On 20 October 2020 Slovenian TV presenter Marko Potrč claimed in his Facebook post that the tests performed to detect the presence of the virus (PCR) do not tell if someone is actually infected or even contagious. He said that dr. Lejko Zupanc, infectious disease specialist, also had to admit this on national television. This…
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…
“A recent job market study shows that about five percent of male Chechen immigrants living in Austria since 2016 have a job” states unzensuriert.at. As claim source the article mentions a study conducted by the Public Employment Service Austria (AMS) – this is false. Moreover, the authors of the actual study do not fully confirm…
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that the anti-Covid drug will begin to be distributed in just over a month: “If the final stages of preparation of the Oxford-Irbm Pomezia-AstraZeneca vaccine will be completed in the coming weeks, the first doses will be available in early December. The statement, taken from the book “Why Italy…
Donald Trump’s Twitter posting on 9 July 2020 establishes a correlation between the corona tests performed in a country and the confirmed Covid-19 cases in that country. Explicitly, he claims for the USA: “For the 1/100th time, the reason we show so many Cases, compared to other countries that haven’t done nearly as well as…
Domestic violence cases have jumped by 30 per cent during lockdown in France. Being confined at home with abusive partners increases the risk to victims. A TV report on Channel One Russia, covering the situation in France, included the claim that using code word “mask-19” is a common practice among French women to let people…
On May 3, 2020, Monica Anisie, the Romanian Minister of Education and Research, claimed in a TV interview at Digi24 that approximately 250,000 pre-university Romanian students do not have access to technology, and as a result, they are not able to attend the online courses during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine. This statement is mostly false,…
On the 13th of March, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an article concerning banning the pesticide mancozeb. In the article Jeroen Voorbraak, director of UPL Breda, states that mancozeb is a relatively harmless substance and that it has not been shown to cause Parkinson’s disease or to have hormone-disrupting properties. His claim turns out to…
On April 30, Marcel Ciolacu, the interim president of the Social Democratic Party, the main opposition party in Romania, stated on his Facebook page: “[…] The maximum level of fines in Romania is the highest in Europe, 6 times the average net salary, and the total sanctions applied reach 570 million lei […].”