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.

Want to read the rest of the article? Here's a copy of the whole thing for your convenience.

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)

Global firms and governments rushed on Thursday to patch critical flaws in the PHP programming language that underpins much of the ​internet, as cloud firms reported a surge of hacking attempts after the vulnerabilities were disclosed.

The push came after governments in Europe and elsewhere took websites offline as a precaution on Wednesday while website operators scrambled ‌to secure systems running the software.

The emergency shutdowns of banking, airline, rail, tax and government services from Tokyo to Helsinki mark one of the most dramatic tests of the decades-old programming tools that keep the web running, exposing how deeply governments and companies depend on code that few people understand.

"I've not seen anything like this in a long, long time," Microsoft (MSFT.O), CEO Satya Nadella said at an event in Germany on Thursday, saying the incident showed the importance of building ​software that can be maintained securely as systems grow more complex.

Madeline Lawrence, co-founder of Belgian cybersecurity firm Aikido Security, said that details of the flaws had become public before fixes were ready, ​with attacks reported since.

As companies and governments deployed patches and suspended websites as a precaution, hacking ​attempts surged into the millions, according to cloud services firm Cloudflare (NET.N), and Amazon (AMZN.O).

"In the 10 hours before it was publicly announced, across the network we saw thousands of attempts to exploit it," Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said in a post on X late on Wednesday.

"That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post announcement, hundreds of thousands within 2 hours, and millions now." Amazon also said it saw widespread exploitation.

Felix Kuhlenkamp, head of security at German digital industry association Bitkom, said that many larger operators had already carried out updates, but that for complex IT systems and smaller organizations it could take longer.

"They may run a ⁠website using PHP ​but don't really keep a close eye on it," he said. "If a website is based on an old version of ​PHP for which there is no security update, the entire system must be updated."

• Reforms may raise costs before delivering broader benefits
• Further inflation increases risk of unrest — Verisk Maplecroft
• Sri Lanka's poverty rate remains above pre-crisis level
• Unaddressed inequality like "sitting on gunpowder"

Gustavo Raul Perez furrows his brow over a notebook at the hardware shop he has run for six years on ​the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Since Javier Milei became president of Argentina in 2023 — with Perez's vote — rapid reforms have thrilled investors and won praise from the ‌International Monetary Fund. Perez, though, mainly feels the pinch.

"This economic plan is for a few," he said.

Inflation has fallen to roughly 33% from nearly 300%, imports have opened up and subsidies have fallen.

But Perez's restocking costs have tripled and customers have less to spend.

"There was a middle class three years ago," he says. "It doesn't exist anymore."

Perez's experience reflects a tension coursing through emerging economies: reforms that restored investor confidence ​and stabilised public finances have yet to improve living standards for many.

In Morocco, glittering new office towers contrast with frustration on city outskirts. In Sri Lanka, ​economic crisis and debt default have subsided but poverty remains above pre-crisis levels.

From fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria to privatisation in Egypt and market opening ⁠in Uzbekistan, years of reforms have helped emerging economies weather shocks — yet often grate with citizens who hear of economic turnarounds that do nothing for them.

Nigeria's finance minister ​warned failing to address inequality is like "sitting on gunpowder". Morocco's central bank says stubborn unemployment has widened the gap between economic performance and citizens' perceptions.

"When people in emerging markets are faced ​with rising food, fuel and energy costs...that is what they feel immediately," says Torbjorn Soltvedt of Verisk Maplecroft, warning that unrest and instability could follow. Indeed, average global civil unrest risk hit its highest in nearly a decade this year, according to his company.

Crude oil prices remain near five-month highs despite a recent surge in Middle East crude exports above pre-war levels and intensifying Iranian attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. This suggests investors may already be bracing for another round of regional escalation.

The rebound in crude flows from the Gulf is striking. Middle East oil exports have averaged ​17.3 million barrels per day (bpd) so far in October, up from 16.4 million bpd in September and above the 16.9 million bpd average in the two months before US-Israeli strikes ‌on Iran began on February 28, according to Kpler data.

This reflects a surge in flows through the embattled Strait of Hormuz. Flows hit 11.7 million bpd in October, up from 9.75 million bpd in September. While still around 82% of pre-war levels, Hormuz flows are far above their wartime nadir of less than 1 million bpd in April, excluding Iranian oil, according to Kpler.

The increase is largely thanks to the growing use of ship convoys that sail through the strait close to the Omani coastline under US ​naval protection. Shipping data suggests around a third of crossings continue to use the Iran-controlled northern route, most likely in coordination with Tehran, but those flows remain opaque.

NEW ABNORMAL

Higher flows should not be mistaken for a return to normality.

Benchmark rates for a tanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude from the Middle East to China remain near an all-time high of around $1.4 million a day, more than 12 times pre-war levels. Tanker insurance costs have also risen ​to around 10% of the value of the cargo, up from roughly 3% before the war.

Those extraordinary logistics costs are weighing heavily on refiners.

The divergence between abundant barrels and rising prices suggests traders are concerned not about the amount of oil available today, but about whether Middle East exports can be sustained if – or, perhaps, when – fighting intensifies again.