NEW DELHI: Many Delhi residents were forced to spend Christmas indoors this year as air quality remained at “severe to emergency” levels for a fourth day, in the Indian capital’s worst smog crisis this year.
Senior officials predicted the severe pollution would last another three days due to unusually stagnant and cold air. They issued a three-day emergency response on Monday that included closing area factories and banning construction works.
“We are preferring to stay at home due to pollution despite Christmas celebrations and a public holiday,” said Amit Azad, a financial consultant. He bought an air purifier this week after developing a cough because of the smog.
A Delhi government official blamed the pollution for lighter-than-usual traffic on already holiday-thinned streets, while a Delhi airport official said some domestic and international flights were delayed for up to two hours due to poor visibility.
Delhi’s air quality index, which measures the concentration of poisonous particulate matter, averaged 420 on Tuesday morning, slightly better than 449-450 the previous two days — the worst this year — data from the government’s Central Pollution Control Board showed. A reading above 100 is considered unhealthy.
Delhi is ranked among the world’s worst cities in air quality, after years of breakneck growth in auto sales and coal-fired power generation.
Environmentalists say the federal and city governments, while focusing on temporary responses, are side-stepping more effective, long-term measures that would hit at the sources of pollution and promote cleaner fuels.
“There is a lack of political will to take required measures on a sustained basis to contain pollution levels,” said Sunil Dahiya, a senior campaigner with Greenpeace India. He called for higher car parking fees and reduced dependence on coal-fired power plants.
Dahiya also said the government should immediately close down schools and urge people to curtail outdoor activities given the serious health effects of the current pollution levels.
Delhi residents spend Christmas indoors as smog emergency reaches fourth day
Delhi residents spend Christmas indoors as smog emergency reaches fourth day
- Senior officials predicted the severe pollution would last another three days due to unusually stagnant and cold air
- Some domestic and international flights were delayed for up to two hours due to poor visibility
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
