Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2025
This week's election: 2025 Chilean general election
Buenos Aires Herald
Election Date: 16/11/2025
Chile will hold general elections on November 16, 2025, to elect a new president (as incumbent Gabriel Boric cannot seek consecutive reelection), all 155 Chamber of Deputies seats, and half of the 50 Senate seats. Eight candidates are running for president, with the race primarily between centre-left candidate Jeannette Jara and right-wing candidates José Antonio Kast and Evelyn Matthei, amid declining support for Boric's progressive agenda and rising momentum for conservative parties.
#TrumpCheck
Lead Stories
False: President Trump called out for not paying construction company demolishing East Wing of the White House.
The website that made the claim is full of fake clickbait stories. The text of the article appears to be likely AI generated. The company mentioned in the article has a similar name but is not the company performing the demolition of the East Wing of the White House.
Snopes
Half-True: In 2013, Donald Trump said: "A government shutdown falls on the president's lack of leadership. I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top. A shutdown means the president is weak."
Trump truly once said the exact words in the second sentence of the quote. No record existed of Trump saying the exact words in the first or third sentences. However, his other remarks from that period of time aligned with the same thoughts.
Lead Stories
False: U.S. Marine pushed President Donald Trump up the steps into the Marine One helicopter.
A full version of the video shows the president's pants splitting, exposing a large hole in his underwear and the Marine's uniform is not authentic. It was obviously created by an artificial intelligence tool. The earliest version of the full video was posted by a self-described parody page on Facebook.
#Politics
Snopes
True: New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said he would order the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he came to New York City.
During his 2025 campaign for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani pledged to honor the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by ordering his arrest if he visited the city, a claim confirmed by multiple recorded interviews. However, since the United States is not a signatory to the ICC, such an arrest would likely not be legally possible, and Mamdani has stated he would "operate within the bounds of the law".
PolitiFact
False: Voting in California is “rigged.”
As evidence, the White House said California’s system of sending mail ballots to all voters is "ripe for fraud." A spokesperson pointed to one case of a woman charged with voter fraud. In its statement, the White House also misrepresented data. Noncitizen voting is banned under federal law and rarely occurs. Rigging an election would require a criminal conspiracy of election officials across the state. There is no evidence that happened.
Factly
False: In Bihar, U.P. CM Yogi Adityanath openly buying votes by distributing money for the 2025 Assembly elections.
A viral video falsely claiming to show Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath bribing voters with cash during the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections is actually an old clip from 2012, when he distributed monetary compensation to farmers in Gorakhpur whose crops were destroyed by fire. The same video has been repeatedly debunked during previous election cycles (2019 and 2022), with no credible reports of Yogi Adityanath distributing cash to voters during the current Bihar elections.
#Healthcare
WebQoof - The Quint
False: Lemon extracts are 10,000 times more effective than the chemotherapy.
There is no scientific evidence that lemon juice or lemon peel is superior to chemotherapy or can reverse cancer.
#Economy
Snopes
True: In fall 2025, Bank of America reported "overwhelming evidence" showed tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump raised consumer prices.
Bank of America economists reported in an October 31, 2025, research note that there was "overwhelming evidence that tariffs have pushed inflation higher for consumers," estimating that consumers were bearing 50-70% of the tariff costs and that tariffs contributed 0.3 to 0.5 percentage points to core inflation. Multiple independent analyses from Yale's Budget Lab and Harvard's Pricing Lab confirmed these findings, with the latter estimating tariffs added 0.7 percentage points to the August 2025 inflation rate.
Associated Press - AP News
Mostly false: Walmart prices show that the cost of Thanksgiving dinner is 25% lower in 2025 than in 2024.
Walmart's Thanksgiving dinner is 25% cheaper is misleading: the 2025 basket has only 15 items versus 29 in 2024, cutting out pecan pie, sweet potatoes, celery, and other sides. While the total price dropped from $56 to under $40, customers are getting significantly less food, not lower prices for the same meal.
#Conflicts
Lead Stories
False: These Ukrainian soldiers surrendered in the town of Pokrovsk.
The clips showed a watermark of a generative AI tool. As of this writing, Ukraine denied that its soldiers in Pokrovsk were surrendering in large numbers.
StopFake
False: Bloomberg published an infographic showing how Zelensky looted France.
A fake infographic bearing the Bloomberg logo falsely compared France's €8.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine with losses from the October 2025 Louvre robbery, claiming the aid equaled "84 Louvre robberies". Bloomberg never published such content on November 3, 2025, running only stories about Ukrainian drone strikes and UK missile supplies that day, with no mention of the Louvre incident.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: Antallet af kvindemord er stigende i Danmark.
På trods af politiske debatter, der tyder på en stigning i drab på kvinder i Danmark, viser langsigtede data, at drab på kvinder og drab på kvinder begået af deres partner generelt har været faldende siden 1990'erne, fra et gennemsnit på 12 partnerdrab om året (1992-2016) til omkring 7-8 om året (2017-2021). I 2025 var der 18 kvindemord – det fjerdehøjeste antal i 26 år og en kraftig stigning fra kun 4 i 2024 – men forskere advarer mod at fortolke et enkelt års stigning som en tendens og påpeger, at sådanne udsving er normale, og at den generelle tendens fortsat er faldende.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: Sink-toilet combinations are common in Japan.
Japanese toilets with integrated sinks on top of the water tank are common and help conserve water by reusing handwashing water for the next flush. This dual-purpose design, which has existed in Japan since at least 1956, allows clean water to flow through the faucet for handwashing before draining into the toilet tank, eliminating the need for a separate sink and reducing overall water consumption.
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