This is an illegal mine in Madagascar. Its gold is banned from the world’s legitimate marketplace. Thousands of children work in these mines, in violation of international law. Yet Madagascar’s gold flowed easily to market. And the world’s gold authority helped cover it up.

In an industry riddled with abuse, the world’s banks and governments rely on one entity to keep gangsters, warlords and human rights violators from selling gold into the mainstream market.

That group, the London Bullion Market Association, is the self-described “global authority for precious metals.” With the power to blacklist companies, the L.B.M.A. is the closest thing the multi-trillion-dollar industry has to an international regulator.

Governments rely on the association’s stamp as a sign that gold has been mined without human rights abuses, environmental devastation, financial sanctions or criminality. In the most literal sense, the L.B.M.A. sets the gold standard.

But a New York Times investigation found that the association has repeatedly allowed gold into the market that has been mined by criminals, cartel members and children. Refiners lie with impunity about the origins of their gold. The rules are pocked with exceptions and vagaries, and the L.B.M.A. has repeatedly decided not to enforce them.

And in the case of Madagascar, the L.B.M.A. helped change and backdate key paperwork that certified gold as free from abuse.

As prices skyrocketed in recent years and evidence emerged that gold was financing armed groups in Sudan and polluters in the Amazon, the industry perpetuated the notion that it kept such dirty gold out of the mainstream marketplace.

The Times investigation shows that the divide between “clean” and “dirty” gold is an industry fiction. There is just gold. And as Wall Street, central banks and investors stockpile and trade the precious metal, they’re profiting off a supply that includes gold from illegal sources.

That matters now more than ever. Two decades ago, when gold sold at about $600 an ounce, it was not profitable to drive mining barges into the deepest parts of the Amazon or use bulldozers to tear up acres of Madagascar rice fields to find gold. The price this year crossed the $5,000 mark. That has made it profitable to mine in inefficient, destructive and politically destabilizing ways.

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See also:

• To Find Criminals and Child Exploitation in Gold Mines, We Just Had to Look • Layers of people certify that gold is free from rights abuses and criminality. Nobody makes them leave their desks. (New York Times)

As predicted, Flavio Bolsonaro is formally contesting the election results, asking for the annulment of the previous polls and a new election. Legally speaking, it is highly unlikely that the Electoral Court will grant him the request, but his refusal to concede will create a lot of institutional instability in Brazil. The Judiciary, who also is responsible for overseeing elections, is tainted with multiple corruption scandals and have lost a lot of credibility of late. Lula won by a very narrow 3% margin, lacks support in the House, Senate and local governments and faces a very high rejection rate. So for a country that is already highly polarized, politically fractured and where traditional institutions face serious credibility issues, bringing into question the legitimacy of the results can be a very explosive thing to do, which is very much in line with the Bolsonaros.

Action needed to avoid disastrous overshoot of climate targets, according to organisation’s environment body

The world needs to cut carbon emissions by nearly a fifth in the next four years, and by close to half within a decade, to avoid overshooting climate targets by a disastrous margin.

Although the “window has closed” on holding temperature rises to 1.5C, in line with scientific advice, limiting the “overshoot” of that target is still possible, according to the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

But countries are failing to translate their long-term targets on reducing emissions into short-term actions, a report on the “emissions gap” between climate goals and policies has found.

Global carbon output appears to have stalled: the emission levels in 2025 were broadly similar to those of the previous year. But Unep analysts were wary of calling it a peak or plateau, given the vast uncertainties of geopolitics and an increased reliance on fossil fuels, despite strong growth in renewable energy.

Cutting greenhouse gases by 18% by 2030, and by 45% by 2035, would yield a good chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.7C above preindustrial levels. This would still allow events such as the record heatwaves of the last few months to become frequent and common, but could help prevent them from getting drastically worse.

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets this week in Indonesia to voice anger at what they see as their government’s failure to stop fires in rainforests that have blanketed their country in a sickening haze.

The demonstrations by students and members of civil society groups began on Monday and spread to more than a half dozen cities across the country including on the island of Borneo, where many of the fires are burning.

These are the latest in a series of protests that have been building since August, in which participants have demanded that the nation’s president, Prabowo Subianto, declare a national emergency and take steps to prevent destructive agricultural practices that many blame for fueling the blazes.

While fires appear every year during the dry season that begins in April, this year’s are among the worst on record. Earlier this year, there was less rain during the usually wet months that precede April, which experts blamed on both global warming and an El Niño climate shift.

The smoke has spread into neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, which have also reacted angrily, blaming Indonesia for not doing enough to contain the blazes.

Within Indonesia, the smoke from the burning rainforests has created a growing health crisis that has closed schools, caused widespread breathing disorders and forced many to stay indoors.

According to the Health Ministry, more than 306,309 residents of Indonesia’s seven provinces most heavily affected by the smoke have suffered acute respiratory illnesses over the last two months. Nearly half of those — 146,037 cases — were children under the age of 10, the ministry said on Sunday.

Indonesia’s burning rainforests are often pointed to as a symptom of an ailing planet, an environmental disruption on par with the deforestation of the Amazon. The fires are widely blamed on “slash-and-burn” clearing of rainforest for agriculture to grow cash crops including palm oil and timber. The flames jump to nearby areas of peat, a type of wetland made up of decaying plant matter that extends deep beneath the forest floor but that has dried out.

Once ignited, the peat can smolder out of control for weeks or even months.

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See also:

• Southeast Asia’s worst haze in over a decade sparks student protests (Associated Press)
• Borneo burning: Life on the frontline of South East Asia's toxic haze (BBC)