Dense fog and cold weather delayed train and flight departures in several parts of northern India, including its capital New Delhi, on Wednesday.
India’s weather office issued an orange alert for Delhi, the second highest warning level, forecasting dense to very dense fog in many areas.
Visibility at Delhi’s main airport was between zero to 100 meters (328.08 ft), the weather office said, and more than 40 trains across northern India were delayed because of fog, local media reported.
Some aircraft departures from Delhi were delayed, airport authorities said on social media platform X, warning that flights lacking the CAT III navigation system that enables landing despite low visibility would face difficulties. Delhi’s main airport handles about 1,400 flights every day.
“Low visibility and fog over Delhi may lead to some delays,” the country’s largest airline IndiGo said in a social media post.
Local media showed images of vehicles crawling along highways through the fog, and people huddled indoors as the temperature dipped to 7 degrees Celsius (44.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
Delhi was ranked as the world’s most polluted city in live rankings by Swiss group IQAir on Wednesday, with a reading of 254, ranked as “very unhealthy.”
The Indian capital has been battling poor air quality and smog since the beginning of winter.
Dense fog over Indian capital delays flights, trains
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Dense fog over Indian capital delays flights, trains

- Delhi was ranked as the world’s most polluted city in live rankings by Swiss group IQAir
Harvard to hold graduation in shadow of Trump ‘retribution’

- Thursday’s commencement comes as Donald Trump piles unprecedented pressure on Harvard
- Students wearing black academic gowns tour through Cambridge with photo-taking family members
Thursday’s commencement comes as Trump piles unprecedented pressure on Harvard, seeking to ban it from having foreign students, shredding its contracts with the federal government, slashing its multibillion-dollar grants and challenging its tax-free status.
Harvard is challenging all of the measures in court.
The Ivy League institution has continually drawn Trump’s ire while publicly rejecting his administration’s repeated demands to give up control of recruitment, curricula and research choices. The government claims Harvard tolerates antisemitism and liberal bias.
“Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper,” Trump said Wednesday.
Harvard president Alan Garber, who told National Public Radio on Tuesday that “sometimes they don’t like what we represent,” may speak to address the ceremony.
Garber has acknowledged that Harvard does have issues with antisemitism, and has struggled to ensure that a variety of viewpoints can be safely heard on campus.
“What is perplexing is the measures that they have taken to address these (issues) don’t even hit the same people that they believe are causing the problems,” Garber told NPR.
Basketball star and human rights campaigner Kareem Abdul-Jabbar addressed the class of 2025 for Class Day on Wednesday.
“When a tyrannical administration tried to bully and threaten Harvard to give up their academic freedom and destroy free speech, Dr. Alan Garber rejected the illegal and immoral pressures,” he said, comparing Garber to civil rights icon Rosa Parks.
Madeleine Riskin-Kutz, a Franco-American classics and linguistics student at Harvard, said some students were planning individual acts of protest against the Trump policies.
“The atmosphere (is) that just continuing on joyfully with the processions and the fanfare is in itself an act of resistance,” the 22-year-old said.
Garber has led the fight-back in US academia after Trump targeted several prestigious universities including Columbia which made sweeping concessions to the administration in an effort to restore $400 million of withdrawn federal grants.
A federal judge in Boston will on Thursday hear arguments over Trump’s effort to exclude Harvard from the main system for sponsoring and hosting foreign students.
Judge Allison Burroughs quickly paused the policy which would have ended Harvard’s ability to bring students from abroad who currently make up 27 percent of its student body.
Harvard has since been flooded with inquiries from foreign students seeking to transfer to other institutions, Maureen Martin, director of immigration services, said Wednesday.
“Many international students and scholars are reporting significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies,” Martin wrote in a court filing.
Retired immigration judge Patricia Sheppard protested outside Harvard Yard on Wednesday, sporting a black judicial robe and brandishing a sign reading “for the rule of law.”
“We have to look at why some of these actions have been filed, and it does not seem to me seemly that a president would engage in certain actions as retribution,” she told AFP.
Ahead of the graduation ceremony, members of the Harvard band sporting distinctive crimson blazers and brandishing their instruments filed through the narrow streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts – home to the elite school, America’s oldest university.
A huge stage had been erected and hundreds of chairs laid out in a grassy precinct that was closed off to the public for the occasion.
Students wearing black academic gowns also toured through Cambridge with photo-taking family members, AFP correspondents saw.
Militant attacks hit Mozambique as Total readies to resume gas project

- TotalEnergies paused its multi-billion-dollar liquefied natural gas project in 2021
- TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne said that the security situation had ‘greatly improved’
MAPUTO: A series of attacks in northern Mozambique this month point to a resurgence of violence by Daesh-linked militants as energy giant TotalEnergies prepares to resume a major gas project, analysts say.
The group terrorized northern Mozambique for years before brazenly vowing in 2020 to turn the northern gas-rich Cabo Delgado province into a caliphate.
TotalEnergies paused a multi-billion-dollar liquefied natural gas project there in 2021 following a wave of bloody raids that forced more than a million people to flee.
The insurgency was pushed to the background by a months-long unrest that followed elections in October.
But there has been a new wave of violence. In May, the Islamists attacked two military installations, claiming to kill 11 soldiers in the first and 10 in the second.
A security expert confirmed the first attack and put the toll at 17. There was no comment from the Mozambican security forces.
There were two dramatic strikes earlier – a raid on a wildlife reserve in the neighboring Niassa province late April killed at least two rangers, while an ambush in Cabo Delgado claimed the lives of three Rwandan soldiers.
Also unusual was a thwarted attack on a Russian oceanographic vessel in early May that the crew said in a distress message was launched by “pirates,” according to local media.
“Clearly there is a cause and effect because some actions correspond exactly to important announcements in the gas area,” said Fernando Lima, a researcher with the Cabo Ligado conflict observatory which monitors violence in Mozambique, referring to the $4.7 billion funding approved in mid-March by the US Export-Import Bank for the long-delayed gas project.
“The insurgents are seeing more vehicles passing by with white project managers,” said Jean-Marc Balencie of the French-based political and security risk group Attika Analysis.
“There’s more visible activity in the region and that’s an incentive for attacks.”
Conflict tracker ACLED recorded at least 80 attacks in the first four months of the year.
The uptick was partly due to the end of the rainy season which meant roads were once again passable, it said.
TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanne said last Friday that the security situation had “greatly improved” although there were “sporadic incidents.”
The attack that stalled the TotalEnergies project in 2021 occurred in the port town of Palma and lasted several days, sending thousands fleeing into the forest.
ACLED estimated that more than 800 civilians and combatants were killed while independent journalist Alex Perry reported after an investigation that more than 1,400 were dead or missing.
Rwandan forces deployed alongside the Mozambique military soon afterwards, their number increasing to around 5,000, based on Rwandan military statements.
The concentration of forces in Cabo Delgado “allows insurgents to easily conduct operations in Niassa province,” said a Mozambican military officer on condition of anonymity.
The raid on the tourist wildlife lodge straddling Cabo Delgado and Niassa provinces was for “propaganda effect,” said Lima, as it grabbed more international media attention than hits on local villages that claim the lives of locals.
Strikes on civilians, with several cases of decapitation reported, often fall under the radar because of the remoteness of the impoverished region and official silence.
“More than 25,000 people have been displaced in Mozambique within a few weeks,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said last week.
This was in addition to the 1.3 million the UN said in November had been displaced since the conflict began in 2017.
“The renewed intensity of the conflict affects regions previously considered rather stable,” said UNHCR’s Mozambique representative Xavier Creach.
In Niassa, for example, about 2,085 people fled on foot after an attack on Mbamba village late April where women reported witnessing beheadings.
More than 6,000 people have died in the conflict since it erupted, according to Acled.
East Timor deports ex-Philippine lawmaker wanted in 2023 killings

- Former Philippines congressman allegedly masterminded a March 2023 attack that killed then-provincial governor Roel Degamo and nine others
- “The Government hereby informs that Arnolfo Teves Jr. will be deported from Timor-Leste”
MANILA: East Timor deported an Interpol-wanted Filipino murder suspect on Thursday whose case the government has linked to its aspirations to join the regional ASEAN bloc, after more than two years of political wrangling.
Former Philippines congressman Arnolfo Teves allegedly masterminded a March 2023 attack that killed then-provincial governor Roel Degamo and nine others.
AFP journalists saw him boarding a turboprop plane with Philippine Air Force markings that then took off from Presidente Nicolau Lobato International Airport.
Teves was detained at a driving range in the capital Dili last year, but a Timorese court blocked his extradition. The Philippines justice secretary suggested the decision may have been bought, saying it was “obvious that some people are making money out of this.”
In an abrupt turnaround, East Timor announced Teves’ impending deportation late on Wednesday, saying his continued presence represented a security risk.
“The Government hereby informs that Arnolfo Teves Jr. will be deported from Timor-Leste,” it said in a statement, using the country’s alternate name.
It added that East Timor’s “imminent full accession” to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had reinforced its responsibility to collaborate regionally on legal matters.
On Thursday, the Philippines’ Department of Justice said it was preparing a team to facilitate Teves’ repatriation based on deportation documents from East Timor.
Ex-lawmaker Teves is the prime suspect in the murder of Degamo, the former governor of Negros Oriental province.
Degamo had been distributing aid at his home in Pamplona when six people carrying rifles and dressed in military fatigues entered the compound and opened fire on March 4, 2023.
The killings came months after Degamo was declared winner of a disputed vote, unseating Henry Teves, the ex-lawmaker’s brother.
Arnolfo Teves was expelled from the House of Representatives after refusing to return to the Philippines to face murder charges.
On Wednesday, Teves’ son Axl posted videos on social media of his father being dragged away by Timorese police, claiming he had been “kidnapped.”
Degamo’s widow Janice, meanwhile, called the arrest a “significant step toward justice.”
Thai, Cambodian army chiefs to meet over border clash

- A Cambodian soldier was killed on Wednesday during an exchange of gunfire with the Thai army at the border
- Cambodia and Thailand have long been at odds over their more than 800-kilometer-long border
BANGKOK: The military chiefs of Thailand and Cambodia will meet Thursday, both governments said, after a Cambodian soldier was killed in a border clash.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra told reporters on Thursday that “both sides should remain calm and discuss to see what we can agree,” and called for peaceful discussion.
Her Cambodian counterpart Hun Manet wrote on Facebook that he hoped the meeting between the two army commanders “will yield positive results.”
Thai Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai told journalists the talks will be held on Thursday afternoon, adding that there had been a “misunderstanding by both sides.”
A Cambodian soldier was killed on Wednesday during an exchange of gunfire with the Thai army at the border, a Cambodian army spokesman said.
His death – a rare fatality along the long-sensitive frontier – came after Cambodian and Thai leaders attended a Southeast Asian summit where the regional ASEAN grouping vowed greater cooperation.
Thailand’s military said Wednesday that its soldiers fired in response to gunshots from Cambodia’s border force, leading to an exchange lasting around 10 minutes before the Thai side said the Cambodians requested a ceasefire.
Cambodian Royal Army spokesman Mao Phalla confirmed the clash on Wednesday, but said Thai soldiers had attacked Cambodian troops who were on border patrol duty in northern Preah Vihear province.
“Our soldier died in the trenches. The Thais came to attack us,” Mao Phalla said.
Cambodia and Thailand have long been at odds over their more than 800-kilometer-long (500-mile) border, which was largely drawn during the French occupation of Indochina.
Bloody military clashes between the Southeast Asian neighbors erupted in 2008 over the Preah Vihear temple near their shared border.
The row over a patch of land next to the 900-year-old temple led to several years of sporadic violence, resulting in at least 28 deaths before the International Court of Justice ruled the disputed area belonged to Cambodia.
In February, Bangkok formally protested to Phnom Penh after a video of women singing a patriotic Khmer song in front of another disputed temple was posted on social media.
On Thursday, influential former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen – Hun Manet’s father, and an ally of Paetongtarn’s father, ex-Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra – urged calm and a peaceful resolution to the ongoing border issues between the two countries.
Paetongtarn traveled to Cambodia in April for a two-day visit, during which she met Hun Manet to discuss cross-border cooperation on issues such as online scams and air pollution.
Navy plane crashes in South Korea

SEOUL: A navy plane has crashed in the southern city of Pohang in South Korea, a local government official said on Thursday.
The crash happened at around 1:50 p.m. (0450 GMT), the official at the Pohang city government said.
Four people were on board the patrol plane which crashed in the mountains on the east coast, the Yonhap News Agency reported, citing authorities.
Smoke was seen from the location where the plane appeared to have crashed, Yonhap said, citing a civilian witness.