Did Elon Musk Create CBD Gummies that 'Reverse Dementia'?
In April 2023, a rumor began to spread that claimed Twitter owner Elon Musk had revealed a new line of CBD gummies that could "reverse dementia." According to the story, Musk's gummy product sparked a "huge lawsuit" with Fox News. However, none of this was true. Musk was simply the latest famous person to have his image and likeness used by scammers without permission in an attempt to push miracle promises about CBD or keto gummies. He has nothing to do with any of these products. While the answer here is a fairly simple "it's all fake," the massive reach of these gummy scams might surprise some readers. As of May 18, the scam was still making the rounds in at least one paid ad on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. The ad on a Facebook page named Aromathy read, "Media Backlash Over New Musk Business Announcement. Elon Has a Response. His New Business Venture Has Been Under Scrutiny By Media."  The ad led to a fake article onaromasense.shop that was designed to fool readers into believing they were reading from the Fox News website. Many of the Facebook users who commented on the ad believed that the post was a real news announcement. For example, one person commented, "MEDIA IS AGAINST ANYTHING THAT IS GOOD!! IGNORE THEM!" Some users also appeared to think that Musk made the post himself, with one person writing, "Don't pay attention to the media! So many are fake and bias! Be true to yourself! I trust you." In other words, Fox News and Elon Musk may have been included together by scammers to target easily influenced users who have conservative political leanings and a distrust of mainstream news media. To create the fake Fox News article, scammers copied the logo and article layout from foxnews.com and replicated it on the aromasense.shop website. Scammers have been doing this design-replication process with the logos and designs of multiple publishers for years. The article began with the headline, "Elon Musk reverses dementia, solution sparks huge lawsuit pressure on Fox, he finally fights back on air."  The body of the fictional story was a template that scammers had used many times before about various TV personalities who had their own shows. However, in this case, the article didn't really make sense to be used with Musk since he didn't have a show. The fake article began as follows: (Fox) - In an Exclusive Interview, Elon Musk, a business magnate and investor, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, Inc. and Twitter, Inc. reveals that the show will be ending after his latest business sparks tension with Martha MacCallum. During a heated episode last week, Elon Musk made headlines after revealing his new CBD line on Live TV. Martha MacCallum was outraged saying she will be filing a lawsuit against Elon Musk and Fox for violating his contract and 'scaring-off' sponsors. Elon Musk responded with this: "I know Martha is just coming after my timeslot. I am not giving in to 'Cancel Culture'. When I started this whole thing back in 2018, it really was just a part time passion project and a way for me to give back. After being given so much, I figured there was no better time to make Impact Garden CBD Gummies available to everyone, as it can help thousands of people experience life pain-free and live much happier lives." His product, Impact Garden CBD Gummies, has been flying off the shelves within minutes and Elon Musk says his number one struggle as CEO is being able to keep up with demand. His CBD wellness line is 90% cheaper and five times more effective than those being offered by Bayer and other "Big Pharma" companies. Marthan MacCallum was furious after seeing multiple sponsors sue Fox News Network. Martha is now calling for Elon Musk to be indicted, saying: "I am happy Elon Musk found something to replace prescriptions, but his announcement was a direct breach of contract. Fox News should sue him immediately and he should formally apologize." ... Elon Musk eventually admitted that although Martha MacCallum is enraged, other Fox hosts has been supportive of him. Tucker Carlson even went on Live TV to say that:"Impact Garden CBD Gummieshas completely changed my life and it's clear that MacCallum is attempting a Coup." Again, this article was fictional. The story about Musk, CBD gummies that can "reverse dementia," Fox News, Martha MacCallum, and Tucker Carlson all never happened. (Vitality Labs CBD Gummies, Organicore CBD Gummies, and other product names were also mentioned.) For more information on CBD and keto gummies scams, we recommend a recent story about Ree Drummond, another celebrity whose image and likeness were also used by scammers to push these products. a recent story about Ree Drummond If any readers were scammed and ordered any gummy products after being led to believe that Musk or other celebrities endorsed them, we recommend filing a report with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). filing a report with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) We also advise readers to call their credit card company to dispute the charges. It may be a good idea to block future charges from the sellers in question or to get a new card number altogether, as many of these scams sign customers up to be charged subscription fees of hundreds of dollars per month. Bear in mind that, while it is rare, scammers sometimes use the exact name or a similar name of a real CBD company without permission to push these sorts of scams. In those minority of cases, there's no evidence that the company had any involvement in the activity. We've received word from users in recent months who said that they were being charged for these sorts of gummy products despite having no recollection of ordering them. Some people who left messages for our reporters even said that along with having no memory of ordering the products, they also had no charges on their credit card, yet still received the products at their doorstep. It's possible that some of these apparently unauthorized purchases occurred in the aftermath of what's known as card skimming. The FBI has said of the practice, "Skimming occurs when devices illegally installed on ATMs, point-of-sale (POS) terminals, or fuel pumps capture data or record cardholders' PINs. Criminals use the data to create fake debit or credit cards and then steal from victims' accounts. It is estimated that skimming costs financial institutions and consumers more than $1 billion each year." card skimming We are continuing to look into various aspects of these CBD and keto scams, including something associated with purported "fulfillment center" P.O. Box addresses in Smyrna, Tennessee, and Las Vegas, Nevada, as well as some activity apparently occurring in Tampa, Florida. "Elon Musk Reverses Dementia, Solution Sparks Huge Lawsuit Pressure on Fox, He Finally Fights Back on Air." AromaSense, https://aromasense.shop/. Liles, Jordan. "Is Ree Drummond Leaving Food Network to Sell Keto Gummies?" Snopes, 15 May 2023, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ree-drummond-leave-food-network-keto-gummies/. "Skimming." Federal Bureau of Investigation, https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/skimming. Smith, Daeshen. "Better Business Bureau Warns Customers to Be Mindful of Card Skimming Schemes." Fox 10 News, 25 Apr. 2023, https://www.fox10tv.com/2023/04/25/better-business-bureau-warns-customers-be-mindful-card-skimming-schemes/.
As if from a scene in a doomsday movie, real life Earth-bound space experts will take to their workstations in November 2021 to launch a small, golf-cart-sized spacecraft into space with the hopes that it will knock a looming asteroid off of its orbit. Except in this case, the asteroid in question poses no imminent harm. The target is the near-Earth asteroid Didymos and its moonlet, Dimorphos, neither of which pose a direct threat to Earth. And its all part of a test mission to be conducted by NASA to test the capabilities for redirecting potentially hazardous asteroids in the future. NASA announced the upcoming Double Asteroid Reduction Test (DART) mission on Oct. 1 and news outlets like CBS dubbed it an Armageddon-like mission. But rest easy, there is no "Dottie" in sight. DART Armageddon-like mission  At the time of this writing, there are more than 26,000 near-Earth asteroids, nearly 10,000 of which are known to be larger than 450 feet and another 891 that measure a half-mile long. In the last month, NASA says that 14 known asteroids passed closer to Earth than the moon  a number that reaches 127 when counting back 365 days. Thats where NASAs Planetary Defense Coordination Office comes in. This branch is responsible for finding, tracking, and characterizing near-Earth asteroids and objects, and this marks its first attempt at what is called the kinetic impactor technique, which sends a spacecraft like DART to the path of an asteroid to change its motion. NASAs Planetary Defense Coordination Office DART is our first full-scale attempt to demonstrate that we can change the motion of an asteroid in space, potentially as a way of defending Earth against the hazard of asteroid impacts, said Tom Statler, a DART scientist, in a podcast interview. podcast interview Asteroids orbit the sun like our home planet does, and when they are in their solar orbit, they do not come near Earths orbit or pose a threat. Asteroids that are potentially hazardous are those whose orbits intersect with Earths. To find those potential threats, telescopes around the world consistently scan the skies and collect data ultimately compiled by the International Astronomical Unions (IAU) Minor Planet Center. IAU then determines whether a detected moving object is an asteroid, calibrates its orbit, and figures whether it has the potential to make contact with Earth.    The key is to be able to find the asteroids on those Earth-intersecting trajectories, find them well in advance of any collision, and to take steps years ahead of time, not to destroy the asteroid -- don't need to do that; in many cases, we wouldn't be able to -- but just to prevent that collision from happening. And that's what we're going to do with DART. We're going to demonstrate one technology to cause that deflection that, someday, if we need to, we might use this technology to prevent an asteroid from hitting the Earth, explained Statler. The half-ton spacecraft will spend the better part of a year transiting to the binary asteroid system, Didymos, which is made up of two asteroids that orbit around each other. Just as the sun holds Earth in its orbit, the half-mile wide asteroid Didymos holds its football stadium-sized moon Dimorphos in orbit. DART is expected to run into the side of this small moon at a high velocity of 4 miles per second to change the motion of the binary asteroid, eventually slowing down and tightening up its orbit around the larger asteroid. Orbits are like donkeys, you pull them one way and they go the other way. So that's an aspect of this. You hit the thing to slow it down and it ends up going around faster, explained Statler.  Four sequential radar images of Didymos and its moonlet taken in November 2003. NASA  NASA   Currently, no known asteroid has a chance of impacting Earth in a century, according to Statler, but there could be some we havent yet discovered, and science is finding new ones all the time. And because scientists have been observing Didymos for decades, this natural laboratory will help researchers to determine whether systems like DART can move an asteroid and if so, by how much.  Two views of the DART spacecraft. NASA  NASA   The images DRACO returns of the target asteroid Dimorphos, including the last-second glimpse of its own impact site on the asteroid, will be crucial toward analyzing the results of the DART test and understanding how the asteroid was affected, wrote NASA in a news statement. news statement DART is scheduled to launch at 10:20 p.m. PST on Nov. 23 aboard a SpaceX Falcon rocket and ill be live-streamed from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The spacecraft will intercept Didymos moonlet in late September 2022 when Didymos is within 6.8 million miles of Earth. And yes, it will be visible to ground-based telescopes. live-streamed  Schematic of the DART mission shows the impact on the moonlet of asteroid Didymos. Post-impact observations from Earth-based telescopes would, in turn, measure the change in the moonlets orbit about the parent body. NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab  NASA   Sources DART. https://dart.jhuapl.edu/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2021. Margetta, Robert. NASA Invites Media to Launch of Double Asteroid Redirection Test. NASA, 4 Oct. 2021, https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invites-media-to-launch-of-double-asteroid-redirection-test. Moran, Norah. Ep 215: Redirecting Asteroids. NASA, 30 Sept. 2021, https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/HWHAP/redirecting-asteroids. NASA to Launch Armageddon-Style Mission to Deliberately Crash into an Asteroids Moon and Test Planetary Defense. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-dart-mission-crash-asteroid-moon-planetary-defense/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2021. Talbert, Tricia. DART Gets Its Wings with Innovative Solar Array Technology and Camera. NASA, 11 Aug. 2021, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/dart-gets-its-wings-spacecraft-integrated-with-innovative-solar-array-technology-and-camera. Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission. NASA, 30 June 2017, https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart. Planetary Defense. NASA, 21 Dec. 2015, https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense. Channeling U.S. Rep Joe Wilson, the Republican from South Carolina who shouted You lie! during President Barack Obama's speech to Congress in September, the Republican Party of Texas has accused the president of lying when he said that a new federal mandate requiring individuals to have health insurance was not a tax. You lie! the party tweeted July 19. Obama said O-care mandate wasn't a tax. Now Obama admin says it is a tax. Did the Obama administration talk one way and then the other? Per the legislation that Obama signed into law in March, most people will be required to have health insurance starting in 2014. There are exceptions, but individuals who aren't exempt and refuse to join a plan will be required to pay an annual penalty of $695 per person, up to a maximum of $2,085 per family, or 2.5 percent of household income, whichever is greater. The health care law calls the fine individuals must pay if they don't have insurance a penalty. In a Sept. 20, 2009, interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Obama denied that the mandate to buy health insurance was equivalent to a tax. For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase, Obama said. He noted that Americans are required to have auto insurance, but nobody considers that a tax increase. (Auto insurance is a state mandate, but all the states except New Hampshire require it of resident drivers.) When Stephanopoulos pressed Obama on whether the mandate was a tax, Obama said: I absolutely reject that notion. However, on July 16 The New York Times published a story that seemed to vindicate opponents of the health care overhaul who argued that the insurance requirement was a tax. The headline: Changing stance, administration now defends insurance mandate as a tax. Texas is one of 21 states challenging the law's constitutionality in court, but Virginia was the first to face the federal government in a July 1 hearing on its lawsuit. The New York Times pointed to a brief filed in that case by the U.S. Department of Justice defending the individual mandate as a valid exercise of the federal government's power to lay and collect taxes. Congress can impose taxes to provide for the general welfare under Article I of the Constitution. From the health-care law: The requirement regulates activity that is commercial and economic in nature: economic and financial decisions about how and when health care is paid for, and when health insurance is purchased. The law then says that national health spending is projected to increase from $2.5 trillion  17.6 percent of the economy  in 2009, to $4.7 trillion in 2019. In its legal brief, the department says the penalty is also a tax because it will raise revenue  $4 billion a year by 2017, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office  and because it's imposed and collected under the Internal Revenue Code. Individuals who refuse to obtain health insurance and are penalized will have to report the fine as an addition to income tax liability, the brief says. The health care law itself doesn't mention Congress' taxing authority, instead noting that the mandate is protected under the Constitution's Article I commerce clause, which lets Congress regulate commercial activity that has a substantial effect on the national economy. The tax argument is the strongest argument, the Times quoted Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School who supports the law, saying. This bill is a tax. Because it's a tax, it's completely constitutional. Balkin is also quoted saying that Obama has not been honest with the American people about the nature of the bill. White House spokesman Matt Lehrich defended the law both ways last week, telling us: We believe that the Commerce Clause provides ample constitutional authority for the individual mandate. If anyone has any doubts about that  and we dont think they should  its also clear that that the mandate is constitutional under Congresss power to tax. Similarly, Steven Schwinn, an associate professor of constitutional law at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, pointed out on his blog July 18 that the Obama administration has consistently defended the mandate in court primarily under the Commerce Clause, and secondarily under Congress' taxing power to promote the general welfare. Henry Aaron, a scholar who specializes in health care and tax policy at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, said Obama was correct to say the mandate isn't a tax. A mandate is meaningless unless it is backed up by some 'or else,' as in 'obey the mandate or else,'  Aaron said. The administration asserted the legal power to impose a mandate. The mandate is backed up by a tax that has to be paid if the mandate is violated. You obey the mandate or you pay the tax. Upshot: In his interview with Stephanopoulos, Obama insisted the mandate to purchase health coverage is not a tax. But in defending its legality, the Justice Department argues in part that the mandate is a valid exercise of Congress' taxing power. From where we sit, Obama was trying to make a political point; the Justice Department, a legal one. In its tweet, the Republican Party overreaches when it says the administration now calls the mandate a tax. The administration (still) isn't doing that. But it does cite Congress' power to levy taxes as authority for the mandate. And that enables the GOP to score its own political point, based on what looks like the administration's runs at having it both ways. We rate the GOP's recap of Obama's early position and his administration's recent defense of the law as Mostly True. Claim:  If John Kerry were elected President, the Secret Service would have to protect him and every property he owns for the rest of his life. Status:  False. Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2004] You will pay upkeep/Secret Service for 5 Kerry mansions.  It is good to be John F. Kerry....... The F stands for Forbes in case you ever wondered. He is one of the richest Senators in Government. When someone is elected president, it means the Secret Service has to protect the President and his family as well as his property. The Kerry's have five US properties not counting the several foreign properties they own too. The cost to run these homes are more than what the average American could afford, even if the rent was free, and all you had to pay the water, gas & electric. Including ground keepers, maintenance, pool, and house keepers. To be President would require the taxpayers to pay for all that now if elected. Including a complete staffed Secret Service security 24 hours a day. In addition to that we will have to pay for each of their homes for security improvements even if they never go to them all there is that just in case. Who do you think will pay for all this? We Pay! This takes all the expense off Kerry and puts it on us. Nevertheless, factor another major cost to Americans that Kerry does not want you to know about. Becoming president would automatically include taking care of all their properties with Secret Service Agents that includes 5 agents per 6 hour shift 4 times a day 365 days of the year for the rest of their lives so long as they own those properties. It comes with being President once you are elected. It requires us the taxpayers, to pay for this as well as his annual salary as well as his retirements including the cost of living adjustments to boot.  These salaries and agents protect all their real estate property with Secret Service Agents and pay the bills for the rest of his life. In addition, feed the Secret Service Agents and rotate new ones every 6 hours for the rest of his life. Do the math. Five properties need to be protected. This requires five Secret Service Agents per shift, daily every six hours, per property! That is 20 Secret Service Agents per day per property everyday including Holidays. Wow, what does that cost? Lets say an average of 20 agents per property, each earning a about $60K per agent to survey the perimeters and protect. Now times that by five properties so far. That is if the Kerry's do not buy any more properties afterwards. This also includes the Agents vehicles and repairs, gas, meals, days off, paid vacation, and medical plan visits etc per agent. Who pays? YOU pay, the whole time they are alive after becoming President! Is this the best use of our tax money electing Kerry to take care of all their properties both foreign and domestic? On the other hand, shouldn't he pay for his own? Yet, the Presidential salary could not afford it. The more I think about paying for Kerry's properties everyday, just makes me happy keeping President Bush all the more merrier. Without raising taxes to boot. How on earth would Kerry pay for everyone to have Healthcare, increase our military, and have us pay to protect his investments, all without raising our taxes? Tax and spend Kerry is his party motto. Which really has to make you wonder why anyone with his wealth, would take a salary of that of a U.S. Senator, never mind wanna be President? Do you believe him now why he needs to be the Prez? To serve the people? On the other hand, the people serve Him and his wife! IF YOU AREN'T COMPLETELY APPALLED, THEN YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION Origins:   The fact that Senator John Kerry's middle name is "Forbes" is about the only piece of information this latest political diatribe gets  right. John Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, together own several homes, but since they signed a prenuptial agreement and have kept their premarital assets separate,  a Boston townhouse (which John Kerry mortgaged in 2003 to finance his presidential bid) is the only one of these homes that they technically own as a couple.  The government is obligated to provide Secret Service protection to the President and his immediate family, so if John Kerry were elected to that office, of course he and his family would be entitled to the same level of security detail that the Secret Service provides to every President.  That protection might indeed include the use of public funds to pay the costs of installation and maintenance for security systems at some of the Kerrys' homes, because the protection of First Families is viewed as a right and proper charge upon the nation.  Security measures of this level would not be specific to the Kerrys; the homes of all Presidents are treated this way, as (to a lesser extent) are the homes of all former Presidents.  homes It is not true, however, that every single residence owned by the either of the Kerrys (whether it be in America or abroad) would be staffed by five Secret Service agents around the clock, and that those agents would be guarding the Kerrys and all their properties for the rest of John Kerry's life.  Secret Service staffing levels vary as the situation requires, and lifetime protection for former Presidents and their spouses was eliminated by Congressional legislation in 1997.  President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, are the last First Couple who will receive such a benefit; President George W. Bush and all who succeed him in the White House will be limited to receiving Secret Service protection for a period of not more than 10 years from the time they leave office.  protection In any case, the idea that U.S. voters would have to pay higher taxes if John Kerry were elected President in order to "protect his investments" is just silly.  The projected U.S. federal budget for 2005 is $2.4 trillion  the amount of money spent to protect the President and his family (whoever that President might be) is but a teeny-tiny fraction of a drop in that vast bucket.  The only thing sillier than that notion that taxes would have to be raised to protect a putative President Kerry is the suggestion that the cost of Secret Service protection should be a factor in voters' choosing who should serve as President of the United States. budget For more information about the protection afforded former Presidents, see our article about a similar rumor that was attached to the previous First Couple when President Bill Clinton left office in 2001. article Last updated:  2 October 2004    Sources:   Burger, Timothy and Kenneth Bazinet.  "Hil and Bill Buy 3M Home, Sweet Home in Capital."   [New York] Daily News.  30 December 2000  (p. 6).     DeFrank, Thomas.  "1st Family's N.Y. Bunker."    Fuchs, Marek.  "First Family's Arrival Changes the Focus of Secret Service Office."   The New York Times.  29 October 2000  (Weekend Calendar; p. 5).     Grove, Lloyd.  "The Reliable Source."   The Washington Post.  12 January 2001  (p. C3). Milwaukee County SheriffDavid A. Clarke Jr.regularlyuses the mediato criticize other elected officials -- having, for example, accused Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele ofpenis envyand Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett of beingclueless. In contrast, Milwaukee County District AttorneyJohn Chisholmrarely engages in public political battles. So it was a surprise when Chisholm excoriated Clarkein a letteron June 2, 2014. Among other things, Chisholm said the Sheriff's Office was running a budget deficit partly because Clarke has deputies collecting overtime while sitting passively in chairs watching courthouse security personnel work. Chisholms charge seemed worthy of a look. The backdrop The district attorneys letter was in response toa letterhe and the countys chief judge received a few days earlier from Clarke. Clarke, in the wake ofa shootingof a 10-year-old Milwaukee girl, who was gravely wounded in the crossfire between two men on a playground, called for temporarily suspending plea bargaining and probation sentences for major crimes. For years, he wrote, the county's prosecutors and judges had engaged in soft-on-crime practices. Security checkpoints Security checkpoints for the county courthouse complex, which includes the Public Safety Building and the Criminal Justice Facility, are not the responsibility of the Sheriffs Office but rather the county Division of Facilities Management. In other words, county workers, not sheriffs deputies, check visitors and operate metal detectors at the various entrances to the complex. The security work is not part of the sheriffs budget. Clarke, however, has asserted his authority to help provide security. In March 2013,Clarke announcedthat during an integrity check, an undercover sheriff's deputy with a gun cleared security checkpoints at all six entrances into the county courthouse complex. He said that, as a result, he had ordered deputies posted at each security checkpoint in the complex until he is convinced weapons cannot get through. He said the staffing would be paid for with overtime. That staffing is continuing. When we checked the entrances one afternoon in June 2014, we found two county employees manning each checkpoint and a deputy nearby. At one checkpoint, we saw a deputy actively working the metal detector; but at the others, a deputy was only observing. Our colleagues who regularly visit the courthouse told us the same: usually they see deputies merely observing, but occasionally actively working a checkpoint. For his part, Clarke told us the deputies are not posted at the checkpoints to watch the screeners. The deputies are there to provide an armed presence for the protection of the public and employees, and to prevent and deter an armed person from getting into the building, he said in an email. The cost Theres no dispute that overtime pay is being used, at least in part, to pay deputies to work security checkpoints at the courthouse complex. But the amount is not clear. Based on overtime reports the Sheriffs Office submits to county officials, its not possible to tell how much in overtime pay is being spent on deputies working security checkpoints at the courthouse complex, said county Auditor Jerome Heer. Overall, the sheriffs overtime expenditures have gone over budget. In 2013, the Sheriffs Office spent $5.9 million for overtime, exceeding the $3.6 million overtime budget, Heer said. As of June 23, 2014, he said, overtime expenditures were $2.7 million, which is on pace to exceed the overtime budget of $4.1 million. Our rating Chisholm said Clarke has deputies collecting overtime while sitting passively in chairs watching courthouse security personnel work. Theres no dispute that part of the sheriffs overtime budget pays deputies to work security checkpoints at the courthouse complex. The deputies typically are observing visitors passing through the checkpoints, but sometimes get actively involved in screening them or monitoring metal detectors. We rate Chisholms statement Mostly True. To comment, go to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelwebsite. In April 2017, an advertisement for a diet product called "Refresh Garcinia Cambogia" or "Garicinia Slim" was disguised as a genuine news report and published on web sites such as Running Evolutions.com and The Platinum Beard:  Running Evolutions.com The Platinum Beard   Student from Cornell University Cuts 31lbs On University Budget! Amanda Haughman, a student at Cornell University, was able to drop 31lbs off her waist in 1 month without ever using a dime of her own money. Amanda is studying nutrition sciences at Cornell, and for a required research project Amanda thought it would be perfect to use university funds to find out how to 'hack' her weight loss. According to Amanda, "the most expensive piece of it all was actually finding what worked. But the actual solution only cost about $5." "I had struggled with my weight my whole life. I tried things like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, which just didn't work as good as they promised. I am a single Mom with a kid at home and I am also working towards my degree, so I don't have any time to be at the gym. When I was assigned this big research project, I saw it as a perfect opportunity to get a deeper look at the natural weight loss opportunities that are out there, and that is when I found out about combining Refresh Garcinia Cambogia and apple cider vinegar. The best part of it all, I can tell that my daughter is proud of me." - Amanda Haughman These reports included a number of false and misleading claims. For instance, the lead photograph purportedly showing Amanda Haughman's tremendous weight loss is actually Rachel Graham, who lost nearly 100 pounds in a year. Graham told Today in 2016 that she credited her weight loss to exercise and a healthy diet. Graham did not mention the alleged magic formula of apple cider vinegar and garcinia cambogia: Rachel Graham Today Ask Rachel Graham how shes managed to lose almost 100 pounds in one year and the formula is simple: Healthy food and exercise. No secrets. No gimmicks. No quick fixes. Shes also honest about the impact of going from 235 pounds to 144 pounds, especially the loose skin on her stomach, thighs and arms.  [...] I want people to know that it is 110 percent possible, Graham told TODAY. I used to feel as though it wasn't. That I didn't have what it takes, and that it was just too far out of reach... If you want to make changes, it is completely possible with healthy food and exercise. This weight loss advertisement also fabricated an interview with CNN and claimed that the network ran a segment on this Cornell student's "amazing discovery":   We sat down with Amanda to ask her more about how she found out about Refresh Garcinia Cambogia and whether or not that is all that she used to lose 31lbs so quickly. CNN: Tell us, how did you know where to start? Amanda: To be honest, I really didn't. I was given a budget for the project by the university, and I spent nearly all of it researching everything under the sun. I looked into other previous research, case studies, and even successful weight loss stories of others.   This story never appeared on CNN.  Not surprisingly the Platinum Beard post links to a site selling Garcinia Cambogia. The Running Evolutions article links instead to what is apparently borrowed content from Barry's Boot Camp, a personal training program. We reached out to Barry's Boot Camp for comment, but have not yet received a reply.  Although we can't speak to the effectiveness of drinking apple cider vinegar with Refresh Garcinia Cambogia, we can say that this text did not originate in a genuine news article. This is an advertisement that used a fabricated interview, falsified claims, and an unrelated photograph to sell a diet product. Pawlowski, A.  "Mom gets real about weight loss: Here's how she shed 90 pounds in a year."
  Today  3 October 2016. An Iranian president says hesready to resolvethe nations nuclear standoff with the West  what gives? Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich gives at least partial credit to economic pain orchestrated by the United States and international allies. While the United States must still be very cautious, he saidon ABCsThis Week, one of the big lessons here is that economic sanctions do seem to work. Right now Iran is suffering 30 percent inflation, 20 percent unemployment, he told a roundtable including CNNs Newt Gingrich, ABCs Jonathan Karl and PBS Gwen Ifill. I mean this nation is hurting and our economic sanctions, because we've been patient with them, because we have actually rounded up almost every other nation to support us, have had a huge impact. Is Iran suffering such high inflation and unemployment under economic sanctions? Tumbling oil exports Now, economic sanctions are nothing new for Iran, which hasfaced U.S. sanctionssince its 1979 Islamic revolution. But the pressure has been rising. Other nations have joined in sanctions since 2006 in response to Irans efforts to develop a nuclear weapon,according to a report by Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, which provides nonpartisan analysis to Congress. Oil exports, which fund nearly half of Irans government spending, have fallen by about half since 2011, from about 2.5 million barrels a day to about 1.25 million. The drop has been driven, Katzman says, by a European Union embargo and U.S. pressure on Iranian oil customers. Iran also lost access to the international banking system. The combination has caused a sharp drop in the value of Irans currency, the rial, Katzman says. Meanwhile, sanctions helped trigger a recession thats driving up unemployment. Has that meant 30 percent inflation, 20 percent unemployment, as Reich told ABC viewers? Theres not a simple answer. Inflation estimates range from30 percent to 70 percent. Official unemployment statistics, meanwhile, are out of date, and outside experts question their accuracy, anyway. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development dont have up-to-date figures for Iranian unemployment. Still, Reichs in range. Gary Hufbauer, a former U.S. Treasury official and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who has studied sanctions for 30 years, said Reichs numbers seem reasonable. Heres how the Congressional Research Service put it in June: Inflation: 30 percent plus, according to Iran Central Bank in May 2013, but believed to be over 50 percent by outside experts. Unemployment rate: Official rate is 15.3 percent as of the end of 2011, but outside experts believe the rate is higher. Reich pointed us to news articles from theAssociated Pressand energy news siteOilPrice.com which offer some support for his numbers while highlighting the uncertainty. The Associated Press reported in June inflation over 30 percent, though it cited a 14 percent unemployment rate. OilPrices.com noted Sept. 19 that analysts outside the country found that unemployment rate impossible to believe, and quoted an estimate from Mehrdad Emadi, an Iranian-born economic adviser to the European Union, of more than 20 percent. (The OilPrices.com report echoes a Reuters report from thesame day.) So reasonable seems like a fair assessment for Reichs numbers. We should also note theres not universal agreement on the size of sanctions role in all that financial pain, which experts also attribute to Iransfiscal management. Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley with a background in economics, told PolitiFact it just makes sense unemployment and inflation would follow a slash in oil exports. The typical consequence for a nation dependent on exports when those exports are cut is high inflation and high unemployment, he said. Michael Malloy, a professor at the University of the Pacifics McGeorge School of Law who specializes in banking regulation and economic sanctions, told PolitiFact it's likely to be a much more complicated picture. Our ruling Reich told ABC viewers that under economic sanctions, now Iran is suffering 30 percent inflation and 20 percent unemployment. Irans own statistics arent widely trusted and international organizations dont have recent unemployment figures. But those numbers fall within a broad range of expert estimates cited by news reports and the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Its worth noting that Irans economic struggle has been exacerbated by its own economic policies and other factors, not just sanctions. Still, theres good evidence theyve had a huge impact, as Reich said. We rate his claim Mostly True. On 8 August 2017, NewsMax author Ed Klein published an article ("Hillary's Plea Bargain") heavily insinuating that Hillary Clinton had been quietly offered a plea bargain due to the Justice Department's belief that the former candidate was prosecutable on "a number of counts." That claim rested on a solitary anonymous source, purportedly a "Clinton lawyer." That designator was not further qualified or explained, and it seems contradictory that a lawyer purportedly working on Clinton's behalf would leak such a potentially damaging tidbit about his client to the author of several anti-Clinton books. Klein claimed that "discussion" of a plea took place in July 2017 between the unnamed lawyer and "a high-ranking Justice Department" official: The Justice Department has reopened the investigation of Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified material on her private email system while she was secretary of state, and is considering offering her a plea bargain if she will agree to plead guilty to charges of breaking the law, according to a Clinton attorney ... During the exploratory talks with the prosecutor, the Clinton attorney was told that despite former FBI Director James Comey's decision last July not to prosecute Hillary, the Justice Department has reexamined the email case and believes there are ample grounds for prosecuting Hillary on a number of counts. Under the Justice Department's plea offer, Hillary would be required to sign a document admitting that she committed a prosecutable crime. In return, the DOJ would agree not to bring charges against Hillary in connection with the email probe. Also as part of the agreement, the Justice Department would not proceed with an investigation of Hillary's pay to play deals with foreign governments and businessmen who contributed to the Clinton Foundation or who paid Bill Clinton exorbitant speaking fees. The article concluded with a stipulation that the source had "cautioned that normally a plea is offered by a prosecutor only upon arraignment," whereas Clinton had not been charged with any crime. No other news reports we located carried a version of the claim that was not sourced from Klein's article, and his Twitter header suggests that he is perhaps emotionally invested in the prospect of Clinton's theoretical indictment: header   Despite doubling down on his remarks about the Clinton investigation, there seemed to be a discrepancy in communication, because after the article was published, he told [America Talks Lives Miranda] Khan that the Department of Justice was considering reopening it, not that they had reopened it. They are seriously thinking of reopening this investigation and therefore if she doesnt take the plea agreement, which I agree with you, she almost certainly wont, I think they will then proceed with this investigation and this is going to drag on for a long time and in a way balance the investigation thats going on with President Donald Trump and his campaign advisers regarding so-called collusion with the Russians. The outlet was far from the first to take issue with Klein's sourcing and attribution. In 2012, Politico reported: reported On the other hand, his Clinton book was strewn with serious factual errors, truncated and distorted quotes, and the overall themes don't gibe with any other serious accounts of Clinton's life. The disdain for Klein's previous efforts haven't necessarily broken along political lines. Of the same tome, conservative New York Post columnist John Podhoretz said in 2005: said Curious and revealing. Because if any book in recent memory reads as though it has been written out of greed  a greedy hunger to separate millions of conservative book buyers from their hard-earned 25 bucks  it is Ed Klein's "The Truth About Hillary." This is one of the most sordid volumes I've ever waded through. Thirty pages into it, I wanted to take a shower. Sixty pages into it, I wanted to be decontaminated. And 200 pages into it, I wanted someone to drive stakes through my eyes so I wouldn't have to suffer through another word. It's June 2005. Hillary Clinton has been a major public figure in the United States for nearly 15 years. Somehow I imagine that if, indeed, she had "embraced" lesbianism "as a revolutionary concept" during her college years  years that have been written about exhaustively  we would have heard about it before now ... We also probably would have heard by now that Bill Clinton learned Hillary was pregnant with Chelsea by reading about it in an Arkansas newspaper. This detail is offered up by a single source  an "investment banker from New York"  in the course of a story about how Bill "raped" Hillary while on vacation in Bermuda in 1979. Coupled with the claim was a second assertion that Clinton never bothered to inform her husband she was pregnant. In 2005, Klein (in his own words) "dial[ed] back" during an interview about the passage on C-SPAN2, essentially retracting the claim in its entirety: interview HOST: OK. Is it true that Bill Clinton found out that his wife was expecting by reading the newspaper? KLEIN: Yes. HOST: Tell us a little bit more about that. KLEIN: Well, let me actually dial back. HOST: All right. KLEIN: I suspect that Bill Clinton knew that his wife was pregnant since she was pregnant for three months by the time the announcement came out. But it is true that the announcement was not made in the names of Governor and Mrs. Clinton or Governor and Ms. Rodham as she was then known, but was made in her name alone, and that she made the announcement and Bill Clinton said to my source, whom he was speaking to on the phone, "Guess what, you'll never  you'll never believe this, but I'm sitting here reading that Hillary has announced she's pregnant." That's how he found out that she  HOST: The announcement had been made. KLEIN: The announcement had been made. In 2014, The Guardian reviewed a subsequent Clinton book, Blood Feud: reviewed On a sunny afternoon in May last year, we are told, Hillary Clinton gathered six girlfriends from Wellesley's class of 1969 for a boozy lunch at Le Jardin du Roi, a bistro near her home in Chappaqua, New York. Recently liberated from the State Department, Clinton is said to have let loose on her erstwhile boss, accusing President Obama of having no hand on the fucking tiller. Klein discloses breathlessly that the wines had been carefully chosen by Roi, the owner of the restaurant, and that Roi waited on Hillary personally and prepared a special vegan dish for her after the former first lady told him that she was trying to lose weight. There is, however, a problem with this centrepiece of Blood Feuds prologue. Le Jardin du Roi was not named after the backyard of a man called Roi. It means The Garden of the King, or The Kings Garden in French. Its just the name of the restaurant, a puzzled staff member told the Guardian when reached by telephone. The name of the man who owns the restaurant is Joe. This is not the first glaring factual error to have made its way into Kleins reporting. It is not even the first time a mistake has been made in the very first anecdote of one of his books ... Two publishing industry sources familiar with the situation confirmed a report by BuzzFeed [in 2014] that Blood Feud had been dropped by its original publisher, William Morrow, because the content did not pass a vetting by in-house lawyers. When youre at an imprint of HarperCollins, which is part of NewsCorp, they take that stuff very seriously, and they check all of your sources and notes and they want to know where you got stuff, said one. Klein's suggestion that Hillary Clinton was to be indicted and had already been offered a plea deal quickly travelled through hyperpartisan corners of the Internet, but a number of criticisms of Klein's relationships with facts and sources have dogged his work from at least 2005, with numerous prominent conservative journalists among his most vocal critics.  Klein, Ed.  "Hillary's Plea Bargain."
  NewsMax.  8 August 2017. Podhoretz, John.  "Smear For Profit."
  New York Post.  22 June 2005. Swaine, Jon.  "Edward Klein: The Difference Between The Truth And A Lie."
  The Guardian.  14 July 2014. Taylor, Sarah.  "Report: Hillary Clinton Email Investigation Reopened  Clinton Purportedly Offered Plea Deal."
  The Blaze.  9 August 2017. Thrush, Glenn.  "Ed Klein's Obama Book Debuts At #1 On Times List -- Knocks Caro To #2."
  Politico.  24 May 2012. 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 attempt to ring the alarm on supposed deceptive practices by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hard-line conservatives including U.S. President Donald Trump promoted the idea in August 2020 that the public health agency suddenly changed its methods for reporting COVID-19 mortality statistics. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention And as a result, viral social media posts alleged, America only tallied about 9,000 COVID-19 fatalities, or roughly 6% of the more than 150,000 deaths widely reported by politicians, scientists, and news reporters. Many believers, including conspiracy theorist Jeff Berwick, dubbed the alleged change by the CDC evidence that people other than his followers were exaggerating the seriousness of the pandemic, and that everyone should be skeptical of rules on social distancing that halt the economy. In a Sept. 1 video, for example, he said: "It's been proven by the CDC  [the pandemic] is nothing, it was absolutely nothing. Zero. 9,000 people? That's nothing." video,   Numerous readers asked Snopes to investigate the matter. Several inquiries included a link to the hyperpartisan, junk news website The Gateway Pundit, or a link to another conspiratorial web page that phrased the alleged revelation like this: link The Gateway Pundit web page "The CDC quietly released new covid numbers showing those who solely died from the virus was only 6% (9,210) of the total deaths (153,504). 94% of those who died, did so because they had existing health conditions." Additionally, The Gateway Pundit page claimed, "the overwhelming majority" of reported COVID-19 deaths were among "very old Americans"  without going into specifics on what age population that meant  and suggested nefarious intentions on the part of the CDC to try to change its guidance without anyone noticing. Versions of this notion circulated widely online in summer 2020, in part because of support from American politicians such as Trump. In two retweets  one by his campaign adviser that linked to the Gateway Pundit page and another by a supporter of the unfounded QAnon conspiracy theory (screenshot below)  Trump endorsed the claim, essentially denigrating scientific evidence by his own health advisers, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. However, as of this writing, Twitter had removed the below-displayed post for violating its terms of service. American politicians Trump his campaign adviser QAnon conspiracy theory terms of service   First, to unpack the claim, let's be clear about how COVID-19  which is the disease caused by the coronavirus dubbed SARS-CoV-2  attacks the body and can become deadly. According to an article in the journal Science, a highly credible scientific publication: article Once inside, the virus hijacks the cells machinery, making myriad copies of itself and invading new cells.  As the virus multiplies, an infected person may shed copious amounts of it, especially during the first week or so. Symptoms may be absent at this point. Or the virus new victim may develop a fever, dry cough, sore throat, loss of smell and taste, or head and body aches. If the immune system doesnt beat back SARS-CoV-2 during this initial phase, the virus then marches down the windpipe to attack the lungs, where it can turn deadly. In other words, SARS-CoV-2 attacks lung cells, and that assault on a person's respiratory system can greatly exacerbate other preexisting conditions. That means COVID-19 patients run the risk of previously manageable health problems turning fatal  including cardiac arrest, liver failure, or lung scarring  after they're infected with SARS-CoV-2. Put another way, Ryan McNamara, a virologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in a series of tweets compared the SARS-CoV-2 virus with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which causes AIDS. He wrote: series of tweets After years of (HIV) virus spread, and in the absence of treatment, a patient infected with HIV will develop AIDS. [...] During this state of HIV progression, white blood cells called T-cells are depleted. This can allow co-infecting pathogens to spread unchecked or tumor cells to grow & metastasize. Hence pneumonia & AIDS-associated cancers are leading causes of death in HIV+ patients.    Next, we investigated how the CDC compiles COVID-19 death toll data. Since the viral posts did not specify what "numbers" by the CDC to which they were alleging nefariousness, we considered the CDC's Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) web page, which is a compilation of death certificates updated weekly by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Additionally, we obtained an April 2020 document by the World Health Organization titled, "International Guidelines For Certification and Classification (Coding) of COVID-19 As Cause of Death," which stated that medical examiners must include as much detail as possible based on records and lab testing when they're filling out death certificates. For example, a death certification for a patient who was infected with SARS-CoV-2 and afterwards developed pneumonia and fatal respiratory distress would list all three conditions as causes of death (see example below). document   The document also said death certificates for people who suffered from chronic conditions, such as coronary artery disease or diabetes, before their exposure to the coronavirus would list those conditions in addition to COVID-19. The coronavirus would still be labeled the underlying cause of death  or the disease that initiated the train of events leading directly to death," per the WHO's definition  since the preexisting health issues were likely exacerbated by the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. definition Next, we considered the CDC's process for analyzing those death certificates that list COVID-19. Its website explained: explained: When a person dies, the cause of death is determined by the certifier  the physician, medical examiner, or coroner who reports it on the death certificate. States register all death certificates and send them to [NCHS], where they are used to produce the nations official death statistics. [...] When COVID-19 is reported as a cause of death on the death certificate, it is coded and counted as a death due to COVID-19. COVID-19 should not be reported on the death certificate if it did not cause or contribute to the death. [...] Complete means describing a clear chain of events from the immediate to the underlying cause of death, reporting any other conditions that contributed to death, and providing information that is specific. In short, the CDC compiles mortality statistics that are based on all possible causes of death for one individual. So if a diabetes patient with high blood pressure was infected with COVID-19  which can target blood vessels  and they die because their blood vessels were already so damaged, the CDC would consider their death related to both the coronavirus and diabetes. (According to the CDC database of death certificate data, that was the case for more than 27,500 people.) data As of this writing, the CDC last updated its mortality statistics on Sept. 3, 2020. At that point, the agency said 171,787 death certificates included COVID-19 since the beginning of the U.S. outbreak in February 2020. And alongside the coronavirus, the majority of documents also listed comorbidities, or additional health issues that can either worsen or develop after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. For instance, 71,700 included influenza or pneumonia and COVID-19 as potential causes of death. However, fueling the conspiracy theory, the CDC web page stated: "For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause [of death] mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death." That meant, yes, medical investigators believed only 6% of COVID-19 patients died from the coronavirus alone. Those patients had no reported comorbidities. However, it was dangerously wrong to misinterpret that fact to mean that the remaining fatalities (or 94 percent) died from health issues other than the coronavirus. Rather, most people's underlying cause of death was COVID-19 and the virus either intensified or caused other illnesses that contributed to patients' death. Note: The "6%" claim was not the first attempt by COVID-19 conspiracy theorists to allege without any substantial evidence that the CDC was nefariously compiling data to trick people into thinking the coronavirus was more serious than it actually is. In spring 2020, for instance, they attempted to ring the alarm on the agency supposedly inflating COVID-19 death numbers for political reasons, but in reality the alleged discrepancy was a result of comparing two separate data sources that report different measurements. (See our analysis into that claim here.) here The death certification statistics, in short, prove that people with preexisting health problems  such as asthma or hypertension  face higher risk for serious illness, or dying, if they're infected with COVID-19, according to Bob Anderson, lead mortality statistician at NCHS. He said in a statement to NBC News: "These data are consistent with CDC guidance that those with underlying medical conditions are at greater risk for severe illness and death from COVID-19." NBC News: Additionally, Fauci explained the phenomena in a Sept. 1 interview on the ABC program "Good Morning America: Sept. 1 interview The point that the CDC was trying to make was that a certain percentage of [COVID-19 deaths] had nothing else but just COVID. That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn't die of COVID-19  they did. So the numbers that you've been hearing  the 180,000-plus deaths  are real deaths from COVID-19. ...It's not 9,000 deaths from COVID-19. Next, we found data to address another aspect of the fringe theory: that the "overwhelming majority" of reported COVID-19 deaths were among people of a "very advanced age." For the purpose of this report, we considered that group to be people aged 85 or older. And according to the CDC death certificate data, 53,000 documents for that population listed COVID-19 as a potential cause of death, accounting for about one-third of the total, or less than the majority. We should note here: Epidemiologists and health officials have been up front with the fact that COVID-19 patients who are older  as well as those who have underlying health problems  are at greater risk for serious problems. "As you get older, your risk of being hospitalized for COVID-19 increases. Everyone, especially older adults and others at increased risk of severe illness, should take steps to protect themselves from getting COVID-19," according to the CDC. Eight out of 10 people who have died as a result of COVID-19 in the U.S. were over the age of 65, per the agency's data. the CDC Lastly, we looked for any evidence to confirm or deny that the CDC attempted to "quietly" adjust its mortality statistics under the public's radar. Bob Anderson, lead mortality statistician at NCHS, told NBC News in a statement the death certificate data does not represent new information as NCHS has been publishing this same information since the outset when we began posting data on COVID-19 deaths on our web site.  NBC News In sum, considering the way in which the coronavirus impacts the human body, the way the CDC compiles data from death certificates  listing comorbidities that were either developed or exacerbated by COVID-19  as well as the fact that one-third of COVID-19 fatalities were people aged 85 or older, we rate this claim  The Dollar Vigilante. "Shocking Admission: CDC Says Over 90% of Deaths Weren't COVAIDS19 and 90% of Tests False Positives."
 LBRY. Accessed 2 September 2020. Hoft, Joe. "SHOCK REPORT: This Week CDC Quietly Updated COVID-19 Numbers  Only 9,210 Americans Died From COVID-19 Alone - Rest Had Different Other Serious Illnesses."
 The Gateway Pundit. 29 August 2020. Dale, Daniel, and Gumbrecht, Jamie. "Twitter Removes QAnon Supporter's False Claims About Coronavirus Death Statistics That Trump Had Retweeted."
 CNN. 31 August 2020. Factba.se. "Donald Trump - Deleted Tweets."
 Accessed 2 September 2020. Saving the Republic. "Updated CDC Covid Numbers Show Only 6% of Total US Deaths Actually Died Solely From Virus."
 Accessed 2 September 2020. ABC News. "Dr. Fauci Weighs in on 6M US Coronavirus Cases, Deaths and CoMorbidity."
 Accessed 2 September 2020. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "National Center for Health Statistics,"
 Accessed 2 September 2020. Flagg, Anna. "Mounting US Deaths Reveal An Outsize Toll On People Of Color."
 The Associated Press. 21 August 2020. World Health Organization. "Violence And Injury Prevention."
 Accessed September 3 2020. In August 2018, police in Iowa charged 24-year-old Cristhian Rivera with the murder of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old college student who had gone missing while jogging more than a month earlier.  charged The investigation into the disappearance of Tibbetts had been closely followed on a national level for weeks, but the arrest of Rivera, who authorities say is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, prompted some commentators -- led by President Donald Trump -- to bring her death into the realm of politics.  In a short video posted to Twitter, Trump used the murder of Tibbetts to advance his immigration policies, including the long-touted construction of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico: pic.twitter.com/wYCNmkkaNR pic.twitter.com/wYCNmkkaNR  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2018 August 22, 2018  The politicization of Tibbetts' death continued in the days following the arrest of Rivera, whom authorities in Iowa say led them to her remains and has confessed to the murder. On 23 August, the right-wing junk news Facebook page "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" posted a widely-shared meme which claimed that "liberals" had started a GoFundMe campaign to collectively raise $5,000,000 for Rivera's bail. It contained what was presented as a screenshot from the GoFundMe website, along with the introductory message: "Liberals raising the bail money for a murder [sic] just #WalkAway." meme "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" added: "Is this for real? Are Democrats raising money for this [piece of shit]?"   #WalkAway is an online campaign which purports to represent individuals who have left the Democratic party, supposedly in dismay at left-wing policies and vehement criticism or disparagement of President Donald Trump. A Twitter tracking tool called Hamilton68, which is run by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, has found that Russian bot networks have boosted the spread of the #WalkAway hashtag.  campaign Russian bot networks The meme was also promoted in several widely-shared tweets, including one posted by the self-described "investigative journalist" Laura Loomer, who has a track record of fabricating and perpetuating conspiracy theories: tweets track record Soooooooo@jihadwatchRS cant have a @gofundme for his journalism, but #MollieTibbettss illegal immigrant murderer can? ? @jihadwatchRS @gofundme #MollieTibbetts We need a very powerful lawyer of group of lawyers to sue these tech companies for violation of public accommodation laws. This is absolutely absurd. pic.twitter.com/dnEOoQcGNv pic.twitter.com/dnEOoQcGNv  Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 23, 2018 August 23, 2018  The meme's central claim is false. Nobody (liberal or otherwise) has set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise Rivera's bail (which is, in fact, $5,000,000.) The meme features some sloppy image editing, for example the jarring difference in font between "$117,504" and "of 5,000,000 to make bail."  bail   It also contains mistakes. On the actual GoFundMe website, the feature which shows how much money a campaign has raised always follows the same format: "$9,999 of $99,999 goal," as shown in the example below:   In the GoFundMe mobile app, the same feature is slightly different, always following the format "$9,999 raised of $99,999 goal." Neither the website or app display this meter with a description of the campaign (such as "to make bail") affixed to the end, and they always include dollar signs before every amount (which is not the case in the fake "Cristhian Rivera" meme.) format As well being crudely doctored, the "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" meme does not follow either of these formats, which establishes that it is a fake.  No campaign relating to Cristhian Rivera's bail existed on GoFundMe as of 24 August 2018, as a quick search of the website shows. (Neither did any such campaign exist under "Christian Rivera," as the suspect's name is sometimes misspelled, or "Cristhian Bahena Rivera," his full name.) Furthermore, no such campaign had ever existed. search exist Bahena When a campaign is removed from GoFundMe, it remains discoverable on search engines. For example, in August 2018 GoFundMe deleted a potentially fraudulent campaign purporting to raise funds for medical care for a Trump supporter supposedly attacked with a brick in Arizona. Performing a Google search for the title of the campaign ("Darrell's medical bills") still yields a residual URL for that campaign: campaign     "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" is a hyperpartisan Facebook page which frequently posts misleading or fake content and memes, some of which we have debunked previously.  debunked A separate campaign relating to Rivera (but not mentioning his bail) was launched on 22 August. It, too, used his mugshot but it was titled "Iowa billboard" and aimed to purchase a billboard which would show Rivera's photograph along with the slogan "Vote Democrat: No border. No wall. Just death for you all." campaign Foley, Ryan. "Authorities: Iowa Student Killed by Mexican in US Illegally."
 The Associated Press. 22 August 2018. Palma, Bethania. "Did the #WalkAway Campaign Use Stock Photographs for People It Claimed Left the Democratic Party?"
 Snopes.com. 25 July 2018. O., Caroline. "Pro-Trump and Russian-Linked Twitter Accounts Are Posing as Ex-Democrats In New Astroturfed Movement."
 ArcDigital. 5 July 2018. Palma, Bethania. "Conspiracy Theories Immediately Appear After Santa Fe School Shooting."
 Snopes.com. 18 May 2018. KNXV Phoenix. "Video -- Valley GoFundMe Page Taken Down."
 KNXV/MSN. 23 August 2018. 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 November 2020, as news broke that a vaccination for COVID-19 was being prepared for distribution, a rumor started circulating on social media that the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline owned a laboratory in Wuhan, China -- the Wuhan Institute of Virology -- where conspiracy theorists falsely maintain the COVID-19 pandemic originated.  This rumor, which reads like a game of six-degrees of separation, attempts to trace a line from GlaxoSmithKline, to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, to billionaire philanthropist and frequent right-wing boogeyman George Soros, and, in some iterations of this rumor, to Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. iterations Here's one version of the rumor that was posted to Twitter:   This tweet reads: "The Chinese biological laboratory in Wuhan is owned by Glaxo! Who, by cnance [sic], owns Pfizer! (the one who produces the vaccine!) Which, by chance, is managed by Black Rock finances. Who, by chance, manages the finances of the Open Foundation Company (SOROS FOUNDATION)!" This nonsensical game of connect the dots starts with a false assertion. The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline does not own the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Wuhan Institute of Virology  a research lab in China that has been the center of conspiracy theories since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic  is operated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and is funded, in large part, by the Chinese government. It is not owned by GlaxoSmithKline or any other private company. funded "Over the past 40 years, half of its income has come directly from central-government investment; the rest has been from competitive funding or technology transfer. CAS could not develop without the funding and support of the central government." It's also false to say that GlaxoSmithKline owns the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.  While these two companies share some common interests  in 2018, they announced a joint venture that combined their consumer health businesses  they remain two distinct companies. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time: Wall Street Journal Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline PLC plan to combine their consumer health-care units and eventually spin off the joint venture, creating the worlds largest seller of drugstore staples like Advil and Sensodyne toothpaste. The deal, announced Wednesday, will free up both companies to concentrate on prescription medicines, which tend to be more profitable if also higher risk. The joint venture represents an unexpected conclusion to a yearlong process by Pfizer to shed its consumer business, as it and other pharmaceutical companies focus on higher-margin prescription drugs. While Glaxo has shared that focus, the British drugmaker had remained committed to its consumer business, which its chief executive led before her promotion to the top job last year. This joint venture, however, did not involve one company buying the other.  This rumor appears to have been created with the intent of stirring up confusion and skepticism over the COVID-19 vaccine by connecting pharmaceutical companies to a laboratory in Wuhan, China. GlaxoSmithKline, however, does not own the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Furthermore, claims that COVID-19 was "manufactured," or that it "escaped from" this Chinese lab, are nothing more than baseless conspiracy theories.