Social Media

Noelle Martin was just 18 when she discovered that pornographic pictures of her were being circulated online. She never recalled taking, let alone sharing, intimate images. However, that was her face in those images - the body, however, wasn’t hers. She became a victim of what would later be known as "deepfakes". Pornographic pictures had been manipulated to look like her by using images she had shared on her personal social media accounts. "This is a lifelong sentence," Martin told Euronews Next. "It can destroy people's lives, livelihoods, employability, interpersonal relationships, romantic relationships. And there is very, very little that can be done once someone is targeted".

They gather every day at 5pm outside the Russian consulate in Mariehamn. A small group of protesters in the capital of the Åland Islands, making their opposition to the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine known in no uncertain terms to the few diplomats inside. "The Åland community is extremely against the aggressive war in Ukraine," explains Mats Löfström, the sole member of parliament from this semi-autonomous and monolingual Swedish province of Finland: a main island where most of the 30,000 inhabitants live, and more than 6,500 skerries strung out like a handful of scattered stones in the Gulf of Bothnia between the two Nordic neighbours. "There's over 300 Ukrainian refugees in Åland, people have donated two fire trucks, buses, electricity generators and all kinds of things to support Ukraine," he tells Euronews.

With a growing unease over the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, European lawmakers are increasingly strategizing ways to way in these platforms. Early last week, European lawmakers issued a joint statement urging U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to convene a summit to find ways to control the development of advanced A.I. systems such as ChatGPT they say are developing faster than anticipated.

A new poll shows nearly 3 out of 4 Americans do not believe President Joe Biden should run for reelection, following multiple reports that he will announce his bid for a second term this upcoming week. According to the survey from NBC News, 70% of Americans, including 51% of Democrats, do not think Biden should run for reelection, with 26% supporting the president. Almost half of the respondents who voted no cited Biden's age as their "major" concern with Biden running again – 48% categorized their concern as "major" while 21% said it was a minor concern; 29% of respondents said the issue of his age did not pose a reason in their logic whatsoever. In February, Biden, 80, admitted that concerns over his age were "totally legitimate" amid growing concerns from both his critics and supporters.

CNN — President Joe Biden’s advisers are moving quickly to finalize staffing and operational details of his reelection campaign ahead of what’s widely expected to be a bruising 19-month effort to convince the public of his accomplishments and his ability to serve well into his eighties. Biden returned to the White House late Sunday from a weekend at Camp David designed to serve as an intensive runthrough of campaign and personnel planning, including matters still requiring his final approval, people familiar with the matter said.

Len Goodman dies aged 78: Strictly star passed away peacefully in a hospice surrounded by his family at the weekend after suffering with bone cancer

The 33-year-old son of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says he served with the Wagner mercenary group in Ukraine for nearly six months. Nikolai Peskov said "it was my duty... I couldn't sit to one side watching as friends and others went off there." Wagner is called a "private military company" in Russia and now has international notoriety for alleged war crimes and other abuses in Ukraine. It has recruited thousands of convicts from prisons after taking heavy losses. The BBC was unable to verify his claim about serving with Wagner, whose troops have been engaged in intense fighting for months in Bakhmut. It is rare for a member of the Russian elite to choose to join the group - many have gone abroad to avoid conscription into the regular army.

Australia will speed up efforts to buy longer range missiles to counter the growing threat from China, a major defence review says. It warns the country can no longer be protected by its geographic isolation in the "missile age". The government will spend some A$19bn ($12bn, £10bn) to deliver the report's immediate recommendations. The 110-page study is described as the biggest overhaul of Australian defence since World War Two. The Defence Strategic Review (DSR) comes amid increasing regional tension over China's stance towards Taiwan, which it has repeatedly vowed to take by force if necessary. The Chinese navy has also established a major presence in the South China Sea, claiming parts of it as its own territory, contrary to international law.

Credit Suisse has revealed the scale of the bank run that triggered its state-backed rescue in March. The Swiss banking giant said 61.2bn Swiss francs (£55.2bn; $68.6bn) left the bank in the first three months of 2023. It came as the bank reported what are expected to be its last ever financial results. Its forced sale to rival Swiss bank UBS is expected to be completed soon. Credit Suisse's flagship wealth management division saw the amount of assets it managed drop to 502.5bn francs at the end of March, almost 29% lower than the same period last year, Credit Suisse said in a statement. "These outflows have moderated but have not yet reversed as of April 24, 2023," it added.

As dozens of scientists gathered in Switzerland last month to finalise a seminal United Nations report on the climate crisis, across the Atlantic, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was gearing up for a celebration of all things oil. On 18 March, he joined tens of thousands of people in the heart of Mexico City to mark the 85th Anniversary of nationalising the fossil fuel industry.

Mike Goldberg spent his early career working in financial services, putting in long hours for 12 years, he said, before he decided it was time to call it quits. “I was just chasing money,” he said. “But I realized that is not me. … It just wasn’t true to my core.” In 1996, Goldberg left his job and his home in Los Angeles to follow his passion for underwater diving, spending time in Hawaii, the British Virgin Islands, and the Cayman Islands. “When I got out of the water after my very first dive, I decided that this is what I really wanted to do … to take my life and somehow intertwine diving and making a living,” he said.