ROTTERDAM (ANP) - Burgemeester Carola Schouten van Rotterdam wilde na afloop niet spreken van een pijnlijk moment toen de herdenking van de Rotterdamse gedeporteerden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog werd onderbroken door enkele demonstranten. Tijdens de toespraak van Zvi Aviner Vapni, de ambassadeur van Israël in Nederland, riepen enkele demonstranten leuzen tegen Israël en de oorlog in Gaza.
"Van belang is dat de herdenking van de bijna 6800 inwoners van Rotterdam die nooit meer terugkeerden centraal staat." Schouten wilde verder niet ingaan op het incident. Ze wees erop dat de ambassadeur is uitgenodigd door de stichting die de herdenking organiseert.
De ambassade van Israël spreekt van "opnieuw een schrijnend gebrek aan respect en moreel besef" bij een kleine groep demonstranten. "Afgezien daarvan verliep de herdenking waardig en respectvol."
"Wij willen iedereen bedanken die heeft bijgedragen aan een waardige, veilige en betekenisvolle herdenking, en ervoor heeft gezorgd dat de nagedachtenis aan de Joodse slachtoffers van de Holocaust centraal bleef staan", aldus de ambassade.
SANAA (ANP/AFP) - De Houthi's in Jemen ontkennen afgelopen woensdag een droneaanval te hebben uitgevoerd in de haven van de Egyptische stad Damietta. Daarbij raakten twee schepen beschadigd, waaronder een Amerikaans schip. Het is de eerste aanval op Egypte sinds het uitbreken van de oorlog tussen de VS en Iran. De aanslag is nog door niemand opgeëist, ook niet door Iran.
Volgens een woordvoerder van de beweging, aangehaald door persbureau Saba, zijn "geruchten dat Jemen een schip in de haven van Damietta in Egypte heeft aangevallen ongegrond".
De haven van Damietta ligt aan de Middellandse Zee, op meer dan 1300 kilometer afstand van Iran en 2000 kilometer van Jemen. Egypte speelde eerder dit jaar een belangrijke rol bij het bereiken van een staakt-het-vuren tussen de VS en Iran. Experts zeggen tegen persbureau AFP dat de aanval, los van wie deze uitvoerde, bedoeld kan zijn om Egypte in het conflict te betrekken.
ROESE (ANP/AFP) - In Bulgarije zijn de resten van een jonge mammoet gevonden door de lage waterstand van de Donau. Het gaat om onder meer delen van een kaak en fragmenten van slagtanden.
De botresten werden woensdag bij toeval ontdekt in de rivierbedding door een inwoner van het nabijgelegen Ryahovo, circa 30 kilometer van de Noord-Bulgaarse provinciehoofdstad Roese.
Volgens experts kan de lage waterstand leiden tot verdere vondsten. De Donau staat door de aanhoudende hitte op meerdere plekken bijzonder laag.
De mammoet stierf circa 10.000 tot 4000 jaar geleden uit. Hoewel exacte cijfers ontbreken, wordt vermoed dat er de afgelopen eeuwen tienduizenden exemplaren zijn teruggevonden. Een zeventigtal bekende ontdekkingen betroffen mammoeten die zo goed bewaard waren - bijvoorbeeld doordat ze gevonden werden in het ijs - dat er nog zacht weefsel als huid en haar werd aangetroffen.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - De Israëlische ambassadeur in Nederland, Zvi Aviner Vapni, is boos over een Sigmund-cartoon van tekenaar Peter de Wit die afgelopen dinsdag in de Volkskrant heeft gestaan. Hij noemt het een "antisemitische karikatuur" en verbaast zich erover dat de krant die niet heeft tegengehouden.
De cartoon toont een vrouw die zegt: 'Wat er ook gebeurt, ik blijf altijd achter Israël staan. Want als je ervoor gaat staan schieten die smeerlappen je in je rug'.
"Er is iets echt verkeerds aan de gang in Nederland, als niemand bij de Volkskrant eraan heeft gedacht deze antisemitische karikatuur tegen te houden", schrijft Vapni op X. Zijn woordvoerder laat weten dat er wordt nagedacht over een aangifte.
UK’s highest court gives permission for Huda Ammori to challenge court of appeal ruling
The co-founder of Palestine Action has won permission to challenge the ban against the group at the UK’s highest court.
The direct action group was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in July last year but its co-founder, Huda Ammori, has been fighting to have it overturned amid a mass civil disobedience campaign.
Continue reading...Midfielder grateful to be back with boyhood club
Hardly played at Villa but won the Europa League
Harvey Elliott believes he has been given “a second chance” at Liverpool and denied his ill-fated loan to Aston Villa was a lost year in his career.
Elliott joined Villa on a season-long loan last September with an obligation for them to buy the midfielder for £35m once he made 10 appearances for the club. However, Elliott featured only nine times, playing 277 minutes in total, with Unai Emery and Villa unconvinced over completing the deal. Having made an 89th-minute substitute appearance for Liverpool at Newcastle in August, the 23-year-old was unable to sign for a third club in a single season.
Continue reading...I can hear the howls of disagreement now but we’ve got zoos – complete with giraffes and elephants – at home. Seen one, you’ve seen them all
When I first took my toddler to the zoo, I realised that here were her celebrities. To see a giraffe in real life is the three-year-old’s equivalent of seeing Tom Hanks strolling through your local shopping centre. After all, every night we lie in bed and read stories about the exploits of shy turtles or bossy rhinos or the occasional lion who didn’t want to go to bed. Then, one day, these heroes are right in front of you, ambling about in a pen, being gawked at by the paparazzi.
All of a sudden, I felt my own childlike excitement reinvigorated, getting to surprise her with the next animal and the next animal. A visit to your local zoo is truly one of the greatest experiences you can have as a parent.
James Colley is a comedy writer from Sydney. His debut novel, The Next Big Thing, is out now
Continue reading...Honest Bob was rattled at the idea of joining cross-party talks on social care. Why bother behaving as a serious opposition?
When you’ve lost the trust of GB News, when you’re too deranged, too extreme and too outright mendacious for your biggest fan, then you know you are in trouble. You can almost sense the panic beginning to set in at Reform HQ.
No longer topping the opinion polls. A new prime minister resetting the dial, the public increasingly choosing optimism over grievance. A party mired in financial sleaze. A leader turning into a laughing stock in his head-to-head with a dustbin. It was never meant to be this way for Reform. They thought they were the winners.
Continue reading...First US pope praises principles of freedom and opportunity in implicit critique of Donald Trump’s policies
Pope Leo, the first US pontiff, has expressed “great love” for his home country and its core principles of freedom, opportunity and welcoming immigrants, but qualified that he “just happens to be American”.
In an interview with the US broadcaster NBC on the sidelines of a prayer event in Castel Gandolfo, the papal retreat close to Rome, Leo, who has condemned the immigration policies of Donald Trump’s administration, spoke about his own family history in describing his relationship with the US.
Continue reading...Door klimaatverandering beginnen de extreem brandgevaarlijke weersomstandigheden de capaciteiten van de huidige systemen voor brandmanagement te overtreffen, waarschuwen experts.
Opgezweept door de AI-hausse en de lokroep van riskante beleggingsproducten zijn talloze Zuid-Koreaanse particulieren in de problemen gekomen. De regering in Seoul droeg bij aan de ellende en treft nu snel maatregelen.

Nederland wordt overspoeld. Ooit waren wij het die de macht over onze wateren hadden, nu is door decennia van D66-beleid het slootbeeld voorgoed veranderd. Stekelbaarzen herkennen hun eigen poel niet meer en dat moeten we allemaal maar normaal vinden. Om van een ramp een nog grotere ramp te maken is er nu een ACHTSTE soort invasieve rivierkreeft ontdekt: de calicotrivierkreeft. Men vond alleen nog maar een schaar van het beest in de Klompenwaard, maar zoals het oud-Hollands spreekwoord zegt: waar geschaard wordt, loopt de sloot over. En die loopt dus over van, onder andere, de calicotrivierkreeften. Wij roepen nergens toe op, maar het is wachten tot mensen voor eigen rechter gaan spelen en hele fuiken van die rakkers in de pan flikkeren terwijl dat dus VERBOTEN is.

In February, a content creator from New Zealand named Harry Chang posted a YouTube video called “This AI TikTok Shop Video Made Me $67,420 (Here’s How).” In the video, Chang and another YouTuber, Jimmy Farley, describe how Chang created a viral marketing video for a supplement company called Rosabella called the “Nigerian SECRET to CLEAN LIVER!!”
Chang explains that he copy-pasted the script from a video posted by an account called “liverboosthub11” and tweaked it to suggest the supplement he was marketing is “something that’s been used in Asia or Africa for a long time that a lot of people don’t know about in America.”. In Google’s VEO 3, he created an AI-generated Black woman wearing a surgical mask in the foreground of the video, pointing up at another AI-generated Black woman (created in a tool called HeyGen) wearing a pink dress and standing on a stage. He directed the woman in the foreground to have a “strong African American accent,” and to say, “Why is nobody talking about what this hoe said?! If you’ve got issues with that belly, must watch!”
“Builds curiosity, builds intrigue,” Chang says about his creation. “People want to know, ‘damn, what did she say? What did that ho say?’” To make the AI-generated woman on stage read the script he took from liverboosthub11, he pulls up the popular AI voice generator ElevenLabs. He scrolls through a list of voices that he had created, including “African American Woman Organic,” “Black Man 1,” “ORGANIC White Southern Woman,” and “Sad Black Woman in Car.” He settles on a voice called “Latisha 1.” He syncs the voice with the AI-generated videos he created in the video editing software CapCut. This AI video goes on to get 1.3 million views on TikTok and apparently earned him tens of thousands of dollars in affiliate sales.
In another video, Chang explains how he has made tens of thousands of dollars using AI influencers. “I’ve even had my clients buy me Rolexes for selling so much of their products,” he says.
The video’s title is “How I print $51,000/month profit with AI influencers (feels illegal).”
A new lawsuit argues that the strategy is, indeed, illegal. (After 404 Media asked for comment for this story, several of the YouTube videos mentioned in this article were deleted).

In February, a supplement company called Humann sued a competitor called Ambrosia Brands because Ambrosia, through the supplement company called Rosabella, allegedly directed and influenced the creation of hundreds of TikTok Shop videos and ads featuring AI-generated “doctors” that oversold the supposed benefits of Rosabella’s products. Rosabella’s AI marketing practices have previously been written about by 404 Media and The New York Times, but were most thoroughly explored in an excellent episode of the podcast Conspirituality.
The lawsuit reveals new details about how this group of 20-something YouTubers built their army of AI-generated influencers. In practice, Rosabella is more of a social media AI content hustle and AI marketing exercise than a supplement company. What happened in this case is the same type of spam and buy-my-course to get-rich-quick strategy that we have repeatedly written about, only this time the slop is being used to shill supplements largely to the elderly. Rather than payouts coming from the number of views a video gets on social media, the payouts are commissions on products sold. The lawsuit was spotted by the lawyer Rob Freund on X.
“All these guys are ex-dropshipping guys,” Mallory DeMille, who studies the wellness and supplements industry and who reported the episode of Conspirituality, told 404 Media. “They could have chosen anything to sell to make AI content out of, but they chose supplements, and it’s interesting they chose supplements because it’s such an unregulated market where [they] can basically pump out whatever product they wanted to with very little oversight. On the marketing side, it’s also pretty unregulated and there’s a lot of real [human] influencers making unfounded health claims without there being many consequences. In terms of ease of making money — wellness, they chose this industry for a reason. I think it’s pretty seamless, has proven to be seamless and now they’ve sold a fuckton because of how easy it is.”
The lawsuit highlights a series of TikTok videos—like the ones I described above, and most of which are still online—featuring AI-generated doctors, TED Talk-style speakers, and videos that are essentially identical to the ones Chang has repeatedly taught people on YouTube how to make. And hundreds of additional videos promoting Rosabella that are not highlighted in the lawsuit are trivial to find on TikTok. Many of them have hundreds of thousands or millions of views and seem to make wild promises about what Rosabella supplements can do.

In another video, Chang explains why his favorite products to sell fall into the “elderly health” category: “It’s an extremely profitable niche, especially in the U.S., guys.”
“In the U.S., they have very high demand for health products,” he says. “They don’t have any free healthcare, right? People over 35 literally are very concerned about their health […] You have moms who buy 100 supplements and put them all in their cupboard. It is crazy. It’s crazy.”
“When you have such a high, problem-solving niche, it’s very easy to write scripts for, very easy to innovate, and just continuously make money,” he says, adding that he usually generates AI influencers who themselves look old.
“They’re relatable and credible,” he says of three older-looking AI people he shows on screen, one of which is shilling beetroot powder from Rosabella. “Why? Because they are old. People are more willing to listen to old people only because they see them as more wise and intelligent […] and look how credible they look. They’re speaking on stage like TED Talk-type style and they’re more relatable because they’re more similar to the age we want to target. If you’re trying to sell health products to a 50-year-old, well, make your avatar 50 years old.”


On TikTok, Rosabella used a mix of paid influencers and AI-generated characters to make unfounded medical claims about its products and about beetroot more generally, the lawsuit alleges. “In several TikTok Posts, the post purports to show a doctor, medical professional, or other medical authority espousing the health benefits of Defendant’s products. All or nearly all of the ‘doctors’ featured in the TikTok Posts are AI-generated and fictitious, making the claims in the advertisement false and/or misleading,” the lawsuit notes. “For example, in a June 14, 2025 TikTok post, influencer ‘poormaninla’ purports to depict a doctor in a whitecoat that promotes the alleged health benefits of Defendant’s products. Before the ‘doctor’ begins speaking, a separate speaker is imposed on the screen in a surgeon’s or nurse’s scrubs.”

The “poormaninla” account is still up on TikTok and its videos are almost entirely AI-generated. Several of the videos have hundreds of thousands of views. “The best food for Black women to eat if they want a slim stomach is not turmeric, it’s not ginger, and it’s definitely not blueberries. Just one teaspoon of this food reduces gut inflammation,” an AI-generated man in a lab coat says in one.
You can see some of the videos promoting Rosabella here:
The lawsuit argues that Rosabella is “orchestrating a misinformation campaign on TikTok through its network of influencers,” who “make various misrepresentations about the health and wellness benefits of Defendant’s beetroot products, which are entirely unfounded.” The lawsuit alleges that Rosabella, through a private Discord channel, offered extensive coaching to content creators on how to make AI-generated TikTok ads; that many of these ads featured fake doctors and other AI-generated people who were made to look authoritative; that some of these videos were racist; and that when people bought Rosabella products through TikTok Shop links on those videos, the creator of those videos would earn a commission. Humann’s argument is that Rosabella’s “false and misleading representations undermine public confidence in other beet products, like Humann’s SUPERBEETS products.”
Ambrosia says, essentially, there is no evidence it told people what to do in the Discord channel. In court filings, Ambrosia claims that Humann “fails to allege any facts that plausibly show Ambrosia induced or materially contributed to the third-party conduct it complains of.” It remains unclear whether what Rosabella was doing is illegal in the unregulated world of supplements in the U.S., or whether a competitor could win a false advertising lawsuit like this. But there is no doubt about Rosabella’s strategy, what their motivations are, and the incredibly close connection between Rosabella and the network of content creators who made, conservatively, hundreds of AI-generated videos.
The lawsuit highlights how common fully AI-generated marketing has become on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, and nods at, but does not dive into, the complicated web of YouTube hustlebros that have largely given rise to this practice, and the social media platforms that have incentivized and promoted AI-generated spam and fly-by-night supplement companies. Rosabella is a company that has already been subject to an “extensively drug-resistant salmonella” recall by the Food and Drug Administration. But it is maybe better understood not so much as a supplement company but more as a branding exercise and vertical video content hustle by the same types of AI spammers and buy-my-course bros we’ve written about numerous times over the last few years.
In a video about “why you need to be working with Rosabella” qposted by an account called “Luca Washenko” on the online course sales platform Whop, a man brags “we paid out over $400,000 last month to creators.” He says that individual people have made more than $300,000, and shows “proof and dates of our creators getting tons of views consistently. Got 55 million right there […] I am one of the lead coaches in the Rosabella server.”
But Washenko isn’t just a creator helping to advertise Rosabella. He is the company’s founder. A YouTube video repeatedly alludes to this, and mentions how much money he and his army of affiliate creators have made selling Rosabella products on TikTok Shop. Washenko is also listed as the cofounder of Rosabella on several trademark filings I found, and his LinkedIn lists him as the founder of “MNY Ventures,” a company that has the Rosabella logo on LinkedIn. Clicking through “MNY Ventures” goes to a LinkedIn page for “Rosabella,” which has several job listings for AI video editors: “MNY Ventures is home to one of the fastest-growing supplement brands in the world, built on the back of a high-performance, results-obsessed culture. We don't just create ads; we create market-leading campaigns that generate massive revenue,” one of the LinkedIn job listings reads. “Your mission is to lead the production of our high-converting AI videos quickly and at high quality. You will be responsible for consistently creating on-brand and compliant video content based on proven formulas designed to maximize reach, ensuring MNY Ventures maintains its position as the #1 leader in AI video marketing for e-commerce.” The listing adds the person will need to produce “10 high-quality AI videos per day, following our preset scripts and styles.”
In a video called “Inside a TikTok Shop Meetup with Million Dollar Creators,” there is no doubt about Rosabella’s strategy, Washenko’s motivations, or Rosabella’s close relationships with the people spamming AI-generated content shilling its products. Rosabella is just the latest of Washenko’s creations. His previous claim-to-fame was selling caffeine vapes on TikTok.
“There have been creators that are now millionaires from working with Rosabella,” Washenko says in the meetup video. “It’s one thing if you make money, it’s another thing if you can help everybody around you make money. An event like this where you can go face-to-face and shake hands with people and they say, ‘You’ve changed my life.’ And I’m like ‘You’ve changed mine.’ Those are the moments that are so special, especially when everything is remote. It’s online. It’s Discord, that’s one thing. You look them in the eye and they say, ‘I was able to pay my mortgage when I lost my job because I was making videos for you.’ That’s a different feeling.”
Washenko explains there are two reasons why people should make content promoting Rosabella: “If you want to be the Tiger Woods of creator, if you want to be the Caitlin Clark, you want to be the Michael Phelps, you want the golden rings you want to be the greatest, to be the number one, that’s what we’re all about. That’s the Rosabella family,” he says. “Along the way, you’ll make a ton of money.”
Later in the video, Washenko stands on stage addressing a crowd, shouting out “all the people I’ve been talking to on Discord from day one, from 18 months, I started Rosabella in my mom’s basement.” He shouts out all the creators who he’s helped make rich and who helped make him rich. He then says there’s one other “person I want to shout out today.” He calls up Harry Chang, the YouTuber who made the video “How I print $51,000/month profit with AI influencers (feels illegal).” Washenko presents him with a Rolex. “I cannot be any more proud to be working on a brand with you,” and for that, I want to give you this watch today. It’s a Rolex, by the way.”
After 404 Media asked for comment on the video, it was deleted from YouTube.
DeMille, who reported the episode of Conspirituality diving into Rosabella, Washenko, and Chang, told me the men are “just actively bragging about it online. I can’t believe they’re openly talking about it like this.”
“A lot of the videos of these AI slopfluencers, they’re using narratives that real-life wellness influencers have seen success using, but they’re taking these narratives and inputting them into whatever AI systems they’re using and making people look whatever age they want,” DeMille said. “There’s no thought behind it. There’s no anything behind the content that they’re turning out. These videos they’re replicating in their AI machines are also being used to sell something, but it’s being generated into something else to sell something else. It’s this inception of bad information by people who don’t actually care.”
“These guys behind these AI slopfluencers have proven that they don’t care, and they obviously care more about money and wealth than they do about health,” she added.
Washenko did not respond to a request for comment. Ambrosia Brands did not respond to a request for comment.
A request sent to Rosabella was returned by someone named Emmanuel Obonga. The response said, “We don’t currently have an active affiliate program. However, we’d be glad to keep your information on file and reach out if we revisit or launch one in the future.” In the course of reporting an earlier story about the AI influencer company Doublespeed, Rosabella previously told 404 Media that it “does not use Doublespeed or any AI-generated accounts to promote our products on TikTok or any other platform. We are committed to authentic engagement and building genuine connections with our community. Regarding the claim about being viral on TikTok, this is based on organic content created by real customers and creators who love our product. We’ve seen a lot of positive buzz and user-generated videos that have helped spread the word naturally.”
Daniel Martens, a lawyer representing Humann, told 404 Media Rosabella’s strategy “makes [the] whole supplement industry look bad. If you’re masquerading as a doctor telling consumers how promising all these benefits that don’t exist [are], that’s harmful.
DirtyGlassEye has added a photo to the pool:
What you may see here as a bleak day is nothing short of a monumental moment for me. I know a while ago I already advertised a Sumida skyline shot as my first shot in Japan. But what I really meant was I thought that was the first usable shot I could edit and upload. But back then I just didn't see the vision enough. Excluding maybe 1 or 2 phone shots that are unbelievably awful, this is my first official shot in this country using my real camera.
I could not have asked for better conditions for a day 1. I love low hanging clouds and rain. Sure it proved a bit of a hindrance walking around Asakusa and Senso-Ji later but it was a welcome first look. This is what I normally pine for in the Pacific NW. And while I can say I preferred the view from the observation deck (that I already posted), the view from the ground wasn't bad either as you can see. (Just so you know when I return I intend to target the Skytree more, I hardly shot it at all last year).
I had two shots that had separate positives and negatives so I had to combine them in editing. I had a darker shot that didn't blow out anything in the top half and a lighter image that had the traffic over the bridge in less distracting spots (that taxi took up so much of the frame in the darker shot). This is why you bracket. After that, all that remained was to commit further to the given theme, I drained the saturation and attempted to remove any pieces that stood out. Ironically the weather would be a premonition of worse things to come within the week but other then that, I could not have been a higher note then at that moment, I was about to have a vault full of photos.