Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2024
This week's election: Sint Maarten General Election
Loop News Caribbean
Election Date: 15/07/2024
Sint Maarten has a population of just over 40 thousand people. Following the January 2024 general elections a four-party government was formed by the URSM party, the Democratic Party, the Party for Progress and the NOW party, all of which had won two seats. As the URSM received the most votes of the four, its leader Luc Mercelina became Prime Minister on May 3rd 2024. However, the government collapsed 18 days later when NOW MP Kevin Maingrette left the coalition to join the opposition. This crossing the floor cost the coalition its majority, leading Mercelina to dissolve parliament and call snap elections on the 19th of August 2024.
#Politics
USA Today
False: Minnesota ballot envelopes are marked with voters' political party.
Minnesota doesn't require voters to declare a party when they register, meaning voters can decide which party's primaries to participate in when filling out their ballot.
PolitiFact
True: VP Candidate Tim Walz spent 24 years in the military but he has not spent a day in a combat zone.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in a 2018 video the Kamala Harris campaign circulated on social media in August, said he wanted to get "weapons of war that I carried in war" off the streets. Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard, winning honours for sharpshooting and weapons training, but he has acknowledged he didn’t see combat duty. A Walz spokesperson said the governor misspoke.
PolitiFact
Half-True: Kamala Harris “supports mandatory gun confiscation.”
Kamala Harris, as a 2019 presidential primary candidate, said, "I support a mandatory gun buyback program" for assault weapons. There are no examples that she supports mandatory gun confiscation now and the majority of guns sold in the U.S. are handguns. Former President Trump used this present tense when he said that Harris "supports mandatory gun confiscation." The Harris campaign told The New York Times that she supports banning assault weapons but not requiring their sale to the federal government. As vice president, Harris has urged states to pass red flag laws and supported federal gun safety legislation that included funding for mental health and school security resources.
Reuters
False: Donald Trump stated that Venezuela's Election result was a "disgrace".
A fabricated quote calling Venezuela’s July 2024 election a “disgrace” has been falsely attributed to U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and has been shared online alongside a video of Trump from last November talking about voter ID. Trump has publicly criticized the outcome of the Venezuelan election but there is no evidence he made the statement credited to him in the posts.
#Healthcare
Africa Check
False: Soursop leaf tea cures cancer, depression, diabetes, asthma, anaemia and other diseases and illnesses.
Various research articles have reported that the plant’s leaves, fruit, seeds, bark and roots have pharmacological properties. These include anti-cancer, anti-ulcer, anti-diabetic, anti-protozoal, anti-diarrhoeal, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-hypertensive and wound-healing properties. However, studies have only been carried out on mice in laboratories, not on humans. Experts say clinical trials in humans are needed to establish the efficacy and safety of soursop leaf tea in treating these diseases. So at this time, these claims are unproven.
PolitiFact
Half-True: During Covid, Tim Walz rationed access to monoclonal antibody treatments based on skin colour.
Minnesota’s health department had a centralized program from February 2021 to July 2022 to refer patients for monoclonal antibody treatments based on clinical need. For about one month of the 16-month program, the increase in the risk of poor COVID-19 outcomes for Black, Indigenous and other people of colour because of disparate health impacts was considered a health factor in a scoring system that used prioritized treatment referrals. Race was no longer a scoring factor during a weighted lottery period in early 2022 when monoclonal antibody supplies were lowest and some lower-risk patients were denied referrals.
#Economy
USA Today
False: Apple ended a $1 billion advertising campaign for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
"Apple Drops Out of $1 Billion Advertising Campaign with Olympics, 'They've Gone Woke,'" reads text included in a viral Facebook post. However, there is no evidence Apple had a $1 billion advertising campaign with the Olympics, much less that the company ended one over the controversy or for any other reason. There is no mention of an Olympics advertising campaign in any of the company's recent statements, and no credible news reports support the Facebook post's claim.
#Conflicts
Newsmeter
False: The video shows the Hezbollah attacking Israel amid the growing tensions.
Amid rising tensions between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, a video has gone viral, claiming to show Hezbollah rocket attacking Northern Israel. A Facebook user shared the video with the caption, "Northern Israel is reportedly under attack from Hezbollah rockets" The video is actually from a report by the BBC titled, ‘Ukraine will not go unpunished, Russia says after drone attacks’ published on August 30, 2023. The video was titled, ‘Missile debris explodes over Kyiv.’
India Today
Half True: This video shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responding to a question about the Kursk cross-border offensive with a smile.
A video making the rounds on social media that shows Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, seemingly at a public event, smiling and allegedly responding to a question about the situation in Kursk with "I don’t know". This viral video is actually from the 2023 Nato Summit held in Lithuania, where Zelensky was responding to a question about the delivery of weapons from America.
#Nordics
Tjtjekdet
Falsk: Mark Zuckerberg forbød Fadervor på Facebook.
I et kædebrev, som er gået viralt på Facebook, står der, at Fadervor ikke overholder Facebooks politik og derfor vil blive fjernet fra platformen. Ifølge kædebrevet er det endda Facebooks grundlægger, Mark Zuckerberg, der står bag forbuddet. Som modreaktion er tusindvis af kristne begyndt at forkynde Fadervor i Facebook-opslag. Men indholdet i kædebrevet er falsk. Meta siger, at Fadervor ikke er i strid med deres regler, og at det er tilladt at videregive bønnen.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: Doctors prescribed Guinness to pregnant women in the 1920s for its iron content.
Not only did doctors and laypeople in Ireland and England think Guinness was good for pregnancy. The stout was also perceived to be good for health in general, and the company even based its marketing on that idea. In the 1920s, Guinness picked up on claims its consumers made that having a pint would help them fight all sorts of ailments — fatigue, lack of sleep, general weakness — and made them stronger. Those claims went back to the early 1900s, so the company began to promote its product as a tonic of sorts. It even reached out to medical professionals, promoting the beer the way a pharmaceutical company promotes its drugs. Eventually, doctors began to prescribe Guinness to their patients, including pregnant women.
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