The timing of this World Cup’s major matches has been extremely unfriendly to Chinese viewers. In Hangzhou, a local business organized a watch party for the opening match and sent out more than 4,000 invitations. However, because the game kicked off at 3 a.m. Beijing time, not a single person showed up. Given China’s enormous viewing market, the World Cup should adjust its schedule to make live broadcasts more convenient for Chinese audiences.
Modern AI-generated images can be virtually indistinguishable from authentic content, making definitive determination difficult from visual inspection alone.
This one isn't real—it's AI-generated as part of a fabricated viral hoax. No credible news outlets report Sasha Obama wearing a MAGA hat or making those statements. The story is false.
In response to inquiries from multiple German media outlets, I am issuing this statement regarding my interviewee Xu Xiaoren (known online as Macaron ), who currently faces imminent deportation from Germany.
In March 2025, Xu was the only Chinese citizen I encountered on the Russian frontlines willing to appear on camera, showing his face, to condemn the war:
"Every inch of land is paid for in blood. It is inhuman and immoral."
For the year that followed, he endured relentless persecution and lived in flight because of this. Guided by professional ethics, I documented his journey through video, audio, and over 100,000 words of investigative notes, cross-verified by multiple witnesses, to record the risks the interviewee faced and to offer him a measure of protection.
In thirty years of investigative journalism, this is the first time I have had to do this. It shows how grave I believed the situation to be.
In February 2026, Xu escaped Russia. By April, I was informed that he had reached Germany, facing immediate deportation. He asked me to submit these original records to @BAMF_Dialog.
I never got the chance. No evidence was reviewed. No contact was made — with me or any other witness. Instead, BAMF ruled his application "manifestly unfounded," dismissing my statement as "mere rumors and unsubstantiated assertions."
I am grateful for the attention of the press. A man who admitted he entered the war by mistake, who then defected from within it, and what he became over that year, may tell us something about how wars could truly end: the reflection, the suffering, the compassion, the change. It is a battle of the human soul. I ask the German people to hear his story, and to judge for themselves.
This is my full statement in German: