Fake News Alert: Emirates did not fire pilot for refusing to fly to Israel

Emirate Airlines responded saying the claim was completely untrue. (File/AFP)
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Updated 13 January 2021
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Fake News Alert: Emirates did not fire pilot for refusing to fly to Israel

  • Posts started appearing on social media on Wednesday claiming the UAE’s official carrier Emirates Airlines had suspended a Tunisian pilot after he refused to fly to Israel
  • Emirate Airlines responded saying the claim was completely untrue

LONDON: Posts started appearing on social media on Wednesday claiming the UAE’s official carrier Emirates Airlines had suspended a Tunisian pilot after he refused to fly to Israel.

Emirate Airlines responded saying the claim was completely untrue.

“Emirates has never employed any pilot by this name and all reports circulating on social media around this are false,” the airline said in a tweet.

CJ Werleman, an Australian journalist based in the US, posted a tweet claiming the airline fired its pilot.

The Twitter-verified journalist who works for the Byline Times as per his account, praised the pilot and called him a “hero”.

Other media sites followed suit, with the Middle East Monitor publishing an article carrying the story without fact-checking or contacting Emirates to check the information.

The UAE and Israel signed a historic normalization deal in August 2020 that included travel to and from both countries.

 


Eurovision Sport, Camb.ai to provide live subtitling for Paralympic Winter Games

Updated 06 March 2026
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Eurovision Sport, Camb.ai to provide live subtitling for Paralympic Winter Games

  • Partnership aims to increase accessibility for all audiences
  • Milano Cortina Games run from Friday to March 15

LONDON: Eurovision Sport, the European Broadcasting Union’s free-to-air streaming platform, will provide live and on-demand subtitling for coverage of the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games in partnership with AI language company Camb.ai

The service will run across all competition days, allowing viewers to stream all six Paralympic Winter Games sports on Eurovision Sport with real-time subtitles. The Games open on Friday and run through March 15.

Camb.ai will supply contextual speech-to-text transcription for both live and catch-up coverage, which the organizers said would support accessibility without altering the editorial integrity of broadcasts.

Eurovision Sport Managing Director Alan Fagan said the aim was to make the Games available to “the widest possible audience,” by scaling up digital accessibility across every event on the platform.

The initiative forms part of the EBU’s most extensive digital coverage of a Paralympic Winter Games to date and complements member broadcasters’ linear output.

It also reflects a wider industry push to make live sport easier to follow for viewers watching without sound, people with hearing impairments and audiences consuming content on demand.

Camb.ai’s Chief Technology Officer Akshat Prakash said the company was proud to deepen its partnership with Eurovision Sport, describing the platform as a leader in applying new technology to sports coverage.

The two organizations began working together in 2024, when they delivered what they described as Europe’s first AI-powered real-time translated sports commentary during European Athletics events.