VANCH VILLAGE: Firecrackers are central to Diwali celebrations for millions of Indian Hindus and this year was no different even as some cities, including New Delhi, banned their use to curb some of the worst pollution levels in the world.
Diwali honors the victorious return of Lord Rama, one of Hindiusm’s most revered figures, and was celebrated in India on Thursday. It is also known as the festival of lights to symbolize the triumph of light over darkness, or good over evil, explaining why fireworks are so central to the celebrations.
“Firecrackers damage the environment, but they are a way of bringing good fortune to us,” said Yash Gadani, a local business owner, in Ahmedabad, a city in western Gujarat state.
While the bans didn’t stop people using firecrackers, factories that make the devices say sales have fallen this year as the rising cost of living, including higher prices for firecrackers, dampened demand.
In the village of Vanch, near Ahmedabad, thousands of workers covered in silver gunpowder make firecrackers by hand.
The industry is largely informal with lax safety standards. Nearly all of Vanch’s 10,000 residents are involved and workers are paid 500 rupees ($5.95) a day, often for 16-hour days.
“A couple of fires in factories as well as unseasonal rains have led to an increase in raw material prices,” Dipan Patel, who runs a unit in Vanch, said.
Firecracker bans have been difficult to implement, especially during Diwali, despite the threat of jail and fines.
New Delhi, a city of 20 million people, is the world’s most polluted capital. From October each year, air quality worsens as factors including the burning of farm stubble following the harvest, car fumes, and firecracker smoke get trapped over the city.
“The incidents of stubble burning are decreasing, but ... the smoke created by firecrackers needs to be controlled,” Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai told news agency ANI.
Despite bans, firecrackers sizzle across India for Diwali
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Despite bans, firecrackers sizzle across India for Diwali
- Firecracker bans have been difficult to implement, especially during Diwali, despite the threat of jail and fines
- While the bans didn’t stop people using firecrackers, factories that make the devices say sales have fallen this year
Air monitor records pollution level in Lahore 80 times WHO limit
LAHORE: Air pollution in Pakistan’s second biggest city Lahore soared on Saturday more than 80 times over the level deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization (WHO), with an official calling it record high.
The level of deadly PM2.5 pollutants — fine particulate matter in the air that causes the most damage to health — peaked at 1,067, before dropping to around 300 in the morning, with anything above 10 considered unhealthy by the WHO.
“We have never reached a level of 1,000,” Jahangir Anwar, a senior environmental protection official in Lahore told AFP.
For days, Lahore has been enveloped by smog, a mix of fog and pollutants caused by low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal agricultural burning and winter cooling.
“The air quality index will remain high for the next three to four days,” Anwar said.
On Wednesday, the provincial environmental protection agency announced new restrictions in four “hot spots” in the city.
Tuk-tuks equipped with polluting two-stroke engines are banned, as are restaurants that barbecue without filters.
Government offices and private companies will have half their staff work from home from Monday.
Construction work has been halted and street and food vendors, who often cook over open fires, must close at 8 pm.
Smog is particularly pronounced in winter, when cold, denser air traps emissions from poor-quality fuels used to power the city’s vehicles and factories at ground level.
Japan urges 200,000 people to evacuate due to heavy rain
- Japan’s highest-level warning is typically issued when it is extremely likely that some kind of disaster has already occurred
Tokyo: Nearly 200,000 people in western Japan were urged to evacuate on Saturday as authorities warned of landslides and floods while the remnants of a tropical storm trickle over the country.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said “warm, moist air... was causing heavy rainfall with thunderstorms in western Japan” partly due to Kong-rey, which was downgraded to an extratropical low-pressure system from a typhoon.
The city of Matsuyama “issued the top-level warning, urging 189,552 residents in its 10 districts to evacuate and immediately secure safety,” a city official told AFP.
While the evacuation was not mandatory, Japan’s highest-level warning is typically issued when it is extremely likely that some kind of disaster has already occurred.
Forecasters warned that landslides and floods could affect western Japan on Saturday and eastern Japan on Sunday.
Due to rain, shinkansen bullet trains were briefly suspended between Tokyo and southern Fukuoka region in the morning before resuming on a delayed schedule.
Kong-rey smashed into Taiwan on Thursday as one of the biggest storms to hit the island in decades. It claimed at least two lives and knocked out power to tens of thousands of households.
Scientists say human-driven climate change is intensifying the risk posed by heavy rains because a warmer atmosphere holds more water.
Ukrainians anxious over war aid if Trump wins US election
KYIV: Ukrainians are nervously following the final days of the US presidential election campaign, some fearing a victory for Donald Trump could halt Washington’s vital aid.
Tuesday’s US vote will take place as the war with Russia grinds through its third year, with the outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian army on the back foot against Russia’s advancing troops.
Moscow’s alliance with Pyongyang appears more solid than ever, with Washington and Seoul saying thousands of North Korean troops have been sent to Russia.
By contrast, Ukraine’s war-fatigued backers could be further disheartened by the potential return to the White House of Trump, who has given no assurance of support to Kyiv.
“A Trump victory would create grave risks. The situation would be alarming,” former Ukrainian ambassador to the US Oleg Shamshur told AFP.
Washington has driven NATO-wide support to Ukraine, with Kyiv receiving billions of dollars in financial and military aid enabling it to keep up the fight against a much more powerful Russia.
That support has however been eroded in Europe and the United States over the past few months.
Trump’s repeated criticism of US support for Ukraine and claims that he would end the fighting within 24 hours, have only raised Ukraine’s fears.
“Neither he nor his team believe in Ukraine’s victory,” Shamshur said.
Trump has refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win, and has not published any strategy on how to end the war.
His running mate JD Vance has advocated freezing combat along current lines, around which a demilitarised zone would be set up.
Trump’s plan would also put pressure on Kyiv to give up its aspiration to join NATO, as the Kremlin wishes, which would leave Ukraine vulnerable to further attacks.
“This will be a respite for Putin,” said Shamshur, adding that he believed Russia would use that time to rebuild its army and resume, when ready, its plans “aimed at the complete destruction of Ukraine.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already ruled out the territorial concessions demanded by Russia.
“Ukraine will not recognize these territories (as Russian), no matter who wants it to, no matter who wins in the US,” he said in an interview for the South Korean TV channel KBS.
A senior Ukrainian presidency official, however, expressed more conciliatory views in a conversation with AFP.
He said the meeting between Trump and Zelensky, which took place in the United States in September, had gone “very well.”
“Trump will surely not want to be the man that led America to lose face to Putin,” he said, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
Ukraine is preparing for all possible outcomes and fostering relations with teams of both candidates, the official added.
Whoever wins the election will have to tackle the war in Ukraine, where the tide seems to be turning in favor of Moscow.
Russia has advanced 478 square kilometers (185 square miles) into Ukrainian territory in October alone — a record since March 2022 — according to an AFP analysis of data from the American Institute for the Study of War.
In the Donetsk region, where two-thirds of these gains were claimed, 51-year-old Ukrainian sergeant Sergiy said he took a pragmatic view.
He told AFP he did not care who won so long as “the US continues to help us.”
But he predicted that a Trump victory “could be a catastrophe not only for Ukraine, but for the United States.”
Ukrainian troops had a first taste of Republican foot-dragging between late 2023 and early 2024, when Trump’s supporters blocked US military assistance.
That forced Ukrainian forces to ration shells and allowed Russia to build momentum.
“If it is like it was at the beginning of the year, it will be very, very bad,” Sergiy said.
Bogdan, a young soldier fighting in the same region, said he hopes Trump will “just want to show America’s strength, determination and capabilities.”
Rodion, another soldier interviewed in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, was also confident.
“I know they won’t betray us,” he said.
He vowed to fight “until the end, until our victory.”
UN COP16 nature summit creates permanent body for Indigenous peoples
- Nearly 200 countries convened in the city of Cali aiming to implement the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreement
CALI: Countries at the UN COP16 summit on nature in Colombia on Friday approved a measure to create a permanent body for Indigenous peoples to consult on United Nations decisions on nature conservation.
The consultative body is considered a breakthrough in recognizing the role that Indigenous peoples play in conserving nature globally, including some of the most biodiverse areas of the planet, according to Indigenous and environmental advocates.
Nearly 200 countries convened in the city of Cali aiming to implement the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreement, which aims to halt the rapid decline of nature by 2030.
The consultative body — which will also extend to local communities — will help to incorporate traditional knowledge and practices into conservation efforts.
Countries also agreed to adopt a measure that recognizes the role of people of African descent in caring for nature, which COP16 host Colombia said would grant such communities easier access to resources to fund their biodiversity projects and participate in global environmental discussions.
Former US cop convicted of civil rights abuse in Breonna Taylor case
- Brett Hankison is the first officer to be convicted of the four police federally charged over Breonna Taylor’s 2020 death
- It was the second time Hankison appeared in federal court: his first trial ended in a mistrial
WASHINGTON: A former Kentucky police officer was convicted in federal court Friday of a civil rights abuse in the killing of Breonna Taylor, whose death sparked police reform and racial justice protests across the United States in 2020.
Brett Hankison was convicted on one count of civil rights abuse, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Though Hankinson’s shots did not hit Taylor, a Black woman who died during a police raid on her home, he fired blindly through a bedroom window that had a curtain and blinds drawn.
Hankison is the first officer to be convicted of the four police federally charged over Taylor’s 2020 death. Two other officers remain charged with falsifying a search warrant affidavit and another pleaded guilty to charges around the search warrant.
However no one was ever charged for killing Taylor.
The deaths of Taylor, 26, and George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, became the focus of a wave of mass protests in the United States and beyond against racial injustice and police brutality.
“The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend the civil rights of every person in this country to be free from unlawful police violence,” assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke said in the Justice Department statement.
Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping in her apartment around midnight on March 13, 2020 when they heard a noise at the door.
Walker, believing it was a break-in, fired his gun, wounding one police officer.
Police, who had obtained a controversial no-knock warrant to make a drug arrest, fired more than 30 shots back, mortally wounding Taylor.
Hankison argued he fired his gun to protect his fellow officers.
It was the second time Hankison appeared in federal court: his first trial ended in a mistrial.
Also on Friday, the jury found Hankison not guilty of violating Taylor’s neighbors’ rights, for firing through a sliding glass door, also with its blinds and curtain drawn.
Hankison will be sentenced in March next year, the Justice Department said.
