Asia-Pacific Roundup: Haze Crisis, UN Visit and Rising Regional Tensions

Wildfires in Indonesia remain the region's most pressing story. Forest and peatland blazes on Borneo and Sumatra have burned hundreds of thousands of hectares, sickened local residents and sent thick smoke across Southeast Asia. Singapore has been choked by haze for weeks, and Malaysia closed schools in several states after pollution reached unhealthy levels. Singapore's prime minister has vowed to act against companies found responsible for the fires. Regulators have ordered firms to deploy firefighting crews, stop burning, and submit action plans to Singapore's National Environmental Agency.

Singapore was again ranked the world's most polluted city by the Swiss-based air quality monitor IQAir, while a resident of Petaling Jaya in Malaysia described the toxic haze as making the low-lying town look like it sits in misty highlands.

Diplomacy and security

• UN Secretary-General António Guterres is visiting Indonesia for two days. He met President Prabowo Subianto to discuss bilateral cooperation and will pay tribute to Indonesian peacekeepers killed while serving under the UN flag.
• North Korea fired multiple ballistic missiles off its east coast, South Korea's military said, after weeks of rising tension over a landmine explosion along the heavily fortified border.
• The Philippine coast guard deployed its largest vessel and an aircraft to confront a Chinese research ship operating off Batanes province, near Taiwan. A Chinese coast guard vessel also moved into the area.
• Former Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is on a two-day visit to Malaysia as he seeks wider international legitimacy after becoming president in April. Western governments and rights groups widely condemned the election that brought him to power as a sham.
• Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, 73, has been in prison since 2022 after the country's top court upheld his conviction for graft and money laundering linked to the 1MDB state fund. He denies any wrongdoing.

Climate, migration and crime

• The World Meteorological Organization says El Niño is almost certain to persist through February 2027 and could be one of the strongest since at least 1950.
• The EU's climate monitor reported that El Niño broke a temperature record in a key zone of the Pacific in September.
• Australia's coal mines are expanding as exports boom, a timing problem for a country preparing to lead the UN's upcoming climate negotiations.
• Philippine authorities arrested more than 200 foreign workers in the year's largest crackdown on illegal online gambling operations.
• Nearly 1,500 Myanmar migrants returned home from Malaysia under a repatriation scheme that rights monitors say cannot guarantee their safety.
• Indonesia's deputy foreign minister told an anti-scam conference in Cambodia that international cooperation must keep pace with criminals, who can move in minutes.