In China, where the Gobi Desert is growing by 10, 400 square kilometers (4, 000 square miles) a year, the refugee stream is swelling.

Yesterday in Weihai, east China's Shandong Province, blowing sand from the Gobi desert necessitated a "yellow" wind alert.

As if to remind you how environmentally unfriendly you are being by skiing here, the pistes are often a pale beige, regularly dusted as they are by fine sand blown in from the nearby Gobi Desert.

Such large dust storms are common in China, but the storms usually happen in the spring, when fronts from Siberia sweep southeast across the Gobi Desert.

Yes. These eggs were found in the Gobi Desert.