Chasiv Yar, Ukraine: AFP’s Ukraine video coordinator Arman Soldin was killed on Tuesday by rocket fire near Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine, AFP journalists who witnessed the incident said.
The attack happened at around 4:30 p.m. (1330 GMT) on the outskirts of the town close to Bakhmut, the epicenter of the fighting in eastern Ukraine for several months.
The AFP team came under fire by Grad rockets while they were with a group of Ukrainian soldiers.
Soldin, 32, was killed when a rocket struck close to where he was lying. The rest of the team was uninjured.
“The whole agency is devastated by the loss of Arman,” AFP chairman Fabrice Fries said.
“His death is a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers faced by journalists every day covering the conflict in Ukraine.”
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Soldin on Twitter, hailing his “bravery.”
“With bravery, from the first hours of the conflict he was at the front to establish the facts. To inform us,” Macron wrote, saying he shared “the pain of his relatives and all his colleagues.”
Ukraine’s defense ministry offered its “heartfelt condolences” to Soldin’s family and coworkers in a statement on Twitter, saying he was killed in a Russian missile attack on Chasiv Yar in the eastern region of Donetsk.
“He dedicated his life to informing the world about the truth. His legacy, as well as his cause, will live on,” it said.
Born in Sarajevo, Soldin was a French national who began working for AFP as an intern in its Rome bureau in 2015 and was later hired in London.
He was part of the first AFP team to be sent to Ukraine following the start of Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022, arriving on the following day.
Soldin had been living in Ukraine since September, leading the team’s video coverage and traveling regularly to the front lines in the east and south.
Soldin’s death means at least 11 journalists, fixers or drivers for media teams have been killed covering the war in Ukraine, according to the media advocacy groups Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
In Washington, the White House also paid tribute to Soldin, with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying the world was “indebted” to the journalists who lost their lives covering the conflict.
“Journalism is fundamental to a free society,” she said in a statement.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also offered his condolences during a speech at the Freedom House think tank in Washington.
“Today, we were devastated to learn of the death of AFP video journalist Arman Soldin in eastern Ukraine,” he said. “Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones, and with the entire AFP family.”
“Arman’s brilliant work encapsulated everything that has made us so proud of AFP’s journalism in Ukraine,” the agency’s Global News Director Phil Chetwynd said.
“Arman’s death is a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers of covering this war. Our thoughts tonight are with his family and friends, and with all our people on the ground in Ukraine.”
AFP Europe Director Christine Buhagiar remembered Soldin as “a real on-the-ground reporter, always ready to work even in the most difficult places,” she said. “He was totally devoted to his craft.”
Colleagues said Soldin knew in particular how to recount the lives of ordinary people caught up in the Ukraine conflict, desperately trying to survive amid the chaos.
In Kyiv, he found a tender moment between a conscripted father and his young son who had fled abroad, bonding over a strategy game online.
Earlier this month, he even rescued an injured hedgehog from a trench and nursed it back to health. He named it Lucky.
The founder of the Ukrainian animal rights organization UAnimals, Oleksandr Todorchuk, spoke of Soldin’s “absolute kindness” when he came to the hedgehog’s aid.
UAnimals was setting up a grant for volunteers and shelters that rescue hedgehogs “in memory of Soldin and his great heart,” Todorchuk wrote on Facebook.
AFP journalist Arman Soldin killed in eastern Ukraine
https://arab.news/whm6r
AFP journalist Arman Soldin killed in eastern Ukraine
- In a tweet, AFP said other agency journalists were with Arman Soldin at the time of the Grad rocket bombardment
- French media outlets reported that the late afternoon attack took place in the vicinity of Chasiv Yar
Grok faces more scrutiny over deepfakes as Irish regulator opens EU privacy investigation
- The regulator says Grok has created and shared sexualized images of real people, including children. Researchers say some examples appear to involve minors
- X also faces other probes in Europe over illegal content and user safety
LONDON: Elon Musk’s social media platform X faces a European Union privacy investigation after its Grok AI chatbot started spitting out nonconsensual deepfake images, Ireland’s data privacy regulator said Tuesday.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said it notified X on Monday that it was opening the inquiry under the 27-nation EU’s strict data privacy regulations, adding to the scrutiny X is facing in Europe and other parts of the world over Grok’s behavior.
Grok sparked a global backlash last month after it started granting requests from X users to undress people with its AI image generation and editing capabilities, including putting females in transparent bikinis or revealing clothing. Researchers said some images appeared to include children. The company later introduced some restrictions on Grok, though authorities in Europe weren’t satisfied.
The Irish watchdog said its investigation focuses on the apparent creation and posting on X of “potentially harmful” nonconsensual intimate or sexualized images containing or involving personal data from Europeans, including children.
X did not respond to a request for comment.
Grok was built by Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI and is available through X, where its responses to user requests are publicly visible.
The watchdog said the investigation will seek to determine whether X complied with the EU data privacy rules known as GDPR, or the General Data Protection Regulation. Under the rules, the Irish regulator takes the lead on enforcing the bloc’s privacy rules because X’s European headquarters is in Dublin. Violations can result in hefty fines.
The regulator “has been engaging” with X since media reports started circulating weeks earlier about “the alleged ability of X users to prompt the @Grok account on X to generate sexualized images of real people, including children,” Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a press statement.
Spain’s government has ordered prosecutors to investigate X, Meta and TikTok for alleged crimes related to the creation and proliferation of AI-generated child sex abuse material on their platforms, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Tuesday.
“These platforms are attacking the mental health, dignity and rights of our sons and daughters,” Sánchez wrote on X.
Spain announced earlier this month that it was pursuing a ban on access to social media platforms for under-16s.
Earlier this month, French prosecutors raided X’s Paris offices and summoned Musk for questioning. Meanwhile, the data privacy and media regulators in Britain, which has left the EU, have opened their own investigations into X.
The platform is already facing a separate EU investigation from Brussels over whether it has been complying with the bloc’s digital rulebook for protecting social media users that requires platforms to curb the spread of illegal content such as child sexual abuse material.
