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Indians Celebrate Festival of Light amid COVID-19 Fears

People light lamps on the banks of the river Saryu in Ayodhya, India, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
People light lamps on the banks of the river Saryu in Ayodhya, India, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
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Indians Celebrate Festival of Light amid COVID-19 Fears

People light lamps on the banks of the river Saryu in Ayodhya, India, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
People light lamps on the banks of the river Saryu in Ayodhya, India, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

Indians across the country began celebrating Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, on Thursday amid concerns over the coronavirus pandemic and rising air pollution.

Diwali is typically celebrated by socializing and exchanging gifts with family and friends. Many light oil lamps or candles to symbolize a victory of light over darkness, and fireworks are set off as part of the celebrations.

Last year, celebrations in India were upended by a renewed spike in COVID-19 infections, but festivities this year seem to be back. Even though the government has asked people to avoid large gatherings, markets have been buzzing ahead of Diwali, with eager crowds buying flowers, lanterns and candles.

As dusk fell on Wednesday, over 900,000 earthen lamps were lit and kept burning for 45 minutes in the northern city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state, retaining the Guinness World Record it set last year. As part of the Diwali celebrations, the city last year lit 606,569 oil lamps, The Associated Press reported.

The lamps were lit at Ram ki Pauri, at the banks of Saryu River, a stunning spectacle for thousands of visitors who thronged its shores while ignoring coronavirus social distancing norms. A laser and fireworks show followed, illuminating the city's lanes and river banks. Thousands of city residents also lit lamps at their houses and temples.

The festival is being celebrated at a time when India's pandemic crisis has largely subsided.

On Thursday, the country recorded over 12,000 new coronavirus cases and 461 deaths, a far cry from earlier this year when India buckled under a few hundred thousand new infections every day. Overall, it has recorded more than 35 million infections and over 459,000 deaths, according to the Health Ministry. These figures, as elsewhere, are likely undercounts.

Even states where infections were swelling a few weeks ago, such as Kerala along the tropical Malabar Coast, have seen a sustained decline. India also celebrated administering its billionth COVID-19 vaccine dose last month, further boosting confidence that life is returning to normal.

Still, experts have warned that the festival season could bring a renewed spike in infections if COVID-19 health measures aren´t enforced.

There are also worries over air pollution, which typically shrouds northern India under a toxic grey smog at this time as temperatures dip and winter settles in.

On Diwali night, people also lit up the sky with firecrackers - their smoke causing pollution that takes days to clear.

While there is no nationwide ban on bursting firecrackers, a number of states have imposed restrictions to stem the pollution, with some allowing their residents to light green crackers for a certain number of hours. Green crackers produce lesser emissions than normal firecrackers. In the past, similar bans have often been flouted.

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Varieties

What Is ALS, the Disease That Killed Actor Eric Dane?

US actor Eric Dane speaks about his ALS diagnosis during a news conference to discuss health insurance at the Department of Health and Human Services Headquarters in Washington, DC, on June 23, 2025. (AFP)
US actor Eric Dane speaks about his ALS diagnosis during a news conference to discuss health insurance at the Department of Health and Human Services Headquarters in Washington, DC, on June 23, 2025. (AFP)
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What Is ALS, the Disease That Killed Actor Eric Dane?

US actor Eric Dane speaks about his ALS diagnosis during a news conference to discuss health insurance at the Department of Health and Human Services Headquarters in Washington, DC, on June 23, 2025. (AFP)
US actor Eric Dane speaks about his ALS diagnosis during a news conference to discuss health insurance at the Department of Health and Human Services Headquarters in Washington, DC, on June 23, 2025. (AFP)

Eric Dane, known for his roles on "Grey’s Anatomy" and "Euphoria," died this week from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at age 53.

The fatal nervous system disease, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, killed Dane less than a year after he announced his diagnosis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ALS is rare. In 2022, there were nearly 33,000 estimated cases, say researchers, who project that cases will rise to more than 36,000 by 2030.

The disease is slightly more common in men than in women and tends to strike in midlife, between the ages of 40 and 60.

Here’s what to know.

What is ALS? It affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing loss of muscle control and getting worse over time.

ALS causes nerve cells in the upper and lower parts of the body to stop working and die. Nerves no longer trigger specific muscles, eventually leading to paralysis. People with ALS may develop problems with mobility, speaking, swallowing and breathing.

The exact cause of the disease is unknown, and Mayo Clinic experts said a small number of cases are inherited.

It’s called Lou Gehrig’s disease after the Hall of Fame New York Yankees player. Gehrig was diagnosed with ALS in 1939 on his 36th birthday, died in 1941 and was the face of ALS for decades.

What are some signs of ALS? Experts say the first symptoms are often subtle. The disease may begin with muscle twitching and weakness in an arm or leg.

Over time, muscles stop acting and reacting correctly, said experts at University of California San Francisco Health. People may lose strength and coordination in their arms and legs; feet and ankles may become weak; and muscles in the arms, shoulders and tongue may cramp or twitch. Swallowing and speaking may become difficult and fatigue may set in.

The ability to think, see, hear, smell, taste and touch are usually not affected, UCSF experts said.

Eventually, muscles used for breathing may become paralyzed. Patients may be unable to swallow and inhale food or saliva. Most people with ALS die of respiratory failure.

How is ALS diagnosed and treated? The disease is difficult to diagnose because there’s no test or procedure to confirm it. Generally, doctors will perform a physical exam, lab tests and imaging of the brain and spinal cord.

A doctor may interpret certain things as signs of ALS, including an unusual flexing of the toes, diminished fine motor coordination, painful muscle cramps, twitching and spasticity, a type of stiffness causing jerky movements.

There’s no known cure for ALS, but the drug riluzole has been approved for treatment. According to the Mayo Clinic, it may extend survival in the early stages of the disease or extend the time until a breathing tube is needed.

Another much-debated drug, Relyvrio, was pulled from the US market by Amylyx Pharmaceuticals in 2024. Its development had been financed, in part, by the ALS Association, the major beneficiary of the 2014 " ice bucket challenge " viral phenomenon.

Other medications are sometimes prescribed to help control symptoms.

Choking is common as ALS progresses, so patients may need feeding tubes. People may also use braces, wheelchairs, speech synthesizers or computer-based communication systems.

After the onset of the disease, experts say patients may survive from two years to a decade. Most people live from two to five years after symptoms develop, and about a fifth live more than five years after they are diagnosed.

Varieties

Snowstorm Paralyzes Vienna Airport

People wait at a tram stop after heavy snowfalls in Vienna, Austria, February 20, 2026. REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl
People wait at a tram stop after heavy snowfalls in Vienna, Austria, February 20, 2026. REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl
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Snowstorm Paralyzes Vienna Airport

People wait at a tram stop after heavy snowfalls in Vienna, Austria, February 20, 2026. REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl
People wait at a tram stop after heavy snowfalls in Vienna, Austria, February 20, 2026. REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl

Massive snowstorms caused power outages and transport chaos in Austria on Friday, forcing the Vienna airport to temporarily halt all flights.

Flights departing from the capital, a major European hub, were cancelled or delayed, and more than 230 arrivals were similarly disrupted or rerouted.

"Passengers whose flights have been delayed are asked not to come to the airport," the facility said in a statement.

The area received 20 centimeters (nearly eight inches) of snow, national news agency APA reported.

The main highway south of Vienna was closed for several hours, and other sections of highway were temporarily inaccessible because of snowdrift, stranded lorries or poor visibility, said the national automobile association, OAMTC.

According to AFP, electric companies reported power outages in several regions in the south and east, including Styria, where 30,000 homes lost electricity.

The weather was forecast to improve from around midday, but the risk of avalanches remained high.

Varieties

NASA Delivers Harsh Assessment of Botched Boeing Starliner Test Flight

NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File
NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File
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NASA Delivers Harsh Assessment of Botched Boeing Starliner Test Flight

NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File
NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File

NASA on Thursday blamed what it called engineering vulnerabilities in Boeing's Starliner spacecraft along with internal agency mistakes in a sharply critical report assessing a botched mission that left two astronauts stranded in space.

The US space agency labeled the 2024 test flight of the Starliner capsule a "Type A" mishap -- the same classification as the deadly Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters -- a category that reflects the "potential for a significant mishap," it said.

The failures left a pair of NASA astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station for nine months in a mission that captured global attention and became a political flashpoint.

"Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It's decision-making and leadership," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman in a briefing.

"If left unchecked," he said, this mismanagement "could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight."

The top space official said the investigation found that a concern for the reputation of Boeing's Starliner clouded an earlier internal probe into the incident.

"Programmatic advocacy exceeded reasonable bounds and place the mission, the crew and America's space program at risk in ways that were not fully understood at the time," Isaacman said.

He said Starliner currently "is less reliable for crew survival than other crewed vehicles" and that "NASA will not fly another crew on Starliner until technical causes are understood and corrected" and a problematic propulsion system is fixed.

But the administrator insisted that "NASA will continue to work with Boeing, as we do all of our partners that are undertaking test flights."

In a statement, Boeing said it has "made substantial progress on corrective actions for technical challenges we encountered and driven significant cultural changes across the team that directly align with the findings in the report."

- 'We failed them' -

Isaacman also had harsh words for internal conduct at NASA.

"We managed the contract. We accepted the vehicle, we launched the crew to space. We made decisions from docking through post-mission actions," he told journalists.

"A considerable portion of the responsibility and accountability rests here."

In June 2024 Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams embarked on what was meant to be an eight-to-14-day mission. But this turned into nine months after propulsion problems emerged in orbit and the Starliner spacecraft was deemed unfit to fly them back.

The ex-Navy pilots were reassigned to the NASA-SpaceX Crew-9 mission. A Dragon spacecraft flew to the ISS that September with a team of two, rather than the usual four, to make room for the stranded pair.

The duo, both now retired, were finally able to arrive home safely in March 2025.

"They have so much grace, and they're so competent, the two of them, and we failed them," NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya told Thursday's briefing.

"The agency failed them."

Kshatriya said the details of the report were "hard to hear" but that "transparency" was the only path forward.

"This is not about pointing fingers," he said. "It's about making sure that we are holding each other accountable."

Both Boeing and SpaceX were commissioned to handle missions to the ISS more than a decade ago.