Burkina Faso junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore [Courtesy] If viral videos online are to be believed, R. Kelly and Pope Leo XIV agree on one thing; that Burkina Faso’s junta leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, is a remarkable head of state. The images, however, are artificial intelligence-generated propaganda, part of what experts describe as an extensive disinformation campaign designed to bolster the “personality cult” of the West African strongman. Beyoncé and Justin Bieber are among other celebrities whose faces and voices have been digitally manipulated using AI to sing the praises of Traoré. In one such video, attributed to disgraced R&B…
Author: AFP
Unreleased Beyonce music stolen in Atlanta ahead of ‘Cowboy Carter’ tour show Computer drives containing unreleased music by US superstar Beyonce and plans related to her concerts were stolen last week in Atlanta, police said Monday, with a suspect still at large. The items were stolen from a rental car used by Beyonce’s choreographer and a dancer on July 8, two days before the pop icon kicked off the Atlanta leg of her “Cowboy Carter” tour, a police incident report said. Choreographer Christopher Grant, 37, told police that he returned to the car to find its rear window smashed and…
French Catholic priest Abbe Pierre, poses in Eldorado Theater in Paris on December 13, 1988, as he presents his second play “Permis de Vivre”, about Emmaus Foundation, directed by Marc Dufour.(Photo by Gilles LEIMDORFER / AFP) A French archbishop’s decision to promote a priest who was sentenced to jail for raping a teenaged boy has drawn new condemnation of the Roman Catholic Church for its record on sex abuse. Victim support groups and traditionalists have expressed outrage over the case of Dominique Spina, who was found guilty of raping a 16-year-old boy in 2006 and sentenced to five years in…
A handout sketch received from the Supreme Court of Victoria shows Erin Patterson, an Australian woman accused of murdering three people with a toxic mushroom-laced beef Wellington [AFP] An Australian woman told police she “loved” members of her husband’s family she was later accused of killing with poison mushrooms, a court heard Tuesday. Erin Patterson, 50, is charged with murdering the parents and aunt of her estranged husband in 2023 by serving them a beef Wellington laced with lethal “death cap” mushrooms. She is also accused of attempting to murder her husband’s uncle, who survived the meal after a long…
US actor Denzel Washington argues with a photographer next to US singer and actor ASAP Rocky as they arrive for the screening of the film “Highest 2 Lowest” at the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 19, 2025. (Photo by Sameer AL-DOUMY / AFP) Hollywood star Denzel Washington had a tense exchange with a photographer before he received a surprise honorary award at the Cannes film festival on Monday. Washington, 70, was at the festival for the first time for the premiere of his latest film with New York director Spike Lee, “Highest…
US actor Denzel Washington argues with a photographer next to US singer and actor ASAP Rocky as they arrive for the screening of the film “Highest 2 Lowest” at the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 19, 2025. (Photo by Sameer AL-DOUMY / AFP) Hollywood star Denzel Washington had a tense exchange with a photographer before he received a surprise honorary award at the Cannes film festival on Monday. Washington, 70, was at the festival for the first time for the premiere of his latest film with New York director Spike Lee, “Highest…
Celebrity Kim Kardashian [@kimkardashian/Instagram] A-list celebrity Kim Kardashian is to testify in a Paris court on Tuesday, an eagerly awaited appearance nearly a decade after masked men robbed her at gunpoint of millions of dollars of jewellery during the French capital’s fashion week. Ten suspects have been on trial since late April over the armed robbery in 2016, which saw jewellery worth some $10 million stolen from the reality TV star and influencer. The trial has attracted huge media attention, with close to 500 reporters accredited, and the courthouse on Paris’s historic Ile de la Cité is expected to come…
A man walks past movie posters at at AMC Theater in Montebello, California on May 5, 2025. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) Hollywood reacted with skepticism on Monday to US President Donald Trump’s announcement of 100 percent tariffs on foreign films, with movie insiders calling it a policy made up on the fly by a president who fails to understand how the industry works. “It makes no sense,” entertainment lawyer Jonathan Handel said of Trump’s idea. Handel told AFP that many US productions, from James Bond flicks to the “Mission Impossible” franchise, are filmed abroad for obvious creative…
Rajab Butt. [courtesy,Instagram] A Pakistani YouTube star has been charged with blasphemy after launching a perfume named after the very law he has fallen foul of, police said Tuesday. Rajab Butt has one of the largest online followings in the Muslim-majority country and has been embroiled in controversy for years, including over his brief custody of a lion cub. In a recent video, since deleted from his social media accounts, Butt launched his “295” perfume which refers to blasphemy legislation in the penal code. He said it followed a case filed against him last year, over an earlier video deemed…
Souleymane Cisse looks on onstage at the Tribeca Talks Directors Series during the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. (Photo/Getty Images/AFP Malian director Souleymane Cisse, one of the fathers of African cinema, died Wednesday in a Bamako clinic aged 84, his daughter told AFP. Tributes poured in for Cisse, whose trailblazing work on the silver screen across more than half a century was marked by a commitment to African storytelling, deep humanism and profound political engagement. “Papa died today in Bamako. We are all in shock. He dedicated all his life to his country, to cinema and to…