NEW DELHI: At least 16 farmers have been arrested in India’s northern state of Haryana for illegally burning paddy stubble to clear fields, a practice that stokes air pollution in the region around New Delhi at the onset of winter, authorities said on Tuesday.
India’s national capital region battles pollution at this time each year as temperatures fall and cold, heavy air traps construction dust, vehicle emissions and smoke, much of which authorities say travels from the neighboring breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana.
Delhi, ranked the world’s most polluted capital for four years in a row by Swiss group IQAir, has closed its schools and halted construction projects for brief periods in the past as it looks to tackle the problem.
Police in Haryana’s Kaithal region told Reuters that 22 complaints of stubble burning have been registered this year, and 16 people have been arrested.
“Those arrested have been released on bail since this is a bailable offense,” said Birbhan, a deputy superintendent of police, who uses only one name.
Investigations have been launched against almost 100 farmers across Haryana, while fines have been imposed on more than 300, local media reported.
Delhi recorded “very poor” air on Tuesday morning, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), with an air quality index (AQI) of 320. An AQI of 0-50 is considered good while anything between 400-500 poses health dangers.
It was the second-most polluted city in the world on Tuesday, a live ranking on IQAir’s website indicated, after only Lahore in neighboring Pakistan.
The environment ministry said Delhi’s daily average AQI was likely to stay in the ‘Very Poor’ category (300-400) in coming days due to unfavorable meteorological and climatic conditions.
To curb Delhi’s pollution authorities have ordered water sprinkling on roads to tackle dust, increasing public bus and metro services and higher parking fees to discourage car use.
Environmentalists say the measures are inadequate.
“These are only emergency measures...This air pollution mitigation needs a long-term comprehensive solution rather than these ad hoc measures,” said environmentalist Vimlendu Jha.
Sixteen farmers arrested for burning crop waste as pollution rises in north India
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Sixteen farmers arrested for burning crop waste as pollution rises in north India
- Police in Haryana registered 22 stubble burning complaints this year before making the arrests
- Investigations have been launched against nearly 100 farmers, and fines imposed on over 300
India bringing in a new law to curb the menace of hoax bomb threat calls disrupting airlines flying
- The Indian government is working on a new law to punish those spreading the menace of hoax bomb threat calls
In less than two weeks, more than 120 flights operated by Indian carriers have received bomb threats, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan said on Monday that the government is planning to introduce legislation that would put offenders on a no-fly list and amend the 1982 Civil Aviation Act so that they can be arrested and investigated without a court order.
On Tuesday, IndiGo, a private Indian airline, said nine of its flights destined for Jeddah and Dammam in Saudi Arabia and some flights from Turkiye had received such hoax calls. The flights were diverted to the nearest airports for security checks.
“We worked closely with the relevant authorities and followed standard operating procedures,” the airline said in a statement.
The hoaxers have largely gone untraced so far. The Mumbai police said they detained a 17-year-old boy from eastern Chhattisgarh state on Wednesday for allegedly posting bomb threat messages on the social media of various airlines.
Police officer Maneesh Kalwaniya said the boy’s motive was to implicate another person involved in a business dispute with him.
The Press Trust of India said 30 domestic and international flights operated by Indian airlines, including IndiGo, Vistara, and Air India, received bomb threats on Monday night alone.
“Even though bomb threats are hoaxes, things cannot be taken non-seriously,” Rammohan said.
UN: Ukraine population 10 million less since Russia invasion
- The UN Population Fund said there had not been a census, but that there clearly had been a dramatic population decline in war-torn Ukraine
GENEVA: Ukraine’s population has declined by more than 10 million since Russia invaded in February 2022, sparking an exodus and sending birth rates plunging, the United Nations said Tuesday.
The UN Population Fund said there had not been a census, but that there clearly had been a dramatic population decline in war-torn Ukraine.
“The Ukraine population has declined by over 10 million since the beginning of the war,” UNFPA’s regional director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia Florence Bauer told reporters in Geneva.
She stressed that the decline had been seen “since the beginning of the full-scale invasion,” and was due to “a combination of factors.”
Already before the war, Ukraine had one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, and like many countries in Eastern Europe, it had seen a declining population, as young people left in search of more opportunities, Bauer said.
But since the war, some 6.7 million people fled the country as refugees while the birth rate fell to just around one child per woman, she said.
“That’s one of the lowest in the world,” she said, stressing that this was well below the theoretical replacement rate of 2.1 children that each woman on average must have to maintain the population size.
At the same time, she said, there are the “several tens of thousands of casualties (from the war), which of course add to the equation.”
Over 1,000 UK prisoners get early release to ease prison overcrowding
- The controversial policy previously saw 1,700 prisoners freed early last month
- The review will consider options for tougher non-custodial punishments for some convicted criminals
LONDON: The UK was on Tuesday due to release early a second batch of 1,000 prisoners as the government launches a review of sentencing to ease chronic overcrowding in jails.
The controversial policy previously saw 1,700 prisoners freed early last month.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood pledged that earlier mistakes that led to 37 ineligible prisoners being erroneously freed had now been “ironed out.”
The review will consider options for tougher non-custodial punishments for some convicted criminals to ensure prison space is available to incarcerate dangerous offenders.
They include “nudge” technology — watches or apps to encourage compliance with conditions imposed on offenders — as well as home detention curfews.
The early release scheme has seen some so-called non-violent offenders who have complied with certain conditions released after serving 40 percent of their sentence instead of the usual 50 percent.
Former justice secretary David Gauke who is chairing the review said the prison population — currently around 89,000 — was rising by 4,500 each year with 90 percent of those sentenced to custody being reoffenders.
Mahmood said the early release scheme had been forced on the government by a prison crisis inherited from the last Conservative government.
She said that after winning power in early July ministers in the new Labour government discovered a prison system so close to “collapse” it could have led to “the breakdown of law and order in this country.”
“In August of this year, we were down to fewer than 100 places across the whole of the country,” she told Sky News.
As a Conservative justice minister in 2019, Gauke argued that there was a “very strong case” for abolishing jail terms of six months or less, with exceptions made for violent and sexual crimes.
Given current reoffending rates prisons were “clearly... not working,” he said.
“This review will explore what punishment and rehabilitation should look like in the 21st century, and how we can move our justice system out of crisis and toward a long-term, sustainable future,” he added.
EU observers say ‘irregularities’ in Mozambique vote results
- The results of Mozambique’s general election have been contested by the opposition
- Observers noted irregularities during counting and unjustified alteration of election results
MAPUTO: European Union poll observers on Tuesday noted irregularities in the results of Mozambique’s general election, which has been contested by the opposition.
On Monday, riot police in the capital Maputo fired tear gas to disperse a crowd protesting against alleged fraud in the October 9 presidential and parliamentary election, days after two associates of opposition presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane were shot dead.
“The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM)... has noted irregularities during counting and unjustified alteration of election results at polling station and district level,” they said.
The EU observers urged election authorities in the southern African country to conduct the ballot count “in a transparent and credible manner, ensuring the traceability of polling station results.”
“In view of the social tensions and electoral related violence witnessed in recent days, the EU EOM reiterates its condemnation of the killings of Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, and wishes to call for utmost restraint by all,” they added.
Terrified Bangladeshis flee Israeli strikes in Lebanon
- The first 54 of some 1,800 Bangladeshis wanting to escape the troubled Mediterranean nation flew back to Dhaka
- Some gave up long-established lives in Lebanon for a deeply uncertain economic future back home
DHAKA: The first Bangladeshis airlifted home after fleeing Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon described the constant fear of living in a city rocked by explosions.
Late Monday the first 54 of some 1,800 Bangladeshis wanting to escape the troubled Mediterranean nation flew back to Dhaka on a government-backed flight.
Some gave up long-established lives in Lebanon for a deeply uncertain economic future back home.
Bangladesh’s foreign ministry estimates between 70,000 to 100,000 of its nationals are working in Lebanon, many as laborers or as domestic workers.
For 68-year-old Abul Kashem — who lived in Lebanon’s seaside capital Beirut for nearly four decades, including during past heavy fighting in the civil war — the barrage of strikes that began last month was unlike anything he had seen before.
“I have never seen any war like this,” said Kashem, who worked at a gas station, before it was reduced to rubble.
“Everything around the fuel pump where I worked has been destroyed,” he said, after arriving exhausted on a plane chartered by the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
Israel drastically escalated its air campaign against Lebanon’s Hezbollah group last month.
It has since launched a ground offensive intended to push the group back from its northern border.
Hezbollah has been firing thousands of projectiles into Israel over the last year, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis.
Escaping war
The Bangladeshi workers, striving to earn money to send back home to family in South Asia, were trapped in a conflict that erupted around them.
“Five buildings near my residence were brought to the ground,” said Mohammad Hossain, 28, who returned from Beirut with his wife and year-old infant.
“The attacks were so intense,” he added. “The cars are almost melting.”
Nearly a month of all-out war has killed at least 1,489 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
Bangladesh’s Business Standard newspaper has reported at least five Bangladeshi citizens were among those wounded, while thousands have fled border zones with Israel northwards into Lebanon.
“I feel very good after returning to my home country,” Hossain said, speaking as returnees were embraced by relatives welcoming back, some in tears.
“When the plane left the airport in Lebanon, I immediately felt peace in my mind.”
Those returning must now find work at home, with Bangladesh undergoing a political transition after a student-led revolution toppled the autocratic ex-leader Shiekh Hasina from power on August 5.
Their income loss will be sorely missed by their families in a nation where more than five percent of GDP comes from personal remittances, according to the World Bank.
Bangladesh’s foreign ministry, who said Dhaka is bearing the cost of the flights, added 65 more citizens would return on Tuesday.
Ruma Khatun, 30, said she had first fled to Beirut seeking refuge, but said she did not feel safe there either, so was among the first to sign up to leave.
“The situation is very bad,” she said. “When we were taking off from Lebanon.. we heard the sound of bombing.”
