NEW DELHI: India’s capital New Delhi was shrouded in a thick, toxic haze on Monday as air pollution levels soared to more than 16 times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum.
New Delhi and its sprawling metropolitan region — home to more than 30 million people — are regularly ranked among the world’s most polluted capitals, with acrid smog blanketing the skyline each winter.
Cooler air traps pollutants close to the ground, creating a deadly mix of emissions from crop burning, factories and heavy traffic.
But pollution has also spiked due to days of fireworks set off to mark Diwali, the major Hindu festival of lights, which culminates on Monday night.
The Supreme Court relaxed this month a blanket ban on fireworks over Diwali to allow the use of the less-polluting “green firecrackers” — designed to emit fewer particulates.
The ban was widely ignored in past years.
On Monday, levels of PM2.5 — cancer-causing microparticles small enough to enter the bloodstream — hit 248 micrograms per cubic meter in parts of the city, according to monitoring organization IQAir.
The government’s Commission of Air Quality Management said air quality is expected to further deteriorate in the coming days.
It also implemented a set of measures to curb pollution levels, including asking authorities to ensure uninterrupted power supply to reduce the use of diesel generators.
City authorities have also said they will trial cloud seeding by aeroplanes for the first time over Delhi this month, the practice of firing salt or other chemicals into clouds to induce rain to clear the air.
“We’ve already got everything we need to do the cloud seeding,” Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa told reporters this month, saying flight trials and pilot training had been completed.
A study in The Lancet Planetary Health last year estimated 3.8 million deaths in India between 2009 and 2019 were linked to air pollution.
The UN children’s agency warns that polluted air puts children at heightened risk of acute respiratory infections.
Toxic haze chokes Indian capital
https://arab.news/26qpk
Toxic haze chokes Indian capital
- A study in The Lancet Planetary Health last year estimated 3.8 million deaths in India between 2009 and 2019 were linked to air pollution
- City authorities said they will trial cloud seeding by aeroplanes for the first time over Delhi this month, the practice of firing salt or other chemicals into clouds to induce rain to clear the air
Russia says captured Ukraine’s Siversk in key eastern region
- The Russian army in Ukraine is “confidently advancing along the entire front,” Putin said
- He said last month his troops were advancing on Siversk, home to around 11,000 residents
MOSCOW: Russia said Thursday its troops had seized full control of Siversk, a Ukrainian city in the eastern Donetsk region where fighting has intensified in recent weeks, though Ukraine denied the key settlement had been lost.
The Russian army has been slowly but steadily grinding through eastern Ukraine and taking ground from outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces, with some of the fiercest battles taking place in Donetsk.
Russia’s military chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, said Moscow’s forces had captured Siversk in a report to President Vladimir Putin during a televised meeting with army commanders.
The Russian army in Ukraine is “confidently advancing along the entire front,” Putin said, thanking the commanders and soldiers “for their combat work.”
Putin said last month his troops were advancing on Siversk, home to around 11,000 residents before the war, claiming that the Russian offensive was “practically impossible to hold back.”
The Ukrainian army’s eastern command denied Russian claims it had taken Siversk, saying that it “remains under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
“The enemy is trying to infiltrate Siversk in small groups, taking advantage of unfavorable weather conditions but most of these units are being destroyed on the approaches,” it added in a Facebook post.
Siversk is located about 30 kilometers (18 miles) east of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last two major cities still under Ukrainian control in the Donbas — an industrial and mining region in Moscow’s sights.
Moscow earlier this month said it had captured Pokrovsk, a former road and rail hub also in Donetsk, but Kyiv claims fighting in the city is still ongoing.
Putin has said that Moscow is ready to fight on to seize the rest of the land it claims in eastern Ukraine if Kyiv does not give it up as part of a peace deal.
Eastern Ukraine has been ravaged since Russia launched its assault in February 2022, with tens of thousands of people killed and millions forced to flee their homes.
