Digging into Channel migrants deal and how we verified luxury yacht fire
Date: 09:42 BST
Title: Welcome to BBC Verify Live
Content: Rob CorpBBC Verify Live editor
Good morning.
We're working to unpack the UK government's pilot scheme agreed with France that will see Britain return migrants who arrive in small boats back across the English Channel.
Our fact-check team has been listening to the home secretary on BBC Radio 4 this morning talking about the plan and will report here about what she's said.
We're also working to verify footage posted online showing an apparent Russian drone strike that's damaged a hospital in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv following another night of air attacks across the country.
And we're monitoring social media for the latest verifiable information from Gaza where more than 60 people were reportedly killed yesterday by the Israeli military - eight of the victims were children queuing in front of a health clinic.
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Reuters
34 minutes ago
- Reuters
Moroccan community calls for calm after anti-migrant clashes in Spanish town
TORRE PACHECO, Spain, July 15 (Reuters) - Moroccan community leaders in the Spanish town of Torre Pacheco called for calm following four nights of clashes between North African migrants and the far-right, in some of the worst such unrest in the country in recent times. Police have detained at least 14 people so far over the clashes that flared up on Friday after an attack last week on a local man in his 60s. Far-right groups have called for anti-migrant protests on Tuesday and over 120 Civil Guard officers have been deployed to maintain security in the town, a government spokesperson for the region said. Authorities said three Moroccan citizens suspected of involvement in the assault have been apprehended, including a 19-year-old alleged to be the main perpetrator. He was detained on Monday evening in northern Spain on assault and battery charges. A spokesperson for the central government's office in the Murcia region said none of the suspects lived in Torre Pacheco. After xenophobic messages on social media to "hunt down" residents of North African origin, leaders of the local Moroccan community urged calm and advised younger members to remain in their homes after dozens took to the streets over the weekend and on Monday, clashing with far-right groups and police. "We want peace ... We don't want criminals, we don't want violence or people who come from outside to make trouble here," Abdelali, an informal spokesperson for the Moroccan community who has lived in the town for 25 years, told reporters. Police arrested three people overnight after a confrontation with dozens of young men in the San Antonio neighbourhood, home to a majority of the town's first- and second generation migrants who represent nearly a third of the town's population of 40,000, according to local government data. Reuters footage showed some of the protesters, mostly masked, lobbing fireworks at officers clad in riot gear, who responded by firing rubber bullets. Spain's top hate crimes prosecutor, Miguel Angel Aguilar, told SER radio on Tuesday that his office was investigating the events in Torre Pacheco, as well as social media messages inciting violence towards migrants. He also confirmed regional prosecutors were looking at statements by the leader of far-right party Vox in Murcia, Jose Angel Antelo, who is accused by Spain's ruling Socialist Party of linking immigration to criminality in speeches, media appearances and posts on X. Late on Monday, the messaging app Telegram shuttered a channel named "DeportThemNowSpain" for "inciting violence". Reuters reviewed dozens of messages in the channel that included expletive-laden calls to attack Moroccans residing in Torre Pacheco or set fire to their homes. The Spanish Interior Ministry said police in Mataro, near Barcelona, had arrested an unnamed leader of supremacist movement "Deport Them Now Europe" suspected of inciting hatred and seized two computers.
Daily Mail
38 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
How a clairvoyant sparked ridiculous rumour that Brigitte Macron was born a man which social media fanatics believe IS true... as the French president's wife is once again forced to take legal action
As jets coloured the skies over the Champs-Elysees with trails of red, white and blue, Brigitte Macron stood at her husband's side, right hand clasping left, and stared out across the Bastille Day parade. Eight years as the first lady of France have taught Ms Macron the expectations of the job--and how to manage her image in public. Scrutiny follows how she looks, what she says and how she interacts with her husband when in the presidential spotlight. In her first formal post-election interview in 2017, she gently dismissed a question asking how she felt, as a feminist, about the incessant focus on her clothes: 'If it's good for French fashion, why not?' But it is difficult to imagine that Ms Macron, despite her careful presentation, was entirely unaffected by the libel case simmering in the background of Monday's Bastille Day parade. Scrutiny of one's public image is one thing. It is entirely another to question who they are. In the courts, Ms Macron has parried baseless claims by blogger Natacha Rey and self-proclaimed spiritual medium Amandine Roy that she was born a man and transitioned before marrying her husband. The pair were ordered to pay thousands of euros in damages last year, after their claims went viral and gained traction among conspiracy theorists in the United States. But last week, the Paris appeals court overturned earlier convictions. Dressed all in white for the Bastille Day celebrations on Monday, Brigitte Macron, undeterred, stood tall at her husband's side as her lawyer revealed she would fight the claims in court once more. It was three days before Christmas Day, 2021. Most of France was winding down for the holidays. But Mr and Ms Macron were otherwise preoccupied. Her lawyer announced that she would be launching legal action over the spread of false claims that she is a transgender woman who was born a man. Jean Ennochi, the lawyer, told Reuters that several individuals were in focus as the claims gained new momentum following the publication of a video on social media on December 10. The four-hour interview saw a journalist and a self-described medium discuss so-called 'evidence' surrounding claims Ms Macron was born Jean-Michel Trogneux. They spoke about surgeries she had allegedly undergone, aired pictures of her family, and scrutinised personal information belonging to her brother, the real Jean-Michel Trogneux. Ms Rey spoke about the 'state lie' and 'scam' they had uncovered, that the first lady of France had transitioned to become Brigitte and then married the president. She had not. But it did not stop the video being watched nearly 400,000 times and shared across social media as Mr Macron was gearing up for the 2022 presidential election. Ms Macron's office declined to comment at the time. She broke her silence, instead, three weeks later, after Christmas, as the world started to return to normal. Speaking to French radio, she said: 'If I do not address it, if I do not do anything after four years of working against bullying, I will not be listened to.' Brigitte Macron with her daughter Tiphaine Auziere, who spoke out about her mother's history in an interview with Paris Match Speaking on the RTL radio station - incidentally on her priority of tackling bullying in schools - was the first real opportunity to address the falsehood. 'There are three different elements to this story,' the first lady outlined in her comments to the nation. 'It starts with the originators of the story. In this case, they were women who apparently have been pursuing me for a long time – I don't know, I don't go there [on social networks]. 'Then, there are those who share and exaggerate what is being claimed. 'And finally there are, of course, 'the hosts,' she said, referring to the social media platforms themselves.' In the first camp was Natacha Rey, a journalist who claimed she was investigating Macron. On her Facebook page, there were posts implying that Ms Macron was a man dating back to March 2021. Matters came to a head in September of that year when she co-authored an ' investigation ' with Xavier Poussard for the far-right newsletter Faits et Documents (facts and documents), which he edited. The New Statesman observed at the time: 'Its pages, which do not draw heavily on either facts or documents, include one section on 'lobbies', which criticises the supposed influence of various interest groups, such as Jews, Freemasons and homosexuals.' The story existed for a few months before Ms Rey took it to medium Delphine Jégousse, alias Amandine Roy, for a four-hour interview. In the video published that December, she claimed to have evidence of the first lady's transition. She referred to an old Trogneux family photograph, in which Brigitte is seen as a young girl sitting on her mother's knee. Ms Rey said the girl was probably Nathalie Farcy, who was orphaned when Brigitte's older sister Maryvonne was killed in a car crash. She identified a boy in a checked shirt as Brigitte, not her brother Jean-Michel, claiming the child later underwent a sex change operation in the 1980s. The theory falls short; the birth of Brigitte Macron was recorded on April 13, 1953, in the Courrier Picard daily newspaper of the Picardy region of France. A notice reads: 'Anne-Marie, Jean-Claude, Maryvonne, Monique and Jean-Michel Trogneux have great joy in announcing the arrival of their little sister, Brigitte.' But the video was seen hundreds of thousands of times before being deleted, and the claims repeated tens of thousands of times on Twitter. At the same time, Ms Rey created a website with a contact form to address the presidency directly, and called for the bulk sending of messages to 'question Brigitte Macron en masse' about 'her brother Jean-Michel'. Things moved quickly. Within a month of Ms Macron's radio appearance, the pair were hauled in front of the civil courts for invasion of privacy. A criminal complaint for defamation was also filed by Ms Macron and her brother. Candace Owens on Tuesday said that she would be willing to bet her career that French President Emmanuel Macron's wife was born a man. The two women were ultimately found to have defamed Ms Macron by the Paris Criminal Court in September 2024, handed a suspended fine of €500 and ordered to pay a total of €8,000 in damages to Brigitte Macron and €5,000 to her brother. It had been a long wait for the verdict from the trial in June 2023. Ms Macron was not present for the decision. But a verdict was not enough to stop the rumours spreading and taking new form. Originally shared in the United States on sites like notorious disinformation hub 4chan, the claim snowballed when figures 'with very large audiences gave it visibility', doctoral researcher Sophie Chauvet, specialising in audience metrics, told the French AFP news agency. Prominent conservative commentator Candace Owens attacked the first lady in a now-deleted YouTube video posted in March last year, propagating the false claim. She cited a 'thorough investigation' by Rey, published in Faits et Documents in 2021. Why now? Emmanuelle Anizon, a journalist at the French weekly L'Obs, told AFP that the difference was that Xavier Poussard had started translating the newsletter's articles at the end of 2023. Anizon, who spoke to Poussard and his associate Aurelien Poirson who advised on the translation, explained that it was no accident that the US far right had taken up the false claim ahead of the November US elections. 'It was their dream to export this rumour across the Atlantic,' she said. Again, the rumour exploded online. Poussard published a 338-page book called Devenir Brigitte ('Becoming Brigitte') to run alongside it. The falsehoods fail to go away. Last summer, Reuters reported on a photograph of a young male model at a 2009 photoshoot in Russia, posted on social media to more speculation that the boy was, again, Ms Macron. This had no bearing on the original theory. But it did not seem to matter. Reuters contacted the photographer and revealed the image, of a male model in Moscow, not Ms Macron, had been altered. In February of this year, a cropped photo of the Trogneux family circulated on social media, prompting fact-checkers at Full Fact to resurrect the story of how the story emerged, was shot down and led to a successful defamation verdict. 'False and misleading posts like this can spread quickly online, so it's important to consider whether what you are seeing comes from a verifiable and reliable source before sharing on social media,' they advised. Nearly a year has passed, but the fiction still lingers over both the presidency and Ms Macron's personal life. On Thursday, the Paris appeals court overturned earlier convictions against the two women for spreading the false claim about Brigitte Macron. Judges sitting at the Paris Appeal Court ruled that Amandine Roy, now 53, and Natacha Rey, 49 and a blogger, had every legal right to make the allegations. Both had claimed they were subjected to 'intimidation by the authorities' as 'ultra protected' members of the Paris establishment tried to cover up a 'state secret'. Lawyers for Ms Macron, 72, in turn indicated that she was 'devastated' by the development, and would be taking the case to France's Cassation Court. As her lawyer relayed her intentions to the press on Monday, Ms Macron stood before the nation for Bastille Day and watched as jets left trails of red, white and blue overhead. She stood at her husband's side, right hand clasping left, and it was impossible to know what she was thinking.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Europe gives Iran deadline to contain nuclear programme or see sanctions reinstated
The EU will start the process of reinstating UN sanctions on Iran from 29 August if Tehran has made no progress by then on containing its nuclear programme, the bloc has announced. Speaking at a meeting of his EU counterparts, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said: 'France and its partners are … justified in reapplying global embargos on arms, banks and nuclear equipment that were lifted 10 years ago. Without a firm, tangible and verifiable commitment from Iran, we will do so by the end of August at the latest.' Europeans have been largely elbowed aside from the Iranian nuclear issue by Donald Trump, who ordered the bombing of Iran's nuclear sites last month, and this intervention can be seen as an attempt to reassert Europe's influence. The end of August deadline starts a process that could lead to an armoury of sanctions being reimposed by 15 October, giving European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal – the UK, France and Germany – a continuing lever in negotiations with Iran. The European powers want to see the return of the UN nuclear inspectorate to Iran, in part to prevent Iran trying to reconfigure its nuclear programme after the damage inflicted by the US strikes in June. The way in which the 2015 nuclear deal was negotiated does not allow the other signatories, China or Russia, to veto the sanctions snapback, but the European states can defer the imposition of snapback beyond October to allow time for further consultation. The US, after leaving the nuclear deal in 2018, also cannot veto the UK or French move. The sanctions snapback would be triggered under chapter seven of the UN charter, making the reinstatement of six UN resolutions mandatory, including one that requires Iran to suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment and reprocessing, including at the research and development level. Another reimposed resolution would require all UN member states to prevent the transfer of any items, materials or technologies that could serve these activities or Iran's missile programme. Iranian sanctions experts claim the reinstated resolutions would not automatically halt all Iranian oil exports, cut off Iran's access to international financial systems, or cut off general trade communications. But all countries and international financial institutions would have to refrain from providing financial assistance, new commitments or preferential loans to the Iranian government, except for humanitarian and development purposes. Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said recently that the activation of snapback 'will mean the end of Europe's role in the Iranian nuclear issue and may be the darkest point in the history of Iran's relations with the three European countries, a point that may never be repaired.' He said: 'It would mark the end of Europe's role as a mediator between Iran and the US.' He told diplomats at the weekend 'One of the big mistakes of the Europeans is that they think that the 'snapback' tool in their hands gives them the power to act on the Iranian nuclear issue, while this is a completely wrong perception. If these countries move towards snapback, they will make the resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue even more complicated and difficult.'
