Tag Archives: illegal

A claim being shared online that the US state of Texas has declared bringing an LGBTQ pride flag into a school classroom a “crime” originates from a satirical news article.

Posts sharing the claim on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook—sometimes include a link to a page with a full story and other versions have a screenshot including the headline: “It’s Official: Texas Declares Bringing a Pride Flag to the Classroom a Crime.”

Many of the accounts posting or commenting on it on social media appear to believe it is a genuine policy.

The website it originates from tags the article under ‘satire’. It reports that the bill is titled “The Classroom Sanctity Act”. We can find no evidence that a bill of this name or nature has been tabled or approved by…

Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere these days, doing good by helping doctors detect cancer and doing bad by helping fraudsters bilk unsuspecting victims. Now, Microsoft says the US government needs new laws to hold people who abuse AI accountable.

In a blog post Tuesday, Microsoft said US lawmakers need to pass a “comprehensive deepfake fraud statute” targeting criminals who use AI technologies to steal from or manipulate everyday Americans.

“AI-generated deepfakes are realistic, easy for nearly anyone to make, and increasingly being used for fraud, abuse, and manipulation — especially to target kids and seniors,” Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote. “The greatest risk is not that the world will do too much to solve these problems. It’s that the world will do too little.”

Hundreds of people have shared Facebook posts falsely claiming to show two Australian Navy ships ramming “a boat loaded with illegal immigrants that did not respond to requests to stop”. 

The posts, which have also been shared on X (formerly known as Twitter), add: “The illegal immigrants were all returned, the crew members arrested and the boat scrapped.”

They also say “that’s the way you do it!”—implying that similar tactics should be used in the UK.

But this picture doesn’t show ships from the Australian Navy or a boat carrying migrants. As we have written before, when the same false claim went viral in 2020, the picture was taken in 2012 and actually shows a flare-up in tensions between China and Japan over a small group of islands in the East…

An image shared on Facebook makes an inaccurate comparison between the financial support which pensioners and “illegal immigrants” receive.

It claims that “after paying National Insurance for 35 years, UK pensioners receive £6,800 a year” while “illegal immigrants will receive on average £26,000 a year in unearned benefits”.

These figures aren’t right. The amount UK pensioners receive in state pension varies depending on a number of factors, but pensioners entitled to the full amount receive significantly more than £6,800 per year.

People in the UK without a legal right to be here are not entitled to claim any benefits. Asylum seekers, including those who arrive in the UK on small boats, also can’t claim welfare benefits, but do receive some…

Covid: WHO accuses China, hid data on raccoon infection

The World Health Organization has criticized China for withholding research that may link the origin of Covid to wild animals. WHO also asked Beijing why the data was not made available three years ago, and why it is currently lost. The New York Times reports it. Before the Chinese data disappeared, an international team of virological experts had begun analyzing the research, which revealed the possibility that the virus could have been transmitted by specimens of raccoon dogs, a type of Asian fox widespread in the air. of the first contagion, and infected humans at the Wuhan fish market. But the gene sequence has been removed from the database. “These data – commented Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general –…