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Far-right populists worldwide are using AI to bypass traditional media gatekeepers and spread disinformation at scale. Nowhere is that more true than Brazil, which has been rocked by political disinformation in recent years and is expected to face even more daunting challenges with the rise of generative AI. These concerns are now reaching an inflection point just days ahead of Brazil's general election on October 4 — a contest that sits at the intersection of the race to influence democracy with AI and the race to control the technology itself.

Thirteen candidates are running for the presidency, but the race is currently dominated by incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Worker's Party (PT) and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the right-wing Liberal Party (PL). Lula won by a narrow margin in 2022, just edging out Jair Bolsonaro (Flávio's father), who is now serving time for his role in plotting a coup in an attempt to overturn the 2022 election results.

The upcoming election mirrors other recent elections in the region, with high levels of distrust in democratic institutions and the possibility of another right-wing candidate taking office and aligning closely with the presidency of Donald Trump.

Brazil is also a strategically important location, particularly for AI companies, as it is becoming a priority market for data-center investment and is a crucial source of critical minerals that are needed to power and build AI. The United States and European Union, as well as private companies, are now looking to Brazil as they try to reduce supply-chain dependence on China, and Bolsonaro has indicated his support for such a realignment.

Because of this, access to Brazil's Government is both politically and commercially important, making the upcoming election a prime target for interference by foreign governments and tech companies alike.

For the past several election cycles, Brazil has served as a testing ground for information warfare tactics in the digital age. The digital environment there has been described as "a fertile ground for innovative strategies to spread polarizing content with the intent of manipulating public debate."

Several factors converge to make Brazil uniquely vulnerable to political disinformation and malign influence, including a heavy reliance on hyperconnected chat applications, intense political polarization, and a powerful influencer-driven media market.

Brazil was early to recognize the potential dangers of AI as a tool of election influence and interference. Ahead of its 2026 election, the Superior Electoral Court, known as the TSE, prohibited generative AI systems from providing certain election-related responses, including those that recommend or prioritise candidates, parties, and campaigns. The rules also prohibit these systems from expressing an electoral preference or recommending a vote, and impose restrictions on AI-generated content.

In theory, those rules are supposed to help prevent AI systems from interfering in elections via misinformation, disinformation, or content plagued by bias, partisanship, or other forms of hidden influence. In practice, however, that's not how things are playing out.

Research on these systems has found that most of the major AI models ranked or ordered candidates in nearly every instance during testing, and official sources were not reliably used when doing so. Additionally, responses were often inconsistent and varied based on the wording of the input, meaning that voters who turn to these systems for information could receive differing responses with variable source quality, yet no one would know because no one has access to view all of these responses, except for the companies themselves.

In addition to AI chatbots violating Brazil's election rules, Meta's ad system was found to be approving advertisements containing content that violates bot...

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Byline Times' chief reporter has been blocked from attending the Conservative Party conference, just weeks after leader Kemi Badenoch called Reform's decision to bar several journalists from their own conference "authoritarian" and an attack on the "free press".

Josiah Mortimer was told by a party official on Tuesday (29 September): "I regret to inform you that approval has not been granted by the Conservative Party, and as such, your application has been unsuccessful." The email gave no specific reasons. Mortimer has reported on dozens of political conferences and the ban comes within days of the event starting this Sunday.

The decision was condemned by the National Union of Journalists and Index on Censorship as an attack on press freedom.

It comes after the Conservative leader hit out at Nigel Farage's party earlier this month for rejecting several reporters who had investigated Reform UK from their annual gathering.

Badenoch said at the time: "I think you could…[see] what kind of government they would be – authoritarian and using state power actually to pursue opponents is what they've effectively been threatening.

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"We believe in free speech. We believe in a free press. And yes, of course, that might be painful for us as politicians, but public scrutiny is part of the gig. If Nigel Farage can't handle difficult questions about his dodgy £5m then he shouldn't be a politician," she said.

However, the remarks rang hollow even then, coming after her party blocked this outlet's political editor Adam Bienkov, and the late parliamentary correspondent David Hencke, from attending in 2025. Hencke had attended the Conservative conference for decades for outlets including Byline Times and the Guardian. The Conservatives have not responded to Bienkov's application to attend this year's event.

Then and now, the party gave no explanation for the ban, but a Conservative official said last September that the decision had been taken by "our media team".

The apparent blacklisting comes despite Byline Times having previously been approved to cover Conservative conference under the leadership of Badenoch's predecessors Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, as we reported last time.

Conservative conference is in Birmingham, running from Sunday 4 October to Wednesday 7 October.

In the US, President Trump's move to strip three outlets of their White House access (CNN, MS Now and Politico) led to US television networks suspending their pooled coverage of Trump, in a coordinated show of solidarity that included even Fox News.

Such walkouts are largely unheard of in the UK, meaning political parties may calculate that they can afford to be picky about which outlets attend their events.

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The ban on covering the party's annual gathering came despite Badenoch's repeated commitment to "fight" for free speech and a free press

Adam Bienkov

Laura Davison, general secretary of Mortimer's union the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), said: "Further reports of political parties refusing journalists access to their conferences raise serious questions about the state of press freedom in the UK.

"The Conservative Party appears to have rejected media passes to journalists from Byline Times without explanation. This follows the banning of journalists at both the Labour and Reform UK party conferences, and of Byline Times journalists at the Conservative Party conference last year."

The NUJ leader says political parties should not "pick and choose" which journalists and publications are able to question and s...

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Times Higher Education (THE), which also publishes the annual World University Rankings, has failed to provide coverage of the legal and misconduct allegations engulfing Dr James Orr, a Cambridge academic and suspended Reform UK policy chief – who is also chair of the Hungarian government-funded Roger Scruton Foundation – since THE signed a sponsorship agreement with Hungary in 2024.

Times Higher Education (THE) is best known for publishing the annual World University Rankings, which evaluate and compare higher education institutions globally.

Since 2004 THE has partnered with both Thomson Reuters and Elsevier using their data alongside reader input to rank the top 200 universities and 11 academic disciplines.

To be in the top 10 of Times Higher Education World University rankings, where the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and Imperial College London, take positions, 1, 3 and 7 respectively is to be envied by higher education institutions around the world and is studied rigorously by ambitious parents.

That envy is no more evident and made tangible in its 2024 partnership with Hungary's former Culture and Innovation Ministry, a new ministry that was created by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's administration in 2021.

During Orbán's tenure his administration took control of large swathes of Hungary's media landscape, altered judicial structures and placed political allies in key regulatory and institutional positions. Orbán himself declared that his government was building an "illiberal" state in 2014.

The partnership was announced with great fanfare. Phil Baty, Times Higher Education's chief global affairs officer, said upon closing the deal that: "Hungary's ambitions for its higher education and research sectors are impressive and inspiring and Times Higher Education is delighted to have been selected to partner with the ministry to provide our trusted data, global benchmarks and insights to support the sector."

Balázs Hankó, then Hungary's Minister of Culture and Innovation, said: "Our aim by 2030 is to have at least one university in the world's top 100 and three among Europe's top 100. […] Significantly, Hungary is already a prominent higher education hub in Europe, and through our HEIs' performance in THE rankings we expect to attract even more attention."

Times Higher Education's website now also hosts a page called Discover Hungary.

THE introduces the advertorial as follows: "Higher education in Hungary reflects a deep tradition of academic excellence paired with a forward-looking commitment to innovation […] where scholarship, scientific progress and international collaboration can thrive".

The Discover Hungary landing page links to numerous articles, each with its own link to the official Hungarian Government website. Each article on the page discloses that it is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Innovation, Government of Hungary, but not who wrote them.

In 2021, just three years before the long-term partnership was signed there had been global outrage, when it was revealed that Hungary had been attempting to place political ads in some of Europe's most respected newspapers. Reuters reported that France's Le Figaro, Spain's ABC, and Denmark's Jyllands-Posten were some of the recipients who agreed to publish the ads. Further to that in 2025 it was exposed that Hungary had spent 1.1 billion since 2015 on state advertising subsidies around the world.

Following Prime Minister Viktor's landslide election defeat in April a House of Commons briefing notes that: "Controversial legislation adopted under Orbán brought Hungary into conflict with the EU, with the European Commission taking legal action against Hungary on several occasions. This included action in relation to judicial reforms, restrictions on civil society organisations and the refusal to implement EU migration policies."

Writing in Univ...

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Andy Burnham's speech to the Labour Party Conference has been hailed by many British commentators as one of the most consequential in a generation, with his ambitious plans to reform social care and pensions, tackle festering deficiencies in Britain's housing stock, energy supply and infrastructure, improve education and opportunity for young people, and launch national debates on reforming the UK's electoral system, and restoring a better relationship with the EU.

He promised he was going to deliver a "real speech" and say the things "politicians usually avoid" and there was almost no sacred cow he was not willing to address. He became the first major political leader to state openly that Britain was not "anywhere where we want it to be" and has "been on the wrong path for a long time." He became the first to openly state that Thatcher's privatisation of public utilities such as water in the 1980s was a mistake – "a service where shareholders never lose and the public never wins….It stinks."

He was also the first to openly acknowledge that Brexit did not allow the country to "take back control" but actually has caused "more harm than good" whilst explicitly thanking immigrants for their contributions to the country. Perhaps most importantly, because of the implications for his own party's future, he also became the first major party leader to express openness to reforming Britain's electoral system, with the explicit aim of preventing handing the keys of No 10 to "divisive elements" (code for Reform) with less than 30% of the national vote.

Burnham made clear that he was not interested in presiding over Britain's decline, but in leading it back to strength at home and influence abroad. "We led the world's first industrial revolution…so why can't we lead the next? We can, Conference, and we will… As Gordon Brown has said, we can be the world's innovation nation, and he's right, we can."

His remarks throughout were tinged with patriotism, belief, and confidence in the country. "Britain is not perfect; it can be better; and we will make it so; but it still stands for something worth saving, worth fighting for." His plan was "not just to hold us together, but allow Britain to rise again and be confident of our place in the world."

In a particularly poignant moment, he described how it made him feel when the Scottish leader, John Swinney, said that Burnham would be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Burnham, who was at his father's deathbed at the time, said the remark made him "utterly determined to prove him wrong."

Above all, he repeatedly emphasised his determination to deliver on his promises, no matter what the political pain. "It's the leadership I promised you…and I will do it." "I know it's hard…I know not everyone will agree…but I will fight hard for what I believe is in the best interests of our country."

This speech establishes Burnham as not just the most serious politician in Britain in years, but also potentially the most consequential British politician to be reckoned with on the world stage. In terms of public profile, it easily puts him on a level footing with Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada, who has shown himself to be equally courageous in saying the unsayable. Just as Carney has won global respect by being frank about the need for Canada to reduce its reliance on America, so Burnham's remarks are sure to make other countries sit up and take notice that he means business.

To underscore the message, Burnham explicitly drew the link between the state of the UK at home, and its influence and standing abroad. "A country which invests in people's success, rather than abandoning them and paying for failure, will be much more resilient to the shocks we will undoubtedly face in the rest of this century… This leadership we are showing at home will be matched on the international stage." The UK...

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The Prime Minister has announced a national commission to review Westminster's First Past the Post voting system – and has promised to include an overhaul in Labour's next manifesto.

Andy Burnham made the announcement in his leader's speech at Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, 10 weeks after becoming Prime Minister.

Addressing party members, he said: "In past years, [Labour conference] has voted twice to support electoral reform. I hear you. I agree with you. And today I am announcing a new National Commission on Electoral Reform. I invite all the political parties to be part of its work."

He added: "We will contest the next election with a manifesto commitment to change the electoral system so that everyone's vote counts and everyone's voice is heard."

In a lobby briefing after Burnham's speech, the Prime Minister's spokesman told journalists: "The commission's job is to look at the options properly, hear from all parties and the public, and make a recommendation.

"There may be questions around whether we are going to keep the constituency link. The Prime Minister believes the constituency link is critical."

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The Prime Minister's official spokesperson restated this when asked by Byline Times about whether Burnham was ruling out 'list' versions of proportional representation – which aim to secure the most proportional results but which are often seen as removing the direct link between voters and a single constituency MP (there would be multiple local MPs elected from party lists).

It arguably leaves mixed-member PR systems, such as the one used for the Scottish Parliament, in play, which keep a constituency MP but have a regional 'top up' list of representatives elected to rebalance the results so that seats more closely match vote shares.

Asked why the Government would not simply adopt the ranked-choice 'AV Plus' system recommended by the Jenkins Commission in 1998, the spokesperson said the new body would "hear from all parties and the public". He declined to say whether any change would require a referendum like the one held on the (non-proportional) Alternative Vote system in 2011.

Reform UK, which recently abandoned its backing for proportional representation, will be invited to join the commission alongside other parties.

The announcement has been hailed as a momentous moment by electoral reform campaigners.

Laura Parker of Labour for a New Democracy, which spearheaded much of the internal campaigning in recent years, said: "Our voting system is bust. The public knows it, an overwhelming majority across Labour know it, and now a Labour Prime Minister has committed to doing something about it."

The announcement follows years of growing pressure in the party.

Alex Sobel, the Labour MP who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections, recently tabled an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill calling for a commission. It was backed by more than 180 MPs, which Make Votes Matter says makes it the most-supported amendment to any bill since the last general election.

"A National Commission can look at all the issues, consult the public, experts and civil society, and make independent recommendations for how general elections should be run in modern Britain," Sobel said.

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YouGov polling of 100 MPs in July also found a majority of Labour MPs support a commission. A Survation poll for LabourList in August found two-thirds of party members backed one, with just 16% opposed. Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock also backed the ide...

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Political conferences are meant to be about bringing parties together. Yet under Keir Starmer, Labour's annual gathering often felt like it was about doing the complete opposite. Far from seeking to show that he understood his party's hopes and fears, Labour's former leader often appeared determined to demonstrate his indifference, and even contempt, towards them.

In his final conference speech, Starmer berated what he described as the "extreme" views of those to his left, who he dismissed as being "snake oil merchants" who hated their country.

When the then Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham turned up to suggest that, just possibly, a Labour Government should do a few things that its own supporters actually wanted, he was roundly dismissed and mocked, with commentators suggesting that he had blown any chance of ever becoming Labour leader and Prime Minister.

Fast forward to today and Andy Burnham has just delivered a speech which promises to fulfil many of the things his own party have long hoped for.

A new national care service, free at the point of use would be created, Britain's deeply unfair electoral system would be reformed, and its broken relationship with Europe repaired. Speaking with real emotion and power, Burnham did what his predecessor could never do, which was announce big decisions and then clearly argue the case for them.

"I won't pretend some of this won't be difficult," he conceded, as he announced that the triple lock on pensions would be restricted, in order to pay for his new care service.

"I accept I may pay a political price, but someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off."

Ripping that plaster off could prove to be painful.

Most of what Burnham announced today will be complete anathema to the owners and editors of most British newspapers. Public ownership of national utilities, increased social housing and the effective expansion of the NHS into social care will be derided as a return to 1970s-style socialism and economic ruin. Every complaint by big business will be amplified and every slight shift in the cost of borrowing magnified. The same news outlets that greeted Liz Truss' disastrous budget as a political triumph, will treat Burnham's speech as a national calamity.

Burnham's plans could face a public backlash too. When Starmer announced his own plans to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners it left a wound in his government's reputation that would never be healed. His own much more significant plans for the triple lock, risk triggering an even bigger negative reaction.

Yet Burnham today gambled that his willingness to be honest about where he thinks the country has gone wrong and how he plans to set it right again, will ultimately be rewarded by a country wearied by a decade of national drift and decay.

"Britain has been on the wrong path for a long time," he told his conference.

"Deindustrialisation, deregulation, privatisation, austerity, Brexit, and what has it given us? A country run for vested interest, not in the public interest, with power held in too few hands and too many places left to drift.

"I am ready to do things my predecessors wouldn't. I will make a break with the direction of the past 40 years and put Britain on a new path, build a new economy and a new politics. That is the case I make to you today."

The reality of Burnham's programme for Govermment may not prove to be quite as radical as he made it sound. His plans for social care and electoral reform are all being shunted until after the next general election, while his changes to the triple lock are not set to fully kick in until next decade.

And while he took the big step of conceding that Brexit has "done more harm than good" he held back from signalling clearly that return to the EU will ever be on the cards.

Yet with the next general election potentially coming as early as next year, m...

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The United Nation's "Independent" AI Panel warning governments about the dangers of advanced artificial intelligence has financial and personnel ties to OpenAI and Anthropic – the frontier AI companies building the technology the panel was created to assess – a Byline Times investigation has established.

In response to this publication's enquiries, the UN has disclosed that measures including recusal from specific discussions were agreed after an assessment of the conflicts of interest.

The UN AI panel's latest briefing largely echoes the warnings in recent weeks from frontier AI firms, warning that the "safeguards designed today" may fail "once agents can understand them and plan around them. In simple terms, the traditional model of safeguarding is unravelling."

However, a Byline Times investigation has revealed that the panel has extensive ties to the very companies it is assessing. Its co-chair, Yoshua Bengio, advised OpenAI at its launch and now leads LawZero, an AI organisation supported by funders of OpenAI and Anthropic.

Kevin Kohler, one of the writers of the panel's July preliminary report, simultaneously worked full-time for a think tank funded by the same philanthropic network that built both frontier AI giants – an affiliation omitted from the report's credits.

"Each declaration was assessed for possible or actual conflicts, and mitigation measures, including recusal from specific discussions, were agreed," states an FAQ published on the panel's website, which was updated in response to Byline Times' inquiries.

The answer does not identify the interests concerned, or name the members who agreed to stand aside from particular discussions.

"We have published answers to many of the questions you raised on the Panel's website," a spokesperson for the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies, told Byline Times.

These potential conflicts of interest reach into the panel's latest assessment, published on 21 September. Examining an incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face, the brief warns about the risk of losing human control over AI. It draws on Bengio's own work and discusses research from his organisation, LawZero.

The 40-member Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence was appointed by the UN General Assembly in February to assess AI's opportunities, risks and impacts. Bengio co-chairs it alongside Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa. Its findings are intended to inform how governments worldwide govern the technology.

The potential conflicts also extend to the panel's creation. The Simon Institute for Longterm Governance, which employed Kevin Kohler during his report drafting assignment, helped shape the negotiations over the panel's design.

Open Philanthropy, which funded OpenAI and supports Yoshua Bengio's LawZero through its successor Coefficient Giving, also financed the expansion of effective altruism and longtermism, which have intellectual roots in eugenics – the pursuit of supposedly superior human populations through selective reproduction. The same philanthropic network helped finance AI developers and organisations warning of their technology's dangers, and now supports organisations employing people responsible for the UN's independent assessments.

Neither the UN AI panel's September brief nor its July preliminary report publishes individual declarations of interest or records of members standing aside from decisions because of a conflict.

One of the writers of the UN AI panel's July report was simultaneously employed full-time by a think tank that had helped shape the panel itself.

Kevin Kohler's CV records a UN University consultancy in scientific editing and drafting from April to July 2026. Yet throughout those months, he was also a senior technology policy specialist at the Simon Institute for Longterm Governance. While the July report cred...

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Kemi Badenoch was gifted an £8,177 trip from News Corp to meet Rupert Murdoch and other senior executives in Greece over the summer.

The Conservative Party leader has just reported a donation-in-kind for the summer jaunt with the Murdochs worth thousands.

The trip was marked as "international visit to Greece between 24 August 2026 and 26 August 2026" for "attending off-site meetings with Mr Rupert Murdoch and other senior executives from News Corp and News UK," according to her latest Register of Interests.

Alex Burghart, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party and Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, also recorded a trip paid for by the Murdoch media empire worth £4,088, covering the same dates as Kemi Badenoch but in Italy.

He said it was an "international visit to Italy between 24 August 2026 and 26 August 2026" for "off-site meetings with Mr K R [Keith Rupert, his full name] Murdoch and other senior executives from News Corp and News UK."

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The two filings reveal Rupert Murdoch was travelling around Europe in late August, meeting Kemi Badenoch and her deputy in Greece and Italy. It is not known what they discussed.

The Murdochs appear to be moving back towards the Conservatives following a flirtation with Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

Politico reported in 2023 that Kemi Badenoch "held clandestine talks with media mogul Rupert Murdoch within days of joining the U.K. Cabinet, then failed to declare it in transparency data."

"Murdoch, who stepped down this month as chairman of Fox and News Corp but retains a hugely powerful role at the media empire, questioned Badenoch for 20 minutes in an atmosphere described as akin to a job interview by one of those in attendance," the outlet reported.

It is not clear what Badenoch and Burghart discussed at their respective overseas trips with the owners of The Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times, but the spending suggests News Corp is keen to keep the Conservatives close.

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The issue is not confined to the Conservatives. One of Keir Starmer's last social events as Prime Minister was a News Corp summer party with Rupert-heir Lachlan Murdoch. The Sun reluctantly supported Labour at the last moment before the 2024 General Election, and Starmer went on to appoint a former Sun executive, David Dinsmore, to a top communications role.

In 2024, Byline Times revealed that Labour failed to deny reports that Starmer made a secret pre-election deal with News UK not to complete the Leveson inquiry into the conduct of the British press, in exchange for an endorsement from Rupert Murdoch's newspapers.

Liz Pendleton, co-founder of the campaign group Media Revolution, told Byline Times: "Probably the most concerning thing about the 'gifts' from Murdoch to Badenoch and Burghart is that it's not even vaguely surprising…

"Our entire democracy has long been completely compromised by media owners – Murdoch is just one of many."

She added: "Without genuinely independent regulation of the press and social media, there will be yet more victims at their hands, and our politics will remain captured by narrative hacks."

Kemi Badenoch, Alex Burghart and the Conservatives were contacted for comment.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on [email protected]

While most the rest of the media seems to happy to give the handful of Reform MPs undue prominence, Byline Times is committed to tracking the activities of Nigel Farage's party when actually in power

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23 September 2026

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Ukraine's capital, my home for a quarter of a century, has been under terrorist siege for the last 48 hours. The definition of terrorism is the calculated use of violence to achieve political goals. Putin's goal is the subjugation of Ukraine, and so the country's capital of Kyiv is again one of his primary targets.

Of course, Kyiv has been under attack since 24 February 2022. But things are different now, with attack capabilities enhanced through technological advances, Russia is experimenting with new kinds of cruelty. The purpose of the current attack strategy is not just the physical harm that they can do in destroying buildings and bodies, Russia's current theory of war now also encapsulates psychological terrorism.

The Russian war against Ukraine is well known to be a race of technological advancement from each side. When Russia first introduced the Iranian-made Shahed drone to their arsenal, Ukraine sought ways to counter the threat they posed. The new generation of these drones, called "reactive" drones, now feature jet-powered engines that can propel these flying bombs at speeds of up to 600 Km/h. A significant upgrade from the 200 Km/h that the older variants were capable of. Getting a bead on machines travelling at such velocity is not impossible, but it is very difficult.

So as Russia has nudged ahead in the cat-and-mouse game – of designing more efficient means of raining death on civilians in their homes versus the more efficient means of intercepting these powerful weapons – Russia has also refined their strategy of drone use.

Previously drones were used in massive raids, intent on overwhelming the crews trying to interdict them, and hundreds of drones would flood the skies over Kyiv, home to 3 million people and the sixth most populous city in Europe. Those mass attacks would happen in a pattern of roughly once every ten days. Always at night, to catch families as they slept in their beds.

Now, Russia is firing its new jet drones at the city on a near hourly basis, causing the air raid sirens to sound more frequently than ever before. Every time those sirens sound, people face a choice: find shelter or go on about their daily lives. That choice then translates to a life-or-death outcome if someone finds themselves at the spot impacted by one of these almost unstoppable machines. Life in Kyiv is literally a death lottery.

Knowing that, the constant reminder of that fact, as sirens blare across the Ukrainian capital, is where the psychological torture is being inflicted.

While new defences are being developed and tested, it seems like we are all almost naked now. There are three promising interceptor models in the works, the Government tells us, but that development was unable to stop the strikes yesterday. When we hear the impacts and see the rising clouds of black smoke over the city horizon or above our landmarks, we know that someone, somewhere, may have just been killed or severely wounded as a result.

The targets struck in recent days have included the central railway station in Kyiv, a broad daylight attack causing panic to the thousands of passengers who will have been in that location at that time. Business centres have been hit. A maternity hospital took a blow. A kindergarten was also struck.

Last night saw Russian cruise or ballistic missiles being added to the deadly cocktail of terrorist hardware, with impacts occurring at 4 am and causing foundations to rattle while folks hoped or prayed that they might evade death or injury this time around.

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The former FBI agent's pardon came after his co-defendant's daughter donated $3.5 million to Donald Trump

Jackie Singh

Against this backdrop, the Presidents of Ukraine and the US met yesterday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Donald Trump once again confidently stated that he thinks he can end the war because he thin...

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A bitcoin firm in which Nigel Farage holds a stake is set to buy the gold dealer that pays him as its 'brand ambassador' – further entrenching the Reform UK leader's financial interests in the cryptocurrency world.

On 15 September, Stack BTC – which announced Farage as a 6.31% shareholder in March, alongside Liz Truss's former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng as its executive chairman announced it planned to buy gold dealers Direct Bullion.

In an announcement to the markets, Stack BTC wrote: "Today we announced heads of terms for our proposed first acquisition: Direct Bullion, a UK precious metals dealer with £52.1m audited revenue and an operating profit before non-recurring items of £3.86m and profit after tax of £2.15m in FY26.

"Stack's strategy since day one [has been to] acquire profitable, cash-generative businesses that sustainably grow our Bitcoin per share, in sectors aligned with Bitcoin's hard-money principles. Gold is a natural fit."

Farage has been paid £685,500 by Direct Bullion in the space of 18 months, according to his own entries in the Register of Members' Financial Interests.

The value of gold tends to rise in times of political turmoil, suggesting the firm could benefit from unrest or instability under a radical right-wing Government.

A 2018 SSRN study by academics at the University of Western Australia found: "Gold shows a unique behavior among all precious metals with a positive reaction to geopolitical risks and threats."

A video advertisement recently posted by the company predicted violence and unrest under a Reform Government.

Questioning whether "sterling can survive what's coming," the video's narrator added: "If a Reform government pushes through its agenda, resistance from those ideologically opposed to that direction could severely undermine national stability."

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The Reform leader holds shares in Stack BTC through his company Thorn in the Side Ltd, having invested £215,000 on 9 March for 6.31% of the company. Within weeks he added £60,650 of shares in a second tranche. He bought in at 5p, and the share price surged to an all-time high of 21p on 10 March, the day after his investment was announced.

At the time, that suggested a paper gain of almost £700,000 for the Reform UK leader, but it had gone by June, when Stack's share price fell back to 5p. His register entry still lists the shares, so he does not appear to have sold them.

However, Farage's stake in the company has been diluted by a significant expansion in the number of shares available. (If the Direct Bullion deal goes through – funded in part by a major expansion in shares available – his shareholding could fall to around 3%).

But if the purchase does proceed, Farage's brand ambassador fees from Direct Bullion would come from a subsidiary of a crypto company he part-owns, giving him an arguably greater incentive to boost cryptocurrencies. And Stack itself will have a strong incentive to boost a company that appears to have traded on the prospect of unrest and disorder under a Reform Government.

Farage's last payment from Direct Bullion before his Stack investment was £135,000. The first one after it, 81 days later, was £270,000, described as covering the same amount of work: up to four hours a month over three months. Between those two payments he publicly promoted Stack on social media.

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The Clacton MP's payments from the gold dealer were equivalent to a quarter of Direct Bullion's profits in the year he became an MP. His register shows payments totalling £280,500 in the compan...