New Delhi: Acrid clouds engulfed India’s capital on Wednesday as air pollution fueled by fireworks and farm stubble burning was ranked “hazardous” by monitors for the first time this winter.
Commuters walking to work were coughed through poisonous smog that kills thousands each year, according to health experts, although few in the sprawling city wear masks.
New Delhi is blanketed in acrid smog each year, primarily blamed on stubble burning by farmers seeking to clear their fields for plowing in the neighboring regions.
Air pollution is expected to worsen, especially during the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, which falls on November 1 this year.
Smoky fireworks spewing hazardous pollution are part of celebrations.
Levels of fine particulate matter — cancer-causing microparticles known as PM2.5 pollutants that enter the bloodstream through the lungs — surged to more than 68 times the World Health Organization recommended maximum.
The pollutants topped 344 micrograms per cubic meter, according to monitoring firm IQAir on Wednesday, which listed air in the sprawling megacity of some 30 million people as “hazardous,” ranking it as the world’s worst.
New Delhi this month ordered a “complete ban” on all firecrackers — both their manufacture and sale — in view of the “public interest to curb high air pollution.”
Previous restrictions were routinely ignored.
Police are often reluctant to act against violators, given the strong religious sentiments attached to the crackers by Hindu devotees.
Authorities have also banned stubble burning, and police in Haryana state have this week arrested several farmers for setting fires before tilling.
Government efforts have so far failed to solve the country’s air quality problem, and a study in the Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths in 2019 to air pollution in the world’s most populous country.
Indian capital’s ‘hazardous’ air pollution season starts
https://arab.news/23b8r
Indian capital’s ‘hazardous’ air pollution season starts
- Air pollution is expected to worsen, especially during the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, which falls on Nov. 1 this year
France releases suspected Russia ‘shadow fleet’ tanker after fine
- The ship is suspected of being part of a shadow fleet that carries oil for countries such as Russia and Iran
- “The tanker Grinch is leaving French waters after paying several million euros and enduring a costly three-week immobilization in Fos-sur-Mer,” Barrot said
MARSEILLE: France on Tuesday released a tanker called Grinch suspected of being part of Russia’s sanctions-busting “shadow fleet” after its owner paid a fine of several million euros, a minister said.
French forces and their allies boarded the oil tanker last month between Spain and Morocco after it started its journey in Russia. It was escorted to a port near the southern city of Marseille.
Ship tracking websites MarineTraffic and VesselFinder said the vessel had been flying a Comoros flag.
The ship is suspected of being part of a shadow fleet that carries oil for countries such as Russia and Iran in violation of US sanctions.
“The tanker Grinch is leaving French waters after paying several million euros and enduring a costly three-week immobilization in Fos-sur-Mer,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on X.
Russia has reportedly built up a flotilla of old tankers of opaque ownership to get around sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United States and the G7 group of nations, over Moscow’s 2022 all-out invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions, aimed at limiting Moscow’s revenues to pursue its war, have shut out many tankers carrying Russian oil from Western insurance and shipping systems.
“Evading European sanctions comes at a price. Russia will no longer be able to bankroll its war with impunity through a shadow fleet off our shores,” Barrot said.
The public prosecutor’s office and regional authorities said that, “as part of a guilty plea procedure, the company that owns the vessel was sentenced by the Marseille judicial court to a financial penalty.”
“The company, which has already taken numerous steps in this direction, has committed to obtaining a new flag as soon as possible,” they said in a joint statement, without adding where the owner was based.
A ship called Grinch is under UK sanctions, while another named Carl with the same registration number is sanctioned by the United States and European Union.
The boarding last month was the second of its kind in recent months.
France in September detained a Russian-linked ship called the Boracay, a vessel claiming to be flagged in Benin, a move Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned as “piracy.”
The Boracay’s Chinese captain is to stand trial in France next week.
The European Union lists 598 vessels suspected of being part of the “shadow fleet” that are banned from European ports and maritime services.
