Deadly bombing of California fertility clinic an 'act of terrorism', FBI says
18/05/2025
USA: Bomb kills one near California fertility clinic; FBI calls it 'terrorism'
Americas
18/05/2025
USA: Mexican navy ship crashes into Brooklyn Bridge
Americas
18/05/2025
US: Severe storms and tornadoes kill more than 25 in the midwest
Americas
17/05/2025
Strike at New Jersey rail system idles New York-bound commuters
Americas
17/05/2025
Celebrating gender diversity amid LGBTQ+ attacks by the Trump administration
Americas
17/05/2025
How did ten men escape from a New Orleans jail?
Americas
14/05/2025
Trump marvels at wealth of his Arab hosts, eyes White House and Air Force One upgrades
Americas
14/05/2025
Trump's whirlwind Gulf tour unveils 'remarkable shift in American policy vis-à-vis Israel'
Middle East
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France 24
3 hours ago
- France 24
That video said to show Trump selecting a young girl at an Epstein party? It's AI
'The looks on the girls' faces. Holding hands in anticipation of the worst,' read a caption on a video that was posted online on July 13. The footage shows US President Donald Trump pointing at one of two young girls standing before him. The implication is that he is selecting her to have sexual relations with him, which would constitute a crime. The president appears to be making his sordid choice in the presence of Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion of Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier who was found dead in his cell in 2019 while facing charges of sex trafficking of minors. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for helping provide Epstein with these girls. This video appeared online at a moment when Trump is being criticised by his own supporters for how he has managed the Epstein affair. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised to make sensational revelations about the financier, including publishing a list of clients of Epstein's prostitution ring, whom he allegedly blackmailed. Since then, the president has been trying to backtrack on his promises. The US Justice Department published a memo on July 7 claiming that no 'incriminating client list' had been discovered. 'There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,' the memo reads. An AI video created from a real photo The video, however, is fake. We ran it through a reverse image search (learn how by using our handy guide). It seems as if it was based on a real photo published by the British tabloid The Sun. This image shows Trump next to Ghislaine Maxwell. There's also a third person in the image, but you can only see part of their hair in the video. The rest of the video, where you can see the young girls, was entirely created by AI. There are a few clues that helped us determine this. First of all, the wall is grey in the original photo but blue in the video. The door to the right in the original photo is gone in the video. And there are no children in the original photo. We ran the image through InVID-We verify, a tool that helps identify deepfakes. It concluded that the image of the young girls in the video is 94% likely to be AI-generated. The video is emblematic of a new generation of deep fakes that have appeared in recent months. To make them more convincing, fake videos have been generated from real photos using AI, which makes them harder to detect as their details are closer to reality. To verify them, you have to find the original photo that it was based on and then look for inconsistencies between the photo and the video. A fake video published by 'BlueAnon' social media users The fake video of Trump seems to have largely been spread by left-leaning social media users. One pro-democratic social media user, for example, accused MAGA activists (Make America Great Again, Trump's slogan) of supporting a 'paedophile rapist' just because 'they thought he would hurt black and brown people more than themselves". BlueAnon encompasses left-leaning conspiracy theories, many of which arose during the 2024 American presidential election. It is a play on the colour 'blue' used to represent Democratic wins on an electoral map and 'QAnon", conspiracy theories championed by Trump supporters. The spread of this video suggests the movement remains active.
France 24
4 hours ago
- France 24
UK calls for 50-day drive to arm Ukraine
Earlier this month, Trump gave Russian President Vladimir Putin 50 days to strike a peace deal with Kyiv in the three-year war or face sanctions. UK Defence Secretary John Healey told a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG) that Kyiv's backers stand at a moment of "maximum opportunity". "As members of this UDCG, we need to step up, in turn, a 50-day drive to arm Ukraine on the battlefield and to help push Putin to the negotiating table," Healey told the virtual meeting of 52 nations. Trump also pledged to supply Kyiv with new military aid, sponsored by NATO allies, as its cities suffer ever-increasing Russian aerial attacks since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Healey, chairing the meeting alongside German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, said the UK "backs this policy". "We will play our full part in its success," he added. Russia has escalated long-range aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities as well as frontline assaults and shelling over recent months, defying Trump's warning. Healey said Britain and Germany have "agreed to partner in providing critical air defence missiles to Ukraine". Pistorius said the two countries would provide 220,000 rounds of 35 millimetre ammunition for anti-aircraft guns used by Ukraine. According to the UK defence ministry, Britain has sent £150 million ($200 million) worth of air defence missiles and artillery rounds to Ukraine in the past two months. The UK has pledged to spend £700 million on air defence and artillery ammunition for Ukraine this year. The commitment is in addition to other funding to provide more of the drones that have become key weapons in the war with Russia. Some 50,000 drones have been delivered to Ukraine in the last six months, with another 20,000 coming from a coalition of nations led by Britain and Latvia. © 2025 AFP
France 24
7 hours ago
- France 24
Syria evacuates Bedouin from Druze-majority Sweida as ceasefire holds
An AFP correspondent outside the devastated provincial capital saw a convoy of buses and other vehicles enter Sweida and then exit again carrying civilians, including women and children. They were headed for reception centres in neighbouring Daraa province and to the capital Damascus, in coordination with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. State news agency SANA said 1,500 people from Bedouin tribes were to be evacuated. The ceasefire announced Saturday put an end to the sectarian violence that has left more than 1,100 dead, most of them Druze fighters and civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, whose toll also includes hundreds of government security personnel. Clashes began on July 13 between Druze and Bedouin tribes, who have had tense relations for decades, and were complicated by the intervention of Sunni Arab tribes who converged on Sweida in support of the Bedouin. Witnesses, Druze factions and a monitor have accused government forces of siding with the Bedouin and committing abuses including summary executions when they entered Sweida last week. "We reached a formula that allows us to defuse the crisis by evacuating the families of our compatriots from the Bedouin and the tribes who are currently in Sweida city," the province's internal security chief Ahmad Dalati told state television. The ceasefire, though announced on Saturday, only effectively began on Sunday after Bedouin and tribal fighters withdrew from parts of Sweida and Druze groups regained control. Unidentified bodies The announcement came hours after the United States said it had negotiated a ceasefire between Syria's Islamist government and Israel, which had bombed government forces in both Sweida and Damascus earlier in the week. Israel, which has its own Druze community, has said it was acting in defence of the group, as well as to enforce its demands for the total demilitarisation of Syria's south. The deal allowed the deployment of government security forces in Sweida province but not its main city. The AFP correspondent in the city said security forces had erected sand mounds to block some of Sweida's entrances. Sunni tribal fighters armed with machine guns were sitting on the roadside beyond the checkpoints, under the shade of trees. At the main hospital in Sweida city, dozens of bodies were still waiting to be identified, with a forensic medicine official at facility saying that "we still have 97 unidentified corpses". According to the United Nations, the violence has displaced more than 128,000 people, an issue that has also made collecting and identifying bodies more difficult. Health authorities have not released a comprehensive death toll. Aid convoy More than 450 bodies had been brought to the Sweida national hospital by Sunday evening, with more still being recovered from the streets and homes. "The dead bodies sent a terrible smell through all the floors of the hospital," said nurse Hisham Breik, who had not left the facility since the violence began. "The situation has been terrible. We couldn't walk around the hospital without wearing a mask," he said, his voice trembling, adding that the wounded included women, children and the elderly. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said hospitals and health centres in Sweida province were out of service, with "reports of unburied bodies raising serious public health concerns". Humanitarian access to Sweida "remains highly constrained", it said a statement late Sunday. On Sunday, a first humanitarian aid convoy entered the city which has seen power and water cuts and shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies. A Red Crescent official told AFP the supplies included body bags.
