Most U.S. intelligence agencies assess a spillover from an animal is most likely the origin of COVID-19, but recent news reports say the Energy Department now favors the lab-leak hypothesis. Online posts wrongly claim this means a lab origin has been confirmed.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s chair said an Obama-era rule the Trump administration nixed would not have prevented the derailment of a train in Ohio, as some partisan commentators inaccurately claim. The rule requiring a new electronic braking system for certain trains carrying hazardous cargo did not apply to that train.
The people affected by the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, do not qualify for direct financial aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But FEMA and other federal agencies have been assisting since the accident there in early February. Social media posts have misleadingly claimed that the federal government has denied aid.
Scientists say the experiments Pfizer has performed on the coronavirus are standard for the industry. Baseless claims that the company is mutating the virus for profit, however, have been circulating since the release of a popular undercover video from the conservative activist group Project Veritas.
Billionaire George Soros said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “is likely to be the Republican candidate” in the 2024 presidential race. But social media posts edited Soros’ remarks to falsely claim he endorsed the governor. Soros’ full remarks show that he does not support DeSantis for president and that he hopes for “a Democratic landslide.”
Former President Donald Trump, who has regularly complained about the amount of money South Korea pays the U.S. to maintain American military bases there, falsely claimed this week that he “had a deal [with South Korea] for full payment to us, $Billions, and Biden gave it away.”
President Joe Biden said in April 2022 that some of the funding in a Ukraine aid package that Congress later overwhelmingly approved could be used to pay pensions for Ukrainians amid the ongoing war with Russia. That is not a new development, as several viral tweets have misleadingly claimed in recent days.
The derailment of a freight train carrying toxic chemicals in eastern Ohio has sparked a slew of unfounded claims by conservative commentators. There’s no indication that this incident will rise to the level of a “domestic Chernobyl”; it has been covered steadily by the media; federal and state agencies are monitoring air and water quality and its impact on people and animals.
Responding to a question on what NATO could do to deter Russia’s nuclear threat, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said NATO and its allies should use “preventive actions” against Russia. But the Kremlin and social media posts have misquoted Zelensky, claiming he referred to nuclear strikes when he was referring to economic sanctions against Russia.
Health problems that are reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System after vaccination are not necessarily caused by a vaccine. Yet social media posts distorted a comment from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official about such reports to falsely say he admitted the vaccines cause “debilitating illnesses.”