Humans have always been awed by the power and beauty of lightning. How does the experience and understanding of it change in a warming world?

JAKARTA – Indonesian police have named 20 companies as suspects in 2026’s forest and land fires, as the crackdown on plantation firms responsible for the regional haze gathers pace. They said four are foreign-owned, with investors from Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea. The four foreign-owned companies, identified only by their initials as HKI, RKA, API and AI, were disclosed on Oct 29 by Asep Safrudin, head of the national police’s criminal investigation department, at a briefing in Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan. The other 16 suspects are Indonesian-owned companies. Police gave no further information about each company's links or its parent group. The 20 suspects come from 97 companies under criminal investigation for the fires. Indonesian police said that 22 of the 97 have foreign backing. The remaining 77 companies are still being investigated. According to the Indonesian police, Singapore accounts for the largest share, with nine of the 22 companies. They added that Malaysia has eight, Britain two, and China, Japan and South Korea one each. “The state will not allow forest and land fires, whether deliberate or through negligence, to generate economic gains enjoyed by a handful of irresponsible parties while the environmental damage and its impact...

JAKARTA – Indonesian police have named 20 companies as suspects in 2026’s forest and land fires, as the crackdown on plantation firms responsible for the regional haze gathers pace. They said four are foreign-owned, with investors from Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea. The four foreign-owned companies, identified only by their initials as HKI, RKA, API and AI, were disclosed on Oct 29 by Asep Safrudin, head of the national police’s criminal investigation department, at a briefing in Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan. The other 16 suspects are Indonesian-owned companies. Police gave no further information about each company's links or its parent group. The 20 suspects come from 97 companies under criminal investigation for the fires. Indonesian police said that 22 of the 97 have foreign backing. The remaining 77 companies are still being investigated. According to the Indonesian police, Singapore accounts for the largest share, with nine of the 22 companies. They added that Malaysia has eight, Britain two, and China, Japan and South Korea one each. “The state will not allow forest and land fires, whether deliberate or through negligence, to generate economic gains enjoyed by a handful of irresponsible parties while the environmental damage and its impact...

I don’t usually go out of my way to find or correct experts when they’re wrong, but sometimes the truth just needs to be told. The US spends something like $3 billion each year fighting forest fires, and they only pull in a couple hundred million annually from the timber industry. 85% of wildfires are caused by people campfires, vehicles, smoking etc. So a large amount of your tax dollars goes to put out fires caused by idiots. Trump, being an idiot, wants to return to a zero tolerance policy on forest fires. The last time we were able to get anywhere near zero forest fires consistently was in the 50s and 60s, and it cost billions to send smokejumpers into many remote locations where satellites detected fires. Also, in some cases it worked too well, preventing natural fires in wilderness areas that keep forests healthy. Obviously, since humans start most forest fires by accident, humans have a responsibility to put most fires out. If you’ve ever been camping, you may remember seeing rangers going around each morning making sure campfires were completely out. Most fire suppression efforts are like that, where humans put out human-caused fires. Folks who live...

Les incendies de juillet 2026 ont touché plus de 2 000 hectares, soit environ 8 % de la forêt de Fontainebleau selon l'ONF. Les estimations de fréquentation vont de 10 à 18 millions sans comptage fiable, et l'ONF veut répartir les visiteurs plutôt que fermer le massif.

Every month I highlight a climate crisis issue, and since October is fire prevention month, here’s an article I wrote a couple years ago on my blog about the topic. The world’s forests are burning. In North America, I’ve driven through burned forests of desert Joshua trees, mountain pines, boreal spruce, of piñon & juniper scrublands, cypress & tupelos in swamps, oaks, sugar maples, ‘rainforest’ spruce, and redwoods. Fire damage is ubiquitous, depressing and our fault. When I was a kid, we hiked into the forest. Now we demand more forest roads to drive our ATVs into the ‘wilderness’. The NPS reports that “nearly 85% of wildland fires in the United States are caused by humans. Human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, equipment use and malfunctions, negligently discarded cigarettes, and intentional acts of arson”. And that’s not mentioning human climate change driving wildfires, or prescribed burns that got out of control. Most fire suppression is putting our fires that never should have started. Once North America was forested. Agriculture, development, logging and ranching have removed most, and only a tiny percent of forest today is old growth. 2/3 of our forests today are maintained for...

Singapore: Singapore expanded its investigation on Friday regarding the Indonesia fires that have blanketed the region in toxic haze into 10 locally-based firms. The city-state has beefed up measures to combat the months-long blazes and had vowed legal action against companies responsible for the fires that have made regional air quality among the world's worst. Over the past week, Singapore issued notices to 10 foreign-based companies, insisting that they deploy fire fighting teams, stop burning or starting new fires in Indonesia and submit information about their links with associated companies in Indonesia and Singapore. The information is to be reviewed by Singapore's National Environmental Agency (NEA). In addition to these companies, the NEA is seeking information from 10 Singapore-registered firms in the palm oil or forestry industry who are involved with Indonesian land, the environmental agency said in a statement late Friday. The information relates to "linkages with associated companies in Singapore and Indonesia, the location of land concessions owned by them as well as fire preventative measures or firefighting efforts", the statement said. Singapore also said it would form a panel of experts comprising law firms, audit firms and investigative firms with expertise in conducting cross-border inquiries and investigations...

BANGKOK, Oct 23 — After months of fires in Indonesia that have caused thick regional haze, attention is turning to whether companies can be held accountable for the blazes and resulting air pollution. Indonesia experiences fires regularly during its dry season, and experts say years of deforestation and the draining of peatland for cultivation have rendered previously fire-resistant landscapes vulnerable. Driven by a strong El Nino cycle and resulting drought, this year’s blazes have been particularly severe, burning through nearly two million hectares, according to deforestation monitor Nusantara Atlas. The fires have raged across forests and peatland but also palm oil and timber plantations supplying multinational firms. Civil society groups have regularly accused companies of responsibility for the blazes, pointing to so-called “hotspots” in supplier plantations, sometimes called concessions. Environmental group WALHI says it mapped “high confidence” hotspots across Indonesia using NASA fire data and found around 50 per cent were inside concessions. In a report this month the group listed 40 timber and palm oil concessions by the number of hotspots detected. “This is a structural issue... (that) happens because of the practices, the activities, of these companies,” WALHI forests and plantations campaigner Umi Ma’rufah told AFP. Pressure is...

Fires are surging across Africa’s tropical forests – raising fears that the Congo’s forests could suffer the same fate as the Amazon and Indonesia, where deforestation and fires are driving up carbon emissions. The findings are based on newly-compiled data from Greenpeace’s Global Mapping Hub, which uses modelling based on satellite-detected fire hotspots to identify where fire activity is increasing or decreasing across tropical forest regions in Africa over the period 2001-25. The data suggests that there are many more areas experiencing significant rising fire activity than areas experiencing declining activity. The findings come as a potentially record-breaking El Niño raises concerns about extreme weather risks into 2027 – while foreign aid cuts from the US and other countries have threatened funding for scientific and climate research as well as fire-fighting programmes. “Forest loss remains stubbornly consistent in parts of the Congo Basin, and fire is an increasingly important driver,” says Dr Jean Bakouma, country manager for the World Resources Institute (WRI) in the Republic of Congo. “When primary forests and peatlands in the region burn, the carbon they store can be released, and put the region at risk of turning from a carbon sink into a carbon source,” Bakouma...

Follow our live coverage here. – Protests have erupted across parts of Indonesia as frustration grows over the government’s handling of widespread forest and land fires, with demonstrators demanding stronger firefighting efforts, tougher action against companies responsible for the blazes and greater protection for affected communities. The growing public anger comes as Indonesia battles one of its worst forest fire seasons in years, with an El Nino-driven drought leaving vast areas of forest and peatland highly flammable. The Forestry Ministry said on Oct 16 that four people involved in firefighting operations were killed in a forest fire at Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in East Java the day before. Two others suffered serious burns and were receiving medical treatment. The deaths came as the hot spots detected nationwide more than doubled to 799 as at 9pm on Oct 15, from 372 a day earlier, according to the ministry’s SiPongi monitoring system. Central Kalimantan recorded the sharpest increase, with hot spots jumping from 130 to 389, while South Sumatra recorded 122, up from 91, and South Kalimantan 31, up from five. The ministry cautioned that hot spots indicate abnormal surface temperatures and do not necessarily correspond to individual fires. The haze...

PALEMBANG – For months, firefighters in South Sumatra have battled peatland fires that refuse to die. They pump water into the smouldering ground and beat back the flames with basic tools, only to watch the fires flare up again. The acrid smell of smoke greets you the moment you step off the plane at Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II International Airport in Palembang, the provincial capital. The thick haze that has blanketed the city for weeks belies the firefighters’ painstaking efforts. Now, an unlikely weapon has arrived from the other side of the world: a powder called Realiza Antichamas (Portuguese for “fire-retardant solution”) which forms a fire-suppressing gel when mixed with water. Its maker, Brazilian firm Grupo Realiza, claims the product makes water up to 10 times more effective at fighting fires. Firefighting crews in Sumatra and Kalimantan have been testing it since early October. With conventional firefighting efforts struggling to contain Indonesia’s stubborn peat fires, the authorities are turning to alternative measures. But whether the gel can tackle the fires that matter most remains an open question: Peat fires can smoulder metres underground, beyond the reach of water sprayed from above, and it is not yet clear how deeply the...

SINGAPORE: Indonesia will trial the use of dry ice, or solid carbon dioxide, to clear the haze on Thursday (Oct 15), said the government, as the country battles forest and land fires that have covered Southeast Asia in thick smoke. Indonesia’s Coordinating Ministry for Political and Security Affairs said on Wednesday that planes will douse the skies over urban centres in South Sumatra with 1.5 tons of dry ice, in the country's first trial of using this technique to tackle smoke pollution. The operation aims to improve air quality and increase visibility in haze-affected areas, the ministry said in a press release. Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Dudung Abdurachman said the dry ice would be used to disperse smoke trapped in the lower atmosphere. "The function of dry ice is to break down the smoke that was previously below so that it can rise upwards,” said Dudung, after reviewing preparations at Sri Mulyono Herlambang Air Force Base in Palembang. “This way, there will be no more smoke accumulation in the city and its surrounding areas," he added. Unlike Indonesia’s weather modification operations (OMC), which aim to induce rain to help extinguish fires, the dry-ice trial is intended to...

JAKARTA: Indonesian police have named more than 200 people and nine companies as suspects in forest and land fire cases across the country, as authorities intensify enforcement and firefighting operations to tackle the worsening haze crisis that has affected the region. The National Police said on Wednesday (Oct 14) that the 223 people were named as suspects in connection with 273 police reports. These cases involved a combined burned land area of over 5,150 hectares, said Senior Commissioner Pipit Subiyanto from the Directorate of Energy Resources and Environmental Crimes. He was speaking at a press conference with the Coordinating Ministry for Political and Security Affairs held in Jakarta, according to a statement by Indonesia’s Government Communication Agency (BAKOM). Riau recorded the highest number of suspects at 65, followed by South Sumatra with 48 and Central Kalimantan with 39. The rest are from West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, Jambi, South Kalimantan, North Kalimantan, Southeast Sulawesi and South Sulawesi. Additionally, police have also named nine companies as suspects in connection with the fires, with over 25,600 hectares of land burned linked to these corporate cases. Authorities said enforcement efforts undertaken by the National Police and relevant ministries have “progressed significantly”, with 57 business...