Shayan Sardarizadeh
@Shayan86
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Journalist at BBC Verify | disinformation, conspiracy theories, verification, AI, open source investigations, extremism | shayan.sardarizadeh @bbc .co.uk
United Kingdom
Joined August 2009
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Pinned Tweet
DC Weekly, a website founded by a former US Marine now living in Russia, has fuelled disinformation stories about Zelensky and Ukraine, including a fake story that he bought two luxury yachts with US aid money, later repeated by some members of Congress.
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It's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between X and 4chan.
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The official state of Israel account has posted this video, saying it is facilitating aid into Gaza.
A short clip at the end of the video, claiming to show tents and shelter equipment for Gazans, was actually filmed in March 2022, showing tents in Moldova for Ukrainian refugees.
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Lots of videos and images alleging to show Russian attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities going viral on social media already. It is customary for old or false footage to go viral during a conflict, so please try to verify or check the source of the footage you see before sharing.
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The widely shared claim that the Iranian regime has committed to executing 15,000 detained protesters is not true. Please stop sharing it. The Iranian regime is horrific, brutal and ruthless as it actually is. There's no need to make up stories.
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THREAD: How to verify images online?
Social media is awash with false or misleading images, some of which get millions of engagements.
So, here's a simple guide on ways you can quickly check the veracity of an image you see on your social media feeds.
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A plea to Western news outlets and journalists: Please DO NOT publish videos of protests in Iran without blurring or pixelating the faces of protesters. The authorities use them to identify and detain protesters. You're putting their safety at risk.
#MahsaAmini
#مهسا_امینی
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Twitter tells me this tweet doesn't violate any of its policies. What do you think?
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Twitter chief Elon Musk and two men with hundreds of thousands of followers ranting about a completely made up "report" about Ukraine tweeted by some random account without even bothering to check if the tweet they're reacting to is actually true or not.
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We know that was his social media account because his date of birth, personal information and place of residence all match.
You don't need to speak Russian to be on a Russian social network. He was on Odnoklassniki because it has no content moderation.
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I've been fact-checking on Twitter for years, and there's always plenty of misinformation during major events.
But the deluge of false posts in the last two days, many boosted via Twitter Blue, is something else.
Neither fact-checkers nor Community Notes can keep up with this.
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Thread: Online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict - Day 5
This video, viewed nearly 300,000 times, falsely claims to show Israel drop white phospherus bombs on Gaza.
The video is from March, and shows Russia using incendiary munitions in Vuhledar, Ukraine.
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A viral tweet by a Twitter Blue subscribed conspiracy theorist falslely claiming this is a picture of Ukrainian President Zelensky's home has got 11,000 retweets, 25,000 likes and 1.3 million views.
The image shows a villa in Beausoleil, France, listed on real estate websites.
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I hope this is clear to everyone but posting that horrific video of a Russian soldier abusing and murdering a baby on Twitter or any other platform is a criminal offence. As soon as you see it on your feed, censored or uncensored, close the video and then report it.
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Twitter has given Blue subscription coupled with full algorithm promotion to a follower of US far-right figure Nick Fuentes who has the N-word in his handle. Even he couldn't believe it.
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This image has gone viral in pro-Isreal circles, claiming to show a fake Palestinian corpse caught texting on his phone.
Let's go through the image verification process step-by-step, using Google's reverse image search.
Where does the photo come from and what's the context?
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10,000 retweets, 46,000 likes and 4.2 million views for this nonsense by a blue tick conspiracy theorist.
The top left image showing a young Jacinda Ardern is from 1997, when she was a student.
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It seems like there are plenty of people who are unaware the Pfizer vaccine was never approved or administered in Russia.
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Thread: Online misinformation is rampant following the escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas today.
This video of a tower block in Gaza being hit by a missile is from May 2021, not today. It was captured live during a BBC Arabic broadcast at the time.
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The US does not have military bases in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.
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For context, this image is from the ongoing anti-government protests in Tbilisi, Georgia, and unrelated to pro-Palestinian rallies at US college campuses.
I don't know who she is but she's iconic. A true queen.
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This video, posted by Jackson Hinkle and others and viewed nearly 5 million times, claims to show "Israelis panicking" as Iran's missiles and drones reach Israel.
in fact, it shows Louis Tomlinson fans near Four Seasons Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina last week; verified by…
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I'd say it's probably not ideal for the CEO of Twitter to tweet a fake Volatire quote that's actually a quote from US neo-Nazi and white supremacist Kevin Alfred Storm.
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The US does not have military bases in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Turkmenistan, Jake.
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We've examined some of the most widely shared false and misleading tweets about the war in Ukraine in recent weeks, all posted by Twitter Blue subscribers whose content is promoted by the platform.
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This video, viewed nearly 400,000 times, falsely claims to show Palestinians at Al-Aqsa mosque celebrate Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel tonight.
The video is from last week, and shows Palestinians praying at Al-Aqsa on the last Friday of Ramadan.
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THREAD: How to check if a tweet screenshot is fake?
Dozens of fake screnshots of tweets have gone viral in recently. So, here's a simple guide on how one can quickly check if a screenshot of a tweet attributed to an account is genuine or fake before falling for or sharing it.
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The Ukrainian president and his wife are interviewed by Vogue and pose for some photos. Conspiracy Twitter conclusion: the war must be fake then. 25,000 retweets, 115,000 likes.
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Update: The official state of Israel account has now deleted the post.
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The Buffalo supermarket shooter live-streamed his killings and posted an online manifesto because he wants his white supremacist beliefes to spread as far and wide as possible. We don't have to spread his propaganda by sharing copies of the stream and manifesto on social media.
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WARNING: GRAPHIC
This video, viewed over a million times, is being shared with claims it shows a Palestinian boy stuck under the rubble in Gaza.
But the video is from 2016, and shows a Syrian boy being rescued after air strikes by Syrian government forces near Aleppo.
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BREAKING: Starting today, Twitter is labelling accounts "belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their senior staff".
Just checked the accounts of China's Xinhua and People's Daily, and also Russia's RT and Sputnik; and the labels are there
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One of Elon Musk's favourite "citizen journalists".
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The owner of this app cannot stop posting misinformation, and subsequently getting community noted for it.
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Blatant and explicit Holocaust denial on Twitter, with 3.7 million views.
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One of the biggest and most influential accounts on this app
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It's shaping up to be a brutal night for QAnon and conspiracy-adjacent candidates in Florida. Nearly all of them have either already lost or based on current reporting are losing their primaries.
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This is the big reveal in the finale of
#QIntotheStorm
where Ron Watkins says too much to Cullen Hoback and lets his guard slip.
It was so good it made the whole six hours worth it.
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I've been verifying multiple videos from the aftermath of bombings in Mariupol with colleagues all day today and there's only one way to describe what's been happening there: Mairupol city centre is being flattened, literally.
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The lie is where you falsely attribute this quote to Voltaire, where in reality those are the words of American neo-Nazi Kevin Alfred Strom, who also pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography in a federal trial in 2008.
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Thread: You may have seen viral posts that Olena Zelenska, President Zelensky's wife, spent $1.1m on Cartier jewellery during the couple's recent visit to the US.
Let's find out why those posts are false, and examine how pro-Kremlin disinformation of this kind travels online.
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Thread: Online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict - Day 8
This video, viewed 340,000 times, falsely claims to show Palestinians faking their inuries.
It's taken from a 2017
@trtworld
report on a makeup artist doing work for Palestinian films and charity projects.
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Literally no-one, other than you, has ever claimed this is an image of Kyiv in 2022.
This tweet got 8,000 retweet and 36,000 likes.
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Thread: Online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict - Day 6
This video, viewed 830,000 times, claims to show a US military plane carrying weapons landing in Israel.
The video is from 2019, and shows a US Air Force C-5M Super Galaxy taking off from California.
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A vast Russian influence operation on TikTok involving 12,800 fake accounts spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine to millions of users in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Israel and Ukraine, has been uncovered by BBC Verify and
@DFRLab
.
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Mahsa Amini, 22, was arrested by Iran's morality police for so-called "inappropriate hijab". She fell into a coma at a police station and sadly died at a hospital today. Morality police claim she had a "sudden heart attack". Her mother says Mahsa was murdered by the authorities.
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@AlNassrFC_EN
@Cristiano
@AlNassrFC
Imagine leaving Manchester United because they're not ambitious enough and then moving to the Saudi Arabian league lol
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Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 22
Plenty of genuine images documenting the destruction in Gaza have been published since the conflict began.
This, however, isn't one of them. This is an AI-generated image that's been viewed millions of times today.
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Thread: Online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict - Day 7
This video, viewed 450,000 times, claims to show Israel bomb Palestinian homes in Gaza.
The video is from the Syrian war, and shows government forces bombing a residential area in Yabroud in 2013.
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I've done fact-checking during several conflicts. Never have I seen one where so much disinformation is posted with the direct intent of dehumanising real victims of war on both sides.
Dead or injured women and children, civilians, hostages, prisoners; no-one is being spared.
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Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 27
Nick Griffin, former leader of the British National Party, claims this video, viewed 420,000 times, shows "Israeli army vehicles destroyed" in Gaza.
He's wrong, because this is footage from the video game Arma 3.
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Conspiracy Twitter is currently in meltdown after finding out Elon Musk's likely Twitter CEO appointee Linda Yaccarino is an executive chair of the World Economic Forum, an organisation they view as one of the roots of all evil in the world.
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The X (Twitter) algorithm is currently boosting this "Hitler was right" tweet by a blue tick account, currently on 712,000 views, in your feeds.
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Twitter has reinstated the account of Andrew Anglin, editor of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer. His account was suspended nearly a decade ago.
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The Israeli PM's spokesperson to the Arab world falsely claims this video shows Palestinian civilians "fake injuries", using the term "Pallywood".
It's behind-the-scenes footage of a Lebanese short film about Palestinians called "The Reality", as stated by the film's director.
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Thread: Viral misinformation about the French riots
This video of several cars falling from a multi-storey car park is from the set of the action film Fast & Furious 8, and unrelated to the current French riots.
It was filmed in 2016 on Prospect Avenue East in Cleveland, Ohio.
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This video shows 31 masked members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front being arrested in Idaho in 2022.
Unmasked mug shots and names of all of them were subsequently released by police. It certainly wasn't a "Fed psyop".
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THREAD: This type of Twitter account, right here, is among the worst on this platform.
It's a spam account that manipulates the empathy and compassion of users with the sole purpose of getting maximum engagement and building as large an audience as possible.
Let's take a look.
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It's quite incredible that within three days of the Paul Pelosi attack possibly millions in the world's foremost power have come to believe a completely different version of reality despite the fact the attacker made his thought process and beliefs clear to all in his own words.
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This sobering video of a child, with 12,000 retweets, 21,000 likes and one million views, isn't from Gaza.
The video was filmed in 2014 in Aleppo, Syria, and shows the aftermath of bombing by Syrian government forces.
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Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 21
This video, falsely claiming to show a Palestinian "crisis actor" seriously injured one day and fine the next has been viewed tens of millions of times.
Those are two different men, and the hospital video is from August.
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In the city of Gorgan, Golestan province, women of different ages set fire to their headscarves tonight on the fifth day of nationwide protests over the death of
#MahsaAmini
, 22, after her arrest by morality police for "improper" hijab.
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The first account recommended by Elon Musk is well-known for highly questionable posts about Jewish people, and the second is one of the worst "osint" accounts when it comes to posting misleading and unsourced content.
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@realstewpeters
You are looking at Zelensky's well-known personal bodyguard. His name is Maksym Donets. Proper shocking stuff
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No, you're an AI-generated image of a person who doesn't exist.
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This guy is the absolute worst, and it says a lot that he's become one of the biggest influencers on this platform by posting utter garbage like this all the time.
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This supposed screenshot from the newly released Jeffrey Epstein court documents, alleging Jimmy Kimmel had sex with a girl at Epstein's house in Palm Beach, is totally fake.
Jimmy Kimmel's name is not mentioned in the documents.
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Thread: Day two of online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict
This video, viewed 1.3 million times, falsely claims to show senior Israeli generals captured by Hamas. It actually shows the arrest of Karabakh separatist leaders by Azerbaijan's security service.
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Twitter has "verified" the account of President John F Kennedy, who in his own words, has "come back from the dead" to run for president in 2024.
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We've got a story coming out in the next few hours revealing a vast Russian disinformation operation about Ukraine that has reached millions of online users in several major European countries and beyond.
Watch this space.
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I think it's an AI-generated image, and therefore fake.
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Iran's Generation Z is leading an unprecedented social movement in the Middle East these days and the outside world barely seems to know about it.
#MahsaAmini
#مهسا_امینی
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Tonight in Valiasr Street, Tehran, women wave their hijbas as people chant "woman, life, liberty" on the ninth night of protests in Iran over the death of
#MahsaAmini
in morality police custody amid a near total internet shutdown by the state.
#مهسا_امینی
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A video of a young girl and boy putting on blood makeup has racked up millions of views on multiple platforms as evidence the Ukraine war is fake and civilian vicitims are "crisis actors".
But the video was shot in 2020 on the production set of the Ukrainian TV series Contamin.
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The Jerusalem Post has removed and now retracted an article on its website and also two tweets which falsely claimed Muhammad Hani Al-Zahar, a 5-month-old Palestinian baby who died in Gaza yesterday, was "a doll" and not real.
Over the weekend, we shared an article based on faulty sourcing. The article in question did not meet our editorial standards and was thus removed.
We take this matter seriously and will be handling it internally in order to prevent similar incidents from reoccurring.
We…
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@brokebackUSA
That's a parody sticker deliberately stuck on a real University of Liverpool note that has been circulating online since 2020
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He was warned not to post this video from Maui, Hawaii, which it turns out is actually an explosion in Macul, Chile, in May.
It got 20,000 retweets, 54,000 likes and 10 million views before being Community Noted.
He's making money from viral false posts like this.
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Seeing plenty of old videos from the Middle East plus some video game footage going viral tonight, mostly posted by accounts seeking clout and engagement during a major news event by spreading misinformation and fear.
Double-check everything you see online tonight.
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A video of a burning church is being shared by pro-Kremlin accounts who claim it shows a church in Mykolaiv that was set alight by Ukrainian nationalists.
In fact, the video is from 2013, and shows a church on fire in Russia's Astrakhan region.
H/T
@MikaelThalen
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Update: Twitter has now reversed its initial verdict and suspended the account that posted that tweet, as well as plenty other openly racist and hateful content.
Thanks to everyone who reported it.
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In Mashhad, a plainclothes officer beats women protesters on the side of a road with a baton as one woman tries to protect another by standing in front of her, on day five of protests in Iran over the death of
#MahsaAmini
in morality police custody.
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All of those articles featuing false claims about Zelensky and Ukraine are written by Jessica Devlin. According to DC Weekly, she's a "highly acclaimed journalist" from NYC.
Except, that's the image of author Judy Batalion. Jessica Devlin is a fake persona. She doesn't exist.
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In Kerman city centre, protesters directly confront riot police and plainclothes officers, preventing them from beating and arresting fellow protesters, on the fifth day of unrest in Iran sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.
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Conspiracy Twitter currently trying to find out why the sun has turned white, as opposed to the old times when it was yellow.
Also, don't stare at the sun, please.
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This video is being widely shared claiming to show the "take our border back" convoy on its way to Texas in the wake of the migrant crisis.
But the video is from 2022, and shows the trucker convoys heading to Washington DC to protest against Covid restrictions.
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A fake video posted in pro-Kremlin circles with BBC branding and logo is falsely claiming that BBC News and
@bellingcat
are reporting that the Ukrainian government has provided weapons to Hamas.
The video is 100% fake. Neither BBC News nor Bellingcat have reported that.
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Speaking at today's anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown rally in London's Trafalgar Square, former nurse Kate Shemirani - who was struck off in June - says Covid vaccines are "Satanic", citing "the pattern 060606". The graphine oxide single-molecule sheet "is a conductor", she adds.
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Last night in Gohardasht, Karaj province, a woman without a headscarf faces off alone against several riot police and security forces, warning them against touching her, on night four of protests in Iran against the death in custody of
#MahsaAmini
.
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