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No, there wasn’t an assassination attempt on Saudi Crown Prince MBS

https://observers.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240514-debunked-assassination-attempt-saudi-crown-prince-mbs

Excerpt:

Dozens of social media users have been sharing a video that they say shows an assassination attempt on the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It doesn’t matter that the video in question is a few months old and actually shows a traffic accident – the fake news has been spreading across X, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram in dozens of languages.

An article published on Nabd News, a media outlet that shares news from around the Arabic-speaking world, posted the video on May 6 along with the following caption in Arabic, “#Latestnews: A security situation in Riyadh. Information about an assassination attempt targeting the convoy of a high ranking official and a large number of the Royal Guard killed or injured. There is no information about the target”. The article published by Nabd News cites “Beirut News Center” as the source of the information. The Beirut News Centre did indeed post the information on X.

.....Neither the article by Nabd News nor the tweet from the Beirut News Center mentioned Mohammed bin Salman. However, later on, Russian accounts on Telegram started reporting that the crown prince was the victim of an assassination attempt.

One person who shared this theory on Telegram was Alexander Kargin, who presents himself as a Russian political scientist specialising in the Middle East. Other Russian Telegram channels also shared the video along with the false claims.

.....It turns out, however, that this video actually shows a car accident that took place in mid-March. We ran the video through a reverse image search (to find out how, check out our handy guide.) That search led us to a post on X from the account @saudi_fight from March 16, featuring a TikTok video of a car accident. The caption on the post says “King Salman Road Fire”, an intriguing clue. The video has since been deleted from the TikTok account where it was first shared.

However, that post soon lead us to more reports of the accident. The X account of emergency responders the Saudi Civil Defense posted a photo on March 16 showing a firefighter working to put out a car fire. The caption on the post explains that no one was injured in the accident. There are similarities between this photo and the video that has been circulating along with rumors about an assassination attempt on MBS, including the storefront behind the car and the car itself. When we really sat down and compared the two, we concluded that they show the same incident.

We were also able to use these images to identify the exact location where the video was filmed: on King Salman bin Abdulaziz Road in northwest Riyadh.

12,000 Christians Baptized Yesterday in ‘Largest Synchronized Day of Water Baptism in American History’

https://protestia.com/2024/05/20/12000-christians-baptized-yesterday-in-largest-synchronized-day-of-water-baptism-in-american-history/

Excerpt:

A reported 12,000 people were baptized in and around the waters of the Pacific Ocean yesterday as part of Baptize California, billed as the “largest synchronized day of water baptism in American history.”

aptize California is a “statewide movement of water baptisms on Pentecost Sunday” that unites local churches, including Saddleback Church, Sandals Church, Zoe Church, Restoration Life Church, and Higher Visions Church, under “a part of theology we can all agree on, which is the public profession of faith through water baptism.”

While the flagship event took place in Huntington Beach, there were dozens of regional baptisms across California, with many people signing up to partake in the festivities beforehand and others deciding to get baptized spontaneously.

.....Notably, the event encouraged anyone who wanted to “publicly declare their faith in Jesus Christ” to be baptized, even if that meant being baptized away from their local church.