Indonesia yesterday agreed to accept international help to combat forest and agricultural fires cloaking Southeast Asia in haze, after weeks of failed attempts to douse the blazes that have infuriated its neighbors.
Officials said Singapore and Russia had already offered help and talks were under way with several other nations, an about-face after Jakarta insisted for weeks that it could tackle the crisis alone.
“Hopefully, we can speed up our efforts,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo said as he set off to visit western Sumatra island, the site of many of the smog-belching blazes.
Photo: AFP
For weeks, fires illegally started to clear land for plantations on Sumatra and the Indonesian part of Borneo have shrouded Singapore and Malaysia in acrid smog, worsening air quality, closing schools and forcing the cancelation of outdoor events.
The blazes are an annual occurrence during the dry season, but scientists have warned this year’s are on track to be the worst ever due to an El Nino weather system that has created tinder-dry conditions in Indonesia.
Jakarta has deployed about 25,000 personnel and aircraft, but the firefighters have seemed overwhelmed by the extent of the blazes.
Tensions have been rising between Jakarta and its neighbors as the haze spreads, with Singapore’s biggest supermarket chain on Wednesday withdrawing paper products made by an Indonesian-owned company, Asia Pulp & Paper, accused over the haze.
Authorities had for weeks rejected offers of help from other nations, but with no sign of the fires abating, Widodo had a change of heart.
“This remains a challenge for us, so we feel it is important to cooperate with countries with resources to assist us to douse the fires,” Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir told reporters in Jakarta.
He said Indonesia needed bigger planes for water-bombing, capable of carrying 10,000 liters, and so far officials had been in touch with Russia, Singapore, Australia, China and Malaysia about providing assistance.
“This is not a handout, with some countries it’s on a commercial basis, so we are paying for the services,” Nasir said, adding that the specifics were still being discussed.
Indonesia’s disaster agency said one large Russian plane should be arriving soon to help with firefighting efforts.
Singaporean Minister of Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan said in a Facebook post late on Wednesday that his Indonesian counterpart, Retno Marsudi, had “indicated that Indonesia will now take up our offer.”
Singapore has offered to provide Indonesia with aircraft to artificially induce rain and carry out water-bombing, as well as personnel to help fight the blazes. The city-state in particular has been infuriated by the failure to tackle the fires and Indonesian officials making light of the crisis, with Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla making waves by saying the nation’s neighbors should be grateful for good air quality most of the year.
Singapore has targeted companies accused over the haze, with the Singaporean National Environment Agency asking Asia Pulp & Paper to supply information on its subsidiaries operating in the city-state and Indonesia.
Some of the group’s suppliers in Indonesia have been accused over the haze. The company insists it is doing all it can to tackle the fires and says it has provided information to Singapore.
There was some respite from the haze for Singaporeans yesterday, with the city-state’s skies clear and the air quality at moderate levels.
Air quality in Malaysia, where schools have been repeatedly closed due to the haze, was also improving yesterday, with moderate air quality recorded nationwide.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
RSS