Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2025
This week's election: 2025 Malawian general election
BBC
Election Date: 16/09/2025
Malawians have voted in a closely contested presidential election between incumbent Lazarus Chakwera and former leader Peter Mutharika, with only about half of registered voters casting ballots. The poll took place amid deep economic troubles, including soaring food prices, foreign currency shortages, power cuts, and fuel queues. This has been leaving citizens eager for change.
#TrumpCheck
Snopes
False: Trump didn't say US and Italy have been allies 'since the time of Ancient Rome'.
Trump did not claim that the United States and Italy have been allies since ancient Rome. He remarked that the two countries have a "shared cultural and political heritage" dating back back thousands of years.
Aljazeera
Half-true: US workers gained $500 in wages this year.
Donald Trump claimed U.S. workers saw a $500 wage increase in early 2025, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data on median weekly earnings of full-time workers, which showed a $546 rise over six months. However, economists say a more reliable dataset, covering all private-sector employees, shows wages rose only $121 in the same period—less than one-quarter of Trump’s figure and smaller than the $884 increase seen in Joe Biden’s final two quarters.
#Politics
AFP
False: Nepal protests are religious uprising.
Protests in Nepal over a social media ban and corruption forced Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to resign, but Indian media and politicians falsely portrayed the unrest as a religious attack on Hinduism and the Pashupatinath temple. Fact-checkers debunked these claims, showing that viral footage was from an unrelated ritual, while misinformation linking the movement to anti-Hindu forces and calls for a Hindu state spread widely on Indian social media.
#Healthcare
PolitiFact
Barely-True: North Carolina has just approved a law permitting foreign doctors to practice without completing U.S. training or licensing exams.
The law allows foreign doctors a pathway to practice in North Carolina, but only with a partial license. The law requires applicants to be eligible for certification from the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates. As part of that, applicants must pass Step 1 and Step 2 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination.
Aljazeera
False: Taking Tylenol during pregnancy cause autism in children.
Doctors and leading medical groups continue to consider acetaminophen (Tylenol) safe for treating pain and fever during pregnancy, warning that untreated illness poses greater risks than the drug itself. While some studies have suggested a possible association between prenatal acetaminophen use and autism, the strongest research finds no causal link, and experts say any connections are likely explained by genetics or other factors.
#Economy
Euronews
False: EU about to start scanning your text messages.
Viral claims that the EU will soon start scanning everyone’s private messages are misleading, as the proposal to combat child sexual abuse online is still being debated and has not been approved. While the draft law does include possible “detection orders,” the European Parliament has already voted to limit scanning and protect encryption, and no measures can take effect until both Parliament and the Council agree on a final text.
#Conflicts
PolitiFact
False: A book on Amazon titled “The Shooting of Charlie Kirk” with a Sept. 9 publication date is evidence the event was staged.
Amazon said the Sept. 9 publication date on an e-book about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was a mistake caused by a technical error. The book, which was generated by artificial intelligence, was published late afternoon Sept. 10, after Kirk was shot.
AFP
False: Photo shows Charlie Kirk shooting suspect in keffiyeh training in the army.
Social media users are claiming a photo shows Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old Utah resident suspected of fatally shooting right-wing US activist Charlie Kirk, wearing a keffiyeh in support of Palestinians. But the photo shows cadets in Utah Valley University's Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program in 2019 – when Robinson, who never attended Utah Valley University, would have been 16 years old.
Snopes
True: The U.S. Army swore in four senior executives with ties to technology companies Meta, Palantir and OpenAI as lieutenant colonels in 2025.
In June 2025, the U.S. Army swore in four senior tech executives from Meta, Palantir and OpenAI as part-time lieutenant colonels in the Army Reserve under a new initiative called “Detachment 201: The Army's Executive Innovation Corps.” The program aims to leverage private-sector expertise for military modernization, and the claim that these executives joined as advisers is true.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: Muslimer og migranter er skyld i kirkebrande flere steder rundt om i verden.
Videoer af brændende kirker er for nylig blevet spredt på sociale medier X. Videoerne ledsages af beskyldninger mod muslimer og ulovlige indvandrere om brandstiftelse og angreb på kristendommen. Disse påstande er blevet undersøgt i forbindelse med disse brande, og der er ikke fundet tegn på, at de er religiøst motiverede.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: There are more trees on earth than stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
A 2015 Nature study estimated about 3.04 trillion trees on Earth, far more than earlier figures and exceeding the 100–400 billion stars thought to be in the Milky Way. Both numbers come with uncertainties due to difficulties in measurement, but current evidence suggests Earth has more trees than stars in our galaxy, despite around 15 billion trees being cut down annually.
Check out the new Factiverse blog post
This week's blog post: Digital age journalism: AVID and Factiverse empower research
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