“Singapore should not be behaving like a child and making all this noise,” Agung Laksono, the minister who is coordinating Indonesia’s response to the haze crisis, told reporters in Jakarta on Thursday.

Laksono was responding to Singapore’s demands earlier on Thursday for “definitive” action by Indonesia to quell forest fires raging in Sumatra. 

Air quality has deteriorated to “hazardous” levels in both Singapore and Malaysia over the past few days as smoke from forest fires in Indonesia obscured skies and disrupted businesses and travel. 

A technical meeting between Indonesian and Singaporean officials is scheduled during which Indonesia will share information on what it has been doing and will listen to concerns from Singapore.

Slash-and-burn land clearing

Work at several Singapore construction sites slowed with few workers seen outdoors while the city-state called on Indonesia to do something.

“No country or corporation has the right to pollute the air at the expense of Singaporeans’ health and well-being,” Singapore’s Environment and Water Resources Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said on his Facebook page.

Balakrishnan said Singapore had sent officials to an emergency haze meeting in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

At 1 pm local time on Thursday, the city-state’s pollution standards index (PSI) soared to a new high of 371, indicating air quality had deteriorated to “hazardous” levels, and exceeding the previous record set on Wednesday night.

A PSI reading above 300 indicates “hazardous” air, while a reading between 201 and 300 means “very unhealthy”.

The top PSI readings in Singapore over the past two days have exceeded the peak of 226 reached in 1997 when smog from Indonesian fires disrupted shipping and air travel across Southeast Asia.

Indonesian officials have tried to deflect blame by suggesting companies based in Singapore may be partly to blame for the fires.

Singapore has said it wants Indonesia to provide maps of land concessions so it can act against firms that allow slash-and-burn land clearing.

The illegal burning of forest on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, to the west of Singapore and Malaysia, to clear land for palm oil plantations is a chronic problem, particularly during the June to September dry season.

Singapore, which prides itself on its clean environment and usually enjoys clear skies, saw its air quality deteriorate to unhealthy levels on Monday.

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Torrential rain and landslides since Sunday have stranded pilgrims at four revered Hindu shrines, washed away bridges and roads and caused other damage in Uttrakhand province.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said after returning from an aerial survey on Wednesday that the death toll there was 102.

“It is feared that the loss of life could be much higher,” he said.

An additional 17 people died in collapsed homes in neighboring Uttar Pradesh state, said RL Vishwakarma, a provincial police officer.

The annual monsoon rains sustain India’s agriculture but also cause flooding that claims lives and damages property.

The latest rains have affected several states and the capital, New Delhi, where nearly 2,000 people have been evacuated to government-run camps on higher ground. Authorities there said the Yamuna River was expected to start receding by Thursday afternoon.

After Singh’s comments, Uttrakhand’s Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna told the NDTV news channel that hundreds of people have lost their lives but that the exact number would be known only after a survey.

A joint army and air force operation has evacuated nearly 12,000 Hindu pilgrims stranded in the area but nearly 63,000 people remained cut off, according to Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde.

A three-storey apartment building toppled into a river and was carried away by the flood waters, said Amit Chandola, a Uttrakhand government spokesman, adding that a helicopter on its landing pad also was swept away.

The government also said 40 small hotels on the banks of the Mandakini river in the Gaurikund area were destroyed.

Describing the situation as grim, Bahuguna said his administration was not equipped to tackle such a massive disaster, and asked for federal assistance. The region is 400km southwest of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh province.

Hindu pilgrims stranded

Most of those stranded in Uttrakhand are Hindu pilgrims to four revered shrines. Bahuguna said the Kedarnath temple – one of the holiest Hindu temples dedicated to Lord Shiva, located atop the Garhwal Himalayan range - had escaped major damage, but up to 10 feet of debris covered the area around it.

“We are fully engaged in rescuing people who have been stranded in the higher reaches,” Bahuguna told reporters earlier. Nearly 600 people were evacuated by air force helicopters and the rest by the army using land routes.

Air force spokeswoman Priya Joshi said 22 helicopters have dropped food packets and other relief supplies in addition to ferrying stranded tourists.

More than 5,000 soldiers helped bring thousands of homeless people to relief camps and provided them with food and medical supplies.

The Indian meteorological department says that it is sticking to its forecast of average rain during the four-month monsoon period.

The rains usually cover all of India by mid-July, but this year they did so by June 16, the earliest such occurrence on record, a senior official at the department said.

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The protests have evolved into communal outcries that have moved well beyond the original demand that public transportation fares be lowered.

Eduardo Paes, Rio mayor; Fernando Haddad, Sao Paulo mayor; and Geraldo Alckmin, Sao Paulo state governor, said the fare increase had been reversed.

Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from Sao Paulo, said there was little reaction on the streets to the reversal decision but social media, which has propelled the protest movement, was abuzz. 

“A lot of the movement participants say [on social media] that its a good start, but not quite enough. They want free public transport, especially in Sao Paulo,” he said. 

He said many protesters have told him that the protests now go beyond the transit issue and aim for better public services in the country.

Amid the transit-hike rollback, protests continued in Rio’s sister city Niteroi and clashes occurred in the northeastern city of Fortaleza, where police fired tear gas and rubber-coated bullets at demonstrators before a Confederations Cup football game.

Police deployed

Earlier on Wednesday, Brazil’s government deployed special federal police to the five of the six cities where the Confederations Cup football tournament is being played to protect the competition’s venues.

The government’s reaction is notable given that the Confederations Cup is seen as a dry run for the World Cup next year.

The National Force, composed of police and firefighters from different states that are called up for duty on special occasions, is a “conciliatory, mediating” force, “not repressive,” the Justice Ministry said.

On Tuesday, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of several Brazilian cities for the second night of largely peaceful protests over poor public services, high prices and corruption.

In Sao Paulo, an estimated 50,000 people participated in the demonstration lasting hours and concentrated along Avenida Paulista in the centre of the city of 11 million, police said.

A vehicle belonging to a television station was set on fire in front of Sao Paulo mayor’s office. Windows of the building had earlier been smashed by rioters, and police withdrew into the building.

Thousands of people also demonstrated in Sao Goncalo near Rio, as well as in Belo Horizonte, amid a large police presence.

Protests a day earlier saw an estimated 200,000 people in the streets across the country, around half of them in Rio.

The unrest first broke out in Sao Paolo last week against an increase in public-transport prices.

President’s acknowledgment

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The meeting was expected to take place in Doha in the coming days, with some reports indicating this could be as early as Thursday, but the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said his government will not be attending any talks.

Karzai has said he will boycott any peace talks unless they were led by his government.

“As long as the peace process is not Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in the talks in Qatar,” he said in a statement on Wednesday, referring to a body he set up in 2010 to seek a negotiated peace with the Taliban.

The developments came one day after the US announced it would engage in direct negotiations with the armed group.

The dispute over the name of the Taliban’s Doha office, opened on Tuesday, has raised new concerns among the Americans too.

The row centres on the office calling itself the “Islamic Emirate Of Afghanistan” – the formal name of its 1996-2001 government – and portraying itself as a state in exile, officials said.

Jen Psaki, State Department spokeswoman, said on Wednesday the US does “not recognise the name Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”.

She said John Kerry, the secretary of state, had made that clear in two phone calls in the past 24 hours with Karzai.

Kerry also “noted that the government of Qatar has taken steps today to ensure that the political office is in compliance with the conditions established by the government of Qatar for its operations”, Psaki said.

“Reports of a meeting scheduled are inaccurate,” she said, saying that the US had “never confirmed” any specific meeting between US officials and the Taliban in Doha.

“We are now in consultations with the Afghan leadership and the High Peace Council on how to move forward.”

US envoy delayed

Karzai, who has headed the US-backed Afghan government since the US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks brought down the Taliban, opposes bilateral US-Taliban talks.

Psaki confirmed that James Dobbins, the US special envoy, had not left Washington on Tuesday as planned for the talks.

“Right now, Ambassador Dobbins is in Washington. I don’t have any planned travel for you to announce,” she said.

In another decision on Wednesday, Karzai broke off ongoing Afghan-US talks on an agreement to allow the US to maintain soldiers in Afghanistan after a NATO combat mission ends next year over what it called the US’ “inconsistent statement and action” over the peace process.

Against this backdrop of diplomatic controversy, Mohammad Sohail Shaheen, a member of the Taliban’s Doha office, insisted on Wednesday that the only purpose of the office was to find lasting peace in Afghanistan.

“This office was opened in order to bring about peace and to find a peaceful solution [...] which is the main thing and all parties should try to make that happen,” he told Al Jazeera.

Shaheen stressed that no one should try and disrupt the peace process “as we see [now happening] from the Kabul administration”.

“We enter this with good intentions and seek a peaceful solution to the Afghan issues,” he said, “and we want all sides to have the same intention.”

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A Milan court found the pair guilty on Wednesday of failing to declare $1.3bn (euros 1 billion) in income to authorities.

The designers, whose label DolceGabbana is a Milan fashion mainstay, were not present in court and have denied the charges.

Given the complexity and length of the appeals process, they are unlikely to spend any time in jail.

Public prosecutor Gaetano Ruta had asked for them to serve two and a half years.

Prosecutors had argued that the pair had evaded taxes on income of 416 million euros each and 200 million euros through a Luxembourg-based company.

A company spokesman declined to make an immediate comment.

The case dates back to an investigation that began in 2008, when authorities unleashed a tax avoidance crackdown as the financial crisis began to bite.

Flamboyant designs

Two years ago, a judge threw out a tax evasion and fraud case against the pair. Italy’s high court later ruled that the designers could be prosecuted for tax evasion, though not for fraud.

The judge on Wednesday ruled that the pair sold their brand to the Luxembourg-based holding company Gado in 2004 to avoid declaring taxes on royalties of about $1.3bn.

The success of Dolce and Gabbana’s corset dresses and sharply tailored suits favoured by celebrities like Kylie Minogue, Kate Moss and Bryan Ferry have earned them a glamorous lifestyle.

They hosted friend and client Madonna for her birthday in 2009 at their villa perched above the chic boating resort of Portofino.

The pair’s flamboyant designs are inspired by the sultry southern Italian island of Sicily, where Dolce was born in 1958.

He met Gabbana, now 50, in the latter’s home town of Milan, where they showed their first collection in 1985.

“Everyone knows that we haven’t done anything,” Gabbana tweeted in June 2012 after the trial was ordered.

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The gun battle lasted an hour-and-a-half that followed an explosion at the site killing at least four foreign security staff, the Somali government said on Wednesday.

Somali Interior Minister Abdikarim Hussein Guled told reporters: “So far we have confirmed four UNDP [UN Development Programme] foreign staff who were responsible for security, four Somali guards and seven militants.”

The al-Shabab armed group claimed responsibility for the attack.

A plume of thick black smoke was seen billowing into the sky after the initial explosion was heard at approximately 11:30am local time (08:30 GMT) on Wednesday.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is currently in China for talks with the country’s leaders, was “shocked” at the news of the attack, his spokesman said.

“The Secretary-General is aware of the attack against the United Nations in Somalia, and he is shocked by it,” Martin Nesirky, the spokesman, said in an e-mail.

“He is being updated regularly as we get more information from Mogadishu and UN Headquarters in New York.”

A UN official, who cannot be named because she is not authorised to speak to the media, said the attack was against a building just outside the secure airport compound where all the UN agencies were based. The compound includes both residential and office areas. UN staff took shelter in a bunker at the compound, UN staff told Al Jazeera.

Nicholas Kay, the UN secretary-general’s special representative to Somalia, confirmed to Al Jazeera that “a complex attack” had taken place at the compound, but that “the vast majority of UN staff” were safe.

“It did begin with an explosion at the main gate followed up by armed attackers entering the compound where they attempted to assault our staff,” he said.

Government-run Radio Mogadishu reported that the attack had started after a suicide bomber blew himself up at one of the gates of the complex.

UN back in Mogadishu

Somalia’s capital has been hit by a series of attacks including suicide and car bombers, mortar attacks and shootings, although in recent weeks the city has been relatively calm.

Al-Shabab fighters used to control most of the seaside capital until it abandoned fixed positions in August 2011, but the armed group has since carried out a string of attacks against the UN-backed government.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Mogadishu last December and announced that the UN would re-open its offices in the seaside capital. The UN began the process of moving its personnel from nearby Nairobi, Kenya, back to Mogadishu, a process that has accelerated in recent weeks.

International embassies - from Turkey and Britain, for example - followed.

The 17,000-strong AU force, fighting alongside Somali government troops, has forced al-Shabab from a series of key towns.

Wednesday’s attack, though, underscores the fragile security situation and will force the UN and embassies to review their safety plans and decide if they have enough defences to withstand a sustained al-Shabab assault. 

Abdi Farah Shirdon, the Somali prime minister, condemned the “senseless and despicable” attack on Wednesday, saying “the UN are our friends and partners, and the UN agencies offer us humanitarian help and support, so I and all Somalis are appalled that they should be the target and victims of such barbaric violence”.

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