For the first time in 20 years, a Russian cosmonaut rocketed from the U.S. on Wednesday, launching to the International Space Station alongside NASA and Japanese astronauts despite tensions over the war in Ukraine. 

Their SpaceX flight was delayed by Hurricane Ian, which ripped across the state last week. 

“I hope with this launch we will brighten up the skies over Florida a little bit for everyone,” said the Japan Space Agency’s Koichi Wakata, who is making his fifth spaceflight. 

Joining him on a five-month mission are three new to space: Marine Col. Nicole Mann, the first Native American woman to orbit Earth; Navy Capt. Josh Cassada; and Russia’s lone female cosmonaut, Anna Kikina. 

“Awesome!” said Mann as they reached orbit. “That was a smooth ride uphill. You’ve got three rookies who are pretty happy to be floating in space right now.” 

They’re due to arrive at the space station Thursday, 29 hours after a noon departure from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, and won’t be back on Earth until March. They’re replacing a U.S.-Italian crew that arrived in April. 

Kikina is the Russian Space Agency’s exchange for NASA’s Frank Rubio, who launched to the space station two weeks ago from Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz rocket. He flew up with two cosmonauts. 

The space agencies agreed over the summer to swap seats on their flights in order to ensure a continuous U.S. and Russian presence aboard the 260-mile-high (420-kilometer-high) outpost. The barter was authorized even as global hostilities mounted over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. The next crew exchange is in the spring. 

Shortly before liftoff, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the key reason for the seat exchange is safety — in case an emergency forces one capsule’s crew home, there would still be an American and Russian on board. 

In the meantime, Russia remains committed to the space station through at least 2024, Russia space official Sergei Krikalev assured reporters this week. Russia wants to build its own station in orbit later this decade, “but we know that it’s not going to happen very quick and so probably we will keep flying” with NASA until then, he said. 

Beginning with Krikalev in 1994, NASA started flying cosmonauts on its space shuttles, first to Russia’s Mir space station and then to the fledgling space station. The 2003 Columbia reentry disaster put an end to it. But U.S. astronauts continued to hitch rides on Russian rockets for tens of millions of dollars per seat. 

Kakina is only the fifth Russian woman to rocket off the planet. She said she was surprised to be selected for the seat swap after encountering “many tests and obstacles” during her decade of training. “But I did it. I’m lucky maybe. I’m strong,” she said. 

Mann is a member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in California, and taking up her mother’s dream catcher, a small traditional webbed hoop believed to offer protection. Retired NASA astronaut John Herrington of the Chickasaw Nation became the first Native American in space in 2002. 

“I am very proud to represent Native Americans and my heritage,” Mann said before the flight, adding that everyone on her crew has a unique background. “It’s important to celebrate our diversity and also realize how important it is when we collaborate and unite, the incredible accomplishments that we can have.” 

As for the war in Ukraine, Mann said all four have put politics and personal beliefs aside, “and it’s really cool how the common mission of the space station just instantly unites us.” 

Added Cassada: “We have an opportunity to be an example for society on how to work together and live together and explore together.” 

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has now launched eight crews since 2020: six for NASA and two private groups. Boeing, NASA’s other contracted taxi service, plans to make its first astronaut flight early next yea r, after delays to fix software and other issues that cropped up on test flights. 

 
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Africa and Latin America have the highest rates in the world of treatable sight problems, but a Spanish NGO is finding innovative ways to reverse this situation.  

Conditions like glaucoma or cataracts, which are easily treated in developed countries, often go unattended in many poorer countries that are struggling with more serious medical challenges like HIV or malaria. 

The London-based International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, IAPB, reports 161 million people suffer from uncorrected eye problems and of these, 100 million have operable cataracts. Another 510 million are short-sighted. 

By far the largest proportion of people with sight problems — around 90% — live in the world’s poorest regions, the agency said. About 55% are women. 

The Foundation Ojos del Mundo, Spanish for Eyes of the World, has been working for more than 20 years to help people whose sight problems could be easily corrected. 

With three projects in Africa and one in Latin America, the foundation aims to offer aid and train local doctors to do the work. 

It is a daunting task. 

In Western sub-Saharan Africa, 18.8% of the population suffer from vision loss, but this rises to 21.8% in southern sub-Saharan Africa, according to IAPB figures. These figures are exceeded only in South Asia, where the sight loss stands at 22.2%.  

This compares with 4.8% in Western Europe and 3.6% in North America.  

Across the Atlantic Ocean, the figure for Latin America is between 12.3% and 13.4%, according to IAPB. 

Ojos del Mundo, a Barcelona-based NGO, treats avoidable eye conditions like cataracts or glaucoma and lazy eyes through direct intervention or by training local people to do the work. 

The foundation has projects treating Saharawis who have fled the Western Sahara and are living in refugee camps in Algeria as well as in centers in Mali, Bolivia and Mozambique. 

Since it began in 2001, Ojos del Mundo has restored the sight of more than 37,000 people and trained 13,000 local specialists. 

Nuria Roman, head of strategic collaborations for Ojos del Mundo, said preventable blindness caused poverty in many countries because people who were unable to see were unable to work. 

“In many cases, these are conditions like cataracts or reading problems which can be reversed easily by access to simple operations or even glasses,” she told VOA. 

“In the countries in which we work, like Mali which is very poor and has problems with AIDS and malaria, sight problems are not regarded as serious enough to warrant help from the state. We train doctors to become ophthalmologists and then a smaller number will become retina specialists.” 

Celebrity help 

In order to raise awareness of their work, the NGO has enlisted the help of Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who has donated a photograph of his eye as part of a new fundraising campaign called irisesoftheworld.org. 

The image will be sold as a unique, digital non-fungible token (NFT) and a photographic print authenticated by the actor as part of the irises of the world campaign. The auction started on September 29 and ends on October 6. 

Bardem, who won an Oscar in 2008 for best supporting actor in “No Country for Old Men,” told VOA he backed the campaign because he wanted to help people who lacked access to basic eye health care. 

“I think Ojos del Mundo does extraordinary work. In a matter of hours, people who had been blind for years recover their sight. People who, unfortunately, do not have access to standard medical care for geographical, economic and social reasons, are able to see again,” he said in written answers to questions from VOA. 

“Being able to help perform, help a miracle like this, was the main reason I wanted to support them,” he said. 

Bardem added that eyes were vital for him as an actor. 

“A vast array of emotions come through our sight and are also transmitted through our eyes. At the end of the day, every sense counts on the creation of any fantasy, and the eyes play a very important role,” he said. 

In Bolivia, Ojos del Mundo worked in the El Alto community and the rural areas of La Paz, located in the high Andes at an altitude of 4,000 meters. About 70% of the population there has been classified as poor or extremely poor. 

Filling gaps 

Before the NGO arrived in 2003, there was no ophthalmic care system, which meant those who did not have the resources to travel to the capital often became blind or suffered with sight problems which could be treated easily.  

The NGO trained ophthalmologists and worked with Bolivian health services so they could treat local people.  

In Mozambique, when Ojos del Mundo started work in 2002, there were only six ophthalmologists for 20 million people, far below the level recommended by the World Health Organization. The NGO started training schemes for local doctors to treat people for eye problems. 

The foundation has worked to address the widespread lack of information about eye diseases among children and adults. 

Ojos del Mundo did not want to speculate on how much Bardem’s NFT would raise at auction, but the highest bid so far was $12,910. 

The reserve price of $8,930 would pay for 1,300 eye tests, while $29,777 would fund four years of training for an ophthalmologist. A bid of $49,621 would pay for 715 cataract operations. 

Roman thanked Bardem for offering an image of his eye to raise awareness of Ojos del Mundo’s work in the world. 

She said the foundation wanted to attract attention to their campaign by inviting a series of well-known celebrities to donate images of their own eyes. Without revealing the identity, she said later this year a “worldwide star” will follow Bardem’s example. 

Bardem and his wife, fellow Oscar winner Penelope Cruz, have supported a series of charitable causes, donating money to rebuild homes after the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and raising funds for the Open Arms project which rescues people crossing the Mediterranean. 

 
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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Wednesday three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for “the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.”

The prize and its $900,000 award went equally to Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless of the United States and Morten Meldal of Denmark.

For Sharpless, it is his second Nobel Prize in chemistry after being awarded the honor in 2001.

The academy said Meldal and Sharpless each independently presented a chemical reaction that is now used widely to develop pharmaceuticals and materials, and for mapping DNA.

Bertozzi developed the field further with reactions that function inside living things, the academy said, with applications that include exploring cells and tracking biological processes.

The Nobel Prize for medicine and for physics were awarded earlier this week, with the literature prize and the Nobel Peace Prize due to be announced Thursday and Friday.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Enzymes found in the saliva of wax worms can degrade one of the most common forms of plastic waste, according to research published Tuesday that could open up new ways of dealing with plastic pollution.

Humans produce some 400 million metric tons of plastic waste each year despite international drives to reduce single-use plastics and to increase recycling.

Around a third is polyethylene, a tough plastic thanks to its structure, which traditionally requires heating or radiation before it starts to break down.

There have been several studies showing that microorganisms can release enzymes that start the degradation process on polyethylene, but the process has until now taken months each time.

But the enzymes contained in the saliva of the wax worm moth (Galleria mellonella) can act in only a few hours, Tuesday’s research showed.

Researcher Federica Bertocchini, an avid beekeeper, said she originally stumbled on the idea that this small caterpillar had unusual powers when storing honeycombs a few years ago.

“At the end of the season, usually beekeepers put some empty beehives in a storage room, to put them back in the field in the spring,” she told AFP.

“One year I did that, and I found my stored honeycombs plagued with wax worms. In fact, that is their habitat.”

Bertocchini cleaned the honeycombs and put the worms in a plastic bag.

When she returned a short time later, she found the bag “riddled with holes.”

“That raised the question: Is it the result of munching, or is there a chemical modification? We checked that, doing proper lab experiments, and we found that the polyethylene had been oxidized,” she said.

In her latest research, Bertocchini, from Madrid’s Margarita Salas Centre for Biological Studies (CIB) and her colleagues analyzed proteins in the wax worm saliva and identified two enzymes that could break polyethylene down into small polymers in only a few hours at room temperature.

Writing in the journal Nature Communications they explained how they used another worm’s saliva as a control experiment, which produced no degradation compared with the wax worm.

Bertocchini said her team is still trying to figure out precisely how the worms degraded the plastic.

While the study authors stressed that much more research was needed before Tuesday’s findings could be implemented at any meaningful scale, there were a number of possible applications.

“We can imagine a scenario where these enzymes are used in an aqueous solution, and liters of this solution is poured over piles of collected plastic in a waste management facility,” Bertocchini said.

“We can also imagine small amounts that can reach more remote locations, like villages or small islands, where waste facilities are not available.”

She said that further down the line the solution could be used in individual houses, where each family could degrade their own plastic waste.
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South African conservationists are on high alert after an outbreak of bird flu killed close to 30 penguins at one of the country’s most stable colonies and a popular tourist attraction.

The disease, formally known as avian influenza, is untreatable and has already killed more than 20,000 Cape cormorant birds since last year.

Boulders Penguin Colony, about a 40-minute drive from Cape Town’s city center, is home to about 3,000 African penguins — a significant number given there are only about 14,000 breeding pairs left on the planet.

Bird flu was identified in the colony in August.

Dr. David Roberts is a clinical veterinarian who works for the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds, an NGO which advises South African National Parks, the government entity that manages the colony. He said that, for now, tourists and beachgoers are still allowed.

“We don’t think there’s any extra threat caused by people visiting,” he said. “If there’s more of an outbreak, then other measures might be put in place.”

The disease is typically spread between birds by feces. Roberts said rangers are on the lookout for sick birds.

“Because this is an untreatable disease, we don’t take them in and give them medication, we’d rather euthanize them,” he said.

There are concerns that the bird flu could spread to ostriches and chickens, which would have dire economic implications.

As far as spreading to humans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s website said illness in humans from bird flu virus infections are rare and have ranged in severity from no symptoms or mild illness to severe disease that resulted in death.

Roberts said the H5N1 strain present in South Africa has a low probability of being transmitted to mammals.

“It is a threat that we know is real and we’re concerned about that possibility but it’s a very low probability at the moment,” he said. “But we still encourage people not to interact with sick animals, sick birds or to interact with dead birds either.”

Roberts said if people do find sick, injured or dead birds they should find somebody who is trained to respond appropriately.

Azwianewi Makhado, the seabird specialist scientist at the Department of Fisheries, Forestry and the Environment, said the department has a bird security policy for any staff handling penguins in the colonies.

“Clothes that you wear when you enter the colony should be taken off as soon as you come out and should not be worn again,” Makhado said.

Authorities said they will post regular updates about the outbreak.
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Australian scientists are harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence in the fight against wildlife trafficking.  

The technique uses 3-Dimensional X-rays at airports and post offices to detect animals being smuggled in luggage or the mail, and algorithms then alert customs officers.  

This technology uses artificial intelligence to identify the shapes of animals being trafficked.

Australia has a rich diversity of flora and fauna, which has fueled an illegal trade in wildlife.

The number of live animals seized by the Australian Border Force has tripled since 2017, according to official data.   Australian reptiles and birds are highly prized overseas.  

Exotic species, including snakes and turtles, are also brought into the country potentially bringing pests and diseases that could threaten farming industries and fragile native ecosystems.

“We are teaching computers to look for trafficked wildlife in both mail and traveler luggage pathways, said Vanessa Pirotta, a wildlife scientist at Macquarie University in Sydney. “The way in which we do that is we scan animals – dead animals in this case – and what we do is we scan that using 3D X-rays and then we produce a reference library.  So, lots of images with the animals presented in different ways so the computer can go, oh, okay, I have seen this animal before.  Oh, it looks slightly different, but I think that is a lizard.”

Australia is aiming to protect its biodiversity with a new plan announced Tuesday that aims to prevent future extinctions, updating an existing environmental policy. 

Among other things, the plan includes adding fifteen animals and plants to the endangered species list due in part to the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 and land clearing. The government intends to curb the impact of feral species, such as foxes and cats, that inflict untold damage on native wildlife, along with invasive weeds. The strategy also includes reserving almost a third of Australia for conservation to improve biodiversity. Dozens of countries, including France and Britain, have already set similar targets.

Australia is “the mammal-extinction capital of the world,” according to Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, who says previous strategies to protect biodiversity have failed.
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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Tuesday that three scientists won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics for “pioneering quantum information science.

The academy said Alain Aspect of France, John Clauser of the United States and Anton Zeilinger of Austria each carried out “groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated.”

Their work made it possible for the development of new technology, the academy said.

“Quantum information science is a vibrant and rapidly developing field,” said Eva Olsson, a member of the Nobel committee. “It has broad and potential implications in areas such as secure information transfer, quantum computing and sensing technology.”

The three scientists will split the $900,000 cash prize.

The Nobel Prize for medicine was announced Monday. The chemistry prize follows Wednesday, with the literature prize on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Monday it had ended its COVID-19 country travel health notices as fewer countries reported enough data for accurate assessments.

In April, the CDC dropped its “Do Not Travel” COVID-19 recommendations for about 90 international destinations, saying it would reserve its Level 4 travel health notices “for special circumstances.” Level 4 calls for all Americans avoiding travel because of COVID-19, even those who are fully vaccinated.

The CDC said Monday “as fewer countries are testing or reporting COVID-19 cases, the CDC’s ability to accurately assess the COVID-19 (travel health notice) levels for most destinations that American travelers visit is limited.”

Since April, the notices have drawn little attention since the CDC was not issuing blanket recommendations against travel for specific countries.

As recently as March, the CDC recommended against travel to about 120 countries and territories worldwide, or more than half of all destinations.

The notices had deterred some Americans from travel and on occasion sparked consternation in some countries. A recommendation not to travel to Japan in May 2021, months before the Olympics drew wide attention.

The CDC said Monday it will only post a travel health notice “for a country if a situation, such as a concerning COVID-19 variant, is identified that changes CDC travel recommendations for that country.”
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This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to a Swedish scientist for decoding the DNA of the Neanderthal, modern humans’ closet extinct relative.

In a statement Monday the Nobel Organization said Svante Paabo is being honored “for pioneering a new approach to study our evolutionary history.”  

The 67-year-old Swede overcame the extreme technical challenges of handling fragile, ancient DNA samples to succeed in obtaining the genome sequence, the organization said.   

“This was followed,” according to the statement, “by his sensational discovery of another extinct hominin, the Denisova, entirely from genome data retrieved from a small finger bone specimen.”  

Paabo’s work proved that Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans mixed “during periods of co-existence,” resulting in the inclusion of archaic DNA in present-day humans.”

Paabo is affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany, and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, in Okinawa, Japan.

The prize for Medicine is the first of five to be awarded this week, which will culminate with the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The Economics Prize follows on October 10.  It is the only prize not created under Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel’s will.

The formal Nobel Prize ceremony will be held in December in Stockholm.
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Climate change increased the rainfall from Hurricane Ian by more than 10 percent, according to a new quick-fire analysis, as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the United States devastated parts of Florida. 

Ian “could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida history,” President Joe Biden said after the storm brought ferocious winds, turned streets into churning rivers that swept away homes and left an unknown number of casualties.  

According to a rapid and preliminary analysis, human-caused climate change increased the extreme rain that Ian unleashed by over 10 percent, U.S. scientists said.

“Climate change didn’t cause the storm but it did cause it to be wetter,” said Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Michael Wehner, one of the scientists behind the new finding. 

The researchers compared simulations of today’s world — which has warmed nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times — with counterfactual simulations of a world without human-induced climate change. 

Wehner said these were “conservative estimates,” adding that while they are not peer reviewed, they are based on methods used in a study on the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, which was published in April in the journal Nature Communication.

Climate change from emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases is warming the ocean’s surface and increasing moisture in the atmosphere that fuels hurricanes. 

Although the total number of tropical storms, or cyclones, may not increase, scientists say warming is whipping up more powerful cyclones with stronger winds and more precipitation. 

“Human-caused climate change is affecting hurricanes in many ways including causing them to intensify faster, be stronger overall, and dump a lot more rain,” tweeted climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who was not involved in the research. 

For each degree Celsius of warming, scientists expect the water in the atmosphere to increase by around seven percent.  

But Wehner said that his research found that storms are “more efficient” at turning the available moisture into rainfall. 

Ian swept across Cuba Tuesday, downing the country’s power network, before slamming into the Florida coast Wednesday as a strong Category 4 hurricane. 

The National Hurricane Center said Thursday the then-Category 1 storm was expected to bring “life-threatening flooding, storm surge and strong winds” to the Carolinas.
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The World Health Organization and Ugandan authorities are seeking nearly $18 million to help contain the Ebola outbreak in the country for the next three months. The initiative comes as Uganda registers the death of the first health worker in the current Ebola outbreak and brings the total number of confirmed cases to 35, with seven deaths.

The death of the first medical worker during the current outbreak was revealed by Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, Uganda’s minister for health, as she spoke to the media after a high-level closed-door meeting organized by the WHO in Kampala

On Thursday, the ministry announced that six health workers had been confirmed to have the Ebola Sudan strain and two more were in critical condition. 

The health worker who died, a Tanzanian national, was moved to an isolation facility at a hospital in the neighboring district of Fort Portal in the Mubende district, where he had handled the first Ebola case.

Because of what Aceng called some mistakes, more health workers have been exposed to Ebola. 

“Today, we have 35 confirmed cases. And we have lost seven people, unfortunately. And one of them is a medical doctor,” Aceng said. “It is true that we have 65 health workers who have been exposed. Now all these 65 health workers are under quarantine.” 

The current Ebola Sudan strain so far has affected four districts in Uganda, including Mubende, with the epicenter in Madudu sub county, Kyegwegwa, Kassanda and now the Kagadi district. 

Aceng revealed the main commonality with the four affected districts. 

“People from Madudu run to these districts because they thought there was witchcraft in Madudu,” she said. “And they were running away either to find a safe haven or to reach out to relatives to help them … treat what to them was a strange disease that they did not understand. However, with the various interventions that we have had, the people of Madudu have now understood that it is Ebola and not witchcraft.” 

Regardless of what course the spread of the Ebola Sudan strain will take, there is still no vaccine. Health officials in Uganda, including those from the WHO, are mobilizing and seeking the funds to control the outbreak. 

Dr. Yonas Tegegn Woldermariam, the WHO representative to Uganda, said he is worried the money being sought might not cover all costs. 

“If we go into the preparedness, we are talking, even for the three months, three times or four times that amount,” he said. “Plus, there are things which we take for granted, assuming the system will provide them. Those are additional costs like transportation, like fuel, like human resources, which we have to consider to also fund as we go ahead.” 

The Sudan Ebola virus is less common than the Zaire Ebola virus, and there is currently no effective vaccine. The Sudan Ebola virus was first reported in southern Sudan in 1976. Although several outbreaks have been reported since then in both Uganda and Sudan, the deadliest outbreak in Uganda was in 2000, claiming more than 200 lives.   

Uganda’s last Ebola outbreak, in 2019, was confirmed to be the Zaire ebolavirus. It last reported a Sudan ebolavirus outbreak in 2012.
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The United Nations is calling for an end to discrimination against older people and for recognition of their contributions to society, as it marks the International Day of Older Persons Saturday.   

With 1.4 billion people estimated to have reached at least 60 years old by 2030, U.N. officials say that is too many people to ignore and dismiss as inconsequential, especially as older people still make many significant contributions.

At 73, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres demonstrates that. In celebration of the day, he commended the accomplishments of older people, whom he called a valuable source of knowledge and experience.  

He also praised the resilience of the more than 1 billion older people in facing adversity in a rapidly changing world.

“The past years have witnessed dramatic upheavals and older people often found themselves at the epicenter of crises,” Guterres said. “They are particularly vulnerable to a range of challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the worsening climate crisis, proliferating conflicts, and growing poverty. Yet in the face of these threats, older people have inspired us with their remarkable resilience.” 

The World Health Organization says longer life brings opportunities to pursue new activities, such as further education or a new career, depending on a person’s health.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it important for countries to work together to foster healthy aging — an effort that must include older people themselves.  

“A collaboration to improve the lives of older people, their families, and their communities,” said Tedros. “In practice that means keeping alert for ageism and supporting older people by engaging them in the community, providing responsive health care, and quality long-term care for those who need it.”  

The U.N. says it is important to challenge negative characterizations and misconceptions about the elderly. It calls for an end to age and gender discrimination and for communities to create opportunities for older people who live in them.
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The Indian capital of New Delhi will enforce a 15-step action plan to curb pollution ahead of the arrival of winter, when a haze of toxic smog envelops the world’s most polluted city.

High pollution is an annual sore point for Delhi, especially in October and November.

Authorities urge people to stay indoors as burning of crop waste ahead of a new sowing season and lower temperatures trap pollutants in the air for longer, often forcing the closure of schools, with curbs placed on use of private vehicles.

“We are announcing a 15-point winter action plan,” Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal told a news conference at which he laid out the measures to reduce pollution, though the annual campaign has had little impact for years.

Measures to help limit dust in the air will include installation of anti-smog guns and water sprinklers, he added.

The government will also ensure that people do not burn waste materials, a major cause of pollution.

Tough measures to check vehicular pollution include curbs on the usage of diesel-fueled vehicles older than 10 years and petrol-run vehicles older than 15.

Pollution levels also peak during Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, which falls on Oct. 24 this year. The government renewed a ban on firecrackers this month.

The Delhi city government will draft thousands of volunteers to ensure the anti-pollution measures are followed, Kejriwal added. He urged neighboring states to ensure a constant supply of electricity and so limit use of diesel-run power generators.
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