The quiet panic that always accompanies the word “plague” is not hard to understand. Few diseases carry such historical weight, such an almost mythical ability to terrify the human imagination. In Siberia, that fear has collided with a story that is still shrouded in confusion, contradiction, and silence. When news emerged that a young laboratory technician had died in the Irkutsk region, after allegedly working with plague bacteria at a research institute, the world held its breath. Then came whispers of a second suspected case, a colleague with pneumonia of an undetermined cause, and suddenly this was not merely a…

In a move that speaks to the increasingly charged atmosphere around migration in South Africa, the Department of Home Affairs has found itself pushing back against what it calls a coordinated disinformation campaign. The controversy swirls around a recent Constitutional Court judgment concerning the processing of asylum applications. Rumors have been circulating—persistently and, according to the department, deliberately—that Minister of Home Affairs Leon Schreiber or the department itself made a political decision to suspend the so-called “good cause” interviews for asylum seekers. These interviews have long been a point of confusion and anxiety, and the false narrative now spreading suggests…