Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2024
This week's election: Japanese general election
Reuters
Election Date: 27/10/2024
Japan is set to hold early general elections on October 27, 2024, following the dissolution of the House of Representatives by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Ishiba became prime minister on September 27, 2024, after winning the party leadership election. His predecessor, Fumio Kishida, resigned due to low approval ratings and a party-wide slush fund corruption scandal. Ishiba dissolved the House just eight days after taking office, with the election coming only 26 days later—both marking the shortest timeframes for such events since World War II.
#Politics
PolitiFact
False: “Trump's convictions have all been overturned and he is getting his $500,000,000.00 back!”
In May, a New York jury convicted former President Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to an adult film actor. The judge overseeing the case delayed sentencing until November. Trump has appealed the verdict and is seeking to move it from state court to federal court. Trump lost a civil defamation case and is appealing. Three other cases against him in Georgia, Florida and the District of Columbia continue.
PolitiFact
False: Donald Trump posted on Truth Social it “should be illegal” and is “election interference” for Barack Obama to criticize him.
This isn’t an authentic post from former President Donald Trump. It originated on a parody X account and was labelled there as "satire".
Africa Check
False: Kenya's deputy president resigned ahead of senate impeachment hearing
A letter doing the rounds on social media claims that Rigathi Gachagua has resigned. However, no official resignation has been made or confirmed by the Kenyan government or the media.
Lead Stories
False: The Atlantic ran a story with the headline "To Save Democracy Harris May Need To Steal An Election"
The magazine denied publishing that headline or any such story under it. The manipulated screenshot shared on social media digitally replaced the authentic headline in a 2021 article with a fake one.
Reuters
False: Fact Check: List of presidential candidates endorsed by NYT goes back to 1860.
The New York Times has endorsed candidates in every U.S. presidential election since 1860, contrary to online posts saying its support for U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election is a first in more than half a century.The misleading narrative emerged after a Sept.
#Climate
Lead Stories
False: Purple sky before or after hurricanes indicate HAARP interference.
The university responsible for HAARP has rejected such claims before. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stated that "no technology" can "create, destroy, modify, intensify or steer hurricanes in any way, shape or form." Scientists have written that a combination of natural factors can make the sky appear purple to human eyes.
Lead Stories
Mostly False: Weather projections forecast Hurricane Nadine to hit Florida.
Designated AL94 at the time of writing, a weather system over the Atlantic in mid-October was a disturbance – not a hurricane, according to the National Weather Service. Though AL94 may develop into a hurricane, the storm's projected path as of October 16, 2024, was near the Leeward and Virgin Islands in the northwest Caribbean Islands – not Florida.
#Conflicts
StopFake
False: Polish Military to Handle Mobilization of Ukrainians – United24.
Polish servicemen are not and will not be involved in the Ukrainian mobilization process. Russian propaganda created another fake aimed at discrediting the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the country’s mobilization campaign, using the design style of the Ukrainian multimedia platform United24.
Full Fact
False: An image shows four Israel Defense Forces soldiers with their hands behind their backs captured in southern Lebanon as three Hezbollah fighters look on.
The image was almost certainly created with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Discrepancies with the feet and a weapon give this away.
#Healthcare
FactCrescendo
False: MiraLAX, a medicine for constipation and prescribed by doctors contains Propylene Glycol which is made from petroleum and is highly cancerous.
MiraLAX does not contain Propylene Glycol. It contains Polythene Glycol, which is approved by the FDA and other governing bodies. In many studies, no adverse effects of polythene glycol were found. Even though Propylene Glycol is not used in manufacturing, it is generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the CDC and FDA.
#Nordics
Faktisk
Falsk: En russisk video viser en død soldat i norsk uniform.
Organisasjoner har analysert videoen og kan slå fast at den er redigert og inneholder flere logiske brister som gjør at den må være iscenesatt.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: The movie 'Poltergeist' Featured Real Skeletons as Movie Props.
Craig Reardon a special-effects makeup artist who worked on "Poltergeist," has likewise said on multiple occasions that the skeletons were real, while also offering some additional details about why the art department chose to use real skeletons from a biological supply company rather than replica ones. He stated: "No low-budget B film is going to pay anybody to sculpt a human skeleton, when all you had to do was go to a biological supply house and get a human skeleton. You know, wake up and smell the budget."
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