Three defensive perimeters, dozens of cannon, hundreds of rockets and - on standby at a nearby airport - a fleet of five planes laden with thousands of silver-iodine pellets. No, it is not a new frontline in the war on terror. This is the cloudbusting arsenal that is being put at the disposal of Beijing's weathermen as they fight to ensure blue skies for the 2008 Olympics.
Chinese metereologists are preparing one of mankind's greatest ever assaults on the heavens next August, which the organisers belatedly acknowledge as the month when the capital gets almost half its annual rainfall.
