By RAJESH ROY and SIBI ARASU

NEW DELHI (AP) — Dense toxic smog blanketed India’s capital on Monday, pushing air pollution levels to their worst levels in weeks, disrupting travel and causing authorities to impose the strictest containment measures.

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More than 40 flights were cancelled and several dozens delayed. Over 50 trains arriving and departing from New Delhi were delayed by several hours, authorities said.

Healthcare experts warned residents to avoid all outdoor activities as hospitals reported an influx of patients with breathing difficulties and eye irritation.

“New Delhi is a gas chamber right now. Air purifiers can help only a bit, so it’s high time the government comes up with some permanent solutions” said Naresh Dang, a physician at Max Healthcare.

Delhi’s air pollution levels have remained at what the federal government calls a “severe” level for the last two days, which the government says can cause respiratory effects to healthy people and seriously affect the health of people with heart or lung disease.

On Sunday, official index readings were over 450 at several monitoring stations, up from 430 on Saturday and the highest so far this winter season, as per data from Central Pollution Control Board. On Monday, it stood at 449.

Readings below 50 are considered good. During periods of severe air pollution, the government advises people to avoid going outdoors as much as possible and wear N95 masks when going outside. Children, pregnant women, elderly and people with pre-existing respiratory or cardiovascular conditions are at higher risk and officials advise them to be extra cautious.

“I have never seen this kind of pollution ever. Last year I came to Delhi, it was polluted. This year it is more polluted. I can feel the smoke while I breathe the air,” said Tiam Patel, a tourist.

Traffic moves through dense smog in the morning in New Delhi, India, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo)

To stem pollution, Indian authorities have banned construction activities and restricted use of diesel generators and cars. Water sprinklers have been deployed to control the haze. Schools and offices are allowing many students and workers to stay home.

But environmentalists say that the country’s air pollution crisis requires long-term changes.

New Delhi and its surrounding region, home to more than 30 million people, routinely rank among the world’s most polluted. India has six of the world’s 10 most polluted cities, and New Delhi is the most polluted national capital, according to a report from Switzerland-based air quality monitoring database IQAir earlier this year.

Air quality worsens in New Delhi every winter as farmers burn crop residue in nearby states and cooler temperatures trap the smoke, which mixes with pollution from vehicles, construction activity and industrial emissions. Pollution levels often reach 20 times higher than the World Health Organization’s safe limit.

People walk through a public park in a dense smog-covered morning in New Delhi, India, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo)

But Vimlendu Jha, a Delhi based environmentalist, said that the air is not healthy even at other times of year.

“Delhi’s air doesn’t get cleaner at all, we only see it visibly from October to December, but the reality is that it remains polluted through the year,” he said.

Earlier this month, residents of New Delhi staged protests to express frustration and anger about the government’s failure to address pollution.

A study last year by medical journal Lancet linked long term exposure to polluted air to 1.5 million additional deaths every year in India.

A man pushes a cycle cart in a smog-covered morning in New Delhi, India, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Piyush Nagpal)

“Deaths related to air pollution are not being counted. And the reason why its not being counted is because there are no systematic mechanisms to do so,” said Shweta Narayan, a campaign lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

Indian authorities in October carried out a controversial cloud-seeding experiment over smog-choked New Delhi to induce rainfall and clear the city’s toxic air. The experiment ended without rainfall.

Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India. AP video journalist Piyush Nagpal contributed to the report.

August Brown, Los Angeles Times

Carl Carlton, the funk and R&B singer known for upbeat, era-embodying singles like “Everlasting Love” and “She’s a Bad Mama Jama (She’s Built, She’s Stacked)” has died. He was 72.

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Carlton’s son, Carlton Hudgens II, posted to social media confirming the death on Sunday. “RIP Dad, Legend Carl Carlton singer of She’s a Bad Mama Jama. Long hard fight in life and you will be missed.” The post did not cite a cause of death.

Born Carlton Hudgens in Detroit in 1953, he debuted as “Little Carl” Carlton, but changed his stage name and moved to Houston after he was signed to the local label Back Beat Records. He had a minor soul-scene hit in 1971 with “I Can Feel It,” and broke through nationally in 1974 when his regal cover of Robert Knight’s “Everlasting Love” hit No. 6 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and spent 15 weeks on that chart.

Carlton is perhaps best known for his 1981 single, “She’s a Bad Mama Jama (She’s Built, She’s Stacked),” a grooving and awestruck ode to the female form that hit No. 22 on the Hot 100 and helped his self-titled album that year reach gold status.

The song has enjoyed a long life in popular culture — it’s been sampled by rappers like Foxy Brown, BigXThaPlug and Flo Milli, and frequently appeared on soundtracks for TV shows and films like “Friends.”

He continued releasing records into the ’80s, and appeared several times on “American Bandstand” and “Soul Train,” though his output slowed in the ’90s. In 2003, he performed for Barry Glazer’s TV special, “American Soundtrack: Rhythm, Love, and Soul,” which featured Aretha Franklin and other marquee R&B and soul acts. His last album was 2010’s gospel LP “God Is Good.”

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By HILLEL ITALIE

NEW YORK (AP) — Until Sunday’s shocking double killings, few families seemed more apart from the dark side of life than the Reiners.

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For decades, Rob Reiner and his father, Carl, had embodied a gentle, hopeful spirit in American culture, whether Dick Van Dyke’s lovable antics on the show named for him and created by Carl, or the openly sentimental ending to Rob’s “When Harry Met Sally…”, now held up as the kind of romantic comedy they don’t seem to make anymore. Carl Reiner would call his son his favorite director, while Rob would recall being so awed by his father that he wanted to change his first name to Carl.

It was a dynasty seemingly spared of jealousy, cynicism and rage, or ambulances and police tape and 911 calls. Carl Reiner was married to his wife, Estelle, for more than 60 years; Rob to his wife, Michele, since 1989. Few would have imagined that “booked for murder” would appear in a sentence about any of them. But on Monday, Los Angeles police announced that 32-year-old Nick Reiner was in custody on suspicion of killing his parents, Rob and Michele.

“They were among my closest friends,” Maria Shriver wrote on Threads. “We laughed together, cried together, played together, dreamed together. We had dinner this past week, and they were in the best place in the their lives.”

Actor-producer Rita Wilson wrote in an Instagram post that it is “impossible to reconcile the tragedy of their deaths with the beauty they offered the world.”

FILE – Carl Reiner, left, and his son Rob Reiner pose together following their hand and footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre, April 7, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

The Reiners never pretended to like everybody. Carl Reiner, who died in 2020, had appeared in an anti- Donald Trump ad two years earlier, urging like-minded citizens to vote during the midterm elections. Rob Reiner was a liberal who denounced Trump for years as a threat to democracy, and was labeled by the president Monday a victim of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

But the Reiners’ politics, even at their angriest, were rooted in persuasion and civic engagement, the belief that the right words could bring about justice and redemption. In “A Few Good Men,” Rob’s adaptation of the Aaron Sorkin play, an inexperienced Navy defense lawyer outwits a bullying commander into confessing his complicity with the death of a young private. “The American President,” a 1995 Reiner-Sorkin collaboration released during President Bill Clinton’s first term, was a kind liberal fairy tale about a wavering chief executive who rediscovers his principles — and finds love with an environmental lobbyist.

“Beneath all of the stories he (Rob Reiner) produced was a deep belief in the goodness of people — and a lifelong commitment to putting that belief into action,” former President Barack Obama wrote on X.

As the liberal Mike Stivic in “All in the Family,” Reiner argued constantly with his bigoted father-in-law, Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O’Connor), but never gave up on reconciling with him. After one especially heated exchange, Stivic’s mother-in-law, Edith (Jean Stapleton), explains to him that Archie’s anger comes out of resentment that Mike is young and his life is before him.

When he sees Archie again, Mike hugs him: “I understand,” he says.

Honoree Rob Reiner, second from left, poses with his wife Michele and children Jake Reiner, Romy Reiner and Nick Reiner at the 41st Annual Chaplin Award Gala at Avery Fisher Hall on Monday, April 28, 2014 in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Even the acknowledged struggles of Nick Reiner appeared to have been resolved. In his teens, he was in out of treatment facilities and was homeless on occasion. But by 2015, the two had worked together on the semi-autobiographical film, “Being Charlie,” about a young addict and his tensions with his famous father. Both would say the project brought them closer. Nick Reiner told People magazine at the time that movies proved a mutual passion. Rob Reiner told The Associated Press that he had confronted his mistakes as a parent.

“We didn’t go into it thinking this is going to be therapeutic or bring us closer, but it did come out that way,” Rob Reiner told the AP. “It forced us to understand ourselves better than we had. I told Nick while we were making it, I said, ‘you know it doesn’t matter, whatever happens to this thing, we won already. This has already been good.’”

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The police chief in the nation’s capital pressured subordinates to manipulate department data to artificially lower the city’s crime rates, according to a report by a Republican-led congressional committee.

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The report, released Sunday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, found that Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith often threatened, punished and retaliated against police commanders who presented her with “spikes in crime.”

A separate investigation by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office also found that a significant number of MPD reports had been misclassified to make crime rates appear lower than they are.

Pirro’s office began its investigation in August at the height of a political showdown between Republican President Donald Trump’s administration and the city over control of the police department. Trump claimed violent crime in Washington was getting worse as he ordered a federal takeover of the police department,

Neither investigation found grounds for charging anybody with a crime.

“However, it is up to MPD to take steps to internally address these underlying issues,” Pirro said in a statement Monday.

Smith, who is stepping down at the end of the year after two years in charge of the department, has said she doesn’t believe any crime numbers were manipulated during her tenure.

“I have never and will never authorize or even support any thought processes or activities with regards to crime numbers being manipulated,” she told Fox 5 during an interview earlier this month.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday defended Smith’s performance and accused the House committee’s leaders of rushing to judgment “in order to serve a politically motivated timeline.”

“It is my expectation that the crime statistics we publish and rely on are accurate and of the highest quality possible,” Bowser, a Democrat, wrote in a letter addressed to the House committee’s chair and ranking member.

Homicides are down 31% this year, from 181 in 2024 to 125 with two weeks left in 2025, according to MPD crime data. Bowser said independent data on hospital visits shows a 33% drop in firearm injuries for the first 10 months of 2025 compared to the same period of 2024. The mayor accused the committee of cherry-picking critical quotes from commanders without interviewing Smith or any assistant chiefs.

“Even a cursory review of the report reveals its prejudice: of the 22 block quotes presented as complaining about Chief Smith’s management style, 20 of them were made by only two command officials interviewed,” Bowser wrote.

The House committee said its findings are based in part on interviews with the commanders of all seven D.C. patrol districts and a former commander who is currently on leave. Commanders testified that Smith pushed for a more frequent use of “intermediate” criminal charges that go unreported as opposed to more serious charges that must be publicly reported, according to the committee.

“These combined efforts, as explained by commanders, amounted to manipulating MPD crime statistics in an effort to show lowered rates of crime to the public,” the report says.

Pirro, who was appointed by Trump, said her office reviewed nearly 6,000 police reports and interviewed more than 50 witnesses in concluding that a “significant number of reports had been misclassified, making crime appear artificially lower than it was.”

“The uncovering of these manipulated crime statistics makes clear that President Trump has reduced crime even more than originally thought, since crimes were actually higher than reported,” Pirro’s statement says.

The committee’s Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, said Smith “cultivated a culture of fear to achieve her agenda.”

“Every single person who lives, works, or visits the District of Columbia deserves a safe city, yet it’s now clear the American people were deliberately kept in the dark about the true crime rates in our nation’s capital,” Comer said in a statement.