On 1 Octobre 2020, the Dutch edition of Vice magazine claimed that fans of horror movies show better psychological resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. It based its claim on a study conducted by the university of Chicago, Pennsylvania State university and Aarhus university. The claim turns out to be mostly true. The study was conducted…
On 4 November 2020, Zdravko Počivalšek, Slovenian Minister of Economic Development and Technology, tweeted: “The assessments of the international financial institutions show that the measures taken so far have made it possible to maintain social stability and jobs.” We rate this claim as mostly true. In a tweet from the official account of the Slovenian…
In this fact check we looked at one of many highly controversial Tweets about climate change posted by US president Donald J. Trump. In November of 2012 he stated that “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive”. We have found this claim to…
In October, several newspapers published articles with headlines like “Pope Francis backs same-sex civil unions“. The claim is based on previously undisclosed footage from an interview with Pope Francis in the new documentary “Francesco” which we have watched for our fact check. After extensive research we assess the claim as mostly false. “Francesco” is a…
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russian Federation, represented by Sergey Lavrov, the Head of the Ministry, imposed sanctions against Germany and France on the case of Alexey Navalny. This information was reported by the Russian News Agency (TASS) on November 12, 2020. On November 12, 2020, Sergey Lavrov, head of the Ministry of Foreign…
“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…
During a TV interview, aired on December 3rd, 2020, on Digi24, the former Prime Minister of Romania, Ludovic Orban, stated that during the month of November, there have been more COVID-19 tests done than in previous months. This statement is true, according to official statistics. Context Ludovic Orban, leader of the National Liberal Party, was…
On the website of TVP Info, the Polish public television news channel has been published an article entitled “Scientists: leftovers of contraceptive pills go to water and poison the environment”. Due to the very complex nature of this topic our team decided to focus on two key statements from this article. First of all: “Research…
In a headline on Friday 19 June 2020 Belgian public broadcaster VRT NWS wrote that COVID-19 may cause more severe symptoms to people with blood type A. According to the article, people with this blood group therefore run a higher risk of serious symptoms when infected with the coronavirus. This conclusion came from an international…
The leader of the Slovenian National Party (SNS), Zmago Jelinčič Plemeniti, stated that there are 400 employees at the Ministry of Culture and that almost 30 years ago there were only around 40. The number of employees claimed during the special session of the Slovenian Parliament Jelinčič’s, is almost two times bigger than the actual…