DUBAI (TIP): A helicopter crashed off the coast of Dubai during a night training flight, with two pilots on board missing, the United Arab Emirates’ aviation authority said on September 8. The Bell 212 helicopter went down in the Gulf at around 8:30 pm (1630 GMT) on September 7 after taking off from Dubai’s Al Maktoum International Airport, the authority said, quoted by the official WAM news agency.
The pilots — an Egyptian and a South African — had been on a training flight for AeroGulf, the UAE’s leading commercial helicopter operator. “Search and rescue teams have recovered the wreckage and are still searching for the crew,” the aviation authority said, adding investigations were underway. AeroGulf was founded in 1976 to provide services to the oil and gas industry, before expanding its services to other sectors. In 2022, a paramotor flyer crashed in Dubai, killing the pilot. The same year, a single-engine passenger plane crashed into a parking lot in the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi, injuring one person. (AP)
Fake experts drive disinformation before Bangladesh polls
DHAKA (TIP): Hundreds of articles praising Bangladeshi government policies apparently by independent experts have appeared in national and international media but the authors have questionable credentials, fake photos, and may not even exist, an AFP investigation has found.
Commentators say it is evidence of a sustained campaign of disinformation by unknown actors ahead of elections due by the end of January but appears to be intended to benefit the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Such articles have been published by Chinese state news agency Xinhua, leading media across Asia, and quoted by the South Asia Brief of the Washington-based Foreign Policy magazine. Rights groups and foreign powers, including the United States, have long raised concerns over efforts by Hasina’s government to silence criticism and stamp out political dissent.
AFP found that names forming a network of so-called experts are producing regular op-ed pieces, some posing as academics from leading global universities, some using stolen headshot photos, and others making up quotes from real analysts.
“It’s a coordinated influence operation,” said A Al Mamun, a journalism professor at Bangladesh’s University of Rajshahi. “These articles primarily promote narratives that are favourable to the current Bangladesh government.”
A surge of articles appeared online around September 2022, when Bangladesh’s foreign ministry issued a call for “good columnists” to counter negative “propaganda”.
AFP sent multiple requests for comment to top officials at Bangladesh’s foreign ministry and information ministry but received no reply.
Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen told AFP he did “not have enough time” to comment. AFP analysed more than 700 articles published in at least 60 domestic and international news sites with bylines attributed to 35 names, all of which appeared for the first time online last year. The articles overwhelmingly endorse narratives pushed by Dhaka, with some posted on Bangladesh government websites.
Many are staunchly pro-Beijing and fiercely critical of Washington — which has issued Dhaka stiff warnings of the need for free and fair elections.
While it was not possible to prove if the 35 names investigated by AFP are real, no online presence apart from their articles could be found, none has a visible social media profile, and none has published research papers in academic journals.
At least 17 of the 35 claimed links to major Western and Asian universities but AFP’s digital verification reporters found no records for them.
Eight major universities confirmed that they had never heard of nine of the writers purportedly working for them, including the University of Delaware in the United States, Canada‘s University of Toronto, Switzerland’s University of Lucerne, and the National University of Singapore.(AFP)