Forest fires in northern Thailand are threatening to worsen the country’s air pollution, which has sent nearly 2 million people to hospitals with respiratory illnesses since the beginning of the year.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha on Thursday ordered urgent steps to put out forest fires in Nakhon Nayok province in the east of the capital, Bangkok, and those in the country’s northern region, including Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, government spokesman Anucha Burapachasri said.
Firefighters and other officials have been deployed to monitor the affected areas, as burning of farmlands and illegal foraging occur during this time of the year, Anucha said in a statement.
Photo: AP
A mountain known as Khao Laem in Nakhon Nayok that was engulfed in flames since Wednesday had been brought under control, the government said.
Several wildfires are also reported from protected forests in Thailand’s north, with several hotspots across the borders in Myanmar and Laos, a satellite heat map provided by a Thai space agency showed.
The wildfires are the latest cause for the worsening air quality in Thailand that has pushed levels of particulate dust particles known as PM2.5 in some areas past unhealthy threshold into a hazardous zone.
Bangkok and other Thai cities have grappled with poor air quality in the past few years, with pollution tending to get worse in the dry season from December to February due largely to agricultural burning in Thailand and neighboring countries, and vehicular emissions.
Prayuth urged ASEAN to take steps to tackle the trans-boundary haze situation that stems mainly from hotspots across the region, Anucha said in a separate statement.
Chiang Mai was ranked as the world’s most polluted city by air quality monitor IQAir earlier on Thursday, with a “very unhealthy” PM2.5 concentration reading.
Its neighboring province Chiang Rai had a “hazardous” reading for most of the past seven days, IQAir data showed.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly