Latest news with #DWFactCheck
Express Tribune
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Did 'The Simpsons' predict Coldplay jumbotron scandal?
According to viral social media posts, The Simpsons predicted a kiss cam moment at a Coldplay concert in July 2025. After a video went viral allegedly showing the Astronomer CEO caught cheating with the company's chief people officer, users on social media quickly claimed this was another event the sitcom had predicted long before it happened. As per DW, the rumour spread across various social media platforms like TikTok, X, Instagram and Facebook, in various languages. Some posts garnered millions of views, and some even contained specific details, such as the season, episode and air date, where the supposed screenshot was allegedly taken from. DW Fact Check had a look into the alleged prediction. Claim: "Did The Simpsons really predict the Coldplay Concert incident in a 2003 episode? (The alleged affair or sighting of Astronomer CEO Andy Byron & Kristin Cabot)," says this post on X that includes a still of the kiss cam footage alongside an image that appears to show the similar scene from the The Simpsons cartoon. DW Fact Check: False Most versions of the rumour claim the prediction occurred in Season 26, Episode 10, The Man Who Came to Be Dinner. The episode aired on January 4, 2015, and features a plot in which the Simpson family is abducted by aliens while visiting an amusement park. The episode is available on streaming platforms and YouTube here. However, there is no such scene in this episode. Another episode, Season 17, Episode 22, Marge and Homer Turn a Couple Play, does include a kiss cam scene, but it takes place at a baseball match, and the characters kissing are Marge and Homer. The alleged prediction screenshot circulating online is, therefore, most likely generated by artificial intelligence or digitally manipulated. DW Fact Check uploaded the image to several AI-detection platforms, including AIorNot, which labeled it as "likely AI-generated." Hive Moderation even gave an estimate of 99.9 per cent "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content." But this isn't the first time The Simpsons has allegedly predicted future events. You may have seen some of these viral claims before: Trump as US president One of the most famous alleged predictions from The Simpsons was that Donald Trump would become the president of the United States. In Season 11, Episode 17, Lisa Simpson did actually reference Donald Trump's presidency in an episode that originally aired on March 19, 2000. In the episode, set in the future, Lisa is the current US president and implies that real estate mogul Trump had been her predecessor and caused a budget crisis. In 2015, the media cited the episode as a foreshadowing of Trump's future presidential run. However, the image often used to illustrate this "presidential prediction" is actually from a short episode called Trumptastic Voyage, from Season 25, which aired in July 2015, after Trump had already announced his candidacy. The image shows Trump and Homer on an escalator in front of a crowd. The cartoon scene is based on a real-life event from June of the same year. 2024 Baltimore bridge Another viral post claimed that The Simpsons predicted the March 2024 collapse of the Baltimore bridge, showing Homer and Lisa watching the event unfold. At first glance, the image looks real, but the devil is in the details. There are small hints that this image is actually AI-generated. If you take a closer look at the image, you'll see that Lisa's hair has 10 spikes, whereas the real character of the cartoon series only has eight. Homer's hair is also incorrect - the zigzags are noticeably narrower than in the show. COVID-19 pandemic Many people have also claimed online that the show predicted the COVID-19 pandemic. They refer to Season 4, Episode 21, titled Marge in Chains. In the episode many Springfield residents order juicers from Osaka, Japan. One of the factory workers is sick and coughs into the boxes, spreading what becomes known as the "Osaka Flu." The only similarity between the "Osaka Flu" and COVID-19 is that both originated in East Asia. The fictional flu did not lead to a global lockdown, a pandemic or millions of deaths. By contrast, COVID-19 was far more serious, resulting in over 7 million deaths worldwide, as recorded by the World Health Organisation.
DW
18-07-2025
- DW
Fact check: Misinformation fuels anti-migrant riots in Spain – DW – 07/18/2025
The assault of an elderly man in the town of Torre Pacheco sparked outrage and racist riots for several nights. False claims and misleading videos spread online soon after — and exacerbated the tensions. Several days of unrest in the town of Torre Pacheco, near Murcia, have highlighted rising tensions over migration in Spain. Sixty-eight-year-old pensioner Domingo Tomas Martinez had said he was beaten up by migrants on July 9. The motive of the attack was not immediately clear. But it was followed by several nights of riots and violent protests . Far-right groups posted xenophobic messages on social media, calling for people to "hunt down"migrants. This further escalated tensions. Torre Pacheco is a coastal Spanish town of nearly 40,000 people, and a third of its populationconsists of migrants, according to local government data. Police claim that by now peace has been largely restored in the city after the attack. But this is another example of how misinformation can ignite emotions. A video showing an elderly man being assaulted by unidentified persons heightened tensions. The video was widely shared on different social media platforms, it appeared for instance on Facebookand X. Claim: This X postwith the video, from July 10, states: "A video has been leaked of a brutal attack on an elderly man by North Africans in Torre-Pacheco, Murcia." The post comes from a user with a gold checkmark on their X account, indicating that the account belongs to an official organization through verified organizations. Other accounts also shared the video claiming it showed the attack on Martinez. DW Fact Check: False The video is not from Torre Pacheco. It is related to an incident that took place nearly two months ago and was filmed in the city of Almeria, more than 200 kilometers away. The person seen in the video is Jose Moya. After the video went viral in July, Moya posted his statementon Instagram clarifying that the person seen in the viral video is, in fact, him. Local media outlets interviewedhim after the viral video sparked social media outrage against migrants. Moya also showed the T-shirt and trousers on Instagram that he wore on the day of the attack. Calling for justice, he said, "The one in the video is me. I'm having a hard time making this video because I'm so nervous. But they are getting confused. And what I want to say is that I ask for justice for everything they have done to me and for the old man. The old man is a man from Murcia, and I am from Almeria. I was the one who was beaten." He explained that two people attacked him while more were present. He said they asked him for tobacco, and when he replied that he didn't have any, "They got into a fight with me (…). They cut my head open, broke three ribs, and left me there unconscious." He claimed the attackers were Spanish, and not migrants. DW Fact Check could confirm the scene in the video was filmed in Almeria, as claimed by Jose Moya in his Instagram post. He also showed a picture of the location taken after the incident, which is included in his video statement. We geo-located it near the Centro Periferico de Especialidades (Bola Azul) hospital. The footage matches details such as a row of trees, graffiti, and similar ground. Domingo Tomas Martinez, the man beaten up in Torre Pacheco, has also confirmed that he is not in the video that went viral. He spoke to severalmedia outletsfollowing the incident, where he appeared with red eyes and other marks of assault. Similar misleading posts emerged following the case in Murcia, many targeting migrants and Muslims. Here are two examples: Claim: This poston X claims that Torre Pacheco's local police were attacked by migrants and that the Civil Guard did not intervene: "The Torre Pacheco Local Police, overwhelmed by the mob of broccoli-haired people." DW Fact Check: False This incident took place in Torrevieja, about 40 kilometers from Torre Pacheco. Police officers were attacked by several individuals of migrant background there, reported multiple local media outlets. DW verified and identified the locationof the video. Claim: Another postclaimed a "ham protest" was organized to respond to the Torre Pacheco incident. The caption reads, "Torre Pacheco wakes up early. The residents are organizing for the final counter attack." DW fact check: False This video is unrelated. It was first postedin November 2024 on X by a user saying it was an attempt to set a world record for the largest plate of ham. The video was filmed in Huelva and has been viewed more than 2.4 million times since then. Misinformation isn't just a harmless mistake: It can spark violence, fuel hatred, and put lives at risk, as seen in Torre Pacheco: False claims on social media led to further escalations and deep divisions in the community. Before sharing a post, pause and verify the facts. A single misleading video can ignite real world chaos. Check sources, consult fact-checks, and think critically. Stopping the spread of misinformation starts with each one of us. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
DW
08-07-2025
- Politics
- DW
Fact check: Texas floods – cloud seeding theories dismissed – DW – 07/08/2025
Conspiracy theorists have blamed the devastating flash floods in Texas on cloud seeding, a technique used to chemically induce rainfall. Scientists have dismissed the theories as baseless. A DW Fact Check. Over 100 people have now been confirmed dead following flash floods in central Texas over the weekend, including 27 young campers and staff at a local girls' summer camp. Unfortunately, despite meteorological professionals explaining in news outlets all over the world how and why such devastating flooding occurs, parts of social media have become breeding grounds for disinformation. One popular conspiracy theory which has been given credence by current and former US political figures—including Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and former National Security Advisor General Mike Flynn—concerns "cloud seeding" — the practice of chemically inducing rainfall from clouds in areas affected by drought. DW Fact Check takes a look. Claim: Cloud seeding over parts of Texas two days before the floods caused or contributed to the disaster DW Fact Check: False As of Tuesday, over 2.6 million people had viewed a post on X by a well-known conspiracy theorist account which suggested a link between the deadly floods and cloud seeding operations conducted two days earlier by Rainmaker, a weather modification start-up funded partly by US software billionaire Peter Thiel. In another post, viewed over 2.8 million times, the same account claimed that the state of Texas is "running seven massive cloud seeding programs" in an attempt to "enhance rainfall across millions of acres" and questioning: "Did they push the clouds too far and trigger this flood?" Accompanying the post was a video originally published on TikTok on May 2 in which the user questioned whether "blue rain" at a camping site in Texas was linked to "chemtrails" or, in the video description, "cloud seading" (sic). The video had been viewed over 3.1 million times by Tuesday. The claims gained traction among certain right-wing US politicians including Christian nationalist and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene who said in a post on X, viewed over 8.3 million times, that she would be introducing a bill to Congress to "end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering." General Mike Flynn, former National Security Advisor to US President Donald Trump during his first term, further peddled the theory to his 2.1 million followers on X here and here. Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique used to induce rainfall. It involves dispersing insoluble salts such as silver iodide among existing clouds, either via aircraft, drone or shot up from the ground. Water vapor particles in the clouds are thereby "tricked" into forming larger droplets around the silver iodide particles, eventually becoming large and heavy enough to fall as rain. "Cloud seeding itself cannot create rain out of nothing," adds Edward Gryspeerdt, a Research Fellow at the Department of Physics at Imperial College London (ICL), pointing out to DW: "Cloud seeding aims to identify clouds that are not currently raining, but are very close to doing so." The first attempts at cloud seeding were made by US scientists at the General Electric Research Laboratory in the 1940s. Today, the method is used in various countries across the world to relieve drought, including in China and the Middle East. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Rainmaker, the company at the center of the Texas flooding claims, is contracted across the western United States by various municipalities and state governments to produce more water in regions impacted by drought, including in California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas, its CEO Augustus Doricko confirmed on an X Space hosted by a conservative influencer on Monday, July 7. The most recent operation in the vicinity of Kerr County, where the floods took place, was on July 2 – two days before the floods, hence the speculation that the cloud seeding activity could have exacerbated the heavy rainfall. "The flooding, unequivocally, had nothing to do with Rainmaker's activities or any weather modification activities," insisted Doricko, 20 minutes into Monday's X Space – a claim backed up scientific consensus. "Cloud seeding might be able to modify a cloud that already exists, but a large thunderstorm requires a huge amount of water and energy," explains ICL's Gryspeerdt. "Cloud seeding cannot provide either of these — it only creates small modifications to existing clouds." Travis Herzog, award-winning chief meteorologist at broadcaster AB13 in Houston, Texas, concurs, stating in a Facebook post on July 6: "Cloud seeding cannot create a storm of this magnitude or size. In fact, cloud seeding cannot even create a single cloud. All it can do is take an existing cloud and enhance the rainfall by up to 20% — and even that is on the high end. It is physically impossible for [cloud seeding] to have created this weather system." "Cloud seeding played ZERO role in [the] deadly Texas floods – rudimentary, basic physics explains that," agreed Matthew Cappucci, an atmospheric scientist and senior meteorologist at MyRadar, a leading Florida-based weather app. "In dry environments, adding cloud condensation nuclei can help clouds drop subtly more rain," Cappucci added in one of several posts on the subject on X. "You don't spontaneously make 4 trillion gallons of water appear in Texas." What's more, CEO Doricko claimed, given the almost two-day gap between Rainmaker's last operation over Kerr County, any rain-inducing silver iodide particles dispersed on July 2 would have long since dispersed into entirely inconsequential densities — a statement which is also backed up by scientific consensus. "The horizontal winds at cloud level would have moved the air volume that was cloud seeded at least 1,000 kilometers away from the location of the cloud seeding between 2 and 4 July," explained Dr. Sandra Yuter, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciencesat North Carolina State University, speaking to DW. Dr. Yuter's calculation was based on average horizontal wind dispersal speeds of approximately 10 m/s (36 km/h, 22.3 mph), after consulting nearby weather balloon data from July 3. Given that the state of Texas is about 1,320 kilometers (820 miles) wide at its broadest point, Dr. Yuter concludes: "Any cloud seeding on July 2 in the vicinity of Kerr County would not have changed the rainfall from the storms that hit the region on July 4." ICL's Edward Gryspeerdt concludes that "the floods in Texas were driven by record amounts of atmospheric moisture over a region that is known for flash floods" and warns that, as the atmosphere warms due to climate change, such extreme rainfall events are likely to become worse: "Climate models predict that while Texas may become slightly drier on average due to climate change, the intensity of rainfall will likely increase, suggesting that these types of thunderstorms will become more common in the future."
DW
29-06-2025
- Science
- DW
Fact check: Climate deniers misinterpret Antarctic ice study – DW – 06/26/2025
Satellite data shows that Antarctic ice sheets have grown in size, prompting claims that climate change is in reverse or even a hoax. But it's not that simple. A recent study has found that the Antarctic ice sheet mass has slightly increased in size in recent years, prompting a wave of claims on social media (such as here and here) that global warming may be reversing. Published in March 2025 by researchers at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, the study reported that the Antarctic ice sheet gained approximately 108 billion tons of ice annually between 2021 and 2023. This data focused on four glacier basins in the Wilkes Land-Queen Mary Land region of the eastern Antarctic ice sheet, has been misinterpreted by some climate skeptics as evidence that climate change is a "hoax." DW Fact Check looked at the numbers. Claim: Posts on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) have gone viral, with one stating, "Moral of the story: Never believe a climate alarmist," garnering over 270,000 views. Another viewed more than 55,000 times, claimed,"Scientists have had to pause the Climate Change Hoax Scam." DW Fact Check: Misleading One post even featured a GIF that the user believed showed new land emerging off the coast of Dubai due to falling sea levels — apparently unaware of the artificial Palm Islands constructed there between 2001 and 2007. The findings in the Chinese study are based on publicly available data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites, which have been measuring the Earth's gravitational field since 2002 and have documented changes in the planet's ice and water masses. The data may be correct, but its interpretation by conspiratorial social media users is not — a situation not helped by the researchers' decision to insert an increasing average trend curve next to the preceding decreasing curve depicting ice mass. "This is perfect fodder for people who are intentionally looking to spread disinformation," said Johannes Feldmann, a physicist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research near Berlin. Feldmann emphasized that climate science relies on long-term data — typically over 20 to 30 years — to identify meaningful trends. "Two, three or even five years are far too little to identify a long-term trend," he explained. Cherry-picking short-term data is a common tactic among climate change deniers. "There are always phases where the increase [in temperature] levels off a bit, which people suddenly take to mean: global warming has stopped, the trend is reversing," Feldmann added. "But it's never turned out to be true." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The Antarctic ice sheet, like many natural systems, is subject to fluctuations. A 2023 study from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom highlighted how meteorological events, such as unusually heavy or light snowfall, can temporarily affect ice mass and sea levels. Therefore, fluctuations such as those observed between 2021 and 2023 are to be expected. "We're dealing with a natural system that is subject to fluctuations — and this is nothing unusual," said Angelika Humbert, a glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, northern Germany. "We sometimes have years with a lot of snow and sometimes years with no snow at all, and it's the same for ice sheets." The Tongji University researchers themselves acknowledged this in a separate 2023 study, linking increased ice mass in eastern Antarctica to unusually high snowfall. "Given the warmer atmosphere, we know that these snowfall events could increase in the coming years," said Feldmann. "On the one hand, this means more snow could fall more often [on the ice sheets] but also that more could melt — because it's getting warmer. "This is all well-researched and will continue to be researched," he added. "There was a brief increase [in Antarctic ice mass], but it didn't come anywhere close to replacing the losses of recent decades. The long-term development we are observing is a large-scale loss of the Antarctic ice sheet."
DW
25-06-2025
- Politics
- DW
Did NATO expansion drive Russia to war? – DW – 06/25/2025
NATO has allegedly deceived and disrespected Russia by expanding into Eastern Europe, threatening Moscow's interests. That, at least, is how the Kremlin has justified its war in Ukraine. But is there any truth to it? NATO leaders have gathered in The Hague in the Netherlands on June 24 and 25 to discuss the topic of increased defense spending, and support for Ukraine will be high on the the agenda. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is now well into its fourth year. As the fighting drags on, the United States has increasingly demanded that its NATO allies shoulder a greater share of the costs of funding the alliance, whose members have been providing significant military and financial support to Kyiv. In the past four years, NATO has been a target of false narratives time and again. DW Fact Check looked at some of the most common claims. However, for the Russian President Vladimir Putin, NATO itself represents a threat to Russian national security — especially since its post-Cold War expansion into Eastern Europe, which includes countries that had formerly been part of the Soviet Union or at least in the Soviet sphere of influence. The prospect of Ukraine, a country with even stronger historical and cultural ties to Russia, drawing closer to or even joining NATO — or indeed the European Union — has been cited by Putin as justification for Russian interference in Ukraine since 2014 and the so-called "special military operation" launched in February 2022. As early as March 2000, speaking to the BBC in one of his first interviews as Russian president, Putin insisted that he was not opposed to NATO but stressed concerns about the alliance's eastward expansion, which by that point had already seen Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic join as members. Despite NATO's insistence that the alliance was purely defensive, Putin was not convinced. He considers the expansion a breach of trust in the wake of the so-called "Two Plus Four Agreement," the September 1990 settlement regulating the reunification of West and East Germany (the "two") and signed by the four allied powers which had occupied Germany at the end of World War II: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. According to Putin, the Western powers had promised that NATO would not expand eastwards into territory formerly controlled by the Soviet Union. NATO has always denied this claim. The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, or the Two Plus Four Agreement, made it clear that no foreign (meaning non-German) troops or nuclear weapons were to be permanently stationed on the territory of the former East Germany. But the German Interior Ministry states that the deal made "no binding assertions regarding the eastward expansion of NATO or the admission of other members." But what informal promises and statements were made, what exactly they entailed and how they are to be interpreted has been the subject of heated debate among both politicians and historians ever since. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin quoted former NATO Secretary-General Manfred Wörner who said in a speech in Brussels in May 1990: "The fact alone that we are prepared not to station NATO forces beyond the borders of the Federal Republic [of Germany] gives the Soviet Union firm security guarantees." As a 2016 German government position paper on the topic points out, however: "Neither in this speech nor at any other point did [Wörner] declare that there would be no eastward expansion of NATO." For Putin and his allies, two other well-documented comments made by senior German and US politicians in February 1990 are of particular importance: former US Secretary of State James Baker's proposal to Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of "assurances that NATO's jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position," and former West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher's commitment to a "non-expansion of NATO." According to Tim Geiger of the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, however, these words should not be taken out of context. Writing on behalf of the German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr, Geiger argues that Baker's and Genscher's suggestions merely serve to demonstrate the lengths to which the West German foreign ministry was willing to go at the time to accommodate Soviet concerns regarding German reunification, but had never constituted German or American foreign policy. Indeed, he points out that, within two months, both US President George H. W. Bush and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had dismissed the ideas as unworkable since they contravened a country's right of freedom to select alliances. This argument is also made by Jim Townsend, senior fellow at the CNAS Transatlantic Security Program, who worked both for and with NATO in various roles throughout the 1990s. "It was all about Germany and German unification," he told DW. Gorbachev himself confirmed as much in an October 2014 interview in which he stated: "The topic of 'NATO expansion' was not discussed at all … Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn't bring it up, either." But that's not enough for Joshua Shifrinson, associate professor of international politics at the University of Maryland, who told DW that Gorbachev's apparent rejection of Putin's theory has also been taken out of context. Indeed, the former Soviet president also said in the same 2014 interview that the first eastward expansion of NATO in the 1990s was "a big mistake from the very beginning," and "definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990." Among the sources analyzed by Shifrinson are the previously classified minutes of a meeting of the chief US, British, French and German ambassadors to NATO in March 1991, also reported by , in which the German representative Jürgen Chrobog said: "We had made it clear during the Two Plus Four negotiations that we would not extend NATO beyond the [River] Elbe. We could not therefore offer membership of NATO to Poland and the others." According to the minutes of the meeting, photos of which DW has also seen, none of Chrobog's colleagues objected. Indeed, France's Raymond Seitz even added: "We had made it clear to the Soviet Union — in Two Plus Four and in other exchanges — that we would not take advantage of the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe." For Shifrinson, this is proof that NATO had not just committed to keeping foreign troops out of eastern Germany, but that "people were thinking about the future of Eastern Europe in general." Benjamin Friedman, who also analyzes relations between Russia and NATO for the US think tank Defense Priorities, added: "The United States didn't make some solemn promise that we would never expand NATO, but we certainly gave the Russians that impression and I think that upset them." Regardless of the ongoing debate, said Shifrinson, "it's incontrovertibly true that Russia invaded Ukraine. You can acknowledge that assurances were given and later abrogated and still not justify Russian behavior." "The expansion or prospect of expansion [of NATO] to Ukraine was a huge cause, not the only one, but a huge cause of the war," said Friedman. "There's a difference between making a statement about causality and a statement about guilt or moral responsibility." Townsend, who after stints at the Pentagon and NATO, moved to the Atlantic Council think tank, also sees Russia as the clear aggressor. "We didn't do anything to upset the Russians, we were very careful about that, and they gave us the green light during those days," he said. "It wasn't until Putin's speech that he gave at the Munich Security Conference that they suddenly had a problem." If NATO has made any mistake, in Townsend's mind, it's a very different one. "If there was any kind of actions that NATO took, [that might have destabilized the European security architecture], it was by not getting strong enough."
