US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Elon Musk’s company SpaceX will “soon” begin a mission to repatriate two American astronauts who have been stranded for months on the International Space Station.Veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived at the ISS in June aboard Boeing’s Starliner, and were due to spend only eight days on the orbiting laboratory, but technical problems on the spacecraft prompted NASA to change plans. The US space agency announced in August that Boeing rival SpaceX would bring the crew home in February, before their return was further postponed to late March due to SpaceX preparing a new spacecraft.”Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck Elon!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, without specifying when the mission would take place.Musk, who heavily funded Trump’s election campaign, wrote earlier on X that the president had asked SpaceX to bring home the two astronauts “as soon as possible.”SpaceX, the private company founded by billionaire Musk, has been flying regular missions every six months to allow the rotation of ISS crews.In January, Wilmore and Williams said their spirits were still high despite being stranded above Earth, adding that they had plenty of food and were enjoying their time on the space station.While their protracted stay is notable, it has not yet surpassed Frank Rubio’s record-breaking 371 days aboard the ISS, which he completed in 2023 after the Russian spacecraft designated for his return developed a coolant leak. 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed that Pyongyang’s nuclear programme would continue “indefinitely”, state media reported Wednesday, days after new US President Donald Trump said he would make renewed diplomatic overtures to the reclusive leader.Kim recently visited a nuclear-material production facility, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said, where Kim warned of an “inevitable” confrontation with hostile nations and said 2025 would be a “crucial year” for bolstering North Korea’s nuclear forces.”It is our firm political and military stand and invariable noble task and duty to develop the state’s nuclear counteraction posture indefinitely,” Kim said, according to KCNA.The report, and Kim’s nuclear factory visit, follow Pyongyang’s test-firing on Saturday of sea-to-surface strategic guided cruise missiles, its first weapons test since Trump returned to the White House on January 20.In response, an official with the US National Security Council said Trump would pursue “the complete denuclearisation of North Korea, just as he did in his first term”, according to a report from South Korean Yonhap news agency. Trump, who had a rare series of meetings with Kim during his first term, said in an interview last week that he would reach out to the North Korean leader again, calling Kim a “smart guy”.Despite enduring crippling economic sanctions, North Korea declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state in 2022. Pyongyang says the weapons are necessary for its self-defence and to counter hostilities from Washington.Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said Wednesday that the Trump administation appeared to be “adopting a two-track approach”. “Trump is extending overtures for dialogue with Kim to encourage discussions from a political perspective,” Yang told AFP.”On the other hand, Washington’s working-level officials are now making clear that they focused on negotiating with the ultimate goal of achieving complete denuclearisation,” he said. But Yang added that North Korea might still want to speak to Washington “as they do need sanctions relief to keep its regime”.- ‘In love’ – During his first term in office, Trump met with Kim three times, beginning with a landmark summit in Singapore in June 2018. A few months after, Trump famously told a rally of his supporters that the two men had fallen “in love”.  But their second summit in Hanoi collapsed in 2019 over sanctions relief and what Pyongyang would be willing to give up in return. “I think he (Kim) misses me,” Trump said in July last year, adding “it is nice to get along with somebody that has a lot of nuclear weapons”.In a commentary released the same month, North Korea said while it was true Trump tried to reflect the two leaders’ “special personal relations”, he “did not bring about any substantial positive change” during his first term in office. “Even if any administration takes office in the US, the political climate, which is confused by the infighting of the two parties, does not change and, accordingly, we do not care about this,” it added. 

Blurred posts, downranked searches and deleted accounts: Since President Donald Trump’s election, groups sharing information about abortion pills say they have faced a surge in online censorship—hindering their ability to reach women urgently seeking the procedure.Reproductive rights organizations accuse Meta of leading the latest wave of digital suppression on Instagram and Facebook, drawing attention to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge to refocus on free speech. Meta confirmed to AFP that groups including Aid Access, Women Help Women, and Plan C had experienced varying degrees of issues with their content.”These groups encountered both correct enforcement and a variety of issues, including overenforcement and a technical bug,” a spokesperson said, citing prohibitions on the sale of drugs without proper certification as an example of legitimate enforcement. “We’ve been quite clear in recent weeks that we want to allow more speech and reduce enforcement mistakes — and we’re committed to doing that.”But the accounts were only restored after AFP and other news outlets initiated queries, with the organizations crediting media pressure for the change.- Anti-abortion administration -Zuckerberg’s recent overtures to Trump, whose inauguration he attended with other tech moguls, could point to alignment with the new anti-abortion administration, observers say.In its first days, the Trump administration took down reproductiverights.gov and targeted abortion access at home and abroad, including by rescinding orders that protected access to abortion pills and women’s ability to travel to states where the procedure is not banned.It also cut off funding to foreign groups providing such services.”Meta has said that they’re trying to get back to the roots of free expression — but right now, it’s hard to tell who exactly is going to be able to exercise that right fully,” Jane Eklund, author of an Amnesty International report on abortion information censorship, told AFP. “It really is a wait and see in how these tech bros are cozying up to the new administration and trying to gain favor with it — I am concerned about how this is going to play out.”Aid Access was founded by Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts to provide abortion pills over the internet, a key means of accessing the procedure in the United States, where abortion has been outlawed or restricted in nearly half of states since a landmark court ruling in 2022.”It was in the beginning of January that we first noticed it,” the 59-year-old told AFP, referring to pages removed on Instagram and Facebook. They were later restored, though some posts were still blurred. Gomperts, known for her “abortion boat” that anchored off coasts of countries banning the procedure, said she was no stranger to censorship having previously lost her personal Facebook account and access to Google ads.Though Aid Access’s pages are now back, she remains concerned for the future. People “need to have the help they need, period,” she said.- Perpetuates ‘stigma’ -Another group, Women Help Women, only regained its account after AFP queried Meta. “On December 26, Meta blocked our Instagram account, @womenhelporg, without warning, claiming it violated ‘community standards,'” Lucia Berro Pizzarossa of the group told AFP. “This account had been reaching thousands with crucial, evidence-based information and messages aimed at reducing stigma around abortion.””Search engines have deprioritized our website, and shadow banning has invisibly suppressed our reach on social media, making it harder for individuals to find accurate and timely resources.”Advocates worry that such measures perpetuate stigma, with abortion-seekers at times resorting to “algospeak” or coded expressions to circumvent automated moderation measures. “People try to share information and they can’t, and then they tell us ‘we don’t know what we did wrong,'” said Martha Dimitratou, digital strategist for Plan C, a US group that provides information on self-managed, at-home abortion with pills.Plan C lost access to its Meta advertising account in December, severely curbing how many people it could reach, Dimitratou said. That too was restored after AFP made inquiries. Even with accounts now restored, Berro Pizzarossa of Women Help Women said there was no clear process for appeal if suppression happens again.

Unfounded cancer cures, dubious anti-vaccine narratives, and false claims that neurological disorders can be “reversed” through diets: influential American and European podcasters are peddling harmful health misinformation while largely escaping scrutiny, researchers say.The problem will come under the spotlight this week as Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a vaccine skeptic with a longstanding reputation of promoting health misinformation, faces US Senate grilling over his nomination to be President Donald Trump’s health secretary.Falsehoods on podcasts, which experts warn are fueling mistrust in conventional medicine, often go unchecked as fact-checkers must sift through hours of transcripts. They can quickly be amplified when short clips extracted from podcasts ricochet across social media.Earlier this month, actor and director Mel Gibson said on the Joe Rogan Experience — the number two podcast on Spotify in the United States — that some of his friends had overcome stage four cancer after taking the antiparasitic drugs ivermectin and fenbendazole.The Canadian Cancer Society said those treatments were “not scientifically proven,” adding that such misinformation was “dangerous” as it gives false hope to people battling the disease.The podcast garnered millions of views, while posts focused on Gibson’s claim spread across platforms such as Facebook, X, and Instagram, AFP’s fact-checkers reported.- ‘Off the cuff’ -With podcasts easy to launch, huge volumes of audio content are being produced.”The nature of medium itself makes it challenging to detect misinformation and also makes it more likely that false claims will circulate,” Valerie Wirtschafter, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told AFP.”Often these conversations are really off the cuff, which is part of their authentic appeal, longer than your average media clip, and more frequent — sometimes for hours, multiple times a day.”A study she published in 2023 examined over 36,000 episodes produced by 79 prominent podcasters. It found that one out of every 20 episodes — and more than 70 percent of those podcasters — included at least one “unsubstantiated or false claim.”And with the popularity of podcasts soaring around the world, the phenomenon is not limited to the United States.In December, a BBC investigation found that prominent host Steven Bartlett was amplifying health misinformation on “Diary of a CEO,” his top-ranked podcast on Spotify.Its analysis of 15 health-related episodes found that each contained an average of 14 “harmful health claims.”Flight Studio, the podcast production company owned by Bartlett, told the broadcaster their guests were offered “freedom of expression” and were “thoroughly researched.”- ‘Duty of care’ -One London-based fitness coach, Richard Holley, told AFP he was drawn to a “Diary of a CEO” episode that featured a guest advocating for a keto diet to treat cancer.Holley said he did not feel the need to “fact-check” the dubious claim, floated casually as a lifestyle recommendation rather than scientific fact, but added in hindsight that “one has to be cautious.”Podcasts reaching millions of listeners are a lucrative business, with Bartlett telling UK media his show was expected to generate 20 million pounds ($25 million) last year, mainly from advertising.Some leading podcasters regularly featuring guests accused of undermining evidence-based medicine — and failing to challenge them — have created financial incentives to amplify misinformation, experts say.”Prominent podcasters have invested in wellness and health ventures at the same time as they have given airtime to health misinformation,” Cecile Simmons, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told AFP.Last year, a Rogan-backed health supplement company was hit with a lawsuit over false advertising about one of its products, which was regularly promoted on his podcast.Researchers say the medium, which has also strongly influenced political discourse, has long been poorly regulated for accuracy.In a rare action in 2023, YouTube removed a video of podcaster Jordan Peterson interviewing Kennedy for violating its policy prohibiting vaccine misinformation.”Given podcasts’ reach and popularity, we need to think about how to ensure duty of care towards users, while preserving some of the creative freedoms that the medium allows,” said Simmons.burs-ac/des/sms