NEW DELHI (AP) — Millions of Indians celebrated Diwali on Monday as lamps illuminated homes and streets across the country to mark the Hindu festival symbolizing the victory of light over darkness.

Diwali, derived from the word “Deepavali,” meaning “a row of lights,” is typically celebrated by socializing and exchanging gifts. The dates of the festival are based on the Hindu lunar calendar, typically falling in late October or early November.

Shoppers crowded markets to buy flowers, lanterns and candles.

The celebrations were most visible in Ayodhya city in Uttar Pradesh state. Hindus believe the deity Lord Ram was born there and returned after 14 years in exile. People light earthen lamps to mark his homecoming.

As dusk fell Sunday, more than 2.6 million lamps were lit on the banks of the Saryu River in Ayodhya, retaining the Guinness World Record set last year. At least 2,100 Hindu priests performed prayers in unison, their chants echoing across the shimmering riverfront.

The holy city was also decked with fairy lights, and a laser and fireworks show illuminated its lanes and riverbanks. Thousands of residents lit lamps at houses and temples.

Officials said more than 33,000 volunteers helped light the lamps. Nearly 40 families from nearby villages produced 1.6 million lamps. At least 73,000 liters of oil and 5.5 million cotton wicks were used to light the city.

“It is hard work lighting diyas (oil lamps) one by one,” said 19-year-old volunteer Rachit Singh, his face glowing in the firelight. “But when you see the whole ghat (stairs to the river) light up, every bit of effort feels worth it.”

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In recent years, Diwali celebrations in New Delhi have been clouded by concerns over air pollution, as smoke-emitting firecrackers cause toxic smog that can take days to clear.

On Monday, the level of tiniest particulates surged to 347 on the air quality index in parts of the city — about 14 times the World Health Organization’s daily recommended maximum exposure — according to SAFAR, the federal government’s air quality monitoring agency.

Last week, India’s top court eased a blanket ban on firecrackers in New Delhi during Diwali, allowing limited use of “green firecrackers” that emit fewer pollutants. Developed by federal research institutes, they are designed to cut particulate and gas emissions by about 30%.

The court said they could be used during specific hours from Saturday to Tuesday.

Associated Press writer Biswajeet Banerjee in Lucknow, India, contributed to this report.

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are rising Monday, and trading seems to be calmer following last week’s roller-coaster ride.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.7% in early trading and got back within 1% of its all-time high set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 208 points, or 0.5%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.9% higher.

Stocks of smaller and midsized banks drifted higher, recovering some of their losses after a couple raised alarm bells last week by warning about potentially bad loans they’ve made. That raised questions about whether the growing list of problems is just a collection of one-offs or a signal of something larger threatening the entire industry.

Zions Bancorp. rose 1% following its 5.1% drop last week. It will report its latest quarterly earnings after trading ends for the day, and scrutiny will be high after it said it’s charging off $50 million of loans where it found “apparent misrepresentations and contractual defaults” by the borrowers.

This will be a heavier week for corporate earnings reports generally. Big names delivering their latest results will include Coca-Cola on Tuesday, Tesla on Wednesday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.

The pressure is on companies to show that their profits are growing because they need to justify the big gains their stock prices have made. The S&P 500 is still near its all-time high, which was set earlier this month following a torrid 35% run from a low in April.

Delivering bigger profits is one of the easiest ways for companies to quiet criticism that stock prices have gone too high. The other is for stock prices to fall.

Corporate profit reports have also taken on more importance because they’re offering windows into the strength of the U.S. economy when the U.S. government’s shutdown has delayed many important economic updates.

That’s making the job of the Federal Reserve more difficult, as it tries to decide whether high inflation or the slowing job market is the bigger problem for the economy. Fed officials have indicated they’re likely to cut interest rates a few more times through next year in order to give the economy a boost. But that could be a mistake if inflation worsens because low interest rates can push prices even higher.

On Friday, the U.S. government will issue an update for inflation during September. The report was supposed to arrive earlier in month, and the Social Security Administration needs the numbers to calculate cost-of-living adjustments for beneficiaries.

But the government said, “No other releases will be rescheduled or produced until the resumption of regular government services.”

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 3.99% from 4.02% late Friday.

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Treasury yields have been falling recently, and lower yields help make stock prices look less expensive by encouraging some investors to buy stocks when they otherwise would have bought bonds.

On Wall Street, Amazon’s stock held relatively steady despite a widespread outage for its cloud computing service that caused disruption for internet users around the world early Monday. Amazon’s stock rose 0.6%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 3.4%, after its governing Liberal Democrats found a new coalition partner, securing support for its leader Sanae Takaichi to become the country’s first female prime minister. Investors expect Takaichi to push for low interest rates, higher government spending and other policies that could help the market.

Indexes rose 2.4% in Hong Kong and 0.6% in Shanghai after China reported its economy grew at a 4.8% annual pace in the last quarter, supported by relatively strong exports as companies increased shipments markets other than the U.S.

Still, it was the slowest pace in a year. The world’s second-largest economy is still struggling to emerge from a prolonged downturn in its property market and to encourage consumers and businesses to spend more.

AP Business Writers David McHugh and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

A decade after a landmark study proved that feeding peanut products to young babies could prevent development of life-threatening allergies, new research finds the change has made a big difference in the real world.

Peanut allergies began to decline in the U.S. after guidance first issued in 2015 upended medical practice by recommending introducing the allergen to infants starting as early as 4 months. The rate of peanut allergies in children ages 0 to 3 fell by more than 27% after guidance for high-risk kids was first issued in 2015, and by more than 40% after the recommendations were expanded in 2017.

“That’s a remarkable thing, right?” said Dr. David Hill, an allergist and researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and author of a study published Monday in the medical journal Pediatrics. Hill and colleagues analyzed electronic health records from dozens of pediatric practices to track diagnoses of food allergies in young children before, during and after the guidelines were issued.

“I can actually come to you today and say there are less kids with food allergy today than there would have been if we hadn’t implemented this public health effort,” he added.

About 60,000 children have avoided food allergies since 2015, including 40,000 children who otherwise would have developed peanut allergies. Still, about 8% of children are affected by food allergies, including more than 2% with a peanut allergy.

Peanut allergy is caused when the body’s immune system mistakenly identifies proteins in peanuts as harmful and releases chemicals that trigger allergic symptoms, including hives, respiratory symptoms and, sometimes, life-threatening anaphylaxis.

For decades, doctors had recommended delaying feeding children peanuts and other foods likely to trigger allergies until age 3. But in 2015, Gideon Lack at King’s College London, published the groundbreaking Learning Early About Peanut Allergy, or LEAP, trial.

Lack and colleagues showed that introducing peanut products in infancy reduced the future risk of developing food allergies by more than 80%. Later analysis showed that the protection persisted in about 70% of kids into adolescence.

The study immediately sparked new guidelines urging early introduction of peanuts — but putting them into practice has been slow.

Only about 29% of pediatricians and 65% of allergists reported following the expanded guidance issued in 2017, surveys found.

Confusion and uncertainty about the best way to introduce peanuts early in life led to the lag, according to a commentary that accompanied the study. Early on, medical experts and parents alike questioned whether the practice could be adopted outside of tightly controlled clinical settings.

The data for the analysis came from a subset of participating practice sites and may not represent the entire U.S. pediatric population, noted the commentary, led by Dr. Ruchi Gupta, a child allergy expert at Northwestern University.

However, the new research offers “promising evidence that early allergen introduction is not only being adopted but may be making a measurable impact,” the authors concluded.

Advocates for the 33 million people in the U.S. with food allergies welcomed signs that early introduction of peanut products is catching on.

“This research reinforces what we already know and underscores a meaningful opportunity to reduce the incidence and prevalence of peanut allergy nationwide,” said Sung Poblete, chief executive of the nonprofit group Food Allergy Research & Education, or FARE.

The new study emphasizes the current guidance, updated in 2021, which calls for introducing peanuts and other major food allergens between four and six months, without prior screening or testing, Hill said. Parents should consult their pediatricians about any questions.

“It doesn’t have to be a lot of the food, but little tastes of peanut butter, milk-based yogurt, soy-based yogurts and tree butters,” he said. “These are really good ways to allow the immune system exposure to these allergenic foods in a safe way.”

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Tiffany Leon, 36, a Maryland registered dietician and director at FARE, introduced peanuts and other allergens early to her own sons, James, 4, and Cameron, 2.

At first, Leon’s own mother was shocked at the advice to feed babies such foods before the age of 3, she said. But Leon explained how the science had changed.

“As a dietician, I practice evidence-based recommendations,” she said. “So when someone told me, ‘This is how it’s done now, these are the new guidelines,’ I just though, OK, well, this is what we’re going to do.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By MIKE CATALINI, Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A federal appeals court is set to hear arguments Monday over whether President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Alina Habba, has been unlawfully serving as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey since earlier this year.

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The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled a hearing in Philadelphia over Habba’s appointment, which a lower court judge said in August was done with a “novel series of legal and personnel moves” and that she was not lawfully serving as U.S attorney for New Jersey.

The judge’s order said that her actions since July could be declared void but put his order on hold so the U.S. Justice Department could appeal.

Habba is validly serving in the role under a federal statute that permits the first assistant attorney, a post she was appointed to by the Trump administration, the government said in court briefs ahead of Monday’s hearing.

A similar dynamic is playing out in Nevada, where a federal judge disqualified the administration’s pick to be U.S. attorney there.

In the Habba case, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann’s decision came after several people charged with federal crimes in New Jersey challenged the legality of Habba’s tenure. They sought to block the charges, arguing she didn’t have the authority to prosecute their cases after her 120-day term as interim U.S. attorney expired.

Habba was Trump’s attorney in criminal and civil proceedings before he was elected to a second term. She served as a White House adviser briefly before Trump named her as a federal prosecutor in March.

Shortly after her appointment, she said in an interview she hoped to help “turn New Jersey red,” a rare overt political expression from a prosecutor, and said she planned to investigate the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general.

She then brought a trespassing charge, eventually dropped, against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka stemming from his visit to a federal immigration detention center.

Habba later charged Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver with assault stemming from the same incident, a rare federal criminal case against a sitting member of Congress other than for corruption. McIver denied the charges and pleaded not guilty. The case is pending.

Questions about whether Habba would continue in the job arose in July when her temporary appointment was ending and it became clear New Jersey’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, would not back her appointment.

With her appointment expiring, federal judges in New Jersey exercised their power under the law to replace Habba with a career prosecutor who had served as her second in-command.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi then fired the prosecutor installed by the judges and renamed Habba as acting U.S. attorney. The Justice Department said the judges acted prematurely and said Trump had the authority to appoint his preferred candidate to enforce federal laws in the state.

Brann’s ruling said the president’s appointments are still subject to the time limits and power-sharing rules laid out in federal law.