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
Russia will ‘definitely’ respond to Ukraine ATACMS strike: Kremlin
- Russia’s defense ministry accuses Ukraine of firing the missiles in an overnight attack on an airfield in the port city of Taganrog
- Both sides have escalated aerial attacks in recent months as Russia’s troops advance on the battlefield
President Vladimir Putin has previously threatened to launch its new hypersonic ballistic missile, named Oreshnik, at the center of Kyiv if Ukraine does not halt its attacks on Russian territory using US-supplied ATACMS missiles.
Russia’s defense ministry on Wednesday accused Ukraine of firing the missiles in an overnight attack on an airfield in the port city of Taganrog in the southern Rostov region.
A response “will follow when, and in a way that is deemed, appropriate. It will definitely follow,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
He did not provide details of how Russia might retaliate.
Washington only recently gave Kyiv permission to fire ATACMS on Russian territory, following months of requests.
The United States warned Wednesday that Russia could be preparing to fire Oreshnik missiles at Ukraine again.
The US warning was “based on an intelligence assessment that it’s possible that Russia could use this Oreshnik missile in the coming days,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists.
Both sides have escalated aerial attacks in recent months as Russia’s troops advance on the battlefield.
Russia’s defense ministry said Thursday its troops had captured the tiny settlement of Zarya in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Indian troops kill seven Maoist rebels
- More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by the Naxalite movement
- The insurgency has drastically shrunk in recent years and a crackdown by security forces has killed over 200 rebels this year
RAIPUR, India: Indian troops shot dead seven Maoist rebels in a fierce gunbattle on Thursday, as security forces step up efforts to crush the long-running armed conflict.
More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by the Naxalite movement, as the Maoist insurgents are known, who say they are fighting for the rights of marginalized Indigenous people in India’s resource-rich central regions.
The insurgency has drastically shrunk in recent years and a crackdown by security forces has killed over 200 rebels this year, according to government data.
The latest gunbattle took place in a remote forested area of Bastar region in Chhattisgarh state, the heartland of the insurgency.
“So far seven bodies of Maoists, who were in their uniforms, have been recovered during search operations,” police inspector general P. Sunderraj said, adding that the toll was likely to rise.
Indian home minister Amit Shah warned the Maoist rebels in September to surrender or face an “all-out” assault, saying the government expected to quash the insurgency by early 2026.
The Naxalites, named after the district where their armed campaign began in 1967, were inspired by the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.
They demanded land, jobs and a share of the region’s immense natural resources for local residents, and made inroads in a number of remote communities across India’s east and south.
The movement gained in strength and numbers until the early 2000s when New Delhi deployed tens of thousands of security personnel against the rebels in a stretch of territory known as the “Red Corridor.”
Authorities have since invested millions of dollars in local infrastructure and social projects.
Taiwan detects 16 Chinese warships around island
- Beijing has been holding its biggest maritime drills in years
- Around 90 Chinese warships and coast guard vessels involved
TAIPEI: Taiwan said Thursday it detected 16 Chinese warships in waters around the island, one of the highest numbers this year, as Beijing intensifies military pressure on Taipei.
The navy vessels, along with 34 Chinese aircraft, were spotted near Taiwan in the 24 hours to 6:00 a.m. Thursday, according to the defense ministry’s daily tally.
Beijing has been holding its biggest maritime drills in years from near the southern islands of Japan to the South China Sea, Taiwan authorities said this week.
Around 90 Chinese warships and coast guard vessels have been involved in the exercises that include simulating attacks on foreign ships and practicing blockading sea routes, a Taiwan security official said Wednesday.
There has been no announcement by Beijing’s army or Chinese state media about increased military activity in the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea or Western Pacific Ocean.
However, a recent Pacific tour by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te that included two stops in US territory drew fury from Beijing, which claims the democratic island as part of China’s territory.
The security official said that China began planning the massive maritime operation in October and aimed to demonstrate it could choke off Taiwan and draw a “red line” ahead of the next US administration.
The sea drills were “significantly larger” than Beijing’s maritime response to then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in 2022, the security official said. Those war games were China’s largest-ever around Taiwan.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said Wednesday that China’s increased military activity around the island was evidence that Beijing was a “troublemaker.”
But China’s foreign ministry – whose spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that drills were taking place – directed blame at Taiwan.
James Char, an expert on China’s military at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said Beijing’s silence “serves as a way of demonstrating that the Taiwan Strait as well as the waters and airspace around the island falls under Chinese sovereignty – hence unnecessary to announce (the drills) to the world.”
“This is another means by the mainland to force its position upon others,” Char said, though he did not rule out Chinese confirmation at a later date.
Taiwan said Monday that Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had reserved airspace off the Chinese coast until Wednesday.
Vietnam-based maritime security analyst Duan Dang said Thursday that aviation data showed the airspace zones had “fully returned to normal.”
Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion by China, which has not ruled out using force to bring the island under its control.
Beijing has ramped up the deployment of fighter jets and warships around the island in recent years, and also opposes any international recognition of self-ruled Taiwan – especially when it comes to official contact between Taipei and Washington.
Lai spoke last week with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson in addition to his two recent stopovers on US soil.
The defense ministry’s tally of Chinese warships on Thursday was the highest since May 25, when 27 navy vessels were detected during Chinese military drills held days after Lai’s inauguration.
Suspense mounts as Macron prepares to unveil new French PM
PARIS: French politics was on hold Thursday during a day trip to Poland by President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to name a new prime minister a week after MPs toppled the government.
Macron had promised to name a replacement government chief within 48 hours after meeting party leaders at his Elysee Palace office Tuesday, participants said.
But he remains confronted with the complex political equation that emerged from July’s snap parliamentary poll: how to secure a government against no-confidence votes in a lower house split three ways between a leftist alliance, centrists and conservatives, and the far-right National Rally (RN).
Greens leader Marine Tondelier urged Macron on Thursday to “get out of his comfort zone” as he casts around for a name.
“The French public want a bit of enthusiasm, momentum, fresh wind, something new,” she told France 2 television.
Former prime minister Michel Barnier, whose government had support only from Macron’s centrist camp and his own conservative political family, was felled last week in a confidence vote over his cost-cutting budget.
His caretaker administration on Wednesday reviewed a bill designed to keep the lights of government on without a formal financial plan for 2025, allowing tax collection and borrowing to continue.
Lawmakers are expected to widely support the draft law when it comes before parliament on Monday.
At issue in the search for a new prime minister are both policies and personalities.
Mainstream parties invited by Macron on Tuesday, ranging from the conservative Republicans to Socialists, Greens and Communists on the left, disagree deeply.
One totemic issue is whether to maintain Macron’s widely loathed 2023 pension reform that increased the official retirement age to 64, seen by centrists and the right as necessary to balance the budget but blasted by the left as unjust.
On the personality front, Macron’s rumored top pick for a new PM, veteran centrist Francois Bayrou, raises hackles on both left and right.
For the left he would embody a simple “continuation” of the president’s policies to date, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure has said.
Meanwhile Bayrou is personally disliked by former president Nicolas Sarkozy, still influential on the right and reported to have Macron’s ear.
Other contenders include former Socialist interior minister and prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, serving Defense Minister and Macron loyalist Sebastien Lecornu, or former foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
But a name could still emerge from outside the pack, as happened with Barnier in September.
Those in circulation “are names that have been around for years and haven’t seduced the French. It’s the past. I want us to look to the future,” Greens boss Tondelier said.
While the suspense over Macron’s choice endures, there has been infighting on the left over whether to play along in the search for stability or stick to maximalist demands.
Once a PM is named, “we will then have to have a discussion with whoever is named,” Socialist chief Faure said, saying the left must “be able to grab some victories for the French public.”
The Socialists’ openness to cooperation has been denounced by their nominal ally Jean-Luc Melenchon, figurehead of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI).
“No coalition deals! No deal not to vote no confidence! Return to reason and come home!” he urged on Tuesday.
Hard-line attitudes are not necessarily vote-winners, with just over two-thirds of respondents to an Elabe poll published Wednesday saying they want politicians to reach a deal not to overthrow a new government.
But confidence in the elite is limited, with around the same number saying they did not believe the political class could reach agreement.
In a separate poll from Ifop, RN leader Marine Le Pen is credited with 35 percent support in the first round of a future presidential election — well ahead of any likely opponent.
She has said she is “not unhappy” her far-right party has been left out of the horse-trading around government formation, appearing for now to benefit from the chaos rather than suffer blame for bringing last week’s no-confidence vote over the line.
Hardest-hit Nigeria is latest African country to provide malaria vaccine to young children
- Experts say Nigeria’s population of more than 210 million people, as well as its climate, contribute to its high malaria burden
- WHO report notes countries with malaria still grapple with fragile health systems, weak surveillance and drug and insecticide resistance
BAYELSA, Nigeria: Ominike Marvis has lost count of the number of times her 6-year-old son has had malaria. So when Nigeria started offering a malaria vaccine, she was eager to protect her youngest child.
She took the 6-month-old baby to get his first shot at a health center in hard-hit Bayelsa state, where the country’s vaccination campaign kicked off last week. The vaccine aims to prevent severe illnesses and deaths from the mosquito-borne disease.
“At least I know he’s safe from it now,” Marvis, 31, said.
Africa accounts for the vast majority of malaria in the world. Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country, has the biggest burden with about a quarter of the cases.
According to a World Health Organization report released Wednesday, there were an estimated 263 million cases of malaria and 597,000 deaths worldwide last year, mostly in children under 5. That is 11 million more malaria cases compared to 2022 with nearly the same number of deaths.
“No one should die of malaria, yet the disease continues to disproportionately harm people living in the African region, especially young children and pregnant women,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, calling for more support.
There are now 17 countries giving new malaria vaccines to young children, the WHO report said. Nigeria began its campaign last week, offering a vaccine developed by Oxford University.
Research suggests it is more than 75 percent effective at preventing severe disease and death in the first year and that protection is extended for at least another year with a booster.
Nigeria’s health minister, Muhammad Ali Pate, called the vaccination campaign a “monumental step” in the country’s efforts to eliminate malaria.
The disease is caused by a parasite that is spread through mosquito bites. Experts say other measures like bed nets and insecticide spraying remain essential to curb the disease.
Experts say Nigeria’s population of more than 210 million people, as well as its climate, contribute to its high malaria burden, but so do other factors like poor sanitation and limited tools like treated bed nets.
Besides the lack of funding, WHO report said countries with malaria still grapple with fragile health systems, weak surveillance and drug and insecticide resistance.
But progress has also been made on several fronts, the report said, including in the African region where countries have achieved a 16 percent reduction in malaria deaths since 2015. And in 83 countries where malaria is present, 25 of them now report fewer than 10 cases a year, the report said.
In the oil-rich but poor Bayelsa state, among the worst-hit in Nigeria, malaria is so common in riverside communities that mothers spoke of how no one in their family has been spared.
“Here, malaria is something we are used to,” said Claris Okah, a community health worker.
Among the challenges health workers like Okah face is hesitancy among parents, so they are educating families about the new vaccine and other steps to prevent malaria.
“The vaccine is a good thing,” Okah siad.
