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Who Killed the Recovery Trade? Take Your PickJohn Authers, Bloomberg
Some locals say a bitcoin mining operation is ruining one of the Finger Lakes. Here’s how. NBC
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In this edition you will find:
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A look at the last month of COVID-19
falsehoods
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Animal Politico explains Mexican pot
policy
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PolitiFact looks at how falsehoods
caused the Jan. 6
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By microstock3D/ Shutterstock
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3,190 fact checks were added to the CoronavirusFacts
Alliance database in the first half of 2021, with fact checks about
vaccines dominating the list. The alliance database combines the work of
more than 90 fact-checking organizations from more than 70 countries
contributing fact checks in more than 40 languages.
In the past month, magnetism has taken center stage when it comes to
vaccine falsehoods, with some falsehoods going so far as to claim that
vaccinated people are detectable by Bluetooth. PolitiFact
and Ukrainian fact-checking outlet VoxCheck
debunked this falsehood in May with Myth
Detector in Georgia and Teyit
in Turkey batting it down in June.
June also saw a continuation of people with advanced degrees using/abusing
the societal respect conferred upon their academic achievement to make
unfounded claims about COVID-19. Agence
France Presse knocked down a claim by one of the “disinformation
dozen” about vaccine shedding, which is the false notion that
vaccinated people can shed vaccines and vaccinate the unvaccinated (that’s
not how vaccines work).
There were also a handful of false claims that used the specter of a
prominent anti-vaxxer to gain traction. Aos
Fatos and Agência
Lupa in Brazil, Maldita.es
in Spain, Colombiacheck
in Colombia and Animal
Politico in Mexico all discovered that Luc Montagnier — a French Nobel
laureate who’s made several false claims about COVID-19 — hadn’t claimed
that vaccinated people would die in two years. The quote had been
fabricated from an interview where Montagnier made a separate false claim
that vaccines were creating new COVID-19 variants. That claim is not
supported by science.
As travel picks up in the United States and Europe, several fact checks
knocked down a falsehood that airlines were considering banning vaccinated
passengers. The claims cited rare
instances of blood clots on long haul flights and trumped up fears of
rare blood clots associated with some of the vaccines to justify the ban.
However, fact-checkers in Spain,
Poland,
Brazil
and the United
States all found that airlines are encouraging passengers to get
vaccinated, not banning them.
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AP
Photo/Marco Ugarte, File
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Mexico’s Supreme Judicial Court struck
down that country’s criminalization of marijuana, but confusion remains
about what the decision actually means. Animal Politico used this
explainer to lay out what’s now legal, what’s not, and what are the
possible next steps.
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The origins of the COVID-19 pandemic
have long been a political football. To clear up the debate,
FactCheck.org gave a rundown of all the possible theories, as well as
the evidence supporting or detracting from them.
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List build create sending split valuable
test render table program.
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"Voter fraud gains momentum in Germany," from Politico.eu. A less than
favorable result in a regional East German election is spurring far
right parties to make unfounded claims of voter fraud ahead of federal
elections in September.
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"Punitive laws are failing to curb misinformation
in Africa," from Nieman Lab. IFCN advisory board member Peter
Cunliffe-Jones, along with fellow researchers Alan Finlay and Anya
Schiffrin, looked into anti-misinformation laws and found they do more
to chill all forms of speech rather than cut down on falsehoods.
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If you are a fact-checker and you’d
like your work/projects/achievements highlighted in the next edition, send
us an email at factually@poynter.org
by next Tuesday.
Any corrections? Tips? We’d love to hear from you: factually@poynter.org.
Thanks for reading Factually.
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