On September 1, 2021, “Deutsche Welle” published an article titled “How much do school teachers earn in Germany and can they be granted gifts?” Its author, Xenia Safronova, a journalist, claims that German teachers are paid 3 to 5 thousand euro per month on average, and this meets the benchmark of «higher than average» in…
September 12, 2021, author Carl Zimmer published in The New York Times the article “A New Company With a Wild Mission: Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth“. A group of scientists led by biologist George Church plans to revive the genome of the Woolly Mammoth and do it within six years. Dr. Church argues that their…
The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE observes elections within all its member states. The ODIHR recently deployed a mission of four experts to Germany for the federal elections on September 26th. Here’s how different media view the work of the OSCE as well as the integrity of German politics. The…
On 16 March 2021, BBC Online reported on negative health effects linked to noise pollution. During the fact check, we learned that vibrations and noises not only irritate a person and cause discomfort but can also lead to negative health consequences such as cardiovascular diseases including hypertension, gastrointestinal ulcers, vegetative disorders, mental illnesses, and hearing…
In our last FactCheck, we concluded that deputy Yevgeny Stupin was completely wrong in his claim that an average pension size in Latvia is 1000 euros. We have also come across the newest report made by the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation which states that in July 2020 an average pension size…
On July 3rd, 2020, the Moscow City Duma held a meeting during which Deputy Yevgeny Stupin presented a draft of federal law on the abolition of pension reform. A video of his speech (in Russian) was posted on the YouTube channel “Совесть Некрасовки” (Сonscience of Nerkasovka). In his report, Mr. Stupin proposed to increase pension…
On November 10, 2020, at 20:28 the Internet version of the Russian edition of “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” published an article with the headline: “To Catch up with Italy Russia has to Fire Half of its Workers”. Anastasia Bashkatova, Deputy Head of the Economics Department of “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” quoted First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov saying that…
We decided to turn to the media about the versions of what happened on August 20, 2020 with the Russian politician Alexei Navalny. We analyzed articles from reliable sources in Germany and Russia and identified the most common positions in the case of the possible poisoning of Alexei Navalny by Novichok. We found contrasting views.…
On October 14, 2020, Fox News posted an article with the headline: “Trump and public health system have saved 2 million lives in coronavirus pandemic.” However, this statement raised our doubts and suspicions. Newt Gingrich, the author, did not provide any statistics: there are no illustrations or links. Firstly, we decided to check the statistics:…
“Generation 0-100: Russian Universities Fail to Offer World Class Education” – our team found an article with this headline on the website of “The National Interest” magazine dated October 29, 2020. Indeed, Russian universities did not manage to get into the top 100 best universities in the world. However, higher educational institutions raised their positions…