Schoolchildren huddled in Uvalde, Tex. classrooms as classmates and teachers are cut down by a rogue gunman. A peaceful weekend afternoon at a Buffalo, N.Y. grocery store interrupted by a white supremacist who sprays the aisles of elderly, predominantly African American weekend shoppers with an AR-15 style rifle.

Schoolchildren huddled in Uvalde, Tex. classrooms as classmates and teachers are cut down by a rogue gunman. A peaceful weekend afternoon at a Buffalo, N.Y. grocery store interrupted by a white supremacist who sprays the aisles of elderly, predominantly African American weekend shoppers with an AR-15 style rifle.

It’s not only the Chinese. Africa has emerged as a key geopolitical arena for another major power ~ Russia. While the continent has largely been on the radar of powerful countries to secure rare earth minerals/ metals, trade routes, and energy security, the Kremlin’s narrative following the invasion of Ukraine has been taken up a notch and is centered around a sophisticated social media campaign. Moscow is leaving no stone unturned to push its version of events on the war and it’s falling on receptive ears. Western analysts, of course, see this as another example of President Vladimir Putin’s alleged attempts to obscure facts through disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda. The Russian state-backed social media campaign on the African continent is routinely painted as divisive and aimed at sowing distrust to weaken the resolve of Ukraine’s allies.

For years, mass shootings in the US have elicited a common refrain on social media: “Sending thoughts and prayers.”

The information spaces in Africa and other regions of the Global South like India and China have been heavily targeted by Russian disinformation and propaganda campaigns in recent months and years. In the case of Africa at this moment, Russia’s objectives are not only to justify its invasion of Ukraine, but to sway African countries to support Russia’s actions and secure Russia’s influence over the region, especially as the country becomes increasingly isolated from the United States and Europe.

This has been a horrific month in America. While Ukrainians fight for their nation and their lives amid an aggressive Russian invasion, Americans are dealing with the slaughter of their schoolchildren and peaceful grocery shoppers (among others) by their own citizens. And yet at least half of our polity is unmoved and unwilling to support restrictive measures against gun ownership that have proven effective at stopping mass murders in at least 10 other wealthy countries, including the U.K., New Zealand, Scotland, and Australia.

Russian propaganda has its seeds in World War II. This is what researcher Mary Blankenship defends, who, in an interview with Expresso, talks about how Russia continued the loose ends of the Soviet Union's discourse. Russians look at World War II as a religious event and that's why they believe they are saving the world from the "Nazis"

From Tesla to Space X, and to the Boring Company digging tunnels under Las Vegas, Elon Musk has his hands in many projects over the last few decades, but arguably his biggest move is purchasing Twitter for roughly $44 billion.