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Millions of Indians celebrated Diwali on Sunday with a new Guinness World Record number of bright earthen oil lamps as concerns about air pollution soared in the South Asian country.

Across the country, dazzling multicolored lights decked homes and streets as devotees celebrated the annual Hindu festival of light symbolizing the victory of light over darkness.

But the spectacular and much-awaited massive lighting of the oil lamps took place — as usual —at Saryu River, in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state, the birthplace of their most revered deity, the god Ram.

At dusk on Saturday, devotees lit over 2.22 million lamps and kept them burning for 45 minutes as Hindu religious hymns filled the air at the banks of the river, setting a new world Record. Last year, over 1.5 million earthen lamps were lit.

After counting the lamps, Guinness Book of World Records representatives presented a record certificate to the state’s top elected official Yogi Adityanath.

Over 24,000 volunteers, mostly college students, helped prepare for the new record, said Pratibha Goyal, vice chancellor of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University, in Ayodhya.

Diwali, a national holiday across India, is celebrated by socializing and exchanging gifts with family and friends. Many light earthen oil lamps or candles, and fireworks are set off as part of the celebrations. In the evening, a special prayer is dedicated to the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, who is believed to bring luck and prosperity.

Over the weekend, authorities ran extra trains to accommodate the huge numbers trying to reach their hometowns to join family celebrations. The festival came as worries about air quality in India rose. A “hazardous” 400-500 level was recorded on the air quality index last week, more than 10 times the global safety threshold, which can cause acute and chronic bronchitis and asthma attacks.

But on Saturday, unexpected rain and a strong wind improved the levels to 220, according to the government-run Central Pollution Control Board.

Air pollution levels are expected to soar again after the celebrations end Sunday night because of the fireworks used.

Last week, officials in New Delhi shut down primary schools and banned polluting vehicles and construction work in an attempt to reduce the worst haze and smog of the season, which has posed respiratory problems for people and enveloped monuments and high-rise buildings in and around India’s capital.

Authorities deployed water sprinklers and anti-smog guns to control the haze and many people used masks to escape the air pollution.

New Delhi tops the list almost every year among the many Indian cities with poor air quality, particularly in the winter, when the burning of crop residues in neighboring states coincides with cooler temperatures that trap deadly smoke.

Some Indian states have banned the sale of fireworks and imposed other restrictions to stem the pollution. Authorities have also urged residents to light “green crackers” that emit less pollutants than normal firecrackers. But similar bans have often been disregarded in the past.

The Diwali celebrations this year were marked as authorities prepared to inaugurate in January an under-construction and long-awaited temple of the Hindu god Ram at the site of a demolished 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya city in Uttar Pradesh state.

The Babri Masjid mosque was destroyed by a Hindu mob with pickaxes and crowbars in December 1992, sparking massive Hindu-Muslim violence that left some 2,000 people dead, most of them Muslims. The Supreme Court’s verdict in 2019 allowed a temple to be built in place of the demolished mosque. 
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“Creole isn’t about a specific skin tone or country, it’s about a culture,” said Mona Lisa Saloy, author of the poetry collection Black Creole Chronicles. 

 

“It’s food, it’s music, it’s architecture, it’s style and it’s traditions,” she told VOA. “There are millions of Creole people in countries across the world and, still, we are all so much more alike than we are different. We create beautiful cultures everywhere we go, and I think that’s evident here in Louisiana.”

Linguists estimate as many as 10,000 people still speak the French-based language Louisiana Creole. Many more in New Orleans and across the state consider themselves part of a culture that draws tens of thousands of people to events including last month’s Festivals Acadiens et Creoles, summer’s Creole Tomato Festival, and spring’s Tremé Creole Gumbo & Congo Square Rhythms Festival.

But for many locals and visitors alike, it’s the everyday evidence that demonstrates how pervasive Creole culture really is in Louisiana. The state’s stages and airwaves are frequented by the driving, rhythmic scrape of a washboard virtuoso or by the up-tempo syncopation of zydeco music accompanying an accordionist. Its restaurants emanate mouthwatering scents from rich, complex flavors including gumbo, hot sausage, red beans and rice, and shrimp étouffée.

“To celebrate Creole culture is to wake up and live in New Orleans,” said Christina Bragg, a member of the Mahogany Blue Babydolls, a parading group for Black and mixed-race women.

“Celebrating ‘Creole’ is celebrating our day-to-day lives. The food we eat. The music we dance to. The way we gather with friends to parade during Mardi Gras,” she said. “Every day I open my eyes and breathe, it’s a celebration of Creole culture, because that’s who I am.”

Difficult to define

“No matter where in the world you find Creole culture, you’ll see key similarities to what we have here in Louisiana,” said Saloy, who was Louisiana’s poet laureate from 2021 to 2023.

“Architectural styles common in New Orleans like the Creole Cottage or the Shotgun home can be found in other places with Creoles, such as in other parts of the American South and the Caribbean,” she said. “Much of our music derives from the rhythms of Africa and the Caribbean, as does much of our food — elements of gumbo such as the long rice and okra, for example, or the prevalence of beans.”

While certain elements of Creole culture bridge oceans, how one defines the word “Creole” — and specifically the inclusivity of that definition — changes from region to region, and even from person to person.

It comes from the Portuguese word crioulo, which itself derives from the Latin creare, meaning “to create.” It was used during the European slave trade to denote a slave born in the New World as opposed to someone born in Africa. The word then took on different meanings in different places. Creole cultures in much of Africa and part of the Caribbean, for example, came to define an ethnic group made of people with a mix of African and non-African heritage.

In Louisiana, the definition has shifted over the years, and among households.

“Here, the definition kind of depends on who you ask,” said Vance Vaucresson, a New Orleans-based Creole and owner of a local restaurant, the Vaucresson Sausage Company.

“I prefer an inclusive definition,” he said. “By that definition, anyone born in Louisiana could be Creole. During our colonial era, it was meant to differentiate people born in the Americas — usually of French, Spanish or African descent — from those born in Europe or Africa who now found themselves here.

“I like that better than the other definition,” he added, “which says that Creole people in Louisiana are specifically related to the ‘free people of color.’ I like the more inclusive definition better because it unifies us by culture. Black, white or mixed race, it doesn’t matter. If you’re born here and embrace the culture, you can be Creole.”

 

An evolving term

In 18th- and 19th-century Louisiana, that more inclusive definition was the most accepted. White people with recent European ancestry were just as likely to call themselves Creole as mixed-race residents with African ancestry.

White Creoles claimed the term because it differentiated them from white people who were coming from Northern states after Louisiana was purchased from France in 1803. Mixed-race Creoles, too, claimed the term because it differentiated them from slaves.

“Slavery was so entrenched in the United States, Louisiana included, so I think free people of color or mixed-race people were happy to have a term that raised their social standing,” said Don Vappie, a Creole jazz musician in New Orleans. “It was more of a three-tier racial hierarchy here, instead of the two-tiered Black-or-white experienced elsewhere in the U.S.”

After the American Civil War, however, much of that racial nuance in New Orleans disappeared.

“Creole or not, white people had more in common with white people and Black people had more in common with Black people,” Vappie told VOA. “And white people didn’t want to use a term for themselves that was claimed by anyone who was Black.”

As a result, it’s rare to find a white person in Louisiana today who identifies as Creole.

“Nowadays, it’s definitely more of a Black person thing,” said Bragg of the Mahogany Blue Babydolls. “But there’s still so much diversity in Creole culture. You have Creoles with very dark skin, Creoles who basically look white, Creoles with Black features, Creoles with lighter brown skin and green eyes. It’s people who have been from the region for a long time, and it’s a unique thing.”

And while French Creole is spoken less frequently as older generations pass, there are still many Louisianians who are proudly Creole and want to see its traditions survive.

“I want to see more people learn about Creole culture, no matter what their skin color is,” Vaucresson said. “New Orleans has Irish Creoles, Italian Creoles, African Creoles, French and Spanish Creoles, and more. And they all have their different versions of food. At my restaurant, we try to keep those old Creole dishes on the menu so our past never disappears.”

Saloy believes Creole is firmly connected to African culture and should stay that way.

“The ingredients in our food, the rhythm in our music and dance, the details in our architecture — it’s all connected to West African culture,” she said. “And when those Africans were taken from their lands and shipped across an ocean, even though they were enslaved, they managed to make something beautiful again. That’s our heritage.

“For years, white people didn’t want to have anything to do with Creole,” she added. “So I don’t think they should be able to claim it now that it’s become in vogue.”
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Pope Francis on Saturday forcibly removed from office the bishop of Tyler, Texas, a conservative active on social media who has been a fierce critic of the pontiff and some of his priorities.

A one-line statement from the Vatican said Francis had “relieved” Bishop Joseph Strickland of the pastoral governance of Tyler and appointed the bishop of Austin as the temporary administrator.

Strickland, 65, has emerged as a critic of Francis, accusing him in a tweet earlier this year of “undermining the deposit of faith.” He has been particularly critical of Francis’ recent meeting on the future of the Catholic Church during which hot-button issues were discussed, including ways to better welcome LGBTQ+ Catholics.

The Vatican earlier this year sent in investigators to investigate his governance of the diocese, amid reports he was making doctrinally unorthodox claims.

The Vatican has not released the findings of the investigation, and Strickland had insisted he wouldn’t resign voluntarily. He had said in media interviews that he was given a mandate to serve by the late Pope Benedict XVI and couldn’t abdicate that responsibility, and he had complained that he hadn’t been told what the pope’s investigators were looking into.

It is rare for the pope to forcibly remove a bishop from office. Bishops are required to offer to resign when they reach 75. When the Vatican uncovers issues with governance or other problems that require a bishop to leave office before then, the Vatican usually seeks to pressure him to resign for the good of his diocese and the church.

That was the case when another U.S. bishop was forced out earlier this year following a Vatican investigation. Knoxville, Tennessee, Bishop Richard Stika resigned voluntarily, albeit under pressure, following allegations he mishandled sex abuse allegations and his priests complained about his leadership and behavior.

But with Strickland, the Vatican statement made clear that he had not offered to resign, and that Francis had instead “relieved” him of his job.

Most recently, Strickland had criticized Francis’ monthlong closed-door debate on making the church more welcoming and responsive to the needs of Catholics today. The meeting debated a host of previously taboo issues, including women in governance roles and welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics, but in the end, its final document didn’t veer from established doctrine.

Ahead of the meeting, Strickland said it was a “travesty” that such things were even on the table for discussion.

”Regrettably, it may be that some will label as schismatics those who disagree with the changes being proposed,” Strickland wrote in a public letter in August. “Instead, those who would propose changes to that which cannot be changed seek to commandeer Christ’s Church, and they are indeed the true schismatics.”

There was no immediate comment from the diocese, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops merely posted an English translation of the Vatican statement with data about the size of the diocese.

In a social media post sent a few hours before the Vatican’s noon announcement, Strickland wrote a prayer about Christ being the “way, the truth and the life, yesterday, today and forever.”
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Board members from Hollywood’s actors union voted Friday to approve the deal with studios that ended their strike after nearly four months, with the union’s leadership touting the gains made in weeks of methodical negotiations.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ executive director and chief negotiator, announced at a Friday news conference that the tentative agreement was approved with 86% of the vote.

The three-year contract agreement next goes to a vote from the union’s members, who are now learning what they earned through spending the summer and early fall on picket lines instead of on film and television sets. That vote begins Tuesday and continues into December.

Crabtree-Ireland said the deal “will keep the motion picture industry sustainable as a profession for working-class performers.”

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said the studios believed they could outlast actors by waiting more than two months before initiating talks.

“What were they doing? Were they trying to smoke us out?” she said. “Well honey, I quit smoking a long time ago.”

Crabtree-Ireland and Drescher would not give specifics on who disapproved of the deal, and why. The board vote was weighted, so it’s not immediately clear how many people voted against approval.

Overall, the happy scene at SAG-AFTRA’s Los Angeles headquarters was as different as can be from the defiant, angry tone of a news conference in the same room in July, when guild leaders announced that actors would join writers in a historic strike that shook the industry.

The successful vote by the board, whose members include actors Billy Porter, Jennifer Beals, Sean Astin and Sharon Stone, was expected, as many of the same people were on the committee that negotiated the deal. And it was in some ways drained of its drama by union leaders declaring the strike over as soon as the tentative deal was reached with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on Wednesday, rather than waiting for the approval.

But it was still an essential step in returning to business as usual in Hollywood, if there is any such thing.

Actors need not wait for the ratification to start acting again — “in fact some of them already have,” Crabtree-Ireland said.

Contract provisions surrounding the control of artificial intelligence were among the last sticking points in the agreement.

“AI was a dealbreaker,” Drescher said. “If we didn’t get that package, then what are we doing to protect our members?”
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The Beatles returned to the top of the U.K. music charts Friday with the record-breaking track “Now And Then,” making history as the act with the longest gap between its first and last No. 1 single. 

Billed as the last Beatles song, “Now And Then” features the voice of the late John Lennon and was developed using artificial intelligence. It also features parts recorded by surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr as well as the late George Harrison. 

The group’s 18th U.K. No. 1 hit, it brings the Beatles back to the top of the Official Singles Chart 60 years after the group’s first No. 1 single, “From Me to You.” The feat also extends the Beatles’ record as the British act with the most U.K. No. 1 singles in Official Charts history. 

“It’s mind-boggling. It’s blown my socks off,” McCartney said in a statement. “It’s also a very emotional moment for me. I love it!” 

The song is the fastest-selling single of the year to date in Britain with 48,600 physical and download sales based on its first seven days, the Official Charts Company said. 

It is also the fastest-selling vinyl single of the century so far in Britain with more than 19,400 copies sold on vinyl, and the most-streamed Beatles track in one week, with 5.03 million streams, it added. 

The group is also the act with the longest gap between No. 1 singles — 54 years — and the oldest band to score a U.K. No. 1 single, the Official Charts Company said. McCartney is 81 while Starr is 83.  

“Beatlemania has returned this week,” Official Charts Company Chief Executive Officer Martin Talbot said. 

“The return of John, Paul, George and Ringo with the last ever Beatles single … has cemented their legend by breaking a catalog of records — and in doing so underlined the extraordinary scope of their enduring appeal, across all the generations.” 
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