It’s Election Day in America, and inside a polling station in Washington D.C., voters are filing in with quiet determination, masks and stickers, folding chairs in corridors, and the low hum of democracy doing its most patient work. Photographers from international news agencies capture the ordinary ritual: hands reaching for ballots, booths with curtains drawn, clipboards and blue pens. But just outside that scene, and increasingly inside the national conversation, a very different kind of election drama is unfolding. The 2022 U.S. midterms are happening alongside a booming, deeply controversial ecosystem of prediction markets—online platforms where people wager real money…

On a Monday morning in Abuja, inside the headquarters of Nigeria’s National Counter-Terrorism Centre, a quiet but urgent gathering took place. African security officials, intelligence chiefs, diplomats and counter-terrorism experts came together for the High-Level African Lessons Learned Forum on Counter-Terrorism Cooperation, Intelligence Sharing and Emerging Technologies. The atmosphere was not one of triumph but of reflection and resolve. In his opening remarks, Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, delivered a stark assessment of the continent’s security landscape. Terrorist groups, he warned, are exploiting porous borders, local grievances, illicit financial networks, digital platforms and online radicalisation to expand their operations…