Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2024
This week's election: 2024 Czech Senate election
Al Jazeera
Election Date: 28/09/2024
This Senate election is the second and last election to the Senate happening during the term of Petr Fiala's cabinet. The parties in the government coalition and their allies will defend 22 out of 27 seats. Opposition parties hold only two seats for election, while independents hold three seats for election. Czechs went to the polls on the 21st and 22nd of September 2024 in a two-day vote for a third of the seats in Parliament’s upper house, the Senate, and to select their representatives in regional elections. The elections took place as the Czech Republic was recovering from massive floods that hit Central Europe in recent days. The floods claimed at least 24 lives in the region, five of them in the Czech Republic.
#Politics
PolitiFact
False: “Taylor Swift Forced to Cancel Eras Tour Dates Following Endorsement Backlash”.
The article was originally published as satire. News reports did not say that Taylor Swift cancelled any shows in her Eras Tour after endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president in September.
Reuters
False: Multiple buses were used at Harris' rally to transport supporters and increase her rally's crowd size.
Buses at Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ Sept. 12 rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, were used as a security barrier and not for transit, a spokesperson for the local transit system said. Brett Baldeck, Communications Manager at Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), said that the buses, a contingency fleet that is decommissioned and available to use to support for requests from Emergency Management, were used as a security barrier.
PolitiFact
Half-True: Former President Donald Trump “started out with $400 million on a silver platter and then filed for bankruptcy six times.”
Donald Trump received the present-day equivalent of $413 million from his father or his father’s estate over the course of his lifetime, according to a comprehensive New York Times review of the Trump family’s finances in 2018. It wasn’t all available to him when he "started out."He received perhaps $1 million to $2 million of that before being hired to work at the family business. But he always had a reasonable expectation of inheriting a share of his father’s business.Trump’s companies have filed for bankruptcy a total of six times.
#Healthcare
Africa Check
False: Common goosegrass cannot reverse kidney failure.
According to social media posts, a common type of grass can reverse kidney failure “within three months”. But this is false and dangerous information. Kidney failure requires medically proven treatment to avoid death.
Reuters
False: Public health agency’s mpox disclosure proves disease is made up.
Facebook posts shared a screenshot of a headline from right-leaning website Slay News that read: “FDA Admits There's 'Zero Scientific Evidence' That 'Monkeypox Virus' Exists”. A U.S. public health agency’s reply to a freedom of information request saying it does not hold proof of mpox is not evidence the viral disease does not exist, contrary to online claims.
Full Fact
Mostly False: Between 2003 and 2023 there weren't any cases of malaria spread by mosquitoes.
A number of widely shared posts suggest that malaria outbreaks are happening in the “exact places” that a company backed by Bill Gates has been releasing mosquitoes. There were no locally acquired cases of mosquito-transmitted malaria in the US during this time. In 2023 10 such cases were recorded in Florida, Texas, Maryland and Arkansas. There are around 2,000 cases of largely travel-related malaria in the US each year and millions of cases of malaria globally.
Reuters
False: Australia granted UN personnel immunity to ‘force jab’ citizens.
Australian law protects emergency services and members of the country’s military when they are responding to natural disasters like wildfires but does not let soldiers or UN workers coerce anyone to be vaccinated, as suggested in social media posts sharing false headlines.
#Economy
Africa Check
False: Nigeria's state oil company shared locations for much cheaper fuel.
The price of petrol in Nigeria has risen sharply since May 2023 to as high as N897 per litre. However, social media posts containing claims that the NNPC has shared places where it can be bought for as little as N200. A search of the NNPC's official website and social media handles found no evidence of this claim. No credible news agency has reported such an order from the oil company.
Full Fact
False: Sir Keir Starmer is going to means test pensions.
No no evidence can be found for this, and the government has said it isn’t true. It may originate with comments from a former civil servant before the election, which Labour says are not party policy.
#Conflicts
Full Fact
False: A video clip shows nuclear explosions from a NATO strike in Russia.
A video clip of an explosion has been shared thousands of times on X (formerly Twitter) alongside claims that "NATO has nuked Russia". The clip, which has also been shared on Facebook , shows what appears to be a series of large explosions taking place at night. However, there is no evidence the clip shows nuclear bombs, or involves NATO. Reporting on the recent event indicates the clips show a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian military depot holding weapons and ammunition.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: Jack Black's mom helped create the abort system that rescued Apollo 13 astronauts.
Jack Black's mom was Judith Love Cohen, a NASA engineer who helped create the abort-guidance system that rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts. Her engineering career included roles on the teams that created the guidance computer for the Minuteman missile, the Abort-Guidance System in the Lunar Excursion Module for the Apollo space program, the ground system for the Tracking Data, and Relay System Satellite among others.
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