Public Works Minister Satish Jarkiholi stepped out of the political noise in Belagavi with a simple but firm message: if you want to accuse me, do it in a court of law, not through gossip. Speaking to reporters, the Congress leader made it clear that he had already set the legal machinery in motion against those spreading what he called false news and malicious rumours. His voice carried the impatience of a man who has spent decades in public life and who now believes that the time for patience has run out. He confirmed that defamation proceedings had been initiated…

For years, Europe has been building an arsenal of tools designed to detect, analyze, and blunt the impact of disinformation campaigns. There are algorithms that scan social media for coordinated behavior, platforms that verify images and videos, databases that track false narratives, and fact-checking systems that try to separate truth from fabrication. Yet for all that effort, a basic question has gone largely unanswered: which of these tools actually work when confronted with real-world manipulation and interference? It is one thing to design a system in a laboratory, feed it clean datasets, and watch it perform well under controlled conditions.…