The strange saga started with a simple question: Where is James Talarico? It ricocheted across rightwing echo chambers, ballooned into a full-blown conspiracy theory, and became an accidental case study in how dangerously easy it is to turn a mundane human illness into a political weapon during an election year. Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in Texas, had vanished from public view for nine days. His campaign was slow to explain why, and in the suffocating vacuum left by silence, rumors began to crawl. He was sick, his team eventually said. He had been diagnosed with…

Para. 1: In the quiet but relentless digital battleground of the information war, a decisive blow was struck this week—though you might have missed it amid the thunder of more conventional conflict. The popular video-sharing platform YouTube, a name synonymous with cat videos and DIY tutorials, has once again stepped into the fray, blocking or outright removing another 39 channels operating in Ukraine that were found to be spreading Russian propaganda. This is not a headline about tanks or missiles, but it is every bit as consequential. For the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), a Ukrainian government body tasked with…