Paul Ryan Refuses to Tip Elderly Black Waiter
Claim:  Rep. Paul Ryan refused to tip an elderly waiter at a Washington-area restaurant.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, April 2013] This is being circulated on Face Book and I am curious to know if it's true.  Rep. Paul Ryan refused to tip an elderly waiter today at a Washington-area soul food restaurant. According to witnesses at Auntie Ruth's Bistro in Northeast D.C., Ryan stiffed his server on the grounds of "personal austerity" and proceeded to tell the 72-year-old man to "get a real job." Origins:  On 8 April 2013, the Daily Currant published an article stating that Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who serves as House Budget Committee Chairman, had refused to leave a tip for an elderly black waiter after dining at a Washington-area restaurant: article According to witnesses at Auntie Ruth's Bistro in Northeast D.C., Ryan stiffed his server on the grounds of "personal austerity" and proceeded to tell the 72-year-old man to "get a real job." When Ryan attempted to leave the premises without paying any tip at all, [waiter James] Anderson politely asked Ryan if he was satisfied  with the service. "Listen, I was satisfied with the service," Ryan explained, "but I'm not paying you a cent. You know why? Because you're a taker. I've already paid for my meal. I've spent the money I'm legally obligated to spend  and here you are begging for more. "Why don't you go out and get yourself a real job? Get an education and then go be an engineer or something. Don't sit around doing shitty jobs your whole life and then expect me to pay for your bad decisions. "You don't like the fact that you work a minimum wage job? Tough. You should have used your parents' inheritance money to get a college education instead of wasting it on booze and women."' By the end of the day links and excerpts referencing this article were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered it mistaking it for a genuine news article.  However, the article was just a bit of political humor which satirized Ryan's political stances on economic issues (such as his proposed "austerity budget"). austerity budget As noted in the Daily Currant's "About" page, that web site deals strictly in satire: About The Daily Currant is an English language online satirical newspaper that covers global politics, business, technology, entertainment, science, health and media.   Q. Are your news stories real? A. No. Our stories are purely fictional. However they are meant to address real-world issues through satire and often refer and link to real events happening in the world. Last updated:  8 April 2013
One of the most common Republican attack lines against President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package has been that the money isn't flowing to the nation's economy quickly enough. If the bill's supporters really wanted to help the economy quickly, the argument goes, they should have spent the stimulus money right away rather than using it on projects that will take more time to get up and running.Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the No. 2 Senate Republican, made that point on ABC'sThis Week With George Stephanopouloson July 12, 2009.The reality is (the stimulus) hasn't helped yet, Kyl told Stephanopoulos. Only about 6.8 percent of the money has actually been spent.It's a matter of opinion and interpretation whether the stimulus has helped the economy since it passed in February. So we won't rule on that. But Kyl is mostly right about the amount that's been spent.The Obama administration publishes updated spending figures on Recovery.gov, the administration's Web site tracking the stimulus money. It includesa graphshowing the week-by-week trend in spending, which shows how it has steadily increased.As of July 3, $60.4 billion in stimulus money had been spent, according to the chart. If you divide this by the full stimulus amount of $787 billion, you get 7.7 percent  a bit higher than Kyl's 6.8 percent, but in the ballpark. It appears that Kyl was a few weeks out of date in his statistics. The figure spent by June 19 was 6.7 percent; in the subsequent two weeks of reported data, the government shelled out an additional $7.5 billion, boosting the percentage slightly.But on the larger point, Kyl is accurate: A relatively small portion of the stimulus has been spent. So we find his claim Mostly True. In April 2021, an image went viral on social media platforms that was represented as follows:"This is not a painting. It is the most detailed image of a human cell to date, obtained via radiography, nuclear MRI, and cryoelectronic microscopy." As we'll explain below, that description is completely inaccurate. First, here's an example of the miscaptioned image as posted on Facebook in late 2022:  Contrary to what the caption claims, this is a painting of sorts -- a digital illustrationby an artist named Russell Kightley. It is not the most detailed image of a human cell to date -- in fact, it is, in Kightley's words, a "generalized animal cell," not specifically a human cell. Nor was the image obtained via radiography, nuclear MRI, or cryoelectronic microscopy. All of that was made up out of whole cloth. Kightley created the image with graphics software. digital illustration Russell Kightley As Kightley has written on his blog, the image has repeatedly gone viral since April 2021, almost never with an accurate description or proper credit to the artist (AFP fact-checked viral versions of the image in July 2021). Kightley wrote: has written on his blog AFP fact-checked The image was created twenty years ago for an educational poster for BioCam. It took six weeks of full-time work to create using Painter (Fractal Design's Painter as it was, now it's managed by Corel). Since then, it's appeared in lots of places, including Richard Dawkins's book, The Greatest Show on Earth (plates 12-13 c). It's available on prints and merchandise and for licensing (publication, academic use, etc.). If you want to print it out for your home or office you can buy the digital file here. If you want it for teaching, you can get the 700-pixel file here. BioCam prints and merchandise 700-pixel file Of the conception and design of the illustration, Kightley wrote: I wanted it to look like an opened jewelry box, for the glint and sense of wonder at the inner workings. The colors are arbitrary, but I've used greenish-blue for plasma membranes and red or purple for DNA for many years. It's a generalized animal (including human) cell, with no specializations and was designed as a basic biology teaching tool. I have spent many years creating cell and virus illustrations and animations, including pioneering work on animating the HIV life cycle back in 1990-1991, where I created internal cellular landscapes (using electronic paint on a Quantel Paintbox) and originated this style of illustration. You can learn more about the artist and view more of his work on RussellKightey.com. RussellKightey.com "Animal Cell on White by Russell Kightley." Russell Kightley - Website, https://russell-kightley.pixels.com/featured/animal-cell-on-white-russell-kightley.html. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. "Illustration of Animal Cell Misrepresented as 'Most Detailed Image of Human Cell.'" Fact Check, 27 July 2021, https://factcheck.afp.com/http%253A%252F%252Fdoc.afp.com%252F9GD4Z3-6. Kightley, Russell. "Animal Cell Goes Viral AGAIN." Russell Kightley, 25 July 2021, https://www.russellkightley.com/post/animal-cell-goes-viral-again. "Russelly." Russell Kightley, https://www.russellkightley.com/russelly. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. On 2 June 2015, New York firefighter Michael O'Connell took to Facebook to ask social media users for help in locating a helmet that had been stolen from his house a few years prior. O'Connell posted a photograph of his son with the helmet and explained that he had worn it throughout his FDNY career, including during 9/11 and its aftermath: Facebook   This was my FDNY helmet I wore my entire career including 9/11/01. It was stolen from my home a while back. I know it's a long shot but if enough people share maybe it turns up or is sent back so I can keep it in my family! Thanks! The NYC Wire Fire Facebook page helped spread O'Connell's message by resharing his post with the caption, "In case anyone comes across this ... maybe the thief is stupid enough to try to sell on eBay." Within a week, the message reportedly reached more than 8 million people and had been reshared hundreds of thousands of times. Unfortunately, despite the wide dissemination of this Facebook post, it did not result in the return of O'Connell's FDNY helmet. Facebook reportedly AM New York reported on 24 June 2015, a few weeks after the Facebook post went viral, that while O'Connell had not been reunited with his helmet, he did receive an outpouring of support from the community and two replica helmets from "good Samaritans hoping to sooth the sting" of his loss: reported Retired firefighter Michael O'Connell's social media campaign to retrieve his stolen FDNY helmet has gotten him the next best thing -- two replicas thanks to some good Samaritans. "There are still amazing people in this world!," O'Connell said. O'Connell, 39, recently turned to Facebook to track down the significant memento that he wore at Ground Zero following 9/11 and hoped to leave to his three children. What came back instead were two painstakingly created replica helmets from good Samaritans hoping to soothe the sting of his loss and an avalanche of human kindness and compassion. "I'm taking the good out of this story, not the bad," said O'Connell, who was forced to retire from the FDNY after being diagnosed with sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that attacks the lungs and lymphatic system, in 2007. "We live in an amazing world. So many people are willing to help. I hope people recognize this more than all the hate out there," he said. Although this FDNY firefighter's message was originally posted in June 2015, social media users have continued to share his plea on Facebook over the ensuing years. In April 2019, for example, a screenshot of O'Connell's message that was posted by the "Ramsey, New Jersey Volunteer Fire Department" racked up more than 600,000 shares. Ramsey, New Jersey Volunteer Fire Department When viewers learned that this message was nearly four years old by the time they encountered it in April 2019, they were left wondering if O'Connell had ever been reunited with his firefighter helmet. Unfortunately, that's not the case. O'Connell told us in April 2019: "I appreciate everyones support in this matter. Unfortunately, my helmet was never returned! Hoping that it will make its way back home one day as I am a retired FF who has fallen sick to my work on September 11th and this was the helmet that I wore that day and throughout my career!" Stepansky, Joseph.  "FDNY Firefighter's Helmet Worn During 9/11 Stolen from Long Island Home."
  New York Daily Post.  3 June 2015. Feeney, Sheila Anne.  "Retired FDNY Firefighter Michael O'Connell Searching for 9/11 Helmet."
  AM New York.  3 June 2015. Feeney, Sheila Anne.  "Retired FDNY Smoke Eater Michael O'Connell Receives Two Helmets for the One He Lost."
  AM New York.  24 June 2015. In June 2018, the Feedy TV web site published an article headlined "HIV Infected Needles Found in Public: Take Only 2 Minutes of Your Time to Save Your Life." The text of the article recounted supposedly recent incidents of unsuspecting persons being jabbed with HIV-infected needles left in movie theater seats in various cities: article Recently, a girl who went to the movies, sat down in one of the theater seats, and felt a stabbing pain. She quickly stood up and found the needle of a medical syringe sticking out of the seat. There was also a note that said, You have been infected with HIV. The Centers for Disease Control reports that similar events have taken place in several other cities recently. All of the needles tested HAVE been positive for HIV. The CDC also reports that needles have been found in the coin return areas of pay phones and soda machines. This article was nothing more than a modern recounting of an urban legend about "AIDS terrorists" randomly pricking victims with HIV-infected needles in theaters and other public places, a legend that first hit the Internet two decades ago: [Collected on the Internet, 1998] Warning - MUST READ Be careful the next time you go to a cinema. These people could be anywhere!! An experience of a friend of my brother's wife left me speechless. Please do send this out to everyone you know. This incident occurred in Bombay's Metro cinema (Among the best in town). They were a group of 6-7 College girls & they went to the theater to see a movie. During the show one of the girls felt a slight pinprick but did not pay much attention to it. After sometime that place began to itch. So she scratched herself and then saw a bit of blood on her hands. She assumed that she had caused it. At the end of the show, her friend noticed a sticker on her dress and read the caption. It read "Welcome to the world of AIDS". She tried to pass it off as a practical joke but when she went for a blood test a couple of weeks later (just to be sure), she found herself HIV Positive. When she complained to the cops, they mentioned that her story was one of the many such cases they had received. It seems the operator uses a syringe to transfer a bit of his/her infected blood to the person sitting ahead of him/her. A horrible experience for the victim as also the family & friends. The WORST bit is that the person who does it gains NOTHING where as the victim loses EVERYTHING. So, be careful . . . [Collected on the Internet, 1998] PLEASE CHECK YOUR CHAIRS WHEN GOING TO THE MOVIE THEATRES!!!! An incident occured when a friend's co-worker went to sit in a chair and something was poking her. She then got up and found that it was a needle with a little note at the end. It said, "Welcome to the real world, you're "HIV POSITIVE". Doctors tested the needle and it was HIV POSITIVE. We don't know which theatre this happened at, but it happened in Hawaii. "BE CAUTIOUS WHEN GOING TO THE MOVIES!" IF YOU MUST GO TO THE MOVIES, PLEASE, PLEASE CHECK!!!!! One of the safest way is NOT sticking your hands between the seats, but moving the seat part way up and down a few times and REALLY LOOK!!!!!!! Most of us just plop down into the seats. [Collected on the Internet, 2001] PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY! IT MIGHT SAFE YOUR LIFE! This is happening in Montreal. A couple of weeks ago, in a movie theater, a person sat on something sharp in one of the seats. When she stood up to see what it was, a needle was found poking through the seat with an attached note saying, "You have been infected with HIV." The Centers for Disease Control reports similar events have taken place in several other cities recently. All of the needles tested HAVE been positive for HIV. The CDC also reports that needles have been found in the coin return areas of pay phones and soda machines. Everyone is asked to use extreme caution when confronted with these types of situations. All public chairs should be thoroughly but safely inspected prior to any use. A thorough visual inspection is considered a bare minimum. Furthermore, they ask that everyone notify their family members and friends of the potential dangers, as well. Thank you. The previous information was sent from the Regina City Police Department to all of the local governments in the Saskatchewan area and was interdepartmentally dispersed. We were asked to pass this to as many people as possible. This is very important! Just think you could save somebody's life, just by passing this on. Please take a Couple of seconds of your time and pass this on. Thank you for your precious time and consideration! [Collected on the Internet, 2002] HIV Warning A few weeks ago in a movie theater in Melbourne a person sat on something that was poking out of one of the seats. When she got up to see what it was she found a needle sticking out of the seat with a note attached saying... "You have just been infected by HIV". The Disease Control Centre in Melbourne reports many similar incidents have occurred in many other Australian cities recently. All tested needles ARE HIV Positive. The Centre also reports that needles have been found in the cash dispensers in ATMs. We ask everyone to use extreme caution when faced with this kind of situation. All public chairs/seats should be inspected with vigilance and caution before use. 17 people have been tested positive in the Western suburbs alone in the last 2 months!!! A careful visual inspection should be enough. In addition they ask that each of you pass this message along to all members of your family and your friends of the potential danger. We all have to be careful at public places! This is very important. Just think about saving a life of someone even you don't know by forwarding this message. Please, take a few seconds of your time to pass it along. In all the time since this rumor's initial appearance time we've turned up no confirmed AIDS-laden needle attacks on moviegoers have been reported in Bombay, Hawaii, Dallas, Paris, or anywhere else in the world. We know of only two related incidents, neither of which proved to involve any deliberate intent to infect an innocent victim with HIV: A Louisiana man sat on a needle in a theater in Baton Rouge in December, 1996, and sued the facility over the incident, but there was no note welcoming him to the world of AIDS or any indication of his contracting any infection. An October 2005 report from Athens, Georgia, involved a woman who said she sat upon a needle that had been duct-taped to a movie theater seat, but since then she also has evidenced no symptoms of HIV infection. (In the latter case, although the syringe contained a substance that appeared to be dried blood, it was too small a sample for police to be able to determine what it was or whether it carried a disease.) One of the many versions of this warning claims to be one circulated by the Dallas Police Department. Not only didn't that institution originate the warning, but since its appearance officers there have been kept busy fielding inquiries about this hoax: "It's all false," said Sgt. Jim Chandler, a Dallas police spokesman. "This has not happened, and we would ask people to stop forwarding this message to their friends because it's creating situations where police departments and emergency personnel are having to respond to inquiries to a situation that has not happened." What we have here is an urban legend trading on our fears of catching AIDS. Cautionary tales about hapless bystanders contracting an infectious disease became all the rage in the 1990s. Another such scare has to do with addicts leaving HIV-contaminated needles in the coin returns of pay phones. See our "Slots of Fun" page for more about this related legend. Slots of Fun This particular pin prick story is a version of the better known "AIDS Mary" legend. (In "AIDS Mary," the "Welcome to the world of AIDS" communication is typically imparted either through a gift emblazoned with that message being left for the victim or found scrawled in lipstick on the bathroom mirror.) AIDS Mary AIDS Mary has been scaring the bejeebers out of us at least since the early 1980s. The pin prick legend, however, isn't all that new either, with the HIV version of it having its roots in an 1989 incident in New York City. The legend in its current incarnation (teenage girls in darkened theaters jabbed with needles) dates back to a much older non-HIV story, one rampant in the New Orleans area in the 1930s. Toothsome young girls were told to beware of Needle Men. Young ladies were strictly instructed to sit at the end of the aisle in moviehouses, not in the middle, lest they attract the attention of white slavers working in pairs who would sit down beside the girl, one on each side, inject her with morphine, and carry her out of the theatre and into a life of shame. The New Orleans Needle Men rumor circulated in another form besides the "white slavers after young girls"  others feared these syringe-armed fiends were in fact medical students harvesting cadavers for dissection. Women jabbed by them would quickly succumb to the poison contained in those needles, with their lifeless bodies soon afterwards delivered to a local teaching hospital. Such deadly attacks were said to take place in theaters, but also on the street. Though "Needle Man" scares rippled through New Orleans at various times in the 1920s and 1930s, each time sending women into hysterics, there was never any credible reason to believe such men existed. Women weren't disappearing at a furious rate, nor were gals who'd fallen into lives of prostitution afterwards asserting they'd been overcome via injection and abducted. A slightly different yet inexplicably more frightening version of the pin prick legend began circulating in the early spring of 1998. According to it, young people partying in clubs or at raves run the risk of being jabbed with an HIV-loaded needle and then afterwards finding a "Welcome to reality  you now have AIDS" message stuffed into a pocket or affixed to them by way of a sticker. This warning has so far circulated in Philadelphia, New York City, San Diego, Oakland, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Mexico, Australia, Ecuador, and Germany, each time passed along as something that had already happened to others locally: Do you any of you guys like to go clubbing? Well you might want to think twice after this message. Just in case you don't already know, there is a certain group of people with stickers that say "Welcome to our world." Once this sticker is stuck on you, you contract the AIDS virus because it is filled with tiny needles carrying the infected blood. This has been happening at many dance clubs (even DV8 and Beatbox) and raves. Being cautious is not enough because the person just chooses anyone, and I mean anyone, as his/her victim. So you could just be dancing the night away and not even realize the sticker had been stuck on you. It sounds too demented to be true, but it's the truth. In fact my sister's friend knows someone who just recently contracted the virus in this manner. The world isn't safe anymore. Please pass this on to everyone and anyone you know. Wherever this rumor goes, it has a significant impact on the local bar scene. In August 1998 one popular Toronto nightclub estimated its business to be down by 50%. In March 1998 a popular dance club in San Diego was similarly affected when the story swept through there. People hear this story and stay away in droves. Police in each of these cities have investigated the rumors and found nothing. The clubs named in the rumors similarly report they know nothing of any attacks. Okay, so this isn't happening in movie houses, at popular dance clubs or at raves. Where did this HIV-loaded needle story come from? Keep in mind that although there have at various times been random attacks with needles, none have resulted in infection being passed to victims. That part is myth. Now for the truth of it: For a few weeks in the fall of 1989, a group of Black teenagers (mostly girls) scared the pants off the denizens of New York City by running about jabbing pins into the necks of 41 random white females. Media coverage escalated the general public's fears as it was repeatedly stated the pins were tainted with AIDS. Within a week the kids responsible were found and arrested, and it was at that time police discovered there was no basis to the reports of the AIDS virus being part of these attacks. The hooligans responsible admitted it was just a fun game to them, run up to a white woman, stick her with a pin, see her reaction, then run off. Possibly inspired by the 1989 panic in New York City, for three weeks in 1990 a Black man terrorized white and hispanic women in that city by hitting them in the legs and buttocks with dart-like missiles fired from a homemade blowgun. More than 50 women were hit in this fashion before the man responsible was caught. When asked why the attacks, the assailant made a rambling statement to the effect that short skirts were immoral and "people from the islands shoot women who wear provocative clothing with darts to punish them ... they also throw them sometimes into volcanoes." (Good thing this nut didn't live in Las Vegas, else the volcano at the Mirage would have been standing room only.) Kids have since gotten the idea this is a cool game to play. In 1995 a 13-year-old boy brought a hypodermic syringe to Mount Pleasant Area Secondary School (Pennsylvania) and proceeded to jab 28 classmates with it. The boy was charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment and possession of a weapon on school property and was turned over to juvenile authorities pending a hearing. In 1997 two teenage lads at Exeter-West Greenwich (Rhode Island) jabbed 32 other students with a medical lancet. Meant to be a "playful prank" (stabbing someone with anything isn't considered playful in my book), the state Health Department took the matter very seriously, ordering blood tests and vaccinations against Hepatitis B for all the victims. The boys responsible were suspended and criminal charges were brought against them. Earlier in 1997, 18 Lecanto Middle School (Florida) pupils were attacked by five schoolmates wielding lancets. The perpetrators were suspended for ten days and medical tests were run on their victims. Again, it was only a meanspirited prank  no viruses were communicated in the attacks. Robberies have been carried out by syringe-wielding robbers who claim to be armed with the AIDS virus and willing to stick anyone who gets in their way with the infected needle. It has to be stressed that though various robbers and muggers have claimed to have been so armed, thus far this has never proved out to be anything more than an empty threat. All syringes so employed have tested out as perfectly clean. Even so, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that claiming to be armed with an AIDS-tainted needle would generate a lot of cooperation from the people you're trying to rob. Expect to see this "weapon" become even more common as time marches on. It's not all sweetness and light, however. On 20 May 1999, WBFF/WNUV of Baltimore, Maryland, reported on a midday attack upon an unnamed Towson, Maryland, woman. She had been checking her oil at a gas station when she was approached by a man who asked her for money. The victim described what happened next: I said I didn't have any money. I said I only had a dollar. He said that would do. He put one arm around me and kissed my cheek, he put another arm around me and stabbed me with a needle, and said welcome to reality you have HIV. The victim's description led police to a panhandler known to frequent the area. He was found with a syringe on him. (Click here to read WBFF's report about this incident.) here In January 2000, the attacker earned a three-year prison sentence for his crime. The victim is not HIV-positive. There has been at least one verified HIV-positive syringe attack of the non-random variety. It happened in Australia in 1990, with the victim being a prison guard at Sydney's Long Bay Jail. Gary Pearce opened a security gate for an inmate known to be HIV-positive and in doing so turned his back for a second. He felt a jab in his buttock. He turned to knock a blood-filled syringe away just as the inmate, Graham Farlow, shouted "AIDS" and ran off. Pearce rushed to a nearby office where the wound was sterilised. To no avail however. Despite the 1-in-200 chance that a stick injury from an HIV-infected needle would produce a positive result, he tested HIV positive two months after the attack. Pearce died on 30 August 1997 of an AIDS-related illness. Farlow had died in 1991. This attack plus a spate of supposedly HIV-loaded needle robberies (the robberies at needlepoint were real, but the HIV part was never proved), prompted the Australian government to introduce legislation covering such offenses. Since the victim didn't die within a year and a day of the pricking, the attacker couldn't be charged with murder under the old laws. That changed in 1990. Now robbers using syringes filled with HIV-infected blood as weapons face up to 25 years in jail in New South Wales state. British police would like to have something a lot closer to what the Australian legal system provides for. In 1994 they unsuccessfully called for a crackdown on HIV-loaded needle threats, claiming the harm done to victims necessitated both harsher penalties than currently legally available and voicing the need to be able to charge someone in possession of a syringe with carrying an offensive weapon. At present, the psychological damage caused by the threat to inject someone with an HIV-infected syringe is classed in Britain as actual bodily harm, and an attacker can be charged with grievous bodily harm if an injury is sustained. Is that really enough, or are the British police right that this doesn't go far enough? The AIDS pinprick legend's popularity stems from our fear of contracting AIDS. Even if we take pains to avoid engaging in high risk activities or strive to do so in as safe a fashion as possible, we're all too aware we're still vulnerable, and this legend speaks to that awareness. Though in the early days of this disease, the average citizen felt perfectly safe from its ravages, AIDS is now no longer perceived as something only other people will catch. It's now seen as a danger to all of us. This sense of being at risk, coupled with ongoing fears of the madmen who walk among us, has given birth to this bit of scarelore. Credibility is further supplied by news stories about kids jokingly stabbing classmates with needles and robbers threatening victims with "loaded" syringes. Mix a bit of truth into an existing bit of scarelore, and it becomes powerful medicine indeed. The typical college girl victim is a metaphor for us. By casting the one pinpricked as one of tender years, the undeserving nature of the victim is underscored. She's seen as both young and untouched by the world, therefore completely undeserving of this terrible fate. (As, by implication, are we.) Her gender also comes into play as "college girl" is a shortform in the world of urban legends for sexual and social innocence. Her fatal infection is made to appear doubly tragic in that it doesn't seem to us, the audience, she would otherwise have come in contact with this illness. Indeed, no more "innocent" a mythical victim could be created. She's a lot like us, in other words. The terrifying aspect of this bit of scarelore is we see ourselves in her place. <!--Additional information:  In March 2008, police reported that someone had been embedding used hypodermic needles in park benches in New Waterford, Nova Scotia, but there was as yet no determination whether the needles posed any risk of spreading infectious diseases. In February 2009, three people in Vancouver, Washington, were pricked by syringes taped in public places, one to the handset of a pay phone, two to doorknobs. Additional information:   -->   Anderson, Kendall.  "Dallas Police Say E-Mail Warning Is Hoax."
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  26 March 1992. Claim:  Photograph shows Detroit slums with downtown skyscrapers in the background. REAL PHOTOGRAPH; INACCURATE DESCRIPTION Example:  [Collected via e-mail, August 2009] Several website list this photograph as Detroit. The skyline looks likely, but the slum in front looks more like a composite of the edge of a Brazilian city with the modern Detroit skyline. Is this photo legitimate? Ive only been to Detroit once, and while I wanted to kill myself after driving through, I dont remember it being this bad.    Origins:  Just as the recent financial woes of the "Big Three" U.S. automobile manufacturers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) have been held up as exemplars of the decline of American industry, so has their home base  Detroit, Michigan  been offered as symbolic of the decay of the "rust belt" manufacturing-industrial cities of the northeastern United States. Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the U.S., a booming industrial metropolis that in 1950 boasted a population of 1.85 million.  By 2009 it was home to less than half as many people (770,000), the median household income of its remaining residents was $28,370 (about half the national average), and the median home price was a minuscule $7,100.  The news magazine The Week described Detroit's modern status thusly in October 2009: Outside the city's downtown core of office buildings, Detroit looks like a post-apocalyptic nightmare. The collapse of the auto industry, political dysfunction, and epidemics of crime, drugs, and arson have battered Detroit like a slow-motion hurricane,  leveling entire neighborhoods and causing a major chunk of the population to flee. Nearly 30 percent of the city, an area almost the size of San Francisco, has been abandoned to "urban prairie"  vast depopulated stretches of high grass and shattered asphalt. An Asian plant species sometimes called "ghetto palm" sprouts from the remains of abandoned buildings, where wild pheasants are occasionally sighted. The torched skeletons of homes are commonplace. In the 1980s and '90s, demolition permits outnumbered building permits by more than 10-1. Nearly 30 percent of the city's remaining housing stock  more than 100,000 units  lies vacant. Although the above-displayed photograph of a shantytown juxtaposed against the background of a gleaming, skyscraper-filled downtown core might superficially match a description of modern Detroit, elements of the picture don't match that location.  (It's unlikely, for example, that either residents of the thin wood and tin-sheet shacks or palm trees could survive the harshly low wintertime temperatures common to that area.) This type of picture is one that, unfortunately, could have been snapped in any number of places around the world.  Specifically, it's a photograph of Makati, which is part of the greater metropolitan area of the Philippine capital city of Manila and is an international financial and commercial hub.  It's not uncommon for news stories to feature photographs of Makati as a way of illustrating growing economic disparities found within some rapidly developing countries and regions:   Shanty houses are cramped in the foreground while construction of new high rise buildings rise in the background at Manila's financial district of Makati. Asia is broadly on track to reduce extreme poverty by half by 2015, reflecting the positive impact of its dynamic economy in the lives of its nearly four billion people, according to a joint report released by the Asian Development Bank and the UN Development Programme in Manila. Another photograph of Makati taken from a similar vantage point can be seen in a 2006 BusinessWeek article about squatter cities. photograph article Last updated:  8 September 2013    The Week.  "Detroit: A City on the Brink." Snopes is still fighting an infodemic of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and advice you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.  fighting Find out Read Submit Become a Founding Member CDC WHO In late May 2020, social media users shared a meme that contained a misleading claim about the state of California. The meme said the state had announced it would give undocumented residents a stimulus payment on the same day it said it would lay off first responders due to diminished state funds resulting from the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, implying the two events are causally linked.   California Gov. Gavin Newsom on April 15, 2020, acknowledged undocumented residents paid $2.5 billion in state and local taxes in 2019. He then announced the state would draw up a total of $125 million sourced from charitable donations and taxpayer funds to provide $500 stimulus payments to those residents. That was because they didn't qualify to receive federal stimulus checks under the CARES Act, a relief package meant to blunt the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. acknowledged CARES Act This announcement was unrelated to another statement Newsom made more than a month later. In the latter, he urged the federal government to provide financial assistance to states and local governments struggling with economic shortfalls to their operating budgets due to forced business closures during the pandemic. In an interview on CNN on May 21, Newsom stated that without federal help, cities and counties may be forced to lay off first responders. interview "The next time they want to salute our heroes, our first responders, our police officers and firefighters, consider the fact that they are the first ones to be laid off by cities and counties," Newsom said when asked by CNN host Jake Tapper what would happen if the federal government failed to bail out states and local governments. "The folks who are out there, the true heroes of this pandemic, are health care workers and nurses. Those county health systems have been ravaged, their budgets have been devastated and depleted, the budget accounts depleted since this pandemic." Budgets that deal with first responders like police, firefighters, and paramedics are generally administered by local governments, meaning it would be cities and counties in California, not the state itself, that would have discretion over whether or when to cut those services. Furthermore, Newsom didn't "announce" such layoffs would take place; he simply suggested cuts may occur in the absence of intervention from the federal government to financially shore up local governments. As of late May, California was facing a $54 billion budget shortfall resulting from economic fallout of stay-at-home orders that forced shuttering of most commerce beginning in mid-March, in an effort to slow the spread of the COVID-19 disease. The state one year earlier had a surplus of $21 billion. $54 billion In sum, Newsom didn't "announce" layoffs for first responders but instead projected that layoffs at the local level were a looming possibility. He also didn't make the statement on the same day that he announced California would commit $125 million ($75 million of which would come from taxpayers) to give undocumented state residents $500 stimulus payments. The two events are unrelated, although the meme attempted to link them causally. We therefore rate this claim  Lightman, David."Fact Check: Gavin Newsom Warns of Layoffs for Police, Firefighters. Is He Exaggerating?"
Sacramento Bee.21 May 2020. CNN."Newsom Warns of Police, Fire Layoffs in California."
21 May 2020. Associated Press."California Announces $125 Million Fund for Undocumented Immigrants Impacted by Coronavirus."
15 April 2020. Associated Press."California Faces a Staggering $54 Billion Budget Deficit Due to Economic Devastation from Coronavirus."
7 May 2020. Social media users are frequently targeted by anniversary giveaway and survey scams, with one common form of bait being fake coupon offers for free boxes of Dunkin' Donuts:  Such scams typically provide links which lead to web pages (not operated or sponsored by Dunkin' Donuts) displaying the Dunkin' logo along with entreaties to spread the scam further by sharing those pages and writing thank you in the comments field. The free Dunkin' Donuts offers are a variation of the company anniversary survey scam, a ploy that depends on the unwary unwittingly promoting the phony offer to their social media friends: anniversary survey scam These web pages (which are not operated or sponsored by the companies they reference) typically ask the unwary to click what appear to be Facebook share buttons and post comments to the scammers site (which is really a ruse to dupe users into spreading the scam by sharing it with all of their Facebook friends). Those who follow such instructions are then led into a set of pages prompting them to input a fair amount of personal information (including name, age, address, and phone numbers), complete a lengthy series of surveys, and finally sign up (and commit to paying) for at least two Reward Offers (e.g., Netflix subscriptions, credit report monitoring services, prepaid credit cards). A representative for Dunkin' Donuts wrote on the company's official Facebook page that the online "free dozen" coupon was not one offered by the chain:   The Better Business Bureau issued guidelines warning specifically of identical scams on Facebook that target shoppers: Dont believe what you see. Its easy to steal the colors, logos and header of an established organization. Scammers can also make links look like they lead to legitimate websites and emails appear to come from a different sender. Legitimate businesses do not ask for credit card numbers or banking information on customer surveys. If they do ask for personal information, like an address or email, be sure theres a link to their privacy policy. When in doubt, do a quick web search. If the survey is a scam, you may find alerts or complaints from other consumers. The organizations real website may have further information. Watch out for a reward thats too good to be true. If the survey is real, you may be entered in a drawing to win a gift card or receive a small discount off your next purchase. Few businesses can afford to give away $50 gift cards for completing a few questions. Legitimate Dunkin' Donuts offers are listed in a Promotions page on the company's website. Promotions A new Trump administration directive targeting international students at U.S. colleges is beingchallenged by universitiesin court  and by pundits on the cable news channels. Thenew Immigration and Customs Enforcement guidancewould bar foreign college students from staying in the country if they take all their courses online. International students enrolled atHarvard Universityandother U.S. collegesthat have moved fall-semester classes entirely online due to the coronavirus pandemic will have to leave the U.S. or transfer to a school with in-person teaching, according to the new rule. The rule, if put into effect, could trim the number of foreign students in the U.S. and at specific universities. It could also deal a blow to the U.S. economy, said MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who argued on his primetime TV show that the policy has no upside. Higher education is one of America's strongest export sectors, Hayes said, while displaying achart on U.S. education exports. Over 1 million international students studied at American universities, (in the) 2018-19 school year. They contributed over $40 billion to the economy. Hayes statistics are accurate. In 2019, U.S. service exports from education totaled roughly $44 billion, according to theBureau of Economic Analysis. That made education the sixth largest service export for the year, behind services such as personal travel and professional and management consulting, a spokesperson for the International Trade Administration said. Academic experts and representatives from nonprofits focused on international education also backed Hayes claims. An ICE spokesperson said Hayes statement was accurate but declined to comment further due topending litigation. Higher education is one of the few areas in which we have a big surplus of exports over imports, said Dick Startz, professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who wrote about the economics of education in a2017 article for the Brookings Institution. All three of the statistics Hayes cited are correct. More than 1 million international students studied at U.S. institutions during the 2018-19 academic year, according to theInstitute of International EducationandNAFSA: Association of International Educators, two nonprofits dedicated to international education. The two organizations reported that those international students contributed more than $40 billion to the U.S. economy during the year. Experts said higher education can be considered an export because international students pay their tuition and living expenses to colleges and universities using money from abroad. International students are buying an American education, Startz said. Hence its an export. Exports from education amounted to roughly $44 billion in 2019, up from about $42.6 billion in 2018, according to theBureau of Economic Analysis. Thats more than the U.S. made from exporting manyother goodsand services in the same timeframe. Education ranked sixth among service exports in 2019, the International Trade Administration spokesperson told us. It wasfifth in 2018. Those numbers make sense when you factor in thecost of college, said Judith Scott-Clayton, professor of economics and education at Columbia Universitys Teachers College. If there are 1.1 million international students in the country, and each of them spends about $40,000 on U.S. tuition and living expenses, that gets you to $44 billion, she said. In an email to PolitiFact, Hayes also cited theInternational Trade Administrationand anarticle in the New York Times Magazinein which an Institute of International Education adviser was quoted saying higher education is one of Americas biggest exports. But the article said U.S. schools were losing their international appeal for a number of reasons, including rising tuition costs and various policies enacted under President Donald Trump. Rachel Banks, NAFSAs senior director for public policy and legislative strategy, said in a statement that new international student enrollment is down over 10% since the fall of 2016, a trend NAFSAestimateshas cost the U.S. economy $11.8 billion. Thats before the impacts of a global pandemic and related travel restrictions, several presidential proclamations targeting immigrants and nonimmigrants, and this guidance, Banks said. Therefore, we dont anticipate this downward trajectory to reverse itself anytime soon. Hayes said, Higher education is one of America's strongest export sectors. Over 1 million international students studied at American universities, 2018-19 school year. They contributed over $40 billion to the economy. Government agencies, academic experts and nonprofit organizations said Hayes statistics are correct. The money the U.S. gets from foreign students studying at its colleges and universities makes education one of the countrys top service exports. We rate this statement True. A number of members of the U.S. Congress have been accused of sexual misconduct over the years, but as a viral Facebook message suggests, have at least 260 of those members really settled sexual assault charges? accused settled   Certainly one reason that this bit of congressional trivia is "little known" is because it is factually inaccurate. This meme refers to a report released by Office of Compliance Director Susan Tsui Grundmann in November 2017, which compiled the amount of money that was paid out between 1997 and 2017 to cover 264 settlements in connection with conduct prohibited under the Congress Accountability Act: report Congress Accountability Act   That report did not state that all 264 settlements involved sexual assault charges, that all 264 settlements involved members of Congress, or that the settlements involved 264 different individuals. The Congressional Accountability Act (CAA) established a Treasury Department fund "to settle workplace harassment and discrimination claims." Although this fund has been used to pay out settlements related to sexual harassment, the CAA also applies to "thirteen civil rights, labor, and workplace safety and health laws." established According to Grundmann, a "large portion" of the aforementioned settlements stemmed from offices outside of the House of Representatives and the Senate and involved everything from overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards act to violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act: A large portion of cases originate from employing offices in the legislative branch other than the House of Representatives or the Senate, and involve various statutory provisions incorporated by the CAA, such as the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The statistics on payments are not further broken down into specific claims because settlements may involve cases that allege violations of more than one of the 13 statutes incorporated by the CAA. Although the details of these payments are typically confidential, outrage over the revelation that congress was using taxpayer funds to pay sexual assault settlements persuaded the House Administration Committee to release more details about the settlements. In December 2017, the committee released additional statistics which broke these settlements down into distinct categories. released statistics settlements Those categorized statistics showed that 13 settlements involving claims of sexual harassment or sex discrimination, totaling nearly $300,000, were paid out from the fund between 2003 and 2017: In total, between 2003 and 2017, taxpayers spent $292,652 on 13 settlements involving claims of sexual harassment or sex discrimination, the committee's data shows. This figure does not include settlements agreed to privately between members and their employees, which are sometimes paid in the form of severance out of congressional office budgets. The viral Facebook message incorrectly proclaimed that 260 members of congress had settled sexual assault charges, while in reality some 264 different settlements related to a wide range of workplace violations were paid out between 1997 and 2017. Only a small proportion of those settlements totaling were related to sexual misconduct or discrimination. MacFarlane, Scott.  "264 Congressional Accountability Act Settlements in 20 Years."
  NBC News.  16 November 2017. USA Today.  "Sexual Harassment Fund Exposes Congress."
  27 November 2017. Paige, Leslie.  "When Will the Senate Start Holding Congressional Sexual Harassers Accountable?"
  USA Today.  26 April 2018. PBS.  "$300k in Taxpayer Funds Has Been Spent Settling Sexual Harassment Claims Against Congress, Report Says."
  12 January 2018.
 Przybyla, Heidi.  "House Admin. Committee Reports $342K in Discrimination and Harassment Payouts from 2008 to 2012."
  USA Today.  19 December 2017. A set of gruesome photographs supposedly showing the aftermath of a "pico jackfruit snake" bite is frequently shared online. We'll be posting these photographs below. As they show a severe hand injury, this article may not suitable for all viewers. The photographs first went viral in August 2017 after they were posted to the Facebook group Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in New York. The first photograph in the set shows what appears to be a small cut on a person's thumb. Subsequent photographs show the injury worsening, due to the snake's venomous bite, until eventually the thumb is amputated. Again, the following photographs may not be suitable for all viewers:   We haven't been able to uncover too many specifics about these photographs, such as where they were taken or the identity of the snake-bit victim. When these images first started circulating on Facebook in 2017 (the original post has since been deleted), the snake was identified as a "sharp-nosed viper," not a "pico jackfruit snake."  In fact, we found no snake by the latter's name. It likely refers to a bushmaster snake, another genus of venomous pit-vipers, which is known by a variety of names across South America, such as the pineapple snake, the silent rattlesnake, and the stinging jackfruit.  Regardless of the specific species of snake, these photographs appear to provide a genuine look at the painful aftermath of a venomous snakebite. News.com.au talked to Brian Fry, an associate professor in the school of biological sciences at the University of Queensland, when these images first went viral:  News.com.au That type of snake [Sharp-nosed viper] has a venom that is extremely tissue destroying, Dr Fry told news.com.au. The reason for this is that they kill their prey by haemorrhagic shock, where some parts of the venom damage the blood vessel walls, while other parts destroy the ability of the blood to clot, leading to a state of massive internal bleeding in a prey animal. As Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland, Dr Fry said because it is a Chinese snake; antivenom for a bite like this might be hard to come by in remote areas. If it was in a private collection somewhere, they probably didnt have it and likely none of the nearby zoos would either, he explained. Thus, theyd have to suffer through the full effects. While we haven't been able to find much information about this specific set of photographs, we have found other snake-bite cases that resulted in similar injuries. A 2015 article from the BBC explained some of the science behind deadly venomous snake bites: cases resulted similar injuries BBC Snake venom is made up of several hundred proteins which all have a slightly different toxic effect on the human body. One snake's poison may not be like another's, even if they are from the same species. But, on the whole, there are two main ways snakes make us suffer  by attacking the circulatory system (ie. the blood) and/or the nervous system. Haemotoxic venom goes for the bloodstream. It can trigger lots of tiny blood clots and then when the venom punches holes in blood vessels causing them to leak, there is nothing left to stem the flow and the patient bleeds to death. Other venoms can increase blood pressure, decrease blood pressure, prevent bleeding or create it. They are all bad news. Neurotoxic venom tends to act more quickly, attacking the nervous system and stopping nerve signals getting through to the muscles. This means paralysis, starting at the head, moving down the body until, if untreated, the diaphragm is paralysed and the patient can't breathe. A classic sign of this is ptosis, when people can't keep their eyes open. Around the area of the bite, necrosis can set in. That happens when the venom destroys nearby muscles, tissues and cells. Long-term, this can lead to amputations, the loss of the use of a limb or the need for multiple skin grafts. In sum, the above photographs most likely show the gruesome aftermath of a snake bite, but because we were unable to uncover specific details about the pictures, we've rated this claim "Unproven." Brown, Vanessa.  "Horror Snake Bite Causes Victims Thumb to Turn Black Before Being Amputated"
  News.com.au.  15 August 2017. Weisberger, Mindy.  "What Should You Do If You're Bitten by a Venomous Snake?"
  Live Science.  2 June 2019. BBC.  "The amazing science behind fatal snake bites."
  13 September 2015.