Your weekly-fact checks
#Elections2024
This week's election: 2024 Mozambican general election
France24
Election Date: 09/10/2024
Mozambique is holding general elections on October 9, 2024. The ruling party, FRELIMO, has been in power since 1975 and is expected to win despite increasing concerns over authoritarianism and impunity. The opposition claims that past elections, including the 2019 general and 2023 local elections, were rigged in FRELIMO’s favour. Protests erupted after the 2023 local elections, with allegations of fraud leading to police violence and at least three deaths. Many see a FRELIMO victory as inevitable, reflecting a widespread lack of confidence in the electoral process.
#Climate
Reuters
False: Hurricane Milton is a product of weather control.
As Hurricane Milton barreled towards Florida's battered Gulf Coast this week, a misleading online narrative suggested that weather control was at play because hurricanes do not form in the Gulf of Mexico then travel eastward. Experts in hurricane meteorology said hurricane modification has never been possible due to the size and power of the storms. They also said it is rare but not unprecedented for tropical cyclones, which can strengthen to become tropical storms and hurricanes, to form in the Gulf of Mexico and track eastward.
The New York Times
False: Hurricane Helene was steered to destroy homes in North Carolina to make way for a lithium mine.
Officials from several shellshocked communities near Rutherford County convened to talk about the extensive damage and ongoing search-and-rescue efforts. But within hours, a conspiracy theory took hold. Social media posts claimed that the meeting was a secret discussion about bulldozing, confiscating or even selling land for profit or to mine lithium. The county commission chairman has categorically denied this and stated it is misinformation.
Lead Stories
False: Patent application proves Hurricane Helene was created artificially.
Posts on social media suggest that the existence of a patent application for a so-called "hurricane and tornado control device" proves Hurricane Helene and other natural disasters are created artificially. The social media posts are false. The patent application in question was abandoned as of May 8, 2003. Also, it proposed a strategy for diverting storms by projecting sound waves – not creating storms.
#Politics
USA Today
False: Former Trump supporters in Harris ad are actually Democratic actors.
The couple in Harris' ad debunked the claim. They said they are farmers and lifelong Republicans who previously voted for former President Donald Trump, not Democratic actors. Sky News issued a correction on the broadcast before the Instagram post was made.
PolitiFact
False: Image shows a photo of former President Donald Trump wading through floodwater after Hurricane Helene.
Former President Donald Trump visited Valdosta, Georgia, on Sept. 30, to see how Hurricane Helene had damaged the area. But an image circulating online that purportedly shows him wading through floodwaters past his knees isn’t authentic. It has been discovered to be AI-generated.
PolitiFact
Half-True: The Democratic Party stated "When New Hampshire gubernatorial nominee Kelly Ayotte served on two companies’ boards, one “laid off 18,000 workers” and the other “laid off 1,200 American workers, moving jobs overseas.”
New Hampshire Republican gubernatorial nominee Kelly Ayotte served on several companies’ boards, including Blackstone since 2019 and Caterpillar from 2017 to 2023. Blackstone had a joint venture with hospitality company MGM Resorts International, which laid off 18,000 workers in 2020, when travel cratered during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Blackstone’s joint venture with MGM involved managing MGM’s real estate holdings, not its hospitality business, so it did not steer MGM’s layoff decision. Caterpillar laid off 1,200 U.S. workers during Ayotte’s board tenure, and many of those jobs moved to other countries. But this ignores that Caterpillar’s overall U.S. employment increased during Ayotte’s board term.
#Healthcare
AFP
False: The COVID-19 jab causes more cancer in young people, particularly breast cancer.
Breast cancer rates among patients aged 20-29 have increased in Canada over the past two decades, leading to calls for more research on the causes. However, there is no evidence to support online claims linking the uptick to COVID-19 vaccines; while the pandemic did affect access to preventative screening, data do not show a correlation between the shot and diagnoses.
APP
False: Vaccines including chickenpox, MMR and hepatitis contain aborted fetal cells and DNA.
Vaccines are developed using human cell lines but no fetal tissue ends up in the vaccines. The misunderstanding came from the fact that some vaccines were developed using historical cell lines derived from two elective abortions in the 1960s. Cells from those lines have been replicated in labs for decades, creating a tool in which to grow the viruses needed for vaccines.
Snopes
False: As Minnesota governor, Tim Walz signed a law allowing babies born alive after failed abortions to be left to die.
On Oct. 1, 2024, during the vice-presidential debate, Republican U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio claimed that his Democratic opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had signed a bill into law that let babies born alive after attempted abortions die. The claim is based on an incorrect interpretation of a bill Walz signed into law. Specifically, the Minnesota law called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, was passed in 2015, before Walz was governor. That law recognized the rights of "born alive infant[s] as a result of an abortion." In 2023, Walz signed a bill into law that updated some of the wording in that bill and repealed certain requirements. Anti-abortion activists used that edit, which removed the phrase "preserve the life and health of the born alive infant" from the bill, to attack Walz.
#Disasters
Politifact
False: The Federal Emergency Management Agency “blocked a runway” at a South Carolina airport and “halted” hurricane relief flights.
Organizers of the Runway Relief Project, staged at South Carolina’s Greenville Downtown Airport, collected donated supplies and arranged flights to distribute the donations to North Carolina’s Hurricane Helene victims. The group halted delivery flights Oct. 4 and stopped accepting donations Oct. 6 because it had received more than needed for now, organizers said. FEMA had nothing to do with that decision, organizers said in a video on Facebook. A little-used secondary airport runway was closed for three days to accommodate a FEMA-contracted medical group, but that didn’t affect flights in or out, an airport spokesperson said.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
False: A rare "zonkey," or zebra-donkey hybrid, was born in Kenya.
In April 2020, the conservation group Sheldrick Wildlife Trust made a charming announcement: a "zonkey," or zebra-donkey hybrid, had been born at Chyulu National Park in Kenya. According to the conservation group's announcement of the birth, the foal's mother wandered out of Tsavo East National Park during spring 2019 into a nearby community, and joined up with a heard of domestic cattle. She stayed there for weeks. But once the story hit the news, conservationists were asked to intervene. The mare was sedated and moved to her new home at Chyulu National Park, where she was frequently spotted at a watering hole, taking advantage of a salt lick. But in the early months of 2020, she was seen with an unusual-looking foal tagging along.
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