It looks like a scene from a dystopian future, but in reality it is the Indonesian island of Sumatra this week — enveloped in a toxic red haze as hundreds of hectares of virgin rainforest have been burned to the ground.
Blanketed in an eerie copper haze, one amateur video has captured skies that would not be out of place in the apocalyptic film Bladerunner 2049.
Posted on Twitter and now viewed more than 7 million times, the footage brings home the horror of the fires on the ground, and the reality of living in filthy air.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Behind the camera the person expresses disbelief saying: “Believe it or not, this is daytime, mum, just 10 minutes before 1pm.”
The footage was taken in a village in Jambi, Sumatra, and is one of the many shocking scenes shared online of the fires in recent days.
Indonesia’s meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency has explained the Mars-like skies over Jambi as “Mie scattering.”
The red color is apparently caused by the sunlight being scattered in the air by 0.7-micrometer particles.
The agency said that the pervasive red is produced when the micro-particles of pollutants in the air are equal to the wavelength of visible sunlight.
On the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo, enthusiastic slackers share their tips: Fill up a thermos with whiskey, do planks or stretches in the work pantry at regular intervals, drink liters of water to prompt lots of trips to the toilet on work time, and, once there, spend time on social media or playing games on your phone. “Not working hard is everyone’s basic right,” one commenter wrote. “With or without legal protection, everyone has the right to not work hard.” Young Chinese people are pushing back against an engrained culture of overwork, and embracing a philosophy of laziness known as “touching
‘STUNNED’: With help from an official at the US Department of Justice, Donald Trump reportedly planned to oust the acting attorney general in a bid to overturn the election Former US president Donald Trump was at his Florida resort on Saturday, beginning post-presidency life while US President Joe Biden settled into the White House, but in Washington and beyond, the chaos of the 45th president’s final days in office continued to throw out damaging aftershocks. In yet another earth-shaking report, the New York Times said that Trump plotted with an official at the US Department of Justice to fire the acting attorney general, then force Georgia Republicans to overturn his defeat in that state. Meanwhile, former acting US secretary of defense Christopher Miller made an extraordinary admission, telling Vanity Fair that
The Palauan president-elect has vowed to stand up to Chinese “bullying” in the Pacific, saying that the archipelago nation is set to stand by its alliances with “true friends,” Taiwan and the US. Surangel Whipps Jr, 52, a supermarket owner and two-time senator from a prominent Palauan family, is to be sworn in as the new president tomorrow, succeeding his brother-in-law, Tommy Remengesau Jr. In a forthright interview, Whipps said that the US had demonstrated over the years that it was a reliable friend of Palau, most recently shown by its delivery of 6,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. “It’s important for
Boeing set a target of designing and certifying its jetliners to fly on 100 percent sustainable fuels by 2030, amid rising pressure on planemakers to take climate change seriously. Regulators allow a 50-50 blend of sustainable and conventional fuels, and Boeing on Friday said it would work with authorities to raise the limit. Rival Airbus is considering another tack: a futuristic lineup of hydrogen-powered aircraft that would reach the skies by 2035. The aircraft manufacturers face growing public clamor to cut emissions in the aviation industry, which added more than 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in 2019, according to