Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2025
This week's election: 2025 Tongan general election
The New Zealand Herald
Election Date: 20/11/2025
General elections are being held in Tonga on November 20, 2025, following Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni's resignation in December 2024 ahead of a no-confidence motion, with ʻAisake Eke becoming prime minister in January 2025. The election occurs amid controversy over parliament's August 2025 passage of a bill transferring the foreign ministry to the monarch's authority, which pro-democracy advocates criticized while royalists supported.
#TrumpCheck
Lead Stories
True: Jeffrey Epstein's brother raised a question in a real email about if Russian President Vladimir Putin had photos of Donald Trump "blowing Bubba".
The 2018 email thread, one of the 23,000 emails released by the House GOP Oversight Committee in November 2025, referenced "DONNI TEE," "your boy Donnie," as well as "Trump." Mark Epstein sent a statement to Lead Stories saying it was a "humorous private exchange between two brothers" and that the "Bubba" reference was not about Bill Clinton.
Lead Stories
False: Mark Epstein was referring to a horse named "Bubba" in an email to his brother Jeffrey Epstein when he wrote "Ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba".
A spokesperson for Mark Epstein told publications in a phone call that the 2018 message was not about a horse. The claim that it was a horse spread across social platforms soon after Mark Epstein gave a statement ruling out viral claims that "Bubba" was a reference to former President Bill Clinton. Mark Epstein also said it was a "humorous private exchange between two brothers."
FactCheck.org
False: U.S. citizens to receive stimulus or tariff-based checks of $2,000 in November.
No checks are being issued. President Donald Trump said he wants to use tariff revenue to give “dividend” payments of “at least $2,000” to “middle-income people and lower-income people.” But no formal plan has been finalised and approved by Congress. Fiscal policy experts say there’s not enough tariff revenue for that.
#Politics
Factly
False: The number of votes polled exceeded the number of eligible voters in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections.
According to the Election Commission’s final revised data, Bihar had around 7.45 crore registered voters for the 2025 assembly elections. The voter turnout was 67.13%, and the total number of votes cast, including postal ballots, was 5.0185 crore. Therefore, the claim made in the viral post is false.
StopFake
False: Zelenskyy is faking blackouts to secure more European aid.
Outages across Ukrainian cities stem from voltage fluctuations and emergency shutdowns triggered by Russia’s systematic strikes on the country’s civilian energy infrastructure.
Snopes
False: During a live C-SPAN broadcast, U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., scolded Democratic Party leadership over their "Green New Deal 2.0" costing $93 trillion.
A false rumour circulated online in November 2025 claiming that U.S. Sen. John Kennedy publicly criticised Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Chuck Schumer on C-SPAN over a "$93 trillion Green New Deal 2.0," but no such video or incident exists. The fabricated story, which appeared to be AI-generated and was spread by Facebook pages managed from Vietnam, contained numerous false claims about the politicians' finances and backgrounds.
#Healthcare
PolitiFact
Barely-True: “Evidence suggests that 1 in 25 women who consume (abortion) pills are hospitalised.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier cited two studies listed on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s label for mifepristone, the first of two pills taken in early pregnancy for medication abortion. Uthmeier conflated hospitalisations and ER visits. About 41 women of 1,043 included in the studies — roughly 1 in 25 women — visited the ER after taking abortion pills. ER visits are not proof that patients experienced serious adverse events or were hospitalised. Eight of the 41 women were hospitalised, five related to abortion pills and three for unrelated reasons. That translates to 1 in 200 women being admitted to the hospital for reasons related to abortion pills.
Africa Check
False: Clove water cannot 'destroy cancer cells in 48 hours'.
Posts circulating on Facebook claim that clove water can destroy cancer cells in just 48 hours and is 100 times more effective than chemotherapy. But there is no scientific evidence to support this, and delaying or avoiding medical cancer treatment can have serious consequences.
#Economy
StopFake
False: French industrial icon shutters because of ‘Anti-Russia’ policy.
The Bonpertuis plant didn’t fall victim to anti-Russia sanctions, but to the broader slump in Europe’s steel sector — a squeeze that has left smaller mills unable to absorb soaring costs or finance the large-scale investments required to stay competitive.
#Conflicts
Agence France-Presse - AFP
False: Video shows Israeli soldiers mocking Indonesia's Gaza offer.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto told the United Nations in September the world's most populous Muslim-majority country is prepared to deploy at least 20,000 troops as peacekeepers to Gaza. Social media posts that surfaced following his remarks shared a video supposedly showing Israeli soldiers mocking the offer. However, an analysis of the clip found it was made with AI.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: Lejelofter og flere almene boliger gavner de rigeste.
Liberal Alliances kandidat Alexander Ryle hævder, at venstrefløjens boligpolitik i København gavner overklassen på bekostning af de fattige, men boligforskere afviser dette og siger, at politikken vil hjælpe lavindkomstbeboere med at få adgang til billigere boliger, samtidig med at den skaber udfordringer på tværs af alle indkomstniveauer. Forslagene omfatter lejelofter og flere almene boliger fra Socialdemokraterne, Socialistisk Parti og Enhedspartiet forud for tirsdagens kommunalvalg.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: Researchers taught a Goldfish to steer a tank on wheels.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel successfully trained goldfish to operate a fish-operated vehicle (FOV). This wheeled water tank moves in response to the fish's swimming direction, as detected by a camera system. All six goldfish in the study learned to navigate the vehicle toward a pink target spot to receive food rewards, demonstrating that navigational ability is universal across environments rather than species-specific.
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