Russia's plague cover-up in Irkutsk costs Moscow its credibility
By blaming an unknown pneumonia for the death of Darya Shipilova, Moscow is hiding a laboratory plague leak and trading its credibility for temporary silence.
By Tom Beckwith ·
world health organization — Lorien Times
Russia is lying about Darya Shipilova's death in Irkutsk lab
Russia claims Darya Shipilova died of unknown pneumonia, but the state's opacity and a mother's grief reveal a cover-up of a deadly laboratory leak.
By Josie Calloway ·
Russia hides a plague lab death behind denials and hollow claims
A technician's death in Siberia exposes the hollow core of state-managed biosecurity, proving once again that opaque regimes care more for narrative control than containment.
By Tom Beckwith ·
What We Know About the Death of the Russian Plague-Lab Worker
After a lab technician died in Irkutsk, Russian officials are downplaying a suspected pneumonic plague leak to hide systemic failure and avoid international alarm.
By Josie Calloway ·
Russia lies about Darya Shipilova to hide a plague lab leak
By covering up the death of Darya Shipilova in Siberia, the Russian state is repeating a deadly history of prioritizing military secrets over human lives.
By Josie Calloway ·
What to know about the outbreak of a rare kind of Ebola
There are moments in global reporting when the sheer weight of human suffering becomes so overwhelming that it threatens to break the journalistic impulse entirely.
By Aoife Gallagher ·
M23's Lake Edward closures show institutional decay in Kivu del Norte
The mechanism of crisis management—the imposition of movement restrictions—is ancient.
By Nikhil Raghavan ·
Ocasio-Cortez and Leavitt: personal will undermines state duty
The headlines today are about two vastly different people—a Congresswoman discussing egg freezing costs, and a White House press secretary announcing her departure after giving birth.
By Grant Colby ·
DRC’s Ebola outbreak began months before it was officially declared, says WHO
The narrative emerging from the Democratic Republic of Congo is not a story of biological novelty; it is a textbook case study in policy latency.
By Nikhil Raghavan ·
Animal spillover? Lab leak? What the science says about the origins of COVID-19
The origins of COVID-19 are not a matter for cable news soundbites or political press releases; they are a question scored in payroll—who got sick, where did the animal market…
By Ray Dombrowski ·
J&J offers $5.5bn settlement in lawsuits claiming talc link to cancer
Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay up to $5.5 billion to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging that its talc products caused ovarian cancer.
By Nikhil Raghavan ·
More health workers strike as Ebola cases in Congo near 3,000, including over 1,300 deaths
When I hear about crises—whether it’s at the border fence or deep in the Congo jungle—I am always looking for who is paying the bill. Who gets to profit from the chaos?
By Alma Cordero ·