Fact check: Youth unemployment, ‘burning snow’ and fake Andrew mugshot

This round-up of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.

Is the UK’s youth unemployment rate the ‘highest in Europe’?

Conservative shadow education secretary Laura Trott MP claimed in a TV interview on Sunday that the UK has “the highest rate of youth unemployment in Europe”. And she made a similar claim on X, writing that “youth unemployment is the highest in Europe”.

This isn’t correct. While the youth unemployment rate in the UK is higher than the EU average, several other European countries have a higher rate.

Earlier this month it was reported that the UK’s youth unemployment rate had surpassed the EU average for the first time, based on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data.

The most recent comparable OECD data covers July-September 2025. It shows that in the UK the unemployment rate for 15 to 24-year-olds was 15.3% — higher than the EU average of 15.2%.

However, a number of individual European countries — including Belgium (17.9%), France (19.0%), Italy (20.9%), Spain (25.2%) and Sweden (24.6%) — had a higher rate than the UK.

Ms Trott’s colleague, the Conservative shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride, correctly claimed last week that youth unemployment was “now above the European average”, while Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch also correctly said this week that it was “now higher here than in the EU”.

It seems likely this is what Ms Trott meant to say. However, when Full Fact contacted her office about her claim we did not receive a response.

Videos showing ‘burning’ snow do not prove it is fake

Widely shared claims that holding a flame to snow can test if it’s natural or “chem snow” are false and misunderstand normal chemical processes, experts have told Full Fact.

Videos in which snow appears to go black and doesn’t melt when exposed to a flame have been circulating on X, Instagram and TikTok, with some gaining millions of views.

One clip filmed in the UK depicts a person holding the flame from a safety gas lighter to a snowball, which begins to blacken and disappear. A person speaking in the footage says: “This is not natural snow… this is chem snow.”

The poster warns that children shouldn’t be allowed to “play with this sort of snow”, adding: “It’s laced full of toxic chemtrails that can get them sick.”

But Full Fact has spoken to multiple experts on snow and atmospheric science who confirmed the claims are based on a misunderstanding of the science of applying heat to snow.

While many of the videos appear to show snow turning black, experts say the marks come from the fuel of the lighter itself (generally butane) rather than the snow turning into something else.

“Full combustion needs a good oxygen supply,” said Professor Elizabeth Morris, a glaciologist at the University of Cambridge.

“If you hold a flame next to a cold piece of snow incomplete combustion will mean that soot is produced and deposited on the snow. The soot comes from the hydrocarbon in the lighter fuel, not from the snow.”

A key part of what is presented as evidence in the video is that the snow doesn’t seem to melt when exposed to heat, instead shrinking back in a way described as being like burning polystyrene.

But experts explained to us that normal chemical processes caused this effect, notably sublimation — when a substance changes from a solid to a gas without becoming a liquid in between.

Paul Connolly, professor of atmospheric physics at the University of Manchester, said some snow may initially melt in response to the heat, but then get re-absorbed into the rest of the snowball.

“Snow is porous,” he added. “So either some of that water can be sort of soaked into the snow and it will refreeze inside that sort of porous matrix; or it’s only a very thin layer at a time that’s forming of water, liquid water that’ll just heat up to above 100C very quickly with that kind of flame, and sublime straight to water vapour.”

Fake Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor mugshot

An image supposedly showing a police mugshot of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is being shared online. But it’s not real, and very probably an AI creation.

Accounts on social media have shared what appears to be a police custody photo, in which a man who looks like the former prince holds up a sign against a height measure on the wall behind him.

Andrew was arrested by Thames Valley Police on February 19 on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was released under investigation later the same day. He has previously denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

Under normal police procedure following an arrest, it’s likely the former prince would have had a photograph taken after arriving at Aylsham police station, where he was questioned by police.

But Thames Valley Police has said the image circulating online is fake.

And the format of the image does not resemble mugshots typically released by UK police forces, which do not generally show height markings in the background of mugshots.

We’ve not been able to establish for certain how this image was created, but there’s good reason to think it was made with AI.

In versions of the picture where you can see the whole sign the man pictured is holding, the date of arrest is incorrect. It reads “02-14-2026”, an Americanised version of the wrong date.

And there appear to be errors on the height board behind the man pictured, where the inch markings between the numbered heights are not evenly spaced.