Air raid sirens in Jerusalem as Israeli army says it intercepted missile launched from Yemen
Air raid sirens in Jerusalem as Israeli army says it intercepted missile launched from Yemen
JERUSALEM - The Israeli army said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen on May 25 , shortly after air raid sirens sounded in Jerusalem, according to AFP journalists.
'Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, a missile that was launched from Yemen was intercepted,' the army said in a statement.
Israel's rescue service, the Magen David Alom (MDA), said there were no reports of injuries related to the launch.
The Israeli military reported shooting down two missiles launched from Yemen on May 22 , with the MDA reporting at least one person was injured while seeking shelter from the first missile.
Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have repeatedly fired missiles and drones at Israel since the Gaza war broke out in October 2023 following Hamas's attack on Israel.
The rebels, who say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians, paused their attacks during a two-month Gaza ceasefire that ended in March but resumed them after Israel restarted its campaign in the coastal territory.
The Houthis recently warned they would impose a 'naval blockade' on the Israeli port of Haifa after the country's military intensified its offensive in Gaza. AFP
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Straits Times
13 minutes ago
- Straits Times
AI fakes duel over Sara Duterte impeachment in Philippines
Philippine senators are seated after taking their oath as jurors in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte on June 10. PHOTO: AFP MANILA - Days after the Philippine Senate declined to launch the impeachment trial of the country's vice-president, two interviews with Filipinos arguing for and against the move went viral. Neither were real. The schoolboys and elderly woman making their cases were AI creations, examples of increasingly sophisticated fakes possible with even basic online tools. 'Why single out the VP?', a digitally created boy in a white school uniform asks, arguing that the case was politically motivated. The House of Representatives impeached Ms Sara Duterte in early February on charges of graft, corruption and an alleged assassination plot against former ally and running mate President Ferdinand Marcos. A guilty verdict in the Senate would result in her removal from office and a lifetime ban from Philippine politics. But after convening as an impeachment court on June 10, the senior body immediately sent the case back to the House, questioning its constitutionality. Duterte ally Senator Ronald dela Rosa shared the video of the schoolboys – since viewed millions of times – praising the youths for having a 'better understanding of what's happening' than their adult counterparts. The vice-president's younger brother Sebastian, mayor of family stronghold Davao, said the clip proved 'liberals' did not have the support of the younger generation. When the schoolboys were exposed as digital creations, the vice-president and her supporters were unfazed. 'There's no problem with sharing an AI video in support of me. As long as it's not being turned into a business,' Ms Duterte told reporters. 'Even if it's AI... I agree with the point,' said Mr Dela Rosa, the one-time enforcer of ex-president Rodrigo Duterte's drug war. Five minutes' work The video making the case for impeachment – also with millions of views – depicts an elderly woman peddling fish and calling out the Senate for failing to hold a trial. 'You 18 senators, when it's the poor who steal, you want them locked up immediately, no questions asked. But if it's the vice-president who stole millions, you protect her fiercely,' she says in Tagalog. Both clips bore a barely discernible watermark for the Google video-generation platform Veo. AFP fact-checkers also identified visual inconsistencies, such as overly smooth hair and teeth and storefronts with garbled signage. The man who created the fish peddler video, Mr Bernard Senocip, 34, told AFP it took about five minutes to produce the eight-second clip. Contacted via his Facebook page, Mr Senocip defended his work in a video call, saying AI characters allowed people to express their opinions while avoiding the 'harsh criticism' frequent on social media. 'As long as you know your limitations and you're not misleading your viewers, I think it's fine,' he said, noting that – unlike the Facebook version – he had placed a 'created by AI' tag on the video's TikTok upload. While AFP has previously reported on websites using hot-button Philippine issues to generate cash, Mr Senocip said his work was simply a way of expressing his political opinions. The schoolboy video's creator, the anonymous administrator of popular Facebook page Ay Grabe, declined to be interviewed but said his AI creations' opinions had been taken from real-life students. AFP, along with other media outlets, is paid by some platforms, including Meta, Google and TikTok, for work tackling disinformation. 'Grey area' Using AI to push viewpoints via seemingly ordinary people can make beliefs seem 'more popular than they actually are', said Mr Jose Mari Lanuza of Sigla Research Centre, a non-profit organisation that studies disinformation. 'In the case of the impeachment, this content fosters distrust not only towards particular lawmakers but towards the impeachment process.' While some AI firms have developed measures to protect public figures, Mr Jose Miguelito Enriquez, an associate research fellow at Nanyang Technological University, said the recent Philippine videos were a different animal. 'Some AI companies like OpenAI previously committed to prevent users from generating deepfakes of 'real people', including political candidates,' he said. 'But... these man-on-the-street interviews represent a grey area because technically they are not using the likeness of an actual living person.' Crafting realistic 'humans' was also getting easier, said Mr Dominic Ligot, founder of Data and AI Ethics PH. 'Veo is only the latest in a string of rapidly evolving tools for AI media generation,' he said, adding the newest version produced 'smoother, more realistic motion and depth compared to earlier AI video models'. Google did not reply when AFP asked if it had developed safeguards to prevent Veo from being used to push misinformation. For Mr Ligot, guardrails around the swiftly evolving technology are a must, warning AI was increasingly being used to 'influence how real people feel, pressure decision-makers and distort democratic discourse'. AFP Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
CNA
33 minutes ago
- CNA
Fragile ceasefire holding, Trump envoy says peace talks with Iran 'promising'
WASHINGTON: The ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump between Iran and Israel appeared to be holding on Wednesday (Jun 25), a day after both countries signalled that their air war had ended, at least for now. Each side claimed victory on Tuesday after 12 days of war, which the US joined with airstrikes in support of Israel to take out Iran's uranium-enrichment facilities. Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said late on Tuesday that talks between the United States and Iran were "promising" and that Washington was hopeful for a long-term peace deal. "We are already talking to each other, not just directly but also through interlocutors. I think that the conversations are promising. We are hopeful that we can have a long-term peace agreement that resurrects Iran," Witkoff said in an interview on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" show. "Now it's for us to sit down with the Iranians and get to a comprehensive peace agreement, and I am very confident that we are going to achieve that," he added. Trump said over the weekend that US stealth bombers had "obliterated" Iran's programme to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says its enrichment activities are for civilian purposes only. But Trump's claim appeared to be contradicted by an initial report by one of his administration's intelligence agencies, according to three people familiar with the matter. One of the sources said Iran's enriched uranium stocks had not been eliminated, and the country's nuclear programme, much of which is buried deep underground, may have been set back only a month or two. The White House said the intelligence assessment was "flat out wrong". According to the report, which was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities, but did not collapse underground buildings, said one of the people familiar with its findings. Some centrifuges remained intact, the Washington Post said, citing an unnamed person familiar with the report. Trump's administration told the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday that its weekend strikes had "degraded" Iran's nuclear programme, short of Trump's assertion that the facilities had been "obliterated." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the attack had removed the nuclear threat against Israel and he was determined to thwart any attempt by Tehran to revive its weapons program. "We have removed two immediate existential threats to us: the threat of nuclear annihilation and the threat of annihilation by 20,000 ballistic missiles," he said. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country had successfully ended the war in what he called a "great victory," according to Iranian media. Pezeshkian also told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Tehran was ready to resolve differences with the US, according to official news agency IRNA. Israel launched the surprise air war on Jun 13, attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and killing top military commanders in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq. Iran, which denies trying to build nuclear weapons, retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites and cities. Iran has arrested 700 people accused of ties with Israel during the 12-day conflict, the state-affiliated Nournews reported on Wednesday and Iran executed three men on Wednesday, convicted of collaborating with Israel's Mossad spy agency and smuggling equipment used in an unnamed assassination, the Iranian judiciary's Mizan news agency reported. RESTRICTIONS LIFTED Israel's military lifted restrictions on activity across the country at 8pm local time (Wednesday, 1am, Singapore time) on Tuesday, and officials said Ben Gurion Airport, the country's main airport near Tel Aviv, had reopened. Iran's airspace likewise will be reopened, state-affiliated Nournews reported. Oil prices edged higher on Wednesday, finding some respite after plummeting in the last two sessions, as investors assessed the stability of the ceasefire and the diminished prospect of an Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The truce appeared fragile: Both Israel and Iran took hours to acknowledge they had accepted the ceasefire and accused each other of violating it. Trump scolded both sides but aimed especially stinging criticism at Israel, telling the close US ally to "calm down now." He later said Israel called off further attacks at his command. Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, said he told his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, that his country would respect the ceasefire unless Iran violated it. Pezeshkian likewise said Iran would honour the ceasefire as long as Israel did, according to Iranian media. Israeli armed forces chief of staff Eyal Zamir said a "significant chapter" of the conflict had concluded but the campaign against Iran was not over. He said the military would refocus on its war against Iran-backed Hamas militants in Gaza. Iranian authorities said 610 people were killed in their country by Israeli strikes and 4,746 injured. Iran's retaliatory bombardment killed 28 people in Israel, the first time its air defences were penetrated by large numbers of Iranian missiles.
CNA
2 hours ago
- CNA
Oil prices rise as investors assess Iran-Israel ceasefire
Oil prices climbed on Wednesday as investors assessed the stability of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, but held near multi-week lows on the prospect that crude oil flows would not be disrupted. Brent crude futures rose 85 cents, or 1.3 per cent, to $67.99 a barrel at 0341 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude gained 87 cents, or 1.4 per cent, to $65.24. Brent settled on Tuesday at its lowest since June 10 and WTI since June 5, both before Israel launched a surprise attack on key Iranian military and nuclear facilities on June 13. Prices had rallied to five-month highs after the U.S. attacked Iran's nuclear facilities over the weekend. "Global energy prices are moderating following the Israel-Iran ceasefire. The base case for our oil strategists remains anchored by fundamentals, which indicate sufficient global oil supply," said JP Morgan analysts in a client note. U.S. airstrikes did not destroy Iran's nuclear capability and only set it back by a few months, according to a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment, as a shaky ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump took hold between Iran and Israel. Earlier on Tuesday, both Iran and Israel signalled that the air war between the two nations had ended, at least for now, after Trump publicly scolded them for violating a ceasefire. As the two countries lifted civilian restrictions after 12 days of war - which the U.S. joined with an attack on Iran's uranium-enrichment facilities - each sought to claim victory. "The Israel-Iran ceasefire is likely to prove fragile. But so long as both parties show themselves unwilling to attack export-related energy infrastructure and/or disrupt shipping flows through the Strait of Hormuz, we expect bearish fundamentals in the oil market to continue ... from here," said Capital Economics chief climate and commodities economist David Oxley. Direct U.S. involvement in the war had investors worried about the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, through which between 18 million and 19 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and fuel flow, nearly a fifth of global consumption. Investors awaited U.S. government data on domestic crude and fuel stockpiles due on Wednesday.
