Haze returns to Malaysian towns

Haze returns to Malaysian towns

MALAYSIA: Smoke from forest fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island
hit two coastal towns in Malaysia on Thursday and turned the air
quality "unhealthy", according to official data.

Last month a state of emergency was declared in the two
affected towns, Kuala Selangor and Port Klang, when they bore the
brunt of a haze crisis that sent pollution levels there soaring
to extremely hazardous levels.

The air pollution index in Kuala Selangor, west of the capital
Kuala Lumpur, rose to 125 on Thursday after a brief respite since
Sunday when it recorded 104, the environment department said.

Further south in Port Klang, Malaysia's biggest port where
operations ground to a halt in last month's haze, the index
reached 102. An "unhealthy" reading is anything between 101 and
200.

Nationwide, including in the capital Kuala Lumpur, in southern
Johor state and in Sabah and Sarawak states on Borneo island, air
quality remained moderate.

The environment department said satellite images showed that
the number of "hot spots" in Sumatra rose to 100 from 78 last
Sunday. There were 488 hot spots in Indonesia's Kalimantan on
Borneo, up from 391. -- AFP