Social media has handed us—Gen Z especially—an incredible gift: the ability to access more information, from more perspectives, in less time than any previous generation could have imagined. We can scroll through breaking news, watch a lecture from a Nobel laureate, fact-check a politician in seconds, and hear voices that used to be silenced. But this gift has a shadow. The same open highways that allow knowledge to travel also allow falsehoods to spread at unprecedented speed. It’s like being given a library where every aisle also has a loudspeaker playing someone’s confident guess. A misleading video can reach millions…

In the heart of Kolkata, where the city’s spiritual and cultural life converges during Durga Puja, joy turned to wailing on a rain-soaked Saturday evening. The community pandal at Chorbagan in north Kolkata, one of the countless temporary temples that spring up to honor Goddess Durga, became the site of a catastrophe that left 19 people dead and many more injured. What should have been an evening of devotion and festivity transformed into a desperate scramble for life, as thousands of worshippers found themselves trapped in a surge of panic and fear. The initial investigation by Kolkata Police has begun…