Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2025
This week's election: 2025 Falkland Islands general election
FITV
Election Date: 30/12/2025
The Falkland Islands will hold general elections on December 11, 2025, to elect eight members to the Legislative Assembly. Five representatives from Stanley and three from Camp constituencies will be elected using block voting. The Executive Council called the election early in August 2025, ahead of the constitutional deadline requiring dissolution by November 7, 2025.
#TrumpCheck
FactCheck.org
False: Somali people stole “billions” from Minnesota “every year”.
President Trump claimed that "like 88%" of Somalis in Minnesota receive welfare, but the White House provided no evidence to support this specific figure. A December 2025 report from the Center for Immigration Studies found that 89% of Somali immigrant households with children in Minnesota use "some form of welfare" (including cash assistance, SNAP, and Medicaid), while Minnesota's state demographer reported that only about 8% of people with Somali ancestry receive certain forms of public assistance income like cash welfare programs, though this narrower definition excludes benefits like food stamps.
#Politics
Africa Check
False: Tanzanian presidential election results were nullified.
Following the contentious October 2025 general election in Tanzania, some social media posts claim the presidential result has been declared null and void. However, these claims are false.
Snopes
False: In December 2025, California Gov. Gavin Newsom donated $12 million of his own money to an initiative to feed hungry children.
A December 2025 rumour claimed California Governor Gavin Newsom donated $12 million to feed hungry children after seeing Barack Obama promote the initiative on social media. Snopes debunked this as completely fabricated clickbait designed to generate advertising revenue, noting that no credible news outlets reported the story, Obama never made such a post, the named charity doesn't exist, and the claim was copied from an earlier false story about Pete Buttigieg with Newsom's name swapped in.
#Technology
Lead Stories
False: Elon Musk bought Facebook and will delete it.
Meta (which owns Facebook) had not, as of this writing, announced or documented a sale, as is required of publicly traded companies. No credible news reports of an impending sale to Musk. The site that generated the rumour is one of the "Viet Spam" operators that was exposed in 2025 for attracting web traffic by spreading scandalous and shocking rumours about prominent Americans in fake news stories.
#Healthcare
Africa Check
False: South African social media users can become general hospital workers via an online link.
Facebook posts claim South Africans with only a grade 10 education can apply for hospital general worker positions, earning R13,000 per month with no experience required, providing a link to apply online. Africa Check confirmed this is a scam, as the link leads to a non-existent or poorly designed website filled with pop-up ads designed to generate revenue for scammers, and advises job seekers to only use verified official channels when applying for positions.
Africa Check
False: Diphtheria is caused by viruses.
A Facebook post claims diphtheria doesn't exist and is merely fearmongering to promote vaccinations, while also asserting the disease is caused by viruses that the immune system can naturally defeat. Africa Check debunked both claims, confirming that diphtheria is a real, well-documented bacterial infection caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae that can be fatal in up to 10% of cases even with treatment, and that natural immunity alone cannot reliably fight the infection, making vaccination essential for prevention.
#Economy
Lead Stories
False: Photo shows $45 million in freshly-printed cash sent by the United Sates to the Taliban in Afghanistan on a chartered flight on December 8, 2025.
The photo used to make the claim was published in 2023 in a report about United Nations cash shipments to Afghanistan as humanitarian aid. The UN – not the US – has sent nearly $3 billion in cash to the country since the Taliban regained control in 2021. An inspector general report did conclude that some of the money, which was sent for relief groups, did come from US contributions and some of it ended up with the Taliban.
PolitiFact
False: The U.S. has received promises of investments totalling $18 trillion to $22 trillion since January.
The White House website lists $9.6 trillion in investments, half of the figure President Donald Trump cites. But that $9.6 trillion includes aspirational, multi-year goals, and future purchases or sales of products, rather than only capital investments. The White House’s total includes large commitments from governments such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, whose pledges are multiple times larger than their countries’ annual gross domestic product, which calls the pledges’ feasibility into question.
#Conflicts
StopFake
False: France Plans to Create a PMC for Deployment to Ukraine.
French Decree No. 2025-1030 — the document Russian outlets point to as proof of Paris allegedly greenlighting a private military company for Ukraine — does nothing of the sort. Instead, it outlines rules for civilian economic operators conducting training and technical missions as part of international military cooperation, with no connection to PMC deployment.
BOOM Live
False: IAF fighter jets escorted President Putin's airplane while entering Indian airspace.
A video showing fighter jets covering the presidential aircraft of Russian President Vladimir Putin is being shared online with a false claim that it shows Indian Air Force (IAF) jets escorting him in Indian airspace during his recent visit. The video is actually from 2017 when Putin visited Syria, accompanied by fighter jets of the Russian Aerospace Forces.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: Du får nethindeløsning af corona-vaccinen.
Den danske læge Vibeke Manniche hævder, at der er en sammenhæng mellem COVID-19-vacciner og øget forekomst af nethindeløsning baseret på en »spids« hun observerede i 2021, men hun har ikke delt sine underbyggende data. Det Europæiske Lægemiddelagentur, Lægemiddelstyrelsen og medicinske eksperter afviser imidlertid alle hendes påstand og forklarer, at antallet af tilfælde af nethindeløsning har været gradvist stigende siden 2006 på grund af faktorer som grå stær-operationer, og at der ikke er noget, der tyder på, at tilstanden har forbindelse til COVID-19-vacciner.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: The band KISS mixed their blood in the ink of their comic book.
In 1977, Marvel Comics published a KISS comic book featuring a promotional stunt where the band members had their blood drawn and mixed with red ink used for printing, a process that was officially notarized. A later rumor claimed the blood-infused ink was mistakenly used for Sports Illustrated magazine instead of the comic book.
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