There is a kind of panic that comes with not knowing whom to trust in a crisis. Imagine a wildfire advancing toward your community, and you are staring at your phone, trying to decide whether the official evacuation order is real or a trap. Imagine a parent with an asthmatic child, reading a post that claims air quality warnings are just a government scheme, and hesitating before keeping their child indoors. This is the world that health experts are now asking us to confront. The World Health Organization’s member states, along with health and civil society organizations, are being called…

Politics in Uttar Pradesh has never been for the faint-hearted, and Monday in Lucknow was a reminder of just how theatrical the game can become. At the Samajwadi Party headquarters, party president Akhilesh Yadav appeared before a roomful of journalists with his signature mix of calm and combativeness. He had not gathered them to announce a new scheme or a candidate list, but to respond to a curious and strategically timed provocation: large hoardings had appeared across the state capital featuring Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, with a message that seemed to bypass alliance etiquette…