Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2024
This week's election: Botswana general election
Aljazeera
Election Date: 30/10/2024
On October 30, 2024, Botswana held its general elections to determine the composition of the 13th Parliament and local councils across the nation. The election included all 61 seats in the National Assembly and 609 local council seats, with each position filled through a first-past-the-post voting system. Since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1965, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has continuously held a majority in the National Assembly, governing independently for 58 years. This enduring dominance has made Botswana widely recognized as a dominant-party system.
#Politics
Snopes
True: During an Oct. 27, 2024, rally at New York City's Madison Square Garden, a speaker called Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, a "floating island of garbage."
The speaker, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, said his speech was a stand-up comedy set and the comment was meant as a joke.
PolitiFact
False: A Montana Democratic operative was caught tampering with a ballot box.
The Glacier County sheriff's office investigated an incident in which a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee employee was videotaped appearing to tug at a ballot box. It found the incident "does not constitute a legitimate attempt to tamper with the ballot box."
PolitiFact
False: Former President Donald Trump wore “Proud Boy gang colors” Oct. 27, 2024, at Madison Square Garden.
Former President Donald Trump wore a blue suit and red tie Oct. 27 at his Madison Square Garden rally. He wore a black suit and golden-yellow tie at an Oct. 25 rally in Traverse City, Michigan.
Factly
False: Chinese President Xi Jinping refrained from shaking hands with PM Modi during the BRICS summit.
A video of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Prime Minister Modi is going viral on social media following the 16th BRICS summit, which took place in Kazan, Russia, from 22 to 24 October 2024. There is a viral video being shared with the claim above. However, the viral video is incomplete. The video was recorded during the 16th BRICS Summit held in October 2024. Multiple media reports highlighted the video showing Xi Jinping shaking hands with PM Modi.
#Healthcare
PolitiFact
False: JD Vance stated, “We're bankrupting a lot of hospitals by forcing these hospitals to provide care for people who don't have the legal right to be in our country.”
JD Vance blamed immigration for stressing rural hospitals and causing some to close. However, this overlooks the reasons reported by these hospitals and studied by researchers. Low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates, along with decreasing patient use, contribute to hospital closures. Hospitals have fixed costs, such as for running emergency departments, and must have a high enough patient volume to cover them. Just because people are not legally in the U.S. doesn’t mean they lack access to health insurance or other means to pay for hospital care.
USA Today
False: Supreme Court ruled COVID-19 vaccines cause 'irreparable' damage in a Howeverwin for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Supreme Court has made no such ruling contrary to the social media posts purporting this claim. It hasn’t released any opinions during its current term, and none of its decisions since the pandemic match the post’s description.
Full Fact
Mostly False: £280 million of taxpayers' money is going to Lilly to fund the NHS weight loss injection trial.
The government will not be paying the pharmaceutical firm Lilly £280 million to run a widely reported five-year trial into the impact of weight loss injections, despite confusion online. The Department of Health and Social Care also confirmed that the £279 million will be funded “entirely by Lilly”.
#Climate
USA Today
False: Study shows global warming is a 'hoax'.
The study in question states Earth has been warmer than it is now for most of the last 485 million years. But rather than showing global warming is a "hoax," the paper reports modern global warming is proceeding at an unprecedented rate.
#Economy
Snopes
Half-True: Retailers Walmart and Aldi announced a return to “Trump-era” pricing for the 2024 holiday season.
Walmart and Aldi announced Thanksgiving deals for 2024 they described as "pre-inflation" or "2019" pricing. However neither company mentioned former President Donald Trump in their news releases, and Walmart explicitly denied that Trump's presidency played any role in its pricing. Rather, the phrase "Trump-era" in this context originated with conservative media and pundits.
#Nordics
Faktisk
Halvt sant: Barne- og ungdomskriminaliteten skjøt i været da Frp hadde justisministeren. Barne- og ungdomskriminaliteten holdt seg stabil fra 2007 til 2015, men skjøt deretter i været.
Det er riktig at ungdomskriminaliteten økte fra 2015 hvis man tar hensyn til tallene fra politiet om påtaleavgjorte anmeldelser for de under 18 år. Men 2015 var en «bunn», og en større økning fant sted fra 2022 til 2023 da Ap ledet regjeringen.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: Goats have rectangular pupils.
A 2015 study at the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that the evolutionary choice between vertical and horizontal slit pupils comes down to whether you are a predator or prey. Predatory animals with vertical slit pupils, like cats and many snakes, can maintain sharp focus across the horizontal field of view and more accurately judge distance to their prey. Horizontal slit pupils, on the other hand, sacrifice image sharpness at the left and right edges in return for wider peripheral vision. This gives prey animals such as horses and sheep a better chance of spotting predators.
Factiverse GPT - Now available for anyone using ChatGPT!
Concerned about hallucinations in ChatGPT? Use our GPT for free and verify information. We search in real-time in Google, Bing and Semantic Scholar simultaneously and propose the most credible sources. Try our GPT now!
Check out the Factiverse Blog
Want to know more about the world of misinformation and fact-checking? If so, make sure to out the Factiverse Blog! We explore these topics to give our readers a better understanding of these topics while also giving guidelines on how organisations can protect themselves. Click here to look at our list of posts.