Top news of the day: Delhi’s air quality plummets on Deepavali; Trump says India to pay ‘massive tariffs’ if it continues to buy Russian oil, and more

Delhi’s air quality plummets on Deepavali

Delhi’s air quality nosedived on Monday (October 20, 2025), the Deepavali afternoon, as pollution levels at 31 out of 38 monitoring stations redlined at ‘very poor’, and ‘severe’ at three stations. According to the SAMEER app by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Delhi recorded an overall AQI of 334 at noon, compared to 339 at 9 a.m. Thirty-one monitoring stations reported air quality in the ‘very poor’ category with AQI levels above 300, while three stations – Anand Vihar (402), Wazirpur (423), and Ashok Vihar (414) – logged pollution to be in the ‘severe’ category. The air quality is expected to deteriorate further into the ‘severe’ category more widely on Tuesday (October 21, 2025) and Wednesday (October 22, 2025).

Trump says India to pay ‘massive tariffs’ if it continues to buy Russian oil

U.S. President Donald Trump said that India is going to pay “massive tariffs” if it continues to buy oil from Russia, while reiterating that he got assurance from Prime Minister Narendra Modi that New Delhi is going to halt its oil purchases from Moscow. Speaking to reporters onboard Air Force One on Sunday (October 19, 2025), Mr. Trump said India will “continue to pay massive tariffs” if they do not cease buying oil from Russia, adding that “they (India) don’t want to do that.”

Bihar Assembly polls: RJD releases list of 143 candidates, 24 of them are women

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Monday (October 20, 2025) released the names of all 143 candidates for the upcoming Bihar Assembly election, five of whom would end up contesting against nominees of the other INDIA bloc constituents. Out of 143, the party has fielded 24 women candidates and 16 Muslims. The list was released hours before the filing of nomination papers for the second and final phase was to be over. It put paid to rumours that the RJD was going to contest the Kutumba seat, currently held by state Congress president Rajesh Kumar Ram, which would have led to a full-blown face-off between the two allies.

Twenty-three Indians rescued from burning LPG tanker off Yemen coast

Twenty-three Indian crew members onboard MV Falcon, which caught fire and was adrift off the Yemen coast following an explosion, have been rescued and safely handed over to the Djiboutian Coast Guard. The Cameroon-flagged MV Falcon, which was sailing southeast of the port of Aden, Yemen, with destination Djibouti, caught fire after an explosion onboard on Saturday (October 18, 2025). The vessel was fully loaded with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

Many websites, apps go dark as Amazon’s AWS reports global outage

Amazon’s cloud services unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) was hit by an outage on Monday (October 20, 2025), causing connectivity issues for many companies around the world and disrupting services for several popular websites and apps including Fortnite and Snapchat.

Congress releases another list of 6 candidates for Bihar polls; 60 names declared so far

The Congress on Monday (October 20, 2025) released another list of six candidates for the Bihar Assembly polls, taking the total number of candidates announced by the party to 60. The Congress’s list was announced post-midnight, even as a formal seat-sharing deal has alluded the Mahagathbandhan with the RJD and the Congress, the two main constituents of the alliance, unable to reach an understanding.

JMM says it won’t contest, blames ‘political conspiracy’ by Congress-RJD for decision

Jharkhand’s ruling JMM on Monday (October 20, 2025) announced that it would not contest the Assembly elections in neighbouring Bihar, claiming that the decision was taken in the wake of a “political conspiracy” by its allies RJD and Congress, which deprived it of seats as part of the Mahagathbandhan.

Louvre robbery casts nation in ‘deplorable’ light, says French government

A jewellery heist at Paris’ Louvre museum has cast France in a “deplorable” light, Justice Minister Gerard Darmanin said on Monday (October 20, 2025) as Opposition politicians criticised the government for what they branded a national humiliation. Thieves on Sunday (October 19) broke into the Louvre, one of the world’s most famous museums, using a crane to smash an upstairs window, then stealing priceless objects from an area that houses the French crown jewels before escaping on motorbikes.

Zelenskyy says ready to join Putin, Trump at Budapest summit if invited

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he would be ready to join Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. counterpart Donald Trump at their summit in Hungary if he is invited. Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin said they would meet in the Hungarian capital, possibly in a matter of weeks, as the U.S. leader continues to try to broker a peace deal to end the three-and-a-half-year war, triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion.