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“There is a bit of a car bonanza in Norway at the moment,” OFV’s CEO Geir Inge Stokke told Reuters.

Fully electric vehicles accounted for 97.6% of all new cars sold in the Nordic nation last month, registrations show, in line with a long-held aspiration in Norway of ending the sale of petrol and diesel combustion engines in 2025.

($1 = 10.1630 Norwegian crowns)

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Dutch prosecutors demanded Friday that a Muslim father and his two sons face up to 25 years in prison for allegedly drowning an 18-year-old family member because they believed her “Western” behavior was bringing shame to the family.

The body of Syrian woman Ryan Al Najjar was found submerged in a lake with hands and feet bound tightly on May 28, 2024, near Joure in northern Netherlands, six days after disappearing, according to authorities. Officials arrested her father and two brothers, then aged 22 and 24, and charged them in connection with her killing, which prosecutors said likely happened on May 22.

“They saw Ryan as a burden that had to be removed,” the Public Prosecution Service said Friday. “Just because she was a young woman who wanted to live her own life.”

Authorities said her male relatives, who come from what they described as a “strict” Islamic family, allegedly killed her after believing she was “behaving too Western in the eyes of her family.” Al Najjar was reportedly targeted after refusing to wear a headscarf in public-like settings.

MOTHER SAYS ALLEGED STALKER WHO KILLED HER DAUGHTER SHOULD BE TRIED AS AN ADULT

“The immediate cause of her death appears to be a live video on TikTok, showing Ryan without a headscarf and wearing makeup,” prosecutors said Friday. “The video seriously embarrasses the family, according to their posts, as it does not fit within their traditional views.”

“Once the suspects were aware of the video, they started looking for Ryan,” the authorities added. “According to the Public Prosecution Service, her brothers visited her in Rotterdam and convinced her to come along to a remote location the night before her murder. She was taken to Knardijk, where their father joined. There she was killed.”

Local media NL Times identified the brothers as Mohamed Al Najjar and Muhanad, and their 53-year-old father as Khaled. All three were charged with murdering the young woman, while their father was accused of orchestrating the killing before likely fleeing to Syria, prosecutors said.

CHARLOTTE TRAIN STABBING SUSPECT’S BROTHER SAYS KILLING COULD HAVE BEEN ‘PREVENTED’ 

Investigators say Al Najjar was taken to a remote park where “no one for miles around could have heard her” cries for help. Evidence showed signs of strangulation and drowning, and approximately 60 feet of tape had been used to bind her before she was thrown into the water alive. Prosecutors reported that Khaled’s DNA was also found under his daughter’s fingernails, suggesting he was present during the killing.

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“[Khaled] fled to Syria immediately after the murder and left his sons to take the blame. Cowardly,” the Public Prosecution Service wrote in a statement Friday, according to NL Times. “Khaled has completely destroyed his family.”

Dutch authorities added that extraditing Khaled may be difficult because he married a woman in Syria since Al Najjar’s death, the outlet reported. 

The Public Prosecution Service has recommended a 25-year prison sentence for the father and 20 years for each of the two brothers.

The court is scheduled to issue its ruling on Jan. 5.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Public Prosecution Service for more information.

Dozens of pro-Russia and anti-EU accounts on X have been accused of misleading users after the platform rolled out a new transparency feature revealing where profiles are posting from, how they downloaded the app and when they joined.

The “about this account” tab, now visible on every profile, shows a user’s reported location. X warns that the feature may not be accurate, and can be affected by VPNs, travel or temporary relocations.

“This is an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square. We plan to provide many more ways for users to verify the authenticity of the content they see on X,” announced the platform’s head of product, Nikita Bier, amidst longstanding criticism that fake and automated accounts flood X with misinformation.

The Cube, Euronews’ fact-checking team, could not independently verify the locations of X profiles.

Russian war bloggers ‘post from Ireland’

Since the update, X users have identified a cluster of Russian war bloggers whose accounts repeatedly post updates from inside Russia, yet X lists their locations as Ireland.

One example is Maryana Naumova, a Russian powerlifter turned “war correspondent” with more than 14,000 followers, whose stream of content shows her interviewing Russian soldiers and civilians.

Her most recent posts include clips linked from Rutube, a Russian video platform, claiming to locate her in the Russian town of Gorodets.

However, X’s data says Naumova is not in Russia, but in Ireland. X warns that her account shows signs she could be using a VPN that might inaccurately represent her actual location.

She’s one of several Russian war bloggers whose locations say they are in Russia, but whose X data traces them back to Ireland. Combined, they have thousands of followers.

Is the tool reliable?

Bier described the rollout as having some “rough edges”, adding that incorrect details would be “updated periodically based on best available information”.

By 24 November, he claimed the tool was “nearly 99.9% accurate”.

But Euronews can confirm notable inconsistencies. Over the weekend, the official Euronews account was incorrectly listed as being located in the United States. By Tuesday, this had shifted to France, where the company was founded and still has offices.

Experts have also noted that the platform provides no access to methods used to determine a user’s location, making its accuracy difficult to independently verify.

“It can be a useful tool for improving transparency as long as the data is accurate,” Philipp Darius, a postdoctoral researcher at the Hertie School’s Centre for Digital Governance, told The Cube. “But X should restore researchers’ access to its Research API and make the location data available there as well.”

“However, depending on the granularity, it can also cause privacy and security risks to users, for example, for journalists’ accounts in authoritarian states,” he added. “Without insight into the processes, it’s quite difficult. If X doesn’t share its methods, the data can’t be tested outside the platform.”

Darius also warned that a clustering of multiple accounts in one location could indicate a large VPN provider operating there, rather than provide clues about a user’s real location.

“Many Russian bloggers are very active online, but in Russia, many social media platforms are blocked. So people often use VPN services to re-route their internet traffic,” he told The Cube.

But whilst some users might be hiding their true location for personal or security reasons, others may be part of coordinated efforts.

“There can be many motives and backgrounds possible,” Darius said. “So this can reach from individuals, to organised influence campaigns, such as disinformation campaigns, to individuals with financial motivations, maybe to build a higher follower count and monetise posts.”

‘Unfiltered insights’ on Russia

The update has nevertheless provoked X users to point out how several large anonymous accounts have locations that do not necessarily match what they post, and raised questions about potentially fake and automated accounts.

A collection of accounts that post regular updates and photos about Russia, President Vladimir Putin and negative posts and videos about Ukraine and its politicians are all, according to X, not based in Russia.

Moscow has long been accused of sponsoring anonymous internet political commentators and trolls to orchestrate large-scale disinformation campaigns that spread pro-Putin and Kremlin propaganda online.

One account with more than 225,000 followers titled “RussiaNews” claims to be based in St Petersburg. X shows its location as the United Arab Emirates. The account has changed its username 10 times since it joined.

Another, a self-proclaimed spoof account titled “Vladimir Putin News”, is based in South Asia, according to X, although it clarifies in its biography that it isn’t based in Russia. A third, titled “Russian Army” with more than 69,000 followers, is also based in south Asia.

‘European’ accounts not in Europe?

The Cube has also found several accounts promoting negative content about migrants and the European Union whose locations X lists as outside Europe, despite the profiles presenting themselves as European.

One account under the name of Laure Krause posts in German under the tagline “News from Europe and the World”. Its updates cover a wide range of topics and regularly highlight crimes committed by asylum seekers or migrants.

Krause’s supposed channel says it’s based in “the EU”. However, X’s location data places it in western Asia.

Similarly, the account “Based Hungary” that claims to be based in northwestern Romania, and frequently shares anti-EU posts aligned with Hungarian government narratives, is listed by X as being in North America. The account has changed its username nine times since 2022.

Monetisation incentives

The majority of the accounts the Cube found to have locations incompatible with their profiles also had blue ticks and therefore subscribed to X’s premium feature, which allows users to potentially earn money from posts.

X users need to have at least 500 verified followers and 5 million impressions in the last three months to start monetising their content.

According to Darius, financial motives could indeed be a possible reason an account may be utilising a politically divisive topic from a totally different location to drive up clicks.

Political motives or organised influence campaigns are, however, not out of reach. Accounts posting from unexpected locations, particularly the Global South, may reflect the presence of English-speaking click workers employed at lower labour costs for information campaigns.

“Many of these false accounts present themselves as, for example, a Trump supporter and a mother from the Midwest, but they may actually be steered by foreign actors with strategic interests,” Darius said.

“Platforms have historically failed to conduct proper accountability checks on profiles or advertisements, especially when stricter checks might reduce their earnings,” he added. Identity verification on social media has also been criticised as weak, with multiple opportunities for users to exploit loopholes.

Overall, the tool may have temporarily increased transparency, but it is likely easy to circumvent.

“Whenever new rules are introduced, people adapt,” Darius said. “We may see more users relying on VPNs and routing their traffic through the United States.”

“But that comes with greater friction, because US IP addresses are more heavily monitored and often trigger additional CAPTCHAs or security checks,” he added.