Fact-Check Dispatch: Malawi VP plane crash, Zelenskyy's luxury casino resort, and giant octopus ‘spotted in Bali’
Issue 6 of the Spotlight Fact-Check Dispatch
Spotlight is a newsletter created by Eurovision News in collaboration with Members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). It aims to combat misinformation and promote fact-checking efforts in Europe. The newsletter serves as a platform to showcase the fact-checking work of European public service media broadcasters.
Photo purporting to show Malawi Vice President Chilima’s plane crash is old
Viral images circulating on social media appear to show the site of the plane crash where Malwai Vice President Saulos Klaus Chilima was killed along with nine others.
Upon a Google reverse image search we were taken to the website of Chinese-owned Xinhua News Agency, which first published the image on September 26, 2020 and credited the photo to Ukrainian photographer Sergey Starostenko.
The original photograph shows an Antonov An-26 military aircraft that crashed in Chuhuiv, located in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, during a training flight with 27 people on board.
Claim that President Zelenskyy bought a luxury casino resort is false
In early June 2024, accounts on X began spreading a claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy purchased the Vuni Palace Casino Resort and Hotel in Cyprus in May, amid his country’s intense battle against Russian military occupation.
The claim was first made in a now deleted story published by Turkish outlet OdaTV.
An online search led us to a news article from a local outlet in Cyprus in which a spokesperson for the hotel is quoted denying that the hotel was owned by Zelenskyy and in fact still operated by Oscar Ltd.
During our search we also found a statement from the Embassy of Ukraine in the Republic of Cyprus from June 4, in which the embassy also denied the claims.
Video of nude man dragging woman down hotel corridor is not Hunter Biden
A video showing a naked man running down a hotel corridor after a woman, before assaulting her and dragging her back into a room, purported to show Hunter Biden, the son of U.S. President Joe Biden.
The footage appears to be from a security camera in the corridor of a hotel. In it, a woman wearing a black slip can be seen running from a room, with a nude man pursuing her. He can then be seen dragging her back down the hall.
A user on Weibo posted the video on May 22, 2024, although it was censored over the man’s nudity, suggesting that even this is not the original. Other accounts posting in Chinese shared it on X around the same time, including here and here. There is no mention of Hunter Biden in these posts.
Image of giant octopus ‘spotted in Bali’ is AI-generated
A series of images started to pop up across social media platforms earlier in June purporting to show a giant octopus washed up on a beach on the island of Bali.
The pictures, which showed a huge octopus on a beach with people milling around looking at it, were shared across Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram.
The earliest version we could find online was this, an Instagram video from June 1 containing stills of the same octopus on the beach.
It was posted to a page called @best_of_ai, which collates AI-generated images and frequently features AI images of giant sea creatures, including similar posts previously showing giant octopi on beaches. The uploader describes themselves as a ‘Digital Creative’ who experiments with AI storytelling. The post was published with a long caption containing a fictional story about the creature.
Photo posted with claim about 50 tunnels between Rafah and Egypt is from northern Gaza
A post on X speculates that Egypt has been helping Hamas in its war with Israel due to the purported existence of tunnels that cross from the Gaza Strip into Egypt, allegedly facilitating weapons supply to the Palestinian militant group.
The original poster used this statement to allude to collusion between Egypt and Hamas. When Hamas rose to power in 2007, both Egypt and Israel closed their borders with the Palestinian enclave, with Egypt enforcing several different levels of border security since then. That begun the blockade of the Gaza Strip, which is still ongoing to this day.
Posts about people pushing train along track in India are missing context
Footage posted across multiple social media accounts and across platforms purported to show people pushing a train along its tracks to get it running, in Kiul Junction railway station.
One of the posts on X, by @Mafiya_Singh11, was viewed more than 800,000 times since being posted on June 8.
Research about this news story brought us to a number of news stories about what actually happened.
According to local reports, several carriages on the train caught fire as it approached the station on June 6. Passengers, railway officials and other passersby managed to separate the burning carriages and push the train and its occupants to safety at the station.
Another article referred to the incident as an “extraordinary display of community spirit” after the fire, which originated in the train’s ladies’ coach.
Post claiming 3 jurors in Trump’s trial were arrested is false
An article published in early June by the online platform Real Raw News and reshared by a pro-Trump social media account claimed that three of the 12 jurors in the former U.S. president’s trial were arrested.
A link shared by a social media user led to an article reporting on the alleged arrests. Research across the U.S. Department of Defense platforms did not return any results on the said operation.
Moreover, the identities of the jurors are only known to Trump and lawyers from both sides of the trial, according to a court decision and order.