1. A War of Words at the Very Top of World Football If you thought the drama on the pitch was intense, you haven’t been paying attention to the boardrooms. The relationship between FIFA and UEFA—the two most powerful bodies in world football—has just gone from frosty to openly hostile, and the latest chapter reads less like a sporting dispute and more like a political thriller. FIFA has formally accused UEFA of running a “misinformation campaign” and, perhaps more pointedly, of trying to influence the upcoming FIFA presidential election. This is not a quiet disagreement behind closed doors; it’s a…

Inside the Cyprus Forum in Nicosia, a room filled with policy-makers, academics, journalists and concerned citizens came together to confront one of the most corrosive challenges of the modern democratic era: disinformation. The session, titled ‘Disinformation as a Democratic Security Threat: From Detection to Public Response,’ was not an abstract seminar. It was a conversation about the very conditions that allow lies to take root in open societies, and about the difficult work of building defenses without destroying the openness we seek to protect. British High Commissioner Michael Tatham opened the discussion with a message that shaped everything that followed:…