PRAYAGRAJ, India — A six-week Maha Kumbh Mela or Great Pitcher Festival begins in India on Monday, a Hindu sacred event that will be the world’s largest gathering of humanity as it showcases religion, spirituality, tourism and crowd management.

More than 400 million people are expected in the northern city of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh state over the course of six weeks to take a holy dip at the confluence of three sacred rivers — the Ganga, the Yamuna, and the mythical, invisible Saraswati.

Devout Hindus believe taking a dip in the sacred waters absolves people of sins, and during the Kumbh Mela, it also brings salvation from the cycle of life and death.

The festival has its roots in a Hindu tradition that says the god Vishnu wrested a golden pitcher containing the nectar of immortality from demons.

In a 12-day celestial fight for possession, four drops fell to earth, in the cities of Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik, which host the festival every three years by rotation. The Kumbh held once every 12 years in this cycle has the prefix ‘maha’ (great) as it is considered more auspicious due to its timing and attracts the largest gathering.

The Kumbhs are a big test for authorities to showcase India’s ability to organize and manage the movement of millions of people and retain the ancient festival’s sanctity.

A sprawling 4,000 hectares of open land along the banks of the rivers has been converted into a temporary city to house the visitors in 150,000 tents and comes equipped with 3,000 kitchens, 145,000 restrooms and 99 parking lots.

Authorities are also installing up to 450,000 new electricity connections, with the Kumbh expected to drain more power than what 100,000 urban apartments in the region consume in a month.

Indian Railways has introduced 98 special trains that will make 3,300 trips during the festival to transport visitors besides regular trains that connect Prayagraj.

Prashant Kumar, the police chief of Uttar Pradesh, said around 40,000 police personnel and cybercrime experts have created a web of surveillance powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to protect and help navigate the sea of humanity at the site.

“Security and safety of pilgrims is our priority,” said Mr. Kumar.

Emergency response capabilities include 125 road ambulances, seven river ambulances and air ambulances for swift medical assistance.

“I am fortunate to host one of the most auspicious Hindu festivals in my state,” state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told the Aaj Tak TV channel.

Adityanath is also a powerful Hindu monk and a popular hardline Hindu politician in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A successful Maha Kumbh is expected to burnish the BJP’s record of reclaiming and glorifying India’s religious and cultural symbols for its Hindu base, promised by Modi and Adityanath since their Hindu nationalist party swept to power nationally in 2014.

The state government has allocated 64 billion rupees ($765 million) for this year’s event, officials said. It has also promoted the Kumbh Mela at several international tourism expositions and invited foreign representatives.

In 2021, Mr. Modi’s government had refused to call off the Kumbh festival despite a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases and allowed thousands of ash-smeared ascetics and devout Hindus to take a dip in the Ganga, possibly fearing a backlash from religious leaders in the Hindu-majority country. — Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia Prime Minister (PM) Anwar Ibrahim said the government did not conceal any document relating to jailed former premier Najib Razak’s home detention, state media reported.

Mr.Najib, imprisoned for his role in the country’s biggest scandal, has been pursuing a legal bid to compel the government to confirm the existence of and execute an “addendum order” that he said was issued by the former king alongside a pardon he received last year, entitling him to serve the remainder of his jail term at home.

The former premier had his 12-year sentence halved in a pardon by then-King Al-Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah, who was chair of a special pardons board. Al-Sultan Abdullah’s five-year reign under Malaysia’s unique system of rotating monarchy ended in January 2024.

Mr. Najib and the ex-king’s palace say the document exists, with Najib’s legal team saying it has been ignored by authorities.

Mr. Anwar said the document was sent to the attorney-general and not to him nor any other member of the pardons board, state news agency Bernama reported on Saturday. “The attorney-general then forwarded the document to the palace when there was a change of king, as it is the king who chairs the pardons board. We did not hide anything,” Mr. Anwar said.

On Friday, Malaysia’s law ministry said it had no record of any documents authorizing house arrest for Najib nor had it received any official notification or instructions from the royal palace on the matter. The home and communications ministers have also said they were not aware of the existence of such a document.

Mr. Najib was found guilty in 2020 of criminal breach of trust and abuse of power for illegally receiving funds misappropriated from a unit of state investor 1Malaysia Development Berhad. He is on trial for corruption in several other 1MDB-linked cases and denies wrongdoing.

The Court of Appeal on Monday overturned the dismissal of Mr. Najib’s legal attempt to access the document that he says should allow him to serve the rest of his term at home. The case will go back to court to be heard by another judge. — Reuters

BRUSSELS – The world just experienced the first full year in which global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial times, scientists said on Friday.

The milestone was confirmed by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which said climate change is pushing the planet’s temperature to levels never before experienced by modern humans.

“The trajectory is just incredible,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters, describing how every month in 2024 was the warmest or second-warmest for that month since records began.

The planet’s average temperature in 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than in 1850-1900, the “pre-industrial period” before humans began burning CO2-emitting fossil fuels on a large scale, C3S said.

Last year was the world’s hottest since records began, and each of the past ten years was among the ten warmest on record.

Britain’s Met Office confirmed 2024’s likely breach of 1.5C, while estimating a slightly lower average temperature of 1.53C for the year.

Governments promised under the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to prevent average temperatures exceeding 1.5C, to avoid more severe and costly climate disasters.

The first year above 1.5C does not breach that target, which measures the longer-term average temperature. Buontempo said rising greenhouse gas emissionsmeant the world was on track to soon also blow past the Paris goal – but that it was not too late for countries to rapidly cut emissions to avoid warming rising further to disastrous levels.

“It’s not a done deal. We have the power to change the trajectory from now on,” Buontempo said.

The impacts of climate change are now visible on every continent, affecting people from the richest to the poorest countries on earth.

Wildfires raging in California this week have killed at least five people and destroyed hundreds of homes. In 2024, Bolivia and Venezuela also suffered disastrous fires, while torrential floods hit Nepal, Sudan and Spain, and heatwaves in Mexico and Saudi Arabia killed thousands.

Climate change is worsening storms and torrential rainfall, because a hotter atmosphere can hold more water, leading to intense downpours. The amount of water vapour in the planet’s atmosphere reached a record high in 2024.

But even as the costs of these disasters spiral, political will to invest in curbing emissions has waned in some countries.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has called climate change a hoax, despite the global scientific consensus that it is human-caused and will have severe consequences if not addressed.

The U.S. experienced 24 climate and weather disasters in 2024 in which the cost of damages exceeded $1 billion, including Hurricanes Milton and Helene, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Chukwumerije Okereke, a professor of global climate governance at Britain’s University of Bristol, said the 1.5C milestone should serve as “a rude awakening to key political actors to get their act together”.

“Despite all the warnings that scientists have given, nations… are continuing to fail to live up to their responsibilities,” he told Reuters.

Concentrations in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, reached a fresh high of 422 parts per million in 2024, C3S said.

Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at U.S. non-profit Berkeley Earth, said he expected 2025 to be among the hottest years on record, but likely not top the rankings.
“It’s still going to be in the top three warmest years,” he said.

That’s because while the biggest factor warming the climate is human-caused emissions, temperatures in early 2024 got an extra boost from El Nino, a warming weather pattern which is now trending towards its cooler La Nina counterpart. — Reuters

WASHINGTON – U.S. job growth likely slowed to a still-healthy clip in December while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%, reinforcing the Federal Reserve’s cautious approach toward interest rate cuts this year.

The Labor Department’s closely watched employment report on Friday will probably not be clouded by the weather and strike distortions that dominated in October and November.

The labor market would be ending the year on solid footing, though fears are mounting that pledges by President-elect Donald Trump to impose or massively raise tariffs on imports and deport millions of undocumented immigrants could derail momentum.

Those worries were evident in minutes of the U.S. central bank’s Dec. 17-18 policy meeting published on Wednesday, which noted “most participants remarked that … the Committee could take a careful approach in considering” further cuts.

“The labor market is not as tight as it was coming out of the pandemic, but it’s still strong by any historical measure,” said Sevin Yeltekin, a macroeconomist and dean of Simon Business School at the University of Rochester. “If we can avoid a large increase in tariffs and immigration policies that encumber companies that rely on both skilled and seasonal talent, businesses are going to continue to create jobs.”

Nonfarm payrolls likely increased by 160,000 jobs last month after surging 227,000 in November, payback after being severely constrained by hurricane and strike disruptions, a Reuters survey of economists showed. Estimates ranged from 120,000 to 200,000 jobs added.

Baring revisions to October and November’s payrolls counts, this would mean the economy added 2.144 million jobs in the final year of President Joe Biden’s term, equivalent to 179,000 positions per month. About 3 million jobs were created in 2023.

Labor market resilience, mostly reflecting historically low layoffs, has powered the economy by supporting consumer spending via higher wages. Average hourly earnings are forecast rising 0.3% after gaining 0.4% in November. The annual increase in wages is seen unchanged at 4.0% in December.

Hiring has slowed considerably in the aftermath of the central bank’s hefty rate hikes in 2022 and 2023. The economy is expanding at well above the 1.8% pace that Fed officials regard as the non-inflationary growth rate.

NO POST-ELECTION HIRING BUMP
Job gains last month were likely concentrated in non-cyclical industries like healthcare as well as government, a pattern that prevailed for much of 2024. While business sentiment perked up following Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory on hopes of tax cuts and a less-stringent regulatory environment, economists are not anticipating a surge in hiring.

There have also been no signs in business surveys that companies are planning to boost head counts.

“Though some uncertainty has receded, tariffs and immigration policy are key unknowns,” said Andrew Husby, a senior economist at BNP Paribas Securities. “After the 2016 election, no clear pickup in net hiring occurred until after major tax-cut legislation passed Congress.”

Despite the prevailing strength, potential red flags are lurking. The unrounded unemployment rate has been creeping up, rising to 4.246% in November, which rounded down to 4.2%. In October it climbed to 4.145%, rounding down to 4.1%.

“The rounded data has been understating the recent rise in the unemployment rate,” said Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at The Budget Lab at Yale. “The unemployment rate is now less than a hundredth of a percentage point away from its July 2024 level. The close rounding of October and November … means that the risks around the unemployment rate in December are skewed more to the upside rather than being symmetric.”

A surge in the unemployment rate to 4.3% in July from a five-decade low of 3.4% in April 2023, was key to the Fed launching its policy easing cycle with an unusually large half-percentage point rate cut in September. It followed up with quarter-point rate cuts in November and December, leaving its benchmark overnight rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range.

Last month, the Fed projected only two quarter-point rate cuts this year compared to the four it had forecast in September. The policy rate was hiked by 5.25 percentage points in 2022 and 2023.

“As things currently stand, Fed officials appear to have reached an uneasy comfort level with the labor market situation,” said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander US Capital Markets.

The government will revise the seasonally adjusted household survey data, from which the unemployment rate is derived, for the last five years. Economists expect minimal or no impact on the jobless rate.

Loosening labor market conditions have been underscored by steady rises in the number of people who have permanently lost their jobs, as well as the median duration of unemployment since September to a near three-year high of 10.5 weeks in November. That is consistent with the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, showing the hires rate falling back to levels seen early in the pandemic.

“So far, the increase in permanent job losses and the duration of unemployment aren’t too concerning given the low pace of layoffs, but the trend for both needs to be monitored,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. — Reuters

TOKYO – Japan’s weather bureau said on Friday that there no signs of El Nino or La Nina phenomena, but that characteristics of La Nina were becoming more apparent.

The bureau added that there was an 80% likelihood of normal conditions towards spring.

El Nino is a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific. La Nina is characterised by colder-than-usual ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific region and is linked to floods and drought. — Reuters