JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia sent airplanes and hundreds of firefighters on Sunday to fight a blaze in a popular national park, one of a growing number of wildfires the country is battling during an unusually dry season.

The largest fire reported this week has burned about 176 hectares (435 acres) of Mount Bromo, located within the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in East Java province, one of Indonesia’s best-known tourist destinations.

Authorities closed the park to visitors Saturday and Rudijanta Tjahja Nugraha, the park chief, said the shutdown would remain in effect until further notice.

Hundreds of firefighters, disaster management personnel, police, soldiers, park rangers and volunteers have been mobilized to contain the blaze. Helicopters and drones have also been deployed to help battle the fire, while crews have built firebreaks to try to prevent further spread.

Nugraha said difficult terrain has complicated efforts, with some hotspots located on steep volcanic slopes that are difficult to reach by land.

The Bromo fire comes as several other wildfires have been reported across Indonesia during an unusually dry season.

A forest and land fire broke out in Central Java’s Banyumas Regency on Friday, authorities said. That fire was triggered by land-clearing activities and spread rapidly to surrounding areas, fueled by dry conditions. In West Java, a fire broke out this week in the Suryakencana Meadow area of Mount Gede Pangrango National Park, a popular hiking destination. The incident prompted authorities to temporarily close hiking trails to Mount Gede and Mount Pangrango.

Indonesia’s Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysical Agency said strong winds and extremely dry vegetation are accelerating the spread of fires. The El Niño weather pattern, combined with seasonal dry winds from Australia, has increased the risk of fires across parts of the country.

Forest fires on Sumatra and Borneo islands often break out during dry spells. Fires are often started illegally by plantation owners or traditional farmers to clear land for planting, and those burns periodically blanket parts of Southeast Asia in hazardous haze.

Lily Allen stripped down to her underwear as she headlined Boardmasters Festival with her West End Girl show in Newquay on Saturday.

The singer, 41, had a huge musical comeback last year with her album West End Girl, which detailed her tumultuous split from husband David Harbour, and allegations he cheated on her. 

And Lily pulled out all the stops as she took to the stage to perform the break-up album in full. 

Dressed in a gold ruched dress, Lily later stripped it off to reveal a nude satin corset bodysuit and black lace underwear. 

She later donned a sheer pink gown as she lay on a bed. 

West End Girl is a 55-minute performance which is structured more like a one-woman stage play rather than a traditional concert. It features no crowd interaction or encores. 

The singer, 41, had a huge musical comeback last year with her album West End Girl, which detailed her tumultuous split from husband David Harbour, and allegations he cheated on her

Boardmasters Festival is the UK’s biggest combined surf and music festival and welcomes 46,000 attendees across two coastal sites. 

It features around 90 artists playing across multiple stages with Saturday also featuring Nia Archives, Ren, Alessi Rose and Example. 

It comes as Lily is set to star in a new Prime Video documentary charting her ‘extraordinary’ rise to fame.

The singer has had a triumphant return to the music scene with her comeback album West End Girl, and will now appear in the feature-length film looking back at her life.

The retrospective documentary will chart Lily’s journey, from the “Queen of MySpace” who changed the rules of the music industry, to the cultural force she is today. 

As a pioneering woman in modern music, Lily’s sharp wit and candid storytelling directly paved the way for a generation of today’s biggest female artists.

Featuring interviews with those who know her best, the documentary builds a rich and revealing portrait of an artist defined by her creative fearlessness. 

The documentary will be directed by award-winning film-maker Mat Whitecross, who previously directed Oasis: Supersonic and Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams, and will be released on Prime Video in 2027.

Lily pulled out all the stops as she took to the stage to perform the break-up album in full

West End Girl is a 55-minute performance which is structured more like a one-woman stage play rather than a traditional concert. It features no crowd interaction or encores

Dressed in a gold ruched dress, Lily later stripped it off to reveal a nude satin corset bodysuit and black lace underwear

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It comes as Lily is set to star in a new Prime Video documentary charting her ‘extraordinary’ rise to fame

Lily appeared overwhelmed with the response from the crowd

At one point she took a phone call during the play 

Boardmasters Festival is the UK’s biggest combined surf and music festival and welcomes over 50,000 attendees across two coastal sites

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Earlier this year, the Smile hitmaker opened up about the toll her tumultuous last year has taken on her daughters as she admitted they are struggling to readjust following the family’s relocation to the UK.

The star revealed that Ethel and Marnie are finding it difficult to navigate changes after moving from New York back to the UK.

Lily, who released her West End Girl album that detailed ex David Harbour’s alleged affair whilst they were together, returned home after the breakdown of her marriage to the 51-year-old.

Speaking candidly on her podcast Miss Me? Lily said: ‘I’ve done quite a lot this year.

‘I’ve finished an album, I got a boob job, I had a nervous breakdown, I went into hospital for a bit, I came out, I did some podcasting for a while, then I played one of the hardest tracks in theatre and killed myself [in the role of Hedda Gabler] every night for seven weeks.’

She continued: ‘My kids are f***ing mental at the moment… They are really developing their personalities. It’s just a lot. There’s a lot of questions.

‘There’s a lot of change in our lives at the moment. We’ve changed houses, we’ve changed countries, we’ve changed schools, and it’s a lot.’

What’s the verdict?

The stunning cliffs that provide an impressive welcome to the crag are a result of the more recent history of the area, from quarrying in the 50s and 60s.

You’ll have most likely driven over the very same limestone, as it was used to make the M6 Preston bypass.

Peregrine falcons nest high on the limestone walls, starting their courtship in spring (Image: Surrey Hills Photography)

Peregrine falcons nest high on the limestone walls, starting their courtship in spring.

Before you’ve even left the car park for the footpaths, you might catch a glimpse of the peregrine falcons that nest high on the limestone walls, starting their courtship in spring and spending the summer feeding their chicks.

These birds are the fastest animals on earth, reaching more than 186 miles per hour when diving for prey, nearly the speed that F1 cars drive.

Steep, rocky paths will get your heart pumping as you head up through the tree line, and the woods contain a wonderfully rich and diverse collection of species, including the rare Lancaster whitebeam which is only found around Morecambe Bay.

Early purple orchids, violets, bluebells, wood-anemone and kidney-vetch all bring colour to the forest floor alongside a range of rich green ferns.

Once you’re out of the tree line, you can see the glorious coastline of Morecambe Bay.

On a super clear day, you’ve even got a chance of seeing all the way to the Isle of Man, though you probably won’t be able to spot any TT racers.

Out of the trees and onto the craggy limestone grassland, you’ll often come across some big shaggy cattle.

They graze the scrub and trample some of the plant life down, making sure that the grass doesn’t get too prolific and the limestone-loving plants such as juniper and St John’s wort get their spot in the sun.

Butterflies are the stars of the show at Warton Crag, which is home to rare species of small pearl-bordered fritillary (Image: Tom Marshall)

Ecologically, butterflies are the stars of the show at Warton Crag.

It’s home to nationally important populations of rare species like the pearl-bordered and small pearl-bordered fritillary, whose caterpillars feed on the violets in the woodlands.

The butterflies can be seen on warm days soaking up the heat from the limestone and flitting around the grasses and wildflowers.

If you are really lucky, you may see two of our native lizards, the snake-like slow worm and common lizard, darting through the grass as they finish basking.

Warton Crag is a beautiful spot, and it’s an excellent place to venture after the cold, wet winter.

Follow the example of the butterflies and reptiles and sit on the limestone, watching the world go by, enjoy a sea of colour in the woods and on the grassland as the earth starts to wake up again, and take a moment to really take in and notice what’s going on.

There’s more than you think, and it’s sure to bring you a sense of wellbeing.

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However effective your vacuum cleaner, there will always be those unfortunate spills and baked-in stains that need closer attention. I run a commercial cleaning business and rely on a homemade paste to remove the most stubborn marks from my carpets (and deploy it after any accidents). It’s inexpensive and you will probably have the ingredients in your cupboards already.

It won’t achieve a deep clean, though. If you’re looking to tackle bigger areas and own – or can hire – a carpet cleaner, I also have some fail-safe advice to ensure a pristine finish.

Spot clean stains with a homemade paste

For small stains, this quick concoction is all you need. Simply mix the following ingredients together slowly until they form a paste:

• Half a cup bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tbsp mild washing up liquid
• 1-2 tbsp of warm water

Avoid brightly coloured washing up liquids, especially if you have lighter-coloured carpets, as the dye may transfer onto the fibres. Before you start, there’s one step that applies to any carpet cleaning; always test your cleaning solution (homemade or otherwise) on a small, hidden area of flooring to check for colour-fastness and compatibility.

Vitamins in pregnancy are usually discussed in terms of a baby’s health at birth. But could the amount of vitamin D taken during pregnancy also influence how a child’s brain works many years later?

A recent Danish study suggests that it might. Children whose mothers received a higher dose of vitamin D during late pregnancy performed slightly better on tests of verbal and visual memory at age ten than children whose mothers received the standard dose.

The findings are intriguing, but they need to be kept in perspective. The differences were small, and the higher dose was not linked to better intelligence, attention, thinking speed, planning or working memory. The researchers also did not examine whether the memory differences affected schoolwork or daily life.

The study followed children whose mothers had taken part in a randomised trial originally designed to determine whether high-dose vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy reduced the risk of persistent wheeze and asthma in offspring. From the 24th week of pregnancy until one week after birth, one group received 2,800 international units (IU), or 70 micrograms, of vitamin D each day. The other received the standard Danish dose of 400 IU, or 10 micrograms.

Of the 623 children in the original trial, 498 returned for cognitive testing at around ten years old. After accounting for factors that might have influenced the results, the researchers found that children in the higher-dose group performed slightly better at recalling words and objects and remembering where visual patterns had appeared.

They also initially appeared better at switching between different rules or ways of solving a problem. However, that result could no longer be distinguished confidently from chance once the researchers accounted for the number of tests they had carried out.

Why the findings need caution

An important strength of the study is that the mothers were randomly assigned to receive either the higher or standard dose. This makes it less likely that differences in income, diet, health or lifestyle explain the results.

However, the original trial was designed to investigate childhood wheeze and asthma. Cognition was analysed later and was not one of the study’s original outcomes.

Researchers call this a “post-hoc secondary analysis”. Testing many possible outcomes increases the chance that some apparent differences will arise by coincidence. The two memory findings survived the researchers’ statistical checks, but the improvements were modest and need to be confirmed in trials designed specifically to study cognitive development.

The number of children who returned for testing also needs to be considered. If those who returned differed from those who did not, the findings may be less representative of the original group.

The children were tested only once, at age ten. The research cannot show when the differences appeared, whether they will continue into adolescence or whether a higher dose earlier in pregnancy would have the same effect.

A child’s vitamin D level after birth is influenced by sunlight, food and supplementation, as well as maternal factors such as breastfeeding, and maternal vitamin D status. The researchers measured blood levels at six months and six years, but two tests cannot show a child’s vitamin D exposure throughout the first decade of life. The study therefore cannot establish precisely when vitamin D might have influenced development. For example, it is unclear whether the effects were caused by vitamin D exposure during pregnancy, after birth, or by vitamin D supplements taken during childhood up to the age of ten.

Most of the mothers did not have low vitamin D levels when the trial began. Only 15% had levels below 20 nanograms per millilitre, although definitions of deficiency vary. The findings tell us more about giving extra vitamin D to women whose levels were already relatively high than about treating a clear deficiency.

The researchers found no convincing evidence that the higher dose worked differently according to the mother’s starting vitamin D level. However, the unplanned analysis, small improvements and study population mean that this study alone is unlikely to justify changing UK guidance.

Around 96% of the children who completed the follow-up were white. This limits how confidently the findings can be applied to more diverse populations or groups at greater risk of low vitamin D.

This is particularly relevant in the UK because people with darker skin generally produce less vitamin D in response to sunlight. Future trials should include participants from a wider range of ethnic backgrounds and more women with low vitamin D levels.

Should pregnant women take a higher dose?

Current NHS guidance recommends that pregnant women take 10 micrograms, equivalent to 400 IU, of vitamin D each day from early October to late March.

People who spend little time outdoors or usually cover most of their skin should take this amount throughout the year. People with black or brown skin should also consider taking vitamin D all year. A doctor may recommend a different dose when blood tests show a deficiency or there is another medical reason.

The dose used in the Danish trial was seven times the routine NHS recommendation, although it remained below the adult upper limit of 100 micrograms a day. That does not show that the higher dose offers extra benefits or suits every pregnancy.

Taking too much vitamin D over time can cause calcium to build up in the body, potentially damaging the kidneys and heart. Pregnant women should not increase their dose in the hope of improving their child’s memory without first speaking to a midwife, GP or another healthcare professional. They should also check whether vitamin D is included in more than one of the supplement they are taking.

The study offers tentative evidence that taking more vitamin D during late pregnancy may have a small effect on verbal and visual memory at age ten. Further trials should make cognition a planned outcome, test children at several ages and include a more diverse group of participants.

Until stronger evidence is available, pregnant women should follow current guidance and seek individual medical advice when deficiency is suspected.

Five fire crews were called to the blaze in Duggleby, near Malton, at about 7.50pm on Saturday (August 8).

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said the fire measured around 150m x 100m and was to a stubble and standing crop field.

The field fire in Duggleby, near Malton, on Saturday night (August 8) (Image: North Yorkshire Weather Updates)

Farm machinery was used to cut fire breaks around the blaze.

Crews used hose reel jets and sprayers to extinguish the fire.

In a statement, the fire service said: “Farm machinery was used to cut fire breaks around the fire and crews used hose reel jets, knapsack sprayers and beaters to extinguish the fire and put a wet line in to prevent re-ignition of the fire.”

Firefighters extinguished the blaze in Bishopthorpe Road at about 4.20am on Sunday (August 9).

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said it understood that the fire was started deliberately and informed police about the incident.

In a statement, the fire service said: “A crew from York responded to a tree that was on fire. 

“Crews extinguished the fire using two knapsack sprayers. 

“Police were informed due to the cause of the fire was believed deliberate.”

Temporary cordons in the Huntley Road area, Banbridge, have now been lifted

Cordons have been lifted after an incident in Co Down sparked a security alert.

Police were contacted on Saturday afternoon, August 8, with a report of a concern for the welfare of an individual in the Huntley Road area of Banbridge.

Officers and Ammunition Technical Officers attended and examined items found while the road was closed, with diversions in place at the Glassestown Road and Ballykeel Road.

On Saturday evening, police released a statement and said nothing suspicious was found and the individual concerned was “receiving appropriate support and treatment at this time”.

A PSNI spokeswoman said: “Police received a report of concern for the welfare of an individual in the area of Huntley Road Banbridge earlier today at approximately 12.30pm, Saturday 8th August.

“Officers together with Ammunition Technical Officers (ATO) examined items found and located nothing suspicious.

“Other unrelated items were removed by police for further examination. The individual concerned is receiving appropriate support and treatment at this time.

“Temporary cordons in the area have now been lifted and we would like to thank members of the public for their patience.”

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