In India, polluted air spells trouble for virus patients

A thick quilt of smog is lingering over India's capital and health experts say it could worsen the city’s fight against the coronavirus

NEW DELHI -- A thick quilt of smog lingered over the Indian capital and its suburbs on Friday, fed by smoke from raging agricultural fires that health experts worry could worsen the city’s fight against the coronavirus.

Air pollution in parts of New Delhi have climbed to levels around nine times what the World Health Organization considers safe, turning grey winter skies into a putrid yellow and shrouding national monuments. Levels of the most dangerous particles, called PM 2.5, climbed to around 250 micrograms per cubic meter, which is considered hazardous to breathe, according to the state-run System of Air Quality Weather Forecasting and Research.

The throat-burning smoke regularly turns the city of 20 million people into the world’s most polluted at this time of the year.

This year's haze, however, comes as New Delhi battles a new surge in coronavirus infections, and health experts fear that if the air quality continues to worsen, then people with chronic medical conditions could become more vulnerable.

“We are already registering more infections after the air quality started to deteriorate. I fear things will only get worse from here on,” said Arvind Kumar, a chest surgeon in New Delhi.

India has reported the second most coronavirus infections in the world after the United States, with more than 8.4 million confirmed cases and nearly 125,000 deaths. The number of new daily infections reported across the country has slowed since mid-September, but New Delhi has recently seen a new surge.

On Thursday, the national capital recorded nearly 6,700 new COVID-19 cases, the second-highest single-day spike since the pandemic began. The surge comes ahead of the country's festival season, when people normally gather in large numbers.

With fears growing about rising infections, New Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday banned firecrackers from being used this month during Diwali, the Hindu festival of light.

“The corona situation is worsening because of pollution,” he said.

Xiao Wu, a researcher at Harvard University, said emerging research suggests that pollution exposure could increase the severity of coronavirus infections.

“The relationship of long-term air pollution and COVID-19 indicate adverse health impacts that make people prone to the infection,” Wu said.

He said extended exposure to severely polluted air can cause chronic lung inflammation which could leave people more vulnerable to the coronavirus.

The link between air pollution and worsening COVID-19 cases remains mostly theoretical at the moment. But several researchers have said that in addition to factors such as mask wearing, social distancing, population density and temperature, dirty air should also be considered a key element in coronavirus outbreaks.

Recently, India's National Centre for Disease Control said New Delhi is likely to report around 15,000 new COVID-19 cases a day in the winter, in part because of the prevalence of respiratory illnesses during the season resulting from toxic air.

New Delhi’s air pollution woes aren’t new.

Every winter season, air pollution levels in the capital soar to dangerous levels and dark yellow haze blankets the city for months. What makes things worse is the burning of crop debris on farms in neighboring states, which sends up huge clouds of smoke that drift toward New Delhi.

The New Delhi government has been doing more this year to fight air pollution by setting up a war room to track hot spots, using huge anti-smog guns that spray high pressure mist to help dust particles settle, and reducing smoke caused by agricultural burning.

But many say it is not doing enough.

“Our government only wakes up at the time of emergency. We don't want a quick-fix solution,” said Bhavreen Kandhari, a New Delhi environmentalist.

EU’s Michel wants school for imams to combat terrorism and radicalisation

European Council president says Europe must fight extremist ideologies.

European Council President Charles Michel on Monday called for the creation of a European institute to train imams as a way to curb hate speech and prevent terrorism.

Speaking in Vienna, where he paid tribute to the victims of last week’s terrorist attack, Michel said he believes a school for imams could help “to fight against extremist ideologies, violent extremism, messages of hatred, messages of rejection that feed these terrorist actions.”

“It is important to be firm about this,” Michel said at a press conference with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. “I think, for example, that we should have debates at the European level in connection with the idea that was raised some time ago of setting up a European institute for the training of imams, to ensure that this message of tolerance and openness can be conveyed at the European level.”

He added that the goal must be to create acceptance for “the primacy of civil law” and to forge “mutual respect” for common values and democracy.

Similar ideas of training imams to have European values have already been floated in Germany and France amid fears of foreign influence. However, there are questions about how such a model would work in practice as religious authorities could be reluctant about being trained by secular governments.

European Council President Charles Michel | Florian Wieser/EFE via EPA

Michel’s proposal was immediately met with skepticism.

“The approach of governments controlling religious discourse through imams is a tried and tested failure in Muslim-majority countries,” said Rashad Ali, a senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who specializes in de-radicalization. “It is one thing to break political ties to foreign states and another thing altogether in creating a European imam, and creating a brand of Islam which is neither necessary for the majority nor religiously authentic.”

The proposal comes ahead of a videoconference on Tuesday between German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as well as Michel and Kurz, who plan to discuss European answers to the threat of terrorism.

The European Council president also demanded that the EU crack down on foreign funding for religious organizations “that mobilize to stir up hatred.” In addition, EU legislative proposals expected next month should contribute to removing radical messages on the internet, Michel said.

“It’s very shocking for our citizens to see internet messages of glorification or calls of hatred that are kept for days, for weeks … we must be able to remove these contents very quickly, which is not always the case today,” Michel said.

Kurz said the EU needs to wage “a concerted fight against political Islam, against the ideology behind this aggression on our society and Western way of life.” He lent support to Michel’s proposal, saying: “It does not help to fight only against terrorists and to start only with violence itself, but we have to react much earlier when it comes to stopping payment flows, stopping hate speech and fighting this ideology.”

Kurz also demanded that there should be better surveillance of “foreign terrorist fighters” who have returned from warzones to Europe.

“We have to be aware that we have thousands of foreign terrorist fighters living in our societies in Europe,” Kurz said. “In other words, people who have already made the conscious decision to fight, rape or murder for the [Islamic State] or other terrorist organizations elsewhere in the world.”

He added: “These are ticking time bombs, a massive security threat for us in the European Union.”

Source: Politico

Austria: Mosques Dissolved, Raided After Radical Islamic Terror Attack

Following the terrorist attack in Vienna earlier this week, the Austrian government has raided and dissolved two radical mosques linked to radical Islam.

Culture Minister Susanne Raab and Interior Minister Karl Nehammer announced the closure of the mosques on Friday, one of which is said to have contributed to the radicalisation of the Vienna gunman who killed four people on Monday.

Minister Raab defended the closures stating, “It is not an attack against the members of a religious community, but it is a common fight against the abuse of a religion by radicals.”

According to a report from newspaper Kronen Zeitung, the gunman was active in two mosques in the Austrian capital.

The first, the Tewhid Mosque located in the district of Meidling, was raided Friday morning by police and the Vienna special police unit WEGA but so far no information has been released regarding possible arrests made during the raid.

The mosque was under the jurisdiction of the Islamic Religious Community (IGGÖ), the largest Islamic community organisation in Austria. The group has been criticised int he past for its connections to Turkey and alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The IGGÖ, meanwhile, have condemned the Vienna terrorist attack, and its president, Ümit Vural stated: “This is an ideology that approves of violence, that dehumanises and which we deeply reject.”

The Melit Ibrahim Mosque, located in the district of Ottakring, was also dissolved, according to Raab, and is believed to have played a part in the radicalisation of the Vienna terrorist.

According to Kronen Zeitung, the mosque was also attended regularly by Albanian-born Lorzenz K., who was sentenced to nine years in prison after his arrest in 2017 for plotting a terrorist attack and being a member of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Lorenz K. was back in court in September of this year after he had threatened to behead a fellow inmate who he stated was not a real Muslim.