Disinformation
Food & Drink
Christmas Was Never ‘Pure’ Even Before Culture Wars
An "anti-woke" Christmas party tries to reclaim tradition, yet the holiday itself has always been a quiet collage of borrowed customs, foreign gods and local habits.
EUROPE
Chinese Disinformation Campaign on Spanish GovernmentÂ
A digital Trojan horse from China infiltrated Spain, disguising propaganda as public outrage, to call for the government’s downfall.
BUSINESS
The Kremlin Manipulates AI to Sway German Vote
Artificial intelligence becomes a propaganda tool as Russia deploys 102 fake websites targeting German voters in the run up to the German election.
Popular
Winter Storm Research Rewrites a Witch Trial Tragedy
As new research published in Smithsonian Magazine this week connects a 1617 Arctic storm to Norway's deadliest witch trials, climate historians reveal how weather shock fed decades of persecution.
Prediction Takes Politics: Prophets and Polymarkets Collide
As 11 Peruvian shamans predicted Nicolás Maduro's fall on 29 December 2025, crypto traders were placing similar bets online—five days before U.S. forces extracted the Venezuelan leader to New York.
Mladenov Takes Over Gaza Board After Regional Veto
Nickolay Mladenov becomes Gaza peace board head after Arab states blocked Tony Blair, raising questions about whose interests guide Washington's selection.
Abu Dhabi Rebuffs British Universities Over Campus Radicalisation
The world’s wealthiest patrons now view Western campuses as hazards, forcing a costly inversion of the traditional hierarchy that once defined global education.
Bury the Lead: MTV ‘Death’ and the Way We Read Now
As MTV continued broadcasting across the United States and most of Europe on 1 January 2026, millions of social media tributes mourned a channel that had never actually shut down.
