My phone started ringing like hell on Wednesday evening. Friends, readers, as well as people I haven’t spoken to in months. “Could it be that Wicknell is dead.” “Is it true?” “You’re in Marondera. What’s happening?” “Can you confirm?” The funny part was that I was probably as uninformed as they were. Maybe more. The helicopter had gone down somewhere around Marondera. Six people were …

Ms. Rachel is the current example. She will not be the last. There is an unwritten contract between children’s entertainers and the public, and it is stricter than the one we impose on almost any other kind of celebrity. Musicians are allowed opinions. Politics is practically part of the job description. Actors get more room too, because their politics usually exist outside the work itself, …

There are essays you read and immediately know you disagree with. Then there are essays that make you uncomfortable precisely because you agree with enough of them to have to think harder about the parts you don’t. “The Paradox of Deification of Jesus Christ,” written by Lovemore Chishamba  is the second kind. I have to say that I love the essay’s anger. That may sound …

Rachel Accurso built a $1 million donation career out of teaching toddlers how to say “mama,” identify farm animals and jump like bunnies. Her YouTube channel now has more than 21 million subscribers. There is a Netflix deal, a Sesame Street collaboration, merchandise, books and, this month, her first album, I’m So Happy. She has become one of the most recognisable faces in children’s entertainment. And yet, for the past two years, she has repeatedly found herself in the middle of one of the most vicious political arguments on the internet….

Voting opened Monday across the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao for the first parliamentary election in the region’s history. It was a milestone that took longer to arrive than most elections take to matter. The vote had been postponed four times since it was first scheduled for May 2022, pushed back to 2025, then October 2025, then March 2026, before finally landing on September …

The Philippines is debating a question Zimbabweans should recognise immediately: what happens when a government gives itself the power to decide what counts as false information? On June 3, the Philippine House of Representatives passed the Digital Media Anti-False Information Act bill by an overwhelming 286-3 vote, with seven abstentions. The bill would criminalise knowingly publishing or spreading false information with the intent to cause …