Chinese officials are bristling at foreign press coverage claiming that Beijing is failing to fulfill its promises to clean up the city’s air for the Olympics. A top official in the city’s environmental protection bureau, Du Shaozhong, told reporters Tuesday that journalists were mistaking a natural haze for pollution. “Clouds and haze are not pollution,” he said, according to a state-run newspaper, China Daily.

Mr. Du said new outlets were relying on photographs which “don’t tell the truth,” but a BBC report Monday that was based primarily on a hand-held testing device deployed at the entrance to the Olympic village showed particulate levels at nearly three times international standards.

For much of the day yesterday, it was difficult to see large buildings more than a block away. Unlike typical fog, the haze did not dissipate as the day wore on. The pollution could be lessened a little today by a brief downpour that swept through the city last night, though it was not immediately clear whether the rain was natural. Authorities have prepared a complex cloud-seeding program to head off rain at the opening ceremonies set for August 8, China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua, reported. The effort, which involves silver iodide shells and dry ice, could also be used to clear pollution, though it is unclear whether it could achieve enough scale to affect overall air quality.

PERES TO ATTEND OLYMPIC OPENING ON SABBATH

President Peres is planning to attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics next Friday, after special arrangements were made to allow him to observe the Sabbath, China Daily reported. Mr. Peres will stay at a hotel in the Olympic compound so he can walk to the so-called bird nest stadium, a Israeli embassy official told the newspaper. The paper said Mr. Peres would be separated from other dignitaries, but a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Beijing, Guy Kivetz, said that was not the case. “I didn’t say anything about putting him in isolation,” Mr. Kivetz said. Mr. Peres will refrain from official meetings on Saturday, the spokesman said.

JOURNALISTS, OFFICIALS CLASH OVER WEB LIMITS

Chinese officials gave evasive responses yesterday to claims that the country is breaking its promise to allow unfettered reporting by foreign journalists during the Olympics. Reporters using Internet access facilities at the Main Press Center complained that a variety of sites and Web logs, including some Western news sites and those of human rights groups such as Amnesty International, were inaccessible. “We will guarantee sufficient Internet access for accredited media so your coverage of the Olympic Games won’t be affected,” a spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee, Sun Weide, told Bloomberg News yesterday. Chinese officials said some of the failures could be technical, but they acknowledged blocking sites related to the religious meditation group Falun Gong, which they called an “evil fake cult.”

SECURITY CHECKS AT TIANANMEN SQUARE

In an apparent attempt to head off protests at Beijing’s historic Tiananmen Square, the government announced yesterday that it has set up security checkpoints that visitors will have to pass through in order to get into the square for the Olympic Games. The square was the focal point of 1989 democracy demonstrations that prompted a violent military crackdown in which hundreds of people, mostly students, were reported killed.

SUBWAY SPRUCED UP

While some Olympic infrastructure usually ends up abandoned after the games, Beijing residents are sure to be pleased with the major upgrade to their subway system. The gleaming subway cars boast flat panel TVs and electronic displays of where the train is on its route. Trains and stations are now amply air-conditioned, and signage has been improved to make it intelligible to foreigners who can’t read Chinese. There are still a few glitches, though. New Olympic buses list stops that won’t be of much use to non-Chinese speakers. Some of the stop names stretch to intimidating lengths when Romanized, such as the 29-letter “Ao Lin Pi Ke Nan Gong Jiao Chang Zhan,” which corresponds to the Olympic South Public Transportation Station, not that the typical visitor from abroad would know.

Josh Gerstein in Beijing