We have the most productive workers in the world.
On the third night of the Democratic convention, Vice President Joe Biden took vigorous exception to the Republican message of a nation teetering on the brink. Not only do we have the largest economy in the world, we have the strongest economy in the world, Biden said. We have the most productive workers in the world. And given a fair shot, given a fair chance, Americans have never ever ever let their country down. Does American have the most productive workers? Not quite. We checked the numbers and found that we rank third, not first. Productivity is a measure of how much value comes out of each hour worked. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development tracks the performance of the worlds higher income nations. When the OECDcompares the GDP per hour workedacross 47 countries (using dollars corrected for inflation and the purchasing power in each nation), it consistently reports that Luxembourg and Norway have more productive workers than the United States. This table shows the top six countries since 2010. 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Luxembourg 78.4 78.2 76 78.4 79.3 81.2 Norway 77.8 77.2 77.8 78.3 78.9 79.7 United States 61.9 62.1 62.2 62.2 62.4 .. Belgium 61.8 61.6 61.4 61.7 62.2 .. Ireland 58.2 60.7 61 60.2 62 .. Netherlands 59.6 60.1 59.9 60.1 60.6 61.3  For 2014, the most recent year for which we have complete data, America ranks third, as it has since 2010. For each hour worked in Luxembourg, that country gains $79.30. In Norway, the amount is $78.90. In the United States, the value is $62.40. We reached out to Bidens press office and were told that when hes made this comparison before, he has referred to other larger economies, which means the United States ranks first. He left out that qualification this time. Our ruling Biden said that America has the most productive workers in the world. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development tracks how much value comes out of each hour worked in the worlds higher income nations. According to its data, Luxembourg and Norway have more productive workers than America. That ranking has been in place since 2010. Third is not first. But to place in the top three out of the worlds 47 most wealthy nations is still an achievement. Biden is wrong on the details, but the general point is correct. We rate this claim Mostly True.
For beingHillary Clintonsurrogates, two Wisconsin lawmakers sounded rather likeBernie Sanderswhen they got on the phone with reporters to denounce Donald Trumps tax plan. Forthe billionaires,bythe billionaires, state Rep.Cory Masonof Racine declared in the May 11, 2016 teleconference, which was arranged by Clintons Wisconsin campaign. Mason was joined by fellow DemocratJennifer Shillingof La Crosse, the Senate minority leader. Her attack was more specific. Shilling stated that with Trumps plan, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers -- people earning multiple millions of dollars a year, on average -- would get more tax relief than the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers combined. Economic inequality has been a signature issue for Sanders, whose presidential campaign has kept Clinton from claiming the presumptive nominee titleTrumphas on the Republican side. When Sanders said in Madison that the top one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, we rated his claimMostly True. Let's take a look at Shillings one-tenth of 1 percenters claim -- which, as well see, was made at something of a moving target. The figures Standing in the lobby of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan in September 2015, Trumprolled outhistax reform plan-- which some analysts immediately saw as a boon for the wealthy. He proposed significant cuts across the board,PolitiFact National found, but the wealthiest would get the most in tax cuts. For the highest income earners, the top income tax rate would drop from 39.6 percent to 25 percent. When we asked about Shillings claim, Clintons Wisconsin campaign citedan analysisby the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of two Washington, D.C. think tanks: the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. The analysis found that on average, under Trumps plan, households at all income levels would receive tax cuts -- but the highest-income households would receive the largest cuts, both in dollars and as a percentage of income. More specific to Shillings claim: The highest-income 0.1 percent of taxpayers -- those who had an income of over $3.7 million in 2015 -- would get an average tax cut of more than $1.3 million in 2017. That same group would receive 18 percent of the tax reduction, while the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers would receive 16.4 percent of the reduction. At our request, the liberal Citizens for Tax Justice also did calculations, which came out nearly the same: The top 0.1 percent would get 17 percent of Trump's proposed tax cuts and the bottom 60 percent would get 13 percent of the cuts. To some extent, this isnt a surprise, in that the wealthiest pay the lions share of income taxes. In aJune 2015 report, the Tax Policy Center said the top 0.1 percent pay 21.1 percent of all individual income taxes and the bottom 60 percent pays 1.5 percent. Alan Cole, an economist with the Tax Foundation, also ran the numbers and told us Shillings claim is accurate. But Cole noted that under Trumps plan: -- People in the 40th to 60th percentiles have about 99 percent of their income tax liability removed. -- People in the 0 to 40th percentiles who paid positive income taxes have about 100 percent of their income tax liability removed. So the reason Trumps plan doesnt cut middle-class income taxes by more than that is, well, you cant cut middle-class income taxes by more than that, Cole said. So, the figures back Shilling. The thing is, shortly before she made her claim, Trumps tax proposalwas changing. Sort of. Maybe. Or was it? Trumps equivocation In the three days prior,Trump saidhe might raise, not lower, taxes on the wealthy. Thenhe indicatedthe wealthy would get tax cuts, but the cuts might be less than what is in his plan. And thenPolitico reportedthat Trumps campaign had enlisted conservative economists to revise his plan, and that they were advising a top tax rate of 28 percent -- higher than the 25 percent in Trumps proposal. All of which has caused some confusion as to what Trump would do with taxes. Nevertheless, by the time Shilling made her statement, Trump had not changed histax proposal, which remained on his campaign website. (Indeed, for what it's worth, the day after Shillings claim, a Trump spokeswomantold the New York Times: There are no changes being made to the plan.) Our rating Shilling said that under Trump's tax plan, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers -- people earning multiple millions of dollars a year, on average --  would get more tax relief than the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers combined. A report from a respected nonpartisan research group calculates that the 0.1 percent -- those making more than $3.7 million per year -- would receive 18 percent of the tax cuts under Trumps proposal. The bottom 60 percent of taxpayers, meanwhile, would enjoy only 16.4 percent of the cuts. Another tax group found similar figures. Trump has indicated he might make alter his tax proposal, but he hadnt as of when Shilling made her statement -- so we rate the statement True. Watch the WTMJ-TV PolitiFact segment on this fact check. PolitiFact segments air during the 6 p.m. newscasts Wednesdays and Fridays. In December 2019, readers asked us about reports that claimed the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had proposed changes to the way Social Security disability payments are made, which could cause thousands, even hundreds of thousands, to lose their benefits.  On Dec. 12, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Chicago Tribune posted an article with the headline "Trump Administration Proposes Social Security Rule Changes That Could Cut Off Thousands of Disabled Recipients." The article reported that: Inquirer Tribune "The Trump administration is proposing changes to Social Security that could terminate disability payments to hundreds of thousands of Americans, particularly older people and children. The new rule would change aspects of disability reviews  the methods by which the Social Security Administration determines whether a person continues to qualify for benefits. Few recipients are aware of the proposal, which is open for public comment through January." The left-leaning website Common Dreams published an article with the headline "'A National Disgrace': Trump Proposes Social Security Change That Could End Disability Benefits for Hundreds of Thousands.'" That story reported: article "Activists are working to raise public awareness and outrage over a little-noticed Trump administration proposal that could strip life-saving disability benefits from hundreds of thousands of people by further complicating the way the Social Security Administration determines who is eligible for payments." On the face of it, the changes proposed by the Trump administration would not, in fact, directly or immediately strip disability benefits from thousands of would-be recipients, rather the changes would introduce more (and more frequent) eligibility reviews for those who wish to receive them. However, some critics have argued that those increased bureaucratic requirements would over-burden some would-be recipients, in particular especially vulnerable recipients, and would ultimately (albeit indirectly) result in thousands losing disability benefits.  The Social Security Administration distributes disability benefits in two principle ways: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), which typically provides benefits to people based on their previous Social Security tax contributions and history of work, and is paid out of the Social Security insurance fund; and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which typically provides benefits to people based on their disability status and inability to work, and is paid out of general tax coffers.  ways In order to prevent potential abuse and waste in the system, the Social Security Administration conducts "continuing disability reviews," essentially investigating whether each recipient still has a disabling condition, and if so, which kind. Those reviews take place more or less frequently, depending on the nature of each individual's disability, broken into three "medical diary categories," as follows: reviews In November, the Social Security Administration published its proposals to make several changes to the review system. The most significant proposal was to add a fourth medical diary category, "Medical Improvement Likely." Recipients placed in that category would undergo a review every two years. proposals According to a document accompanying the proposals, the decision to introduce the fourth category was made, in part, because the administration saw a pattern whereby some in the "Medical Improvement Expected" category were being prematurely subjected to re-evaluation, after six-18 months, before a medical improvement had the chance to take hold, and some in the "Medical Improvement Possible" category had successfully treated their impairment comfortably within the three-year review interval. The introduction of the new category would therefore mean the bureaucratic burden on some recipients would actually be lessened, since they would be subject to review less frequently, though clearly it would also mean others would be subject to more frequent reviews. On the whole, the administration has estimated that, between 2020 and 2029, the new category would tend towards requiring more frequent reviews for those currently in the "Medical Improvement Possible" category, rather than less frequent reviews for those currently in the "Medical Improvement Expected" category:   The administration expects the introduction of the "Medical Improvement Likely" category to lead to an 18 percent increase in the total number of reviews undertaken over the next decade. This would therefore lead to an increased up-front cost in administering the disability benefits programs, and an increased aggregate bureaucratic burden to recipients (even if some individual recipients would actually undergo reviews less frequently).  Greater scrutiny of individual cases, and enhanced enforcement of eligibility criteria, results in some recipients no longer being deemed eligible, and no longer receiving either SSDI or SSI, which saves money for the Social Security insurance fund and the Treasury, respectively. For the 2015 fiscal year, for example, the Social Security Administration calculated a 19.9:1 return on investment rate for disability benefits enforcement  meaning that for every $1 spent on performing reviews, the government would save $19.90 on disability benefits that would otherwise have been paid, over the course of a lifetime, to recipients who are now deemed ineligible. To be specific, the administration estimated that the $717 million spent on reviews in 2015 would ultimately save $14.3 billion in lifetime disability benefit payments.  calculated So the introduction of the Trump administration's proposals is highly likely to ultimately lead to thousands of disability benefits recipients no longer receiving those benefits  both because some will be overburdened by the bureaucratic demands of more frequent reviews, and because some recipients whose medical status no longer meets the eligibility criteria will have that ineligibility discovered sooner. A considerable measure of truth, therefore, exists in the reports published by the Philadelphia Inquirer and Common Dreams. However, those articles failed to mention an important component to the administration's proposals: They would not change how a recipient's eligibility is determined, only how often that determination takes place. As the proposal stated: "We are not changing the Medical Improvement Review Standard that we use to determine whether a person continues to meet the disability requirements of the Act." This means that, while the proposed increase in the number and frequency of reviews was highly likely to ultimately cause thousands to lose their benefits, that loss of benefits would not be arbitrary, or based on an application of a new and different standard for determining whether someone's health has improved. The standards and criteria for assessing whether an improvement has taken place would be the same as currently exist, and only the frequency of those reviews would change. In other words, some recipients would be subject to more frequent reviews, but if those more frequent reviews result in a finding that the recipient still has a qualifying disability or impairment  based on the same criteria as currently apply  the recipient would continue to receive disability benefits.  It could be that, as some critics have argued, the proposal represents an elegant way for the administration to save money by removing thousands from the recipient rolls without having to change eligibility criteria  the latter a move that would be more likely to cause public outrage or political opposition. However, on its face at least, the proposal involves enhanced enforcement of existing eligibility standards and criteria. That's an important distinction, and a significant omission from news articles that reported, with some justification, that the Trump administration had proposed changes to Social Security disability benefits that would cause thousands to be stripped of those benefits.  argued Lubrano, Alfred. "Trump Administration Proposes Social Security Rule Changes That Could Cut Off Thousands of Disabled Recipients."
 The Philadelphia Inquirer/The Chicago Tribune. 12 December 2019. Johnson, Jake. "'A National Disgrace': Trump Proposes Social Security Change That Could End Disability Benefits for Hundreds of Thousands."
 Common Dreams. 16 December 2019. Social Security Administration. "Proposed Rule -- Rules Regarding the Frequency and Notice of Continuing Disability Reviews."
 Federal Register. 18 November 2019. In November 2023, multiple Facebook ads were displayed to users that led to an article that bore the People magazine logo and claimed that Sheryl Underwood, the longtime co-host of "The Talk," would be leaving the TV talk show to work on expanding her own line of keto gummies for weight loss. However, this was not true. Underwood has nothing to do with any keto gummies for weight loss, nor did People magazine ever publish any such story. Underwood was simply the latest person in a long line of famous people who had had their image and likeness used without permission to sell keto gummies. Further, this false rumor that mentioned Underwood led to a dangerous scam that could potentially cost victims thousands of dollars per year. a long line of famous people One version of the Facebook ad claimed, "Producers are furious that she came forward." The headline in the ads read, "Sheryl Abandons 'The Talk' After Confessing Her Trick." Two of the false Facebook ads that promoted the scam. These ads led to a fake People magazine article on scam websites including emperorsland.pro, sizzlingpear.pro, mindfulmovement.pro and chillytreats.info. (We were unable to provide an archived link to the article since scammers design these websites so that the scam version of the page is cloaked from prying eyes  that is, unless users specifically came from a Facebook ad.) This is not a true story, nor did People.com ever publish any such article. The fake People magazine article, which was nothing more than fiction and a scam, began as follows: Sheryl Underwood Confirms She Is Leaving 'The Talk' After Her Accidental 'Live' Confession On-Air... The host said that it was 'time for a break', but she may actually have bigger things in mind. (People) - Sheryl Underwood, the 60-year-old host on CBS's show 'The Talk', shocked everyone when she announced her departure from the show after 12 record-breaking years on-air. Sheryl, who has earned the reputation of being one of the most business savvy women in the industry, made sponsors (and CBS) FURIOUS. Why? Because Sheryl failed to disclose her new weight loss line to the network. Sheryl's new company is actually a HUGE competitor to CBS's current sponsor Weight Watchers because Sheryl's product is 90% cheaper and five times more effective than Weight Watchers's competing product. According to sources, CBS made Sheryl decide on which direction she was going to focus on in the future. Being so turned off by the reaction of the network and their power move she has decided to pursue her new weight loss line and dream. The scam article went on to falsely claim that other celebrities had joined with Underwood to promote the products, whether they be Belly Blast Keto Gummies, Total Fit Keto Gummies or other products. It is a fact that no celebrities have ever endorsed keto gummies that are purportedly intended for use in weight loss. Websites that promote sales of keto gummies for weight loss usually lack information about the true creators of the products and the source of where they were packaged. In the past, some consumers who fell victim to these scams told Snopes that the post office box numbers included in return addresses for the products don't exist. The rabbit hole for keto gummies goes even deeper, however. Two odd scenarios have been laid out by numerous victims of the scams, which usually involve monthly subscription fees often reported as being around $200 or more, or around $2,400 per year. Some consumers said that they never ordered the products but kept receiving shipments that they had no way of returning, due to fake return addresses. On the flip side, other customers said that they received charges for the products on their credit card statements despite never having ordered them, and then never received any products in the mail. Further, listings for keto gummies for weight loss on Amazon.com and Walmart.com often feature the words "Shark" and "Tank," although not consecutively as "Shark Tank." The two words are included in product listings on Amazon.com and Walmart.com so that any customers searching online for keto gummies with the words "Shark Tank"  after those same customers saw false claims that said the TV show's investors endorsed the products  would then fall victim to the scam and purchase the products based on the "Shark Tank" lie. Again, to be clear, no investors associated with "Shark Tank" ever endorsed gummies. false claims If any readers have been victimized by these scams, we recommend contacting your credit card company immediately, reporting fraud to the FTC and also searching the U.S. Better Business Bureau's (BBB) website to perform a search for the product name associated with the purchase on your account or the product that arrived at your doorstep, so that you can find the company or LLC connected with the scam. reporting fraud to the FTC website Liles, Jordan. Shark Tank Keto Gummies Weight Loss Reviews Are a Scam. Snopes, 14 Mar. 2023, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shark-tank-keto-gummies-weight-loss-reviews/. Claim:  List reproduces various "Marxist" statements made by Hillary Clinton.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, August 2007] A little history lesson:   If you don't know the answer make your best guess  Answer all the questions before looking at the answers. Who said it? 1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." A.  Karl MarxB.  Adolph HitlerC.  Joseph StalinD.  None of the above 2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity." A.  LeninB.  MussoliniC.  Idi AminD.  None of the Above 3) "(We) ... can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people." A.  Nikita KhrushevB.  Josef GoebbelsC.  Boris YeltsinD.  None of the above 4) "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own ... in order to create this common ground." A.  Mao Tse DungB.  Hugo ChavezC.  Kim Jong IlD  None of the above 5) "I certainly think the free-market has failed." A.  Karl MarxB.  LeninC.  MolotovD.  None of the above 6) "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched." A.  PinochetB.  MilosevicC.  Saddam HusseinD.  None of the above Answers: (1) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  6/29/2004(2) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  5/29/2007(3) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  6/4/2007(4) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  6/4/2007(5) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  6/4/2007(6) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  9/2/2005 Be afraid.  Be very, very afraid and voteAnybody (woman) that would vote for her just because they think it's time for a female president has got to be out of their lunatic mind! Origins:  This list of purported "Marxist" quotes by former first lady, senator, presidential candidate, and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is (like many collections of utterances from various political figures) difficult to rate as strictly "true" or "false": She did make the statements reported above, but they have all been stripped of any explanatory context, and some of them had portions elided, creating potentially misleading impressions about the nature of those statements.  Below we verify the source and complete wording of each statement on this list and provide the context in which it was made.  (All of these entries  date from between 2004 and 2007, during which time Hillary Clinton represented the state of New York in the U.S. Senate.)  "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." This statement by Senator Hillary Clinton was not (as commonly assumed) addressed to the general public, but rather to a group of relatively well-to-do Democrats attending a June 2004 fundraiser for California senator Barbara Boxer.  Her statement specifically referred to a desire to repeal tax cuts that had recently been enacted by the Bush administration, cuts which many Democrats had criticized as favoring the wealthy: tax cuts Headlining an appearance with other Democratic women senators on behalf of Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is up for re-election this year, Hillary Clinton told several hundred supporters  some of whom had ponied up as much as $10,000 to attend  to expect to lose some of the tax cuts passed by President Bush if Democrats win the White House and control of Congress. "Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."  "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few ... And to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity." This entry is a pieced-together passage from a 29 May 2007 economic policy speech given by Senator Clinton on the subject of "Modern Progressive Vision: Shared Prosperity."   The supposedly "Marxist" nature of this statement is undercut when the sentences that immediately followed it (affirming support for a free market economy) are included for context: speech It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few and for the few, time to reject the idea of an "on your own" society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. I prefer a "we're all in it together" society. Now, there is no greater force for economic growth than free markets, but markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed.  When we get our priorities in order and make the smart investments we need, the markets work well.  "(We) ... can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people." "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own in order to create this common ground." "I certainly think the free-market has failed." The above three statements are all out-of-context passages taken from a 4 June 2007 CNN "Presidential Forum" conducted with three Democratic presidential hopefuls, senators John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.  The second statement was part of a straightforward expression of the need to for people to reach a consensus (through metaphorically giving up some of their political "turf," not literally giving up their possessions) on how to proceed in order to tackle an issue such as universal health insurance, while the first statement is another pieced-together quote that omits the contextual references to the issues of health care, dependence on foreign oil, and climate change:  Presidential Forum We can set the vision. We can even work to articulate the goal. But the pathway is extraordinarily complicated because of how we live today andhow we think of ourselves in relation to our fellow citizens. Take health care. I think we could get almost unanimous agreement that having more than 45 million uninsured people, nine million of whom are children, is a moral wrong in America. And I think we could reach that agreement, and then we would have to start doing the hard work of deciding what we were going to do to make sure that they were not uninsured, because an uninsured person who goes to the hospital is more likely to die than an insured person. I mean, that is a fact. So, what do we do? We have to build a political consensus. And that requires people giving up a little bit of their own turf, in order to create this common ground. The same with energy  you know, we can't keep talking about our dependence on foreign oil, and the need to deal with global warming, and the challenge that it poses to our climate and to God's creation, and just let business as usual go on. And that means something has to be taken away from some people. The third statement was part of a passage in which Senator Clinton listed a number of entities (including churches, schools, and the government, as well as the free market) that she felt had failed in helping young people to make responsible decisions (particularly in reference to abortion): Q: Could you see yourself, with millions of voters in a pro-life camp, creating a common ground, with the goal ultimately in mind of reducing the decisions for abortion to zero? A: Yes. Yes. And that is what I have tried to both talk about and reach out about over the last many years, going back, really, at least 15 years, in talking about abortion being safe, legal, and rare. And, by rare, I mean rare. And it's been a challenge, because the pro-life and the pro-choice communities have not really been willing to find much common ground. And I think that is a great failing on all of our parts, because, for me there are many opportunities to assist young people to make responsible decisions. There is a tremendous educational and public outreach that could be done through churches, through schools, through so much else. But I think it has to be done with an understanding of reaching people where they are today. We have so many young people who are tremendously influenced by the media culture and by the celebrity culture, and who have a very difficult time trying to sort out the right decisions to make. And I personally believe that the adult society has failed those people. I mean, I think that we have failed them in our churches, our schools, our government. And I certainly think the, you know, free market has failed. We have all failed. We have left too many children to sort of fend for themselves morally.  "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched." This passage was taken from a 2 September 2005 appearance by Senator Clinton in front of constituents in Elmira Heights, New York, where (in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) she expressed her opinion about the need for federal regulatory oversight of the oil industry in order to curb high gasoline prices and U.S. dependence on foreign oil: The anxiety and anger felt by motorists was evident at nearly every turn in her travels throughout the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. She made clear she shared the concern. "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in our entire economy that they're being watched," she said in explaining her call for an inquiry by the Federal Trade Commission. "I think human nature left to itself is going to push the limit as far as possible, and that's what you need a government regulatory system for: to keep an eye on people to make the rules of the game fair, to make a level playing field and not give anybody some kind of undue advantage." Clinton criticized the new energy bill, which she opposed, as inadequate to solve the country's long-term energy problem. She said the United States has regressed over the past three decades, since the first oil shocks of the early 1970s. "We've had 30 years to do some things we haven't done," she said. "In fact we've gotten, we've gone backwards in many respects. "I am tired of being at the mercy of people in the Middle East and elsewhere, and I'm tired frankly of being at the mercy of these large oil companies," Clinton said.   Last updated:  30 March 2015    Fouhy, Beth.  "San Francisco Rolls Out the Red Carpet for the Clintons."   Associated Press.  29 June 2004.    CNN.  "The Situation Room: Sojourners Presidential Forum."   4 June 2007. A new ad by Gov. Rick Scotts campaign has a simple message: Scott and his wife Ann have shown Florida their tax returns, so its only fair that former Gov. Charlie Crist and wife Carole show theirs. In thead released June 25 called Whats He Hiding, Scotts political group Lets Get To Work demands that Crist release not only his tax returns, but Caroles, too. The ad says the Scotts have released tax returns both in 2010 and for this years election. But millionaire Charlie Crist refuses to release his spouses tax returns, the ad says. Candidates for governor routinely disclose those returns. Alex Sink and Rick Scott both did it four years ago. Crist has said he wont be releasing his wifes tax returns, saying Scott was out of bounds for making the request and should apologize. PolitiFact Florida wondered, however, if spouses truly do routinely disclose their tax returns. Heres our disclosure: It depends on what you consider routine. A separate issue The practice of gubernatorial candidates themselves disclosing tax returns goes back a long time, but for this check well head as far back as Reubin Askew, who became governor in 1971 and released several years worth. Florida elected officials are required by law to file an annual statement showing their assets and liabilities. They are not required to release tax returns, but candidates for governor have traditionally done so. We should note that this generally applies to the general election candidates, and not always primary candidates. For example, Bill McCollum did not release his returns in 2010 while running in the primary against Rick Scott. As to whether spouses fess up their finances, well, thats an interesting history. Most candidates have filed jointly with their spouses. Jeb Bush and his wife Columba released several years worth of joint returns during Bushs years in office, and Rick and Ann Scott filed jointly. It wasnt until 2002, when Democrat Bill McBride ran against Bush, that the issue of a spouse filing separately came up. McBrides wife, Alex Sink, began to file separately from her husband specifically because her husband was running for governor, but in 2002 she released two years of tax returns under pressure from the Bush campaign. Sink had retired as president of Bank of Americas Florida operations in 2000. McBride, a lawyer who worked at Tampa firm Holland & Knight for many years, returned the favor in 2010 and released his returns when his wife ran for governor against Rick Scott (McBride died in 2012). Crist was a solo filer when he ran for governor in 2006, because he was single. He didnt marry Carole Crist until 2008. He has said they continue to file separately because he was a single guy for a long time. She's got her own business, and it's her business. Carole Crist isan owner of a family Halloween costume and novelty business, Franco-American Novelty Co., and has created a second company, Goddessey. Crist, a lawyer by trade like McBride, announcedthe release of three years of tax returns as the ad began airing. The next day, he released returns goingback to 2001, with promises to release more, going back to 1991. Candidates releasing their spouses separate returns has become more of an issue in the last couple of decades as more women become entrepreneurs independently of their spouses. Susan McManus, a University of South Florida political science professor, says the expectation of disclosing separate returns really took off when Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro as his Democratic running mate during the 1984 presidential campaign. Ferraro faced many questions from political opponents and the media about her husband John Zaccaros real estate company. They ultimately released the returns, and Ferraro admitted she was an officer in the company, albeit without the authority to sign company checks. In recent years the same expectation has come up in presidential campaigns; Sen. John McCains millionaire wife Cindy eventually released two years of individual tax returns during the 2008 presidential campaign amid Democratic pressure. But those are examples from presidential politics. In Florida, the question is whether two instances -- by the same couple, in McBride and Sink -- over the last 12 years constitutes spouses tax returns being released routinely, as Scott alleges. Its only recently that weve seen candidates spouses filing separate returns. How you feel about it as a voter likely depends on how you feel about the race and the candidates, McManus said. The interesting thing in this case is that attitudes about this are changing, she said. In the future were likely to see everyone routinely releasing everything. Our ruling Scott said candidates for governor routinely disclose spouses tax returns. It is routine when candidates file joint returns with their spouses. Its only recently that gubernatorial candidates and their spouses have started filing separate tax returns, though. When spouses file separately, there are two instances to look to, whenfirst Alex Sink and then her husband Bill McBride disclosed individual returns for their spouses respective gubernatorial runs in 2002 and 2010. So the trend of spouses who file separately is a new one, but one way or the other, spouses' returns have been released over the years. We rate the statement Mostly True. In November 2015, the biography of Frederick Trump, Donald Trump's grandfather, was condensed into two paragraphs and then passed around the internet via a meme. While some of the information included in the meme is accurate, much of it is either over-exaggerated or incomplete:  This particular rumor centers on the idea that Frederich Trump made his fortune via brothels and opium dens. While there is anecdotal evidence that Trump dabbled in prostitution, there is no proof that this made up the bulk of his fortune. In Gwenda Blair's 2000 book The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate, she described how Frederick Trump opened a series of restaurants and hotels during the Klondike Gold Rush in the 1890s. One of those hotels, The Arctic Restaurant and Hotel, was described as decadent and far superior to other restaurants in the area: book In the larder was salmon and an extraordinary variety of meats, including duck, ptarmigan, grouse, goose, and swan, as well as caribou, moose, goat, sheep, rabbit, and squirrel. Incredibly, the New Arctic served fresh fruit: red currants, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, even cranberries. A small oasis of luxury, the Arctics menu was a vast improvement over what the two restaurateurs had been able to offer on the trail. An anonymous letter to the Yukon, however, claimed that The Arctic Restaurant and Hotel was also known for prostitution: I would advise respectable women traveling alone, or with an escort, to be careful in their selection of hotels at Bennett, he wrote. For single men the Arctic has excellent accommodations as well as the best restaurant in Bennett, but I would not advise respectable women to go there to sleep as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings  and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex. While it's unclear if Frederich Trump directly profited from prostitution at his hotel (or whether it even occurred there), it should be noted that the world's oldest profession was relatively commonplace during the Gold Rush. The meme also claims that Frederick Trump decided to go back to Germany when police started cracking down on "his criminal rackets." Again, this is based on little more than a morsel of truth, and does not tell the whole story. In 1901, Trump sold his assets and returned to Germany. While one could argue that Trump made the decision because he believed that police were going to start enforcing prostitution laws, that is only one factor that led to Trump's departure for Germany: Frederick Trump saw that it was time to leave. If Major Wood actually enforced the laws regarding prostitution, gambling, and liquor, hotels and restaurants would be far less profitable. Not only that, the economic boom was bound to be short lived. There was not nearly enough solid economic development to absorb these newcomers in any long-term way; when the placer deposits were emptied, they would go back home. Without the umbrella of gold, other local industries would not be strong enough to keep going on their own and compete with cheaper sources farther south. The boom was over, Frederick Trump realized... ... Frederick Trump left just in time. He avoided the uproar when his erstwhile partner hit the skids, and he avoided the economic decline that would soon sweep over White Horse. Once again, in a situation that created many losers, he managed to emerge a winner. He had made money; perhaps even more unusual in the Yukon, he had also kept it and departed from White Horse with a substantial nest egg. He had accomplished this goal of making and saving enough money to marry. But he had no intention of doing so in America. For this important moment, he would have to return to Germany. While the meme exaggerated Trump's involvement in "criminal rackets," it did correctly state that Trump returned to the United States after the German government determined that he had originally left Germany in 1885 to avoid taxes and the army. returned In summation, Donald Trump's grandfather Frederick Trump was a German immigrant who made his fortune by opening several restaurants and hotels in Seattle and British Columbia during the Yukon Gold Rush. While some of these hotels may have been used for prostitution, gambling, or other seedy activities common on the trail, it is incorrect to say that Trump built his fortune on illegal activities. Grier, Peter.  "Donald Trump: The Son of an Immigrant."
  The Christian Science Monitor.  24 August 2015. Blair, Gwenda.  The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate.
  Simon and Schuster, 2000.  ISBN 0-684-80849-8. In late July 2020, Snopes readers asked for verification of numerous social media posts that stated Target had canceled its annual "Shop with a Cop" program, which is officially known as "Heroes & Helpers," in an effort to "distance themselves from Police Officers." Here is an example of one such post circulating on Facebook:   Similar posts also made the rounds on Twitter, and to add to the confusion, a website called The Courier Daily only reported that people were talking about the rumor on Twitter but didn't offer any evidence for the claim. posts website We reached out to the source itself, asking Target Corporate whether it had ended the long-standing program that pairs children from low-income backgrounds with local law enforcement officers for holiday shopping trips funded by charitable donations. A spokesperson for Target told us that the program will continue, although details about how it will move forward amid the COVID-19 pandemic are still pending. In response to our question asking whether the program had been canceled, the company sent the following statement: We plan to continue to support children with Heroes & Helpers events across the country this holiday season. Like many of our holiday programs, were carefully considering how to manage these events during the COVID-19 environment in a way that ensures the health and safety of our team and guests. We will have additional details to share as we approach the holiday season. The program was launched in 2009 and takes place in stores nationwide. To date, $5 million in grants has been used to support the shopping trips, and more than 100,000 children and 60,000 police officers have participated, per Target. program The false social media rumors may have been inspired by the fact that since the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, there have been ongoing protests against and conversation about police violence and racism in America, spurring calls to reform policing practices and even some activists calling for police departments to be defunded. George Floyd However, Target, as of this writing, doesn't plan to cancel the program as a result of the racial justice protests. With the information currently available, we rate this claim  A Bullseye View.  "Target Teams Up with Donnie Wahlberg to Celebrate 10 Years of Heroes & Helpers."
  4 December 2019. Trujillo, Damian.  "Shop With a Cop Foundation Considers Name Change to Reconnect with Community."
  KNTV.  2 July 2020. Hill, Evan, et al.  "How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody."
  The New York Times.  31 May 2020. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, speaking in Austin, bemoaned widening income differences between the countrys very rich and the rest of us. And in his remarks at aSouth Austin union hall, the Vermont independentmulling a runfor the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination also warned about American failures to save money. Heres something not talked about, something that can make us all very, very nervous, Sanders said. Half of all Americans have less than $10,000 in their savings account. And you know what that means and you know why people are so stressed out? If you have less than $10,000, he said, that means an automobile accident, a divorce, a serious illness, a crisis of one kind or another can drive you into bankruptcy and financial disaster. Is he right that half of us have less than $10K in savings? Sanders backup To our inquiry, a Sanders spokesman, Jeff Franks, said by email that Sanders relied on an April 2014USA Todaynews storyquoting a survey indicating 52 percent of U.S. workers had said they had less than $10,000 in total savings and investments, such as a 401(k) or IRA, that could be used for retirement. It did not include their homes or defined benefit plans, such as traditional pensions that could be used for retirement Specifically, the story said, 36 percent of workers said they had less than $1,000 in such savings and investments with another 16 percent of workers reporting $1,000 to $9,999 in such savings and investments. Those results came from a telephone survey of 1,000 workers and 501 retirees by the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute and Greenwald and Associates. Next, we spotted a chart on the institutes website drawn from the same 2014 Retirement Confidence Survey. The 52 percent of workers reporting less than $10,000 in savings and investments in 2014 is up from 39 percent in 2009, the chart shows. Of course, workers isnt all of us. We called the Washington, D.C.-based institute,which saysit was founded in 1978 to deliver unbiased information on employee benefit plans so that decisions affecting the system may be made based on verifiable facts. By phone, researcher Craig Copeland told us that overall, 51 percent of survey respondents, meaning retirees and others, had less than $10,000 in financial savings. Also by phone, Ruth Helman of Greenwald and Associates, which helped do the survey, paused at the senators wording. Strictly speaking, their savings account isnt correct. Its total savings wherever it may be, under the mattress or wherever, Helman said. Federal Reserve Bank We wondered if there were other ways of looking at savings. Several experts urged us to contact the Federal Reserve Bank, which conducts a survey focused on consumer finances every three years.Its latest survey, drawing on data collected in 2013, resulted in a chart pointed out by Copeland indicating that the median value of financial savings outside of a pension or home reported by the nearly 95 percent of families who had bank accounts or stocks, bonds and other financial assets that year was $21,200, down from $23,000 in the boards 2010 survey. SOURCE:Report,Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2010 to 2013: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances,Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, September 2014 Copeland said that given that more than 5 percent of families reported no such financial assets, its reasonable to speculate that families overall had median financial savings of less than $20,000. We also asked reserve board officials to analyze the senators savings accounts statement. By phone, William Emmons and Bryan Noeth, both employed by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, raised questions. For instance, why not count a familys home or pension as part of its savings? Reminder: The institute, with its focus on savings for retirement, set aside these asset categories. Emmons said: People do count on their housing equity, not only in retirement, but before that. Beyond that, the pair said, its not always meaningful to focus on money held in savings accounts, which are a single wealth indicator. A savings account isnt where everybody holds their money, Noeth said. The two said a potentially superior way to gauge how Americans are faring, savings-wise, would be to consider net worth meaning family assets compared to debts. An agency manager, Adriene Dempsey, emailed usa spreadsheetshowing that according to the boards 2013 survey, 26 percent of U.S. families had less than $10,000 in net worth--a tick worse than the 25 percent of families according to its 2010 study. In 2013, half of American families had about $81,500 in net wealth or more, according to the spreadsheet. Total assets for a family include financial assets, such as bank accounts, mutual funds and securities plus tangible assets, including real estate, vehicles and durable goods, according to aFebruary 2015 essayby the St. Louis Fed.Weve elaborated on this here. So by the net-worth metric, more families are better off than if one focused on financial savings alone. We ran this net worth angle past the institutes Coleman, who reminded by email that its survey (relied on by Sanders) took into account financial assets, not just savings accounts. Our ruling Sanders said: Half of all Americans have less than $10,000 in their savings account. Some clarification went missing here: A 2014 survey indicated about half of American adults had less than $10,000 in savings and investments, such as a 401(k) or IRA, that could be used for retirement; those results encompassed more than savings accounts. We rate this claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. Claim:  Tourists who have taken rocks from Hawaiian beaches have returned them in hopes of ending streaks of bad luck.  Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2001] Hawaiian legend: anyone that removes a piece of rock from the Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park will incur the wrath of the Godess Pele. Supposedly terrible curses follow those that do prompting them to soon abandon the rock(s) in interest of self-preservation.   Origins:  Can a souvenir casually pocketed on a Hawaiian beach bring misfortune? Though the more skeptical will scoffingly dismiss the notion as pure hooey,   thousands have come to believe that yes, volcanic rocks taken from Hawaii fetch with them a curse of impressive proportions. And the only way to undo the jinx is to return the purloined items whence they came.  Legend has it that Pele, goddess of fire and volcanoes, is so angered when the rocks (which she sees as her children) are taken from her that she exacts a terrible revenge on the thief. She is especially protective of volcanic rock and sand, two items tourists almost unthinkingly pocket as mementos of their vacations. After all, who would miss a rock? Pele, apparently. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and far too many hotels to name receive a never-ending stream of packages containing sand, shells, and rocks from guilty-minded vacationers who are intent upon reversing their sudden downpours of bad luck. Many of these returns are accompanied by notes begging forgiveness of the goddess or detailing litanies of calamities that have befallen these casual purloiners: Please take this sand and put it back somewhere on your island. I have had very bad luck since it came into my life and I am very sorry I took it. Please forgive me and I pray that once I send it back where it comes from, my bad luck will go away.  Please return to soil. I have been having bad luck.  Ever since we have taken items, we have had nothing but back luck and medical problems. We apologize for taking items, so we are returning same to Hawaii.  We placed the rock last fall on a cast iron chair in our garden, this spring the chair's leg had fallen off. This is the least of the problems we have had since we have taken the rock. Pele's supposed curse is not a mild-mannered one. Those allegedly afflicted by it don't misplace their car keys or develop runs in their stockings  their bad luck is of the grievous variety. Pets die. Jobs are lost. Houses burn down. Sudden and devastating illness strikes loved ones. Marriages break apart. The Los Angeles Times reported on the sad case of Timothy Murray, a 32-year-old who scooped some of the unusual black sand from Hawaii Volcanoes National Park into a bottle and brought it back with him to Florida. Everything in his life immediately went into a nosedive: his pet died, his five-year relationship  with a gal he was to marry ended, and the FBI arrested him in a computer copyright infringement case.  The native Hawaiian view of taking such souvenirs is that it's tantamount to stealing from Pele while visiting her home. Only the return of the stolen items appeases her wrath.  Some believe the curse is the invention of park rangers who became fed up with visitors making off with little bits of the island. Whether the curse has an ancient origin or a modern one, many have come to respect it thanks to the cascade of bad luck that descends upon those who take volcanic keepsakes.  Barbara "rock steadied" Mikkelson Additional Information:     Rock Return Service  (Volcano Gallery)  Last updated:  16 May 2013    Honolulu Advertiser.  28 January 2003.   Cart, Julie.  "Hard Luck Blamed on Hot Rocks."   Los Angeles Times.  7 May 2001.   Chalfant, Anne.   "Returned Lava Rocks Fill a Garden to Appease a Goddess in Hawaii."   The Salt Lake Tribune.   12 January 2003.    Cart, Julie.  "Hard Luck Blamed on Hot Rocks."   Los Angeles Times.  7 May 2001.   Chalfant, Anne.   "Returned Lava Rocks Fill a Garden to Appease a Goddess in Hawaii."   The Salt Lake Tribune.   12 January 2003.    Los Angeles Times.  7 May 2001.   Chalfant, Anne.   "Returned Lava Rocks Fill a Garden to Appease a Goddess in Hawaii."   The Salt Lake Tribune.   12 January 2003.    Chalfant, Anne.   "Returned Lava Rocks Fill a Garden to Appease a Goddess in Hawaii."   The Salt Lake Tribune.   12 January 2003.    The Salt Lake Tribune.   12 January 2003. On Oct. 23, 2019, the U.K. tabloid Express published an article that left some readers believing they need not make Christmas plans this year because Earth was in danger of being hit by a large asteroid: Express   The article was entitled "Asteroid terror: NASA spot mammoth space rock to hit Earth's orbit five days before X-mas." The subheading gave earthlings an even smaller chance of survival: "AN ASTEROID the size of the World Trade Centre is on a dangerous Earth-bound orbit that could see the rock smash the planet during Christmas festivities." When the article was regurgitated by even less-reputable websites, the fear-mongering title morphed into a factually inaccurate claim. For instance, the website Digital Wise rehashed this article under the title "NASA Issues Warning Over Asteroid Predicted To Hit Earth Five Days Before Christmas!" Digital Wise NASA has made no such announcement, and Earth is not in danger of being hit by an asteroid around Christmas.  These articles are all based on a real asteroid (known as 216258 2006 WH1) and its holiday approach toward Earth. However, these articles present the information as if this asteroid is particularly dangerous. But there's nothing unusually threatening about asteroid 216258 2006 WH1. NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) currently lists 26 near-Earth objects that are scheduled to pass by our planet within the next 60 days. While asteroid 216258 2006 WH1 (which was discovered in 2006) will truly be passing by earth around Christmas, CNEOS reports that the asteroid is expected to safely pass by earth at a distance of about 15.19 LD (lunar distance), approximately 3.6 million miles. lists Dr. Paul W. Chodas, the Director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, told us in an email that there is "nothing unusual or dangerous" about asteroid 216258 2006 WH1: No, there is nothing unusual or dangerous about this asteroid. It is simply making a close approach to the Earth. Astronomers have been observing this asteroids position for 13 years, we know its orbit very accurately, we can predict its close approaches accurately for the next 200 years, and we know with certainty that it cannot hit our planet. Lindley Johnson, NASAs Planetary Defense Officer and Program Executive of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), also told us that this asteroid "poses no hazard to impacting earth":  NASA and other US agencies are lead players in the international effort to develop plans to respond to a possible Near-Earth Object (NEO) impact. In 2018, the White House released the National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan, which identifies key steps that US agencies need to take to better prepare the United Statesand the worldfor detecting and responding to a possible impact. NASA has been directed by Congress to catalogue and characterize all NEOs bigger than 140 meters, the ones that could be catastrophic. NASA is approximately 35% complete for NEOs 140 meters and larger, and approximately 96% complete for those 1 km and larger. Strategic investments in our space-based programs will lead to the benefit of all of humanity as we continue to catalogue any NEOs that pose a potential threat. This particular asteroids trajectory has been well tracked by NASAs Center for Near-Earth Object Studies since its discovery 13 years and poses no hazard to impacting Earth. Here's a little more information about near-earth objects from CNEOS. The organization writes on its website (emphasis ours):  writes On a daily basis, about one hundred tons of interplanetary material drifts down to the Earths surface. Most of the smallest interplanetary particles that reach the Earths surface are the tiny dust particles that are released by comets as their ices vaporize in the solar neighborhood. The vast majority of the larger interplanetary material that reaches the Earths surface originates as the collision fragments of asteroids that have run into one another some eons ago. With an average interval of about 10,000 years, rocky or iron asteroids larger than about 100 meters would be expected to reach the Earths surface and cause local disasters or produce the tidal waves that can inundate low lying coastal areas. On an average of every several hundred thousand years or so, asteroids larger than a kilometer could cause global disasters. In this case, the impact debris would spread throughout the Earths atmosphere so that plant life would suffer from acid rain, partial blocking of sunlight, and from the firestorms resulting from heated impact debris raining back down upon the Earths surface. Since their orbital paths often cross that of the Earth, collisions with near-Earth objects have occurred in the past and we should remain alert to the possibility of future close Earth approaches. It seems prudent to mount efforts to discover and study these objects, to characterize their sizes, compositions and structures and to keep an eye upon their future trajectories ... ... No one should be overly concerned about an Earth impact of an asteroid or comet. The threat to any one person from auto accidents, disease, other natural disasters and a variety of other problems is much higher than the threat from NEOs. Over long periods of time, however, the chances of the Earth being impacted are not negligible so that some form of NEO insurance is warranted. At the moment, our best insurance rests with the NEO scientists and their efforts to first find these objects and then track their motions into the future. We need to first find them, then keep an eye on them. NASA Near-Earth Object Observations Program is constantly monitoring the skies for approaching asteroids and meteors. So far, the program has discovered more than 19,000 NEOs. When NASA discovers an NEO, it works to determine as much information as possible about the object, such as its size, speed, and orbit, so that the agency can calculate when it will approach Earth and how close it will come when it does.  But the 19,000 NEOs in NASA's database aren't really what we have to worry about. The organization writes that thousands of NEOs have yet to be discovered: discovered Asteroid impacts are a continuously occurring natural process. Every day, 80 to 100 tons of material falls upon Earth from space in the form of dust and small meteorites (fragments of asteroids that disintegrate in Earths atmosphere). Over the past 20 years, U.S. government sensors have detected nearly 600 very small asteroids a few meters in size that have entered Earths atmosphere and created spectacular bolides (fireballs). Experts estimate that an impact of an object the size of the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013  approximately 55 feet (17 meters) in size  takes place once or twice a century. Impacts of larger objects are expected to be far less frequent (on the scale of centuries to millennia). However, given the current incompleteness of the NEO catalogue, an unpredicted impact  such as the Chelyabinsk event  could occur at any time. Still, the chances of an asteroid larger than 140 meters hitting earth in the next 100 years is minimal: hitting The current congressionally directed objective of the NEO Observations Program is to find, track, and characterize at least 90 percent of the predicted number of NEOs that are 140 meters and larger in sizelarger than a small football stadiumand to characterize a subset representative of the entire population. Objects of this size and larger pose a risk to Earth of greatest concern due to the level of devastation an impact would cause, and should continue to be the focus of global search efforts. While no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years, less than half of the estimated 25,000 NEOs that are 140 meters and larger in size have been found to date. Asteroid 216258 2006 WH1 will pass by Earth a few days before Christmas. However, NASA has issued no warnings about a catastrophic impact, and CNEOS reports that this asteroid will get no closer than 3 million miles from Earth during its approach.  NASA.  "Near-Earth Object Observations Program."
  Retrieved 8 November 2019. NASA.  "Planetary Defense Frequently Asked Questions."
  Retrieved 8 November 2019. Day, Joel.  "Asteroid Terror: NASA Spot Mammoth Space Rock to Hit Earth's Orbit Five Days Before X-Mas."
  Express.  23 October 2019.