Air pollution in New Delhi yesterday hit hazardous levels after a night of free-for-all Diwali fireworks, despite Supreme Court efforts to curb the smog-fueling partying.
Major monuments, including the India Gate and Red Fort, were hidden by a toxic haze and commuters donned masks as visibility on major roads was reduced to barely 50m.
Diwali is the biggest Hindu festival of the year, when firecrackers are traditionally let off.
Photo: EPA
Early morning ambient air quality readings in Delhi — the world’s most polluted major city, according to the WHO — touched 526, the US embassy said.
The air quality index used by the embassy is a combined measure of poisonous gases and fine airborne particles.
Any figure above 500 causes serious aggravation of heart and lung diseases, with doctors advising residents to skip outdoor activity.
The Indian Supreme Court last month ruled that only environmentally friendly crackers can be sold in Delhi in a bid to cut the smog that has scarred the city’s international reputation.
However, the capital’s 20 million residents showed scant respect for the decision.
The court also ruled that firecrackers could only be set off between 8pm and 10pm, but their bangs were still reverberating around city neighborhoods well after midnight.
“For a few moments of enjoyment people are willing to endanger the planet. It is insane,” said Pranav Yadav, a 19-year-old student wearing a pollution mask as he headed for a metro train. “I expected people to show some concern, but at this rate it won’t be long until every child in Delhi has a respiratory disease.”
Delhi’s air quality typically worsens in winter due to pollution from the burning of rice stubble, diesel engines, coal-fired power plants and industrial emissions.
Levels of PM2.5 — fine particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or smaller — have soared since last month, when farmers in Punjab and other nearby states started to burn post-harvest crop residue.
Mustafa Mohammed, a student and cycling enthusiast, said he could feel the air quality dip drastically as he set out to the India Gate in the heart of the city.
“I regularly cycle around here and what I can [see] today the pollution has really gone up after Diwali,” he said.
In 2016, Diwali festivities raised pollution levels to their highest in nearly two decades — forcing the closure of schools and other emergency measures.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RSS