Is This Video of a 'Praying Hands' Cloud Formation Real?
It's not uncommon for the human eye to pick out familiar-seeming shapes among clouds in the sky, nor for the human mind to experience, however briefly, the sensation that such a resemblance is more than just coincidental. There's a name for this general phenomenon: pareidolia. pareidolia It's also not uncommon, especially in this era of digital image manipulation and virality, for human beings to fabricate "eerie" photographs along the same lines to share on social media. There's also a name for this general phenomenon: hoaxes. A perfect example of the latter came to Snopes' attention in January 2023, in the form of a YouTube video (originally posted on TikTok) supposedly showing a cloud formation in the shape of shockingly detailed "praying hands." Watch: praying hands  Interestingly, in addition to the above video captioned "A strange cloud in the sky of America," a very similar video can be found elsewhere on YouTube with the caption, "The cloud appeared in the sky of Ukraine during the war." Here is a comparison between the two "cloud formations": very similar video  (YouTube screenshots) Note how artificial the "cloud hands" appear in both of these videos. Note, too, how similar to each other they appear as if they were both modeled after the same source image. We found other specimens with the same similarities. other specimens Clearly, these videos and photographs were the products of digital editing, not miraculous meteorological events. What source image might they have been modeled after? Our vote goes to this drawing of praying hands by the German artist Albrecht Durer, dating from about 1500: Praying hands by the German artist Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), circa 1500. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)  Definition of PAREIDOLIA. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pareidolia. Accessed 18 Jan. 2023. "Praying Hands by the German Artist Albrecht Durer , circa 1500." Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/praying-hands-by-the-german-artist-albrecht-durer-circa-news-photo/2635952. Accessed 18 Jan. 2023.
On 3 May 2016, web site the Washington Free Beacon published an article provocativelytitled "Clinton Campaign Made Payments to Hard Drive and Document Destruction Company" (and subtitled "Payments could have purchased destruction of 14 hard drives"). The article reported that the Hillary Clinton campaign made payments totaling $187 to a document destruction company (American Document Destruction, Inc.) in February and March of 2016. The article implied (without directly stating) that the Clinton campaign might have spent the funds on destroying disk drives involved in the controversy surrounding Clinton's use of private, home-based servers and accounts for official business she conducted while serving as U.S. secretary of state: controversy The Hillary Clinton campaign made multiple payments to a company that specializes in hard drive and document destruction, campaign finance records show. The payments, which were recorded in February and March of 2016, went to the Nevada-based American Document Destruction, Inc., which claims expertise in destroying hard drives or anything else that a hard drive can come from. Our hard drive destruction procedures take place either at your site or at our secure facility in Sparks, NV, the companys website states. This decision is yours to decide based on cost and convenience to you. In either situation, the hard drive will be destroyed by a shredding. Nowhere did the Washington Free Beacon article offer any evidence that the services provided by American Document Destruction, Inc. to the Clinton campaign involved the destruction of hard drives or data from the private server she used while serving as secretary as state. In fact, the article didn't even offer any evidence that the provided services involved the destruction of hard drives at all (rather than paper documents). It simply noted that the Clinton campaign paid American Document Destruction, Inc. an amount of money that would have covered the costs of destroying 14 hard drives or shredding 37.4 cubic feet of paper (or, presumably, some combination of the two). A follow-up article from another news outletreported that Clinton's campaign also paid $50 to Shredco, a company that provides safe disposal of paper documents. outlet It's extremely unlikely either of these companies were involved in destroying material related to Clinton's use of a private e-mail server, for a number of reasons. First of all, the expenditures were openly reported to the Federal Election Commission, an unlikely move for a campaign furtively involved in destroying evidence relating to a federal investigation:     Second, anyone seeking to destroy sensitive information related to a high-level federal investigation probably wouldn't trust the task to businesses who charged only a few hundred dollars for the service, rather than to much more expensive (and presumably more private and secure) outfits. Moreover, even though Bernie Sanders' campaign wasn't embroiled in an e-mail controversy, his campaign paid nearly three times as much as Clinton's did for similar services: paid    Former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz also contracted for shredding services in the same timeframe: timeframe    Paying for data destruction services is hardly suspect for an organization that processes thousands of donations each month, as the Hillary Clinton campaign does. Personal information from donors (such as credit card numbers) would, if printed or stored on hard drives, need to be securely destroyed to protect those donors. And given Bernie Sanders' repeated insistence that the average donation made to his campaign is $27, it seems reasonablethat his organization would also be contracting for similar services and paying for a higher volume of shreddable transactions than the Clinton campaign.  Bier, Jeryl.  "Hillary Clinton Campaign Paid Second Document Destruction Company."
The Weekly Standard.  5 May 2016. Schmidt, Michael S.  "Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules."
The New York Times.  2 March 2015. Schoffstall, Joe.  "Clinton Campaign Made Payments to Hard Drive Aand Document Destruction Company."
The Washington Free Beacon.  3 May 2016. Federal Election Commission.  "Selected Presidential Reports for the 2016 March Monthly."
March 2016. As if Americans hadn't accumulated enough dark suspicions about their government over the past 50-odd years, along comes an Internet factoid holding that the United States government intentionally (and fatally) poisoned more than 10,000 of its own citizens between 1926 and 1933:   The alarming claim is that the U.S. government added poison to alcohol to discourage people from drinking it during Prohibition, the period from 1920 to 1933 in which it was illegal to produce, transport, or sell alcoholic beverages anywhere in the United States. That didn't mean people stopped making, buying, and drinking booze  they just did it illegally. As noted in virtually every U.S. history textbook ever written, one of the many negative unintended consequences of Prohibition was a booming black market in alcohol that law enforcement was never able to subdue. Prohibition To the question at hand: Did the federal government really add poison to alcohol to discourage people from drinking it? It did, in fact. The government did purposely add poisonous substances to alcohol, and this did result in thousands of deaths during Prohibition. The story of how that came to pass is longer and more nuanced than the Internet meme suggests, however. And it began well before the passage of the 18th Amendment, which made Prohibition the law of the land. According to Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (Penguin Press, 2010), the practice was called "denaturing". It consisted of adding noxious chemicals to alcohol sold for industrial purposes to make it unfit for human consumption. The process, long used in Europe, was introduced in the United States in 1906 as a means of exempting producers of alcohol used in paints, solvents, and the like from having to pay the taxes levied on potable spirits. 2010 Mainly, this was done by adding some methyl alcohol ("wood alcohol") to grain alcohol, rendering it poisonous. Some formulas also contained substances that made the product taste too awful to drink. One of the ways crime syndicates tried to flout Prohibition, Blum explained in a 2010 Slate article, was stealing industrial alcohol and finding ways to make it potable. The government, in turn, resorted to making it more poisonous: article To sell the stolen industrial alcohol, the liquor syndicates employed chemists to "renature" the products, returning them to a drinkable state. The bootleggers paid their chemists a lot more than the government did, and they excelled at their job. Stolen and redistilled alcohol became the primary source of liquor in the country. So federal officials ordered manufacturers to make their products far more deadly. By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisonskerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be addedup to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly. TIME magazine's 2008 Prohibition retrospective described the horrendous consequences of an unregulated  and, in many instances, purposely adulterated  black-market liquor supply: retrospective It wasn't just the violent Prohibition-era gang wars that were dangerous to Americans drinking homemade moonshine and bathtub gin. According to the Dec. 26, 1922 edition of the New York Times, five people were killed in the city on Christmas Day from drinking "poisoned rum." That was only the beginning. By 1926, according to Prohibition, by Edward Behr, 750 New Yorkers perished from such poisoning and hundreds of thousands more suffered irreversible injuries including blindness and paralysis. On New Year's Day 1927, 41 people died at New York's Bellevue Hospital from alcohol-related poisonings. Oftentimes, they were drinking industrial methanol, otherwise known as wood alcohol, which was a legal but extremely dangerous poison. One government report said that of 480,000 gallons of liquor confiscated in New York in 1927, nearly all contained poisons. Although it is inaccurate in the sense that none of this deadly business began in 1926, the factoid we set out to investigate wasn't entirely wrong in citing that year as a pivotal one. Blum points out that the spate of alcohol-related poisonings that culminated in so many fatalities on New Year's Day 1927 actually commenced a week earlier, on Christmas: It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City's Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat. Before hospital staff realized how sick he wasthe alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptomthe man died. So did another holiday partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season. As for the claim that some 10,000 people died of alcohol poisoning during the course of Prohibition through its repeal in 1933, that, too, is a figure we can source to Blum (who did not, in the Slate article, specify where this estimate came from): Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people. In sum, federal attempts to reduce the palatability of industrial alcohol came well before Prohibition, and efforts to intensify the risks of consuming it were both well-known and controversial at the time. Such evidence as we've seen does not support the the implication that the government set out to purposely kill drinkers of alcohol, although Prohibition-era lawmakers and public health experts decried what they described as a callous disregard for those who died as result of drinking denatured alcohol. before known Andrews, Evan.  "10 Things You Should Know About Prohibition."
  History.  16 January 2015. Blum, Deborah.  "The Chemist's War."
  Slate.  19 February 2010. Damrau, Frederic, M.D.  "The Truth About Poison Liquor."
  Popular Science Monthly.  April 1927. Norris, Charles, M.D.  "Our Essay In Extermination."
  The North American Review.  December 1928. Rothman, Lily.  "The History of Poisoned Alcohol Includes an Unlikely Culprit: The U.S. Government."
  TIME.  14 January 2015. TIME.  "Top 10 Prohibition Tales: Mortal Moonshine."
  2008. Chicago Tribune.  "Alcohol Gets Double Poison Ration Jan. 1."
  30 December 1926. Wikipedia.  "Prohibition In The United States."
  Accessed 11 May 2017. Wikipedia.  "Prohibition In The United States."
  Accessed 11 May 2017. During the Democratic debate in economically distressed and racially diverse Flint, Mich., CNNs Don Lemon asked both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders the same question: In a speech about policing, Lemon said, the FBI director, James Comey, borrowed a phrase saying, Everyone is a little bit racist. What racial blind spot do you have? When it was Sanders turn to answer, he began by talking about several specific examples of racial discrimination. He then drew a contrast with what whites experience. When youre white, you dont know what its like to be living in a ghetto. You dont know what its like to be poor. You dont know what its like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car, Sanders said. Several readers asked us to take a closer look at Sanders comment that when you're white ... you don't know what it's like to be poor. Sanders' point was that white people havent had to contend with racism based on skin color. But when he moves into the subject of whites experience with poverty, hes on weak ground. Sanders suggestion that white Americans havent experienced poverty is undercut by statistics calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau. Since the 1960s, the Census Bureau has tracked the numbers and percentages of Americans by race who have an income level that puts them at the poverty line. Heres the most recent data, for 2014:  Category Number in poverty Poverty rate Americans of all races 46.7 million 14.8 percent White 19.7 million 10.1 percent African-American 10.8 million 26.2 percent Hispanic 13.1 million 23.6 percent Asian-American 2.1 million 12.0 percent By this measure, Sanders was certainly wrong to suggest that whites havent experienced poverty. In 2014, there were actually more white Americans in poverty -- 19.7 million -- than members of any other group. Part of the reason, of course, is that there are more white Americans than there are members of minority groups overall. (Whitesaccount for62 percent of the population.) Still, even though whites have a lower poverty rate than other groups -- roughly 10 percent -- even that percentage is hardly trivial. The numbers are similar if you raise the income level slightly. At125 percent of the poverty level, the number ofwhite Americansrises to about 26.5 million. Thats a lot of white people who are in or near poverty. This was a misstatement. A lot of white people know what its like to be poor, said Julia Isaacs, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. If you look at the poor as a group, minorities are disproportionately represented. Still, the white population is large enough that the majority of the people in poverty are white. Thats been the case since at least 1970. We calculated the racial and ethnic makeup of the population at the poverty line in roughly 10-year intervals, using data for the four categories above. Census data is available back to 1990 for all four groups, and they exist for all but Asians back to about 1970. Year Percentage of people in poverty who were white Percentage of people in poverty who were black Percentage of people in poverty who were Hispanic Percentage of people in poverty who were Asian 2014 54 19 23 4 2010 54 19 24 3 2000 56 21 20 3 1990 57 25 15 2 1980 62 27 11 NA 1970 64 28 9* NA * Data is for 1972 Its easiest to grasp the scope of white poverty when using the following graphic, which was provided to us by Christopher Wimer, a research scientist at the Columbia University Population Research Center. Its similar to the chart above, except that it uses a more precise, though still experimental, measurement of poverty that is adjusted for geography, government benefits and other factors not captured in the traditional poverty measurement. The share of whites in the population of Americans in poverty is shown in purple. As the chart indicates, the white share has fallen, but its still the largest of any of the four groups studied. Sanders said the day after the debate that he misspoke,telling reporters, What I meant to say is when you talk about ghettos traditionally, what you talk about is African-American communities. There is nobody on this campaign  who's talked about poverty, whether it's in the white community, the black community, the Latino community, more than I have. Our ruling Sanders says that when you're white ... you don't know what it's like to be poor. On the contrary -- the most recent figures show that nearly 20 million white Americans are experiencing poverty. While thats smaller as a percentage than it is for other racial and ethnic groups, thats still a lot of people. In raw numbers, its actually more than any other group. We rate his claim False. Scam:  Card-skimming thieves can make fraudulent purchases with information read from RFID-enabled credit cards carried in pockets and purses.  Examples:  [Collected via e-mail, December 2010] Just received an email concerning "Credit Card Pickpocketing". It was broadcast from Memphis WREG TV.  [Collected via e-mail, October 2012] PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO I read this about a couple weeks ago, and then checked my cards for the little "WiFi Signal Icon" on each one.  I found none w/that signal on them, but I was determined to watch for it when my cards came in on renewals. Well, yesterday I got my CHASE SLATE card AND THERE IT WAS!  My first time to see it. I'll not activate that card after seeing this.  I guess I'll go to the bank and see if I can replace it w/a non wi fi (Radio Frequency Card)....? Thought all my contacts ought to see this if you've not already seen this demo....wow!  Origins:  In December 2010, Memphis television station WREG aired an "Electronic Pickpocketing" piece on the potential risks posed by "contactless" credit/debit/ATM cards containing embedded RFID (radio frequency identification technology) chips.  Such chips encode basic information (e.g., account numbers, expiration dates) that can be picked up by point-of-sale RFID readers, eliminating the need for cards to be physically handled or swiped.  One possible drawback to this technology is unauthorized persons might use RFID readers of their own to surreptitiously glean that same information, as demonstrated in WREG's report, which featured Walt Augustinowicz of Identity Stronghold using a card reader and a netbook computer to engage in card "skimming"  picking up account information off RFID-enabled cards carried in the pockets and purses of random passers-by on the street.  A few days after it broadcast the original "Electronic Pickpocketing" story, WREG reported the piece had gone  Electronic Pickpocketing  viral, racking up 1.2 million views in just three days. Despite all the publicity WREG's report garnered, the concept of RFID-enabled credit card theft was hardly a new one.  Various news, technical, and security  outlets have been reporting (and demonstrating) for several years the potential risk that information transmitted wirelessly by RFID-enabled cards might be picked up by eavesdropping thieves using relatively cheap equipment.  But although (as demonstrated in WREG's piece) it's certainly possible for interlopers to read pieces of information from some contactless cards under some circumstances, the extent to which this activity might be used to facilitate theft is currently difficult to gauge. reporting As the WREG report noted, representatives from the Identity Theft Resource Center said "they've never seen a case of RFID skimming used to steal information,"  but it's also the case that it would be difficult (if not impossible) for skimming victims to identify exactly how their card information had been stolen. Nonetheless, other analysts have offered reasons why they believe card skimming may not be nearly as much of a threat as some reports have made it sound:  The data streams emitted by contactless cards don't include such information as PINs and CVV (Card Verification Value) security codes  or, in newer cards,  customer names  and without those pieces of information a card skimmer should not be able to utilize the stolen card numbers to print up counterfeit cards or engage in Card Not Present (CNP) transactions: CNP None of the cards transmits the additional number on the front or back, known as the card validation code, that some businesses require for online purchases. [C]ompany representatives argued [that] the process of making purchases with the cards involves verification procedures based on powerful encryption that make each transaction unique. Most cards, they said, actually transmit a dummy number that does not match the number embossed on the card, and that number can be used only in connection with the verification "token," or a small bit of code, that is encrypted before being sent. "It's basically useless information," said David Bonalle, vice president and general manager for advanced payments at American Express. "You can't steal that data and just play it back and expect that transaction to work." However, some merchants are not assiduous about requiring extra levels of security information from their customers beyond credit card number and expiration date, and security providers contend that card skimmers can still find plenty of places to make purchases with nothing more than 16-digit account numbers and expiration dates.  Although some contactless cards can be read from as far as a few feet away, refinements to the RFID technology employed in newer cards limits their transmission range to a much smaller distance.   Although RFID-enabled cards may have originally transmitted their information in plain text, newer contactless cards are adding encryption to the data streams and thus cannot be read directly by ordinary card readers.  (Encryption requires additional processing time, however, so businesses that place a premium on speed may still eschew its use in their card processing systems.)  Card skimming generally works when the victim is carrying only a single contactless card; otherwise, the transmissions from multiple cards can create a jumbled, unintelligible stream. It remains the case that cardholders are not liable for the fraudulent use of their credit card information, but consumers who are extra cautious have the option of investing in secure sleeves that shield the RFID signals transmitted by their cards from electronic eavesdroppers. On 17 February 2016, an updated version of the rumor began making the rounds, this time accompanied by a photo of a man holding a Point of Sale (PoS) device: version   In theory, all that a thief would need to do would be to enter a price lower than 30, then tap the device against people's pockets and they would be charged. Almost all new bank cards and credit cards issued in the UK now offer the chips, which allow users to authorise small transactions without entering a PIN code. Facebook user R Jarvis claims he saw the alleged scammer at work, saying, "So this guy was spotted wandering round with a Point of Sale (POS) device. All he has to do is key in a price less than 30 and then touch the device on the pocket that contains your wallet." However, the photo that went along with this claim wasn't taken by Paul Jarvis. It appeared in an 8 February 2016 article about possible electronic pickpocketing in Russia. In any case, "electronic pickpocketing," with or without Point of Sale devices, remained rare as of 2016, but RFID sleeves for cards remained readily available for those with lingering concerns. claim article available Last updated:  17 February 2016     Sources:   Noll, Scott.  "Electronic Pickpocketing."   WREG-TV [Memphis].  3 December 2010.     Noll, Scott.  "Electronic Pickpocketing Goes Viral."   WREG-TV [Memphis].  6 December 2010.     Schwartz, John.  "Researchers See Privacy Pitfalls in No-Swipe Credit Cards."   The New York Times.  23 October 2006.     Vamosi, Robert.  "RFID-Enabled Credit Card Theft."   CNET.com.  27 October 2006.     KKCO-TV [Grand Junction, CO].  "Protecting Your Identity Against Credit Card Hackers."   15 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 April 2020, millions of Americans who lost income due to circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic were waiting on promised relief payments from the United States government. So when news broke that U.S. President Donald Trump was making the "unprecedented" move of having his name added to these stimulus checks, a decision that could potentially delay the arrival of these checks by several days, many citizens took to social media to voice their displeasure, as in the example below: millions of Americans social media   Trump's name is truly being added to the COVID-19 stimulus checks, otherwise known as Economic Impact Payments. As of this writing, however, officials at the U.S. Treasury Department insist this will not result in any delays.  The Washington Post first reported on Trump's decision on April 14, 2020. According to the news outlet, Trump's name is expected to appear in the memo line of the check, not as the payment's official signatory, and that this will be the "first time that a president's name appears on an IRS disbursement": reported The Treasury Department has ordered President Trumps name printed on stimulus checks the Internal Revenue Service is rushing to send to tens of millions of Americans, a process that could slow their delivery by a few days, senior IRS officials said. The unprecedented decision, finalized late Monday, means that when recipients open the $1,200 paper checks the IRS is scheduled to begin sending to 70 million Americans in coming days, President Donald J. Trump will appear on the left side of the payment. It will be the first time a presidents name appears on an IRS disbursement, whether a routine refund or one of the handful of checks the government has issued to taxpayers in recent decades either to stimulate a down economy or share the dividends of a strong one. Treasury officials disputed that the checks would be delayed. While Trump's name will appear on these stimulus checks, we can't predict whether these payments will be delayed or go out on time. A Treasury Department official said in a statement that "absolutely no delay whatsoever" would occur:  statement "Economic Impact Payment checks are scheduled to go out on time and exactly as planned  there is absolutely no delay whatsoever ... In fact, we expect the first checks to be in the mail early next week which is well in advance of when the first checks went out in 2008 and well in advance of initial estimates." It should also be noted that many Americans will be receiving their stimulus payments via a direct deposit. It's unclear how many people will receive hard paper checks bearing Trump's name and how many will receive a digital payment.  An IRS official told Fox News that the number of people who will receive paper checks was subject to a "number of variables, including how much info the IRS obtains through the Non-Filers Enter Payment Info web portal and the Get My Payment portal launching [April 15] at IRS.gov. Fox News These Economic Impact Payments were included in the $2.2 trillion stimulus package that Trump signed in late March 2020. According to the IRS, direct-deposit payments had already started going out as of the second week in April. Those waiting on a paper check, however, may not see their payments for several weeks. (If you're waiting on a payment, you can check the status of your check on a recently launched web app from the IRS.) several weeks web app To sum up: It is true that in April 2020, the U.S. government made the unprecedented move of adding the president's name to stimulus checks issued by the IRS in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although an IRS official said this could slow the process and delay the delivery of checks, Treasury officials insisted that the checks would still go out on schedule.  Paine, Neil.  "More Than 16 Million Americans Have Lost Their Jobs In The Past Three Weeks."
  Five Thirty Eight.  9 April 2020. Raju, Manu; Fox, Lauren; Klein, Betsy.  "Some Americans Could Wait 20 Weeks to Receive Stimulus Checks, IRS Tells House Democrats."
  CNN.  2 April 2020. Olson, Tyler and John Roberts.  "Trump's Name Will be Added to Stimulus Checks."
  Fox News.  15 April 2020. Acosta, Jim and Caroline Kelly.  "Trump's Name Will be Added to Stimulus Checks."
  CNN.  15 April 2020. Acosta, Jim and Caroline Kelly.  "Trump's Name Will be Added to Stimulus Checks."
  CNN.  15 April 2020. Lederman, Josh Phil Helsel.  "Trump's Name Will Appear on Coronavirus Relief Checks."
  NBC News.  14 April 2020. A photograph of Barack Obama carrying (and presumably reading) the best-selling book, The Post-American World, is a real one, snapped by Doug Mills of the New York Times in Bozeman, Montana, in May 2008: What does Obama read?Hussein Obama with a book in his hands. He's reading "The Post-American World"  it's a Muslim's view of a defeated America!  However, the characterization of the pictured book as "a Muslim's view of a defeated America" is erroneous: The book does not posit a "defeated America," nor does it express a Muslim point of view: The The Post-American World was written by Fareed Zakaria, an Indian-born political journalist (commonly described as a "political moderate") who specializes in world affairs and has written for (and edited) U.S. national news publications, hosted U.S. television news programs, and authored several books on international issues. A Village Voice profile described Zakaria (a naturalized citizen of the United States) thusly: Fareed Zakaria written hosted authored Although he was a rising star in the serious foreign-policy world of the '90s (The Nation once described him as a "junior Kissinger"), it was his post-9/11 Newsweek cover story "Why They Hate Us" that put him on the mainstream map as someone who could make sense of the now threatening outside world. And he has continued to win himself a substantial following with his thoughtful critiques of the Bush administration's activities in Iraq. He is America's go-to man for global chaos, providing some urgently needed outside perspective on our never ending war on terror.His own upbringing was open-minded and secular; he sang Christian hymns at school and celebrated Hindu as well as his own Muslim holidays. "I do know a lot about the world of Islam in an instinctive way that you can't get through book learning," he says thoughtfully, but admits he finds the role of token Muslim explainer in the American media slightly uncomfortable. "I occasionally find myself reluctant to be pulled into a world that's not mine, in the sense that I'm not a religious guy." The following review (from Publishers Weekly) summarizes the thesis of The Post-American World  When a book proclaims that it is not about the decline of America but the rise of everyone else, readers might expect another diatribe about our dismal post-9/11 world. They are in for a pleasant surprise as Newsweek editor and popular pundit Zakaria (The Future of Freedom) delivers a stimulating, largely optimistic forecast of where the 21st century is heading. We are living in a peaceful era, he maintains; world violence peaked around 1990 and has plummeted to a record low. Burgeoning prosperity has spread to the developing world, raising standards of living in Brazil, India, China andIndonesia. Twenty years ago China discarded Soviet economics but not its politics, leading to a wildly effective, top-down, scorched-earth boom. Its political antithesis, India, also prospers while remaining a chaotic, inefficient democracy, as Indian elected officials are (generally) loathe to use the brutally efficient tactics that are the staple of Chinese governance. Paradoxically, India's greatest asset is its relative stability in the region; its officials take an unruly population for granted, while dissent produces paranoia in Chinese leaders. Zakaria predicts that despite its record of recent blunders at home and abroad, America will stay strong, buoyed by a stellar educational system and the influx of young immigrants, who give the U.S. a more youthful demographic than Europe and much of Asia whose workers support an increasing population of unproductive elderly. A lucid, thought-provoking appraisal of world affairs, this book will engage readers on both sides of the political spectrum. As for what the chief executive reads in his spare time, according to deputy press secretary Bill Burton, President Obama brought the following books with him to his August 2009 vacation at Martha's Vineyard: In 2015, President Obama's summer reading list, as announced by the White House, included the following books: arner, Dwight.  "What Obama Is Reading."
  The New York Times.  21 May 2008. Joffe, Josef.  "The New New World."
  The New York Times.  11 May 2008. Press, Joy.  "The Interpreter."
  Village Voice.  9 August 2005. Wolf, Richard.  "President's Reading List a Hefty One."
  USA Today.  24 August 2009. It was clear that everyone would pay a bit more when the Georgia Legislature rammed through a $900 million transportation funding bill that voters and businesses alike said the state needed. State gasoline taxes will increase by almost 35 percent. Electric vehicle drivers, who havent been paying for gas, and truckers both will see new annual fees. And if Gov, Nathan Deal signs the measure as expected, it also will add a $5-a-night fee on hotel and motel stays starting July 1. The hospitality industry opposed that last-minute provision. Michael T. Owens, President and CEO of the Tourism Leadership Council in Savannah, told GPB that the charge would have a serious effect in that tourist hotspot and statewide. We absolutely expect to see cancellations of major, major groups, he said. PolitiFact Georgia cant fact-check predictions. But there is a part of Owens comments that callsout for a ride on the Truth-O-Meter:  claims that the fee would hurt convention business by adding tens of thousands of dollars in costs for large groups. Georgia does not have a statewide hotel tax. Instead state law allows local governments to levy up to a 3 percent excise tax or up to an 8 percent sales tax. Some of the collections have no limits while others must pay for tourism promotion or specific projects or attractions. Atlanta sets its hotel rate at the maximum 8 percent. Savannah charges 6 percent. The new charge is a flat $5 fee, tacked on for every night of a hotel stay. Owens was out of town when PolitiFact called, but Tourism Leadership Council Vice President Molly Swagler said the group is concerned about an increase to the bottom line of a multi-day stay. We would typically have a 500-room convention and that adds up to another $2,500 on their bill, Swagler said. In a larger market like Atlanta, youll see 15,000 room nights, so it could be a $75,000 increase out of a $5 fee. Lawmakers did not discuss any of those figures in committee or public, since the fee was added only after a dramatically revised compromise bill. That means the fee was not part of the fiscal note, or official estimate of the effect a bill will have on tax revenues or public spending. Teresa MacCartney, the states chief financial officer, released the state Senates original fiscal note but said the updated report, with estimates from the bed tax, will not be available until later this week. Senators did request an analysis from the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of West Georgia, that will be part of that updated note. William J. Smith, the universitys economics chair who did the work on the fee, said his research involved collecting information about the average number of hotel rooms and occupancy rate in Georgia, plus the states share of tourism visits relative to the rest of the country. That gave an estimate of room nights per year that, multiplied by $5, showed the fee will generate about $160 million a year for transportation projects. In the most basic economics of supply and demand, that tab appears to back up tourism officials worry. After all, when prices go up, dont people buy less? Sometimes. But there are more complex economic realities to that $5 fee. First, even tourism officials agree that the visitors who are set on seeing the historic squares and other Spanish-moss draped sites will still come. Paying $5 more every night could eat into those visitors budgets for their stay  costing restaurants and shops business. But there is nothing that saysvisitorsmust pay the new fee. Put bluntly, the hotel could eat the cost, if it meant remaining competitive with the likes of, say, Charleston, said Bruce Seaman, an economics professor at Georgia State University who specializes in the impact of projects and attractions. Seaman used 2013 data from the Savannah Area Chamber to see if the citys hotels would be better off absorbing the cost or increasing the cost to guests. His math included sympathy to the idea that some guests would be sensitive to price changes and stay away. In his scenario, the price change could chase away about 7.5 percent of room nights  costing Savannah-areal hotels about $22.5 million a year. And if the hotels eat the $5 per night themselves? With 3.6 million room nights at a 67 percent occupancy rate, the price tag would be $18.7 million. The bottom line is, to whatever extent they pass along any of this cost to their customers, they will pay more in a year, Seaman said. Except, no one is requiring hotels to increase the price paid by customers and in this case, it looks like it would cost them less to eat it than pass it forward. In other words, the overall point from Owens is legitimate. The $5 per-night fee is an increase that will affect business. That is, there are downsides to levying any new tax or fee. But part of that risk can be mitigated by the business eating some of the cost  additional context that shows there is not always a price increase with a new fee. More money is headed to state coffers if the transportation plan becomes reality. But the state is not requiring hotels, which change their rates constantly as a reflection of demand, to raise rates. Considering that caveat, we rate Owens statement Mostly True. 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. On 28 December 2014, the web site CenLamar published an article titled "House Majority Whip Steve Scalise Was Reportedly an Honored Guest at 2002 International White Supremacist Convention." According to the site, current House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, then a Louisiana state representative, was a guest speaker at an event hosted by the  European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), a group headed by former Klan leader and neo-Nazi David Duke, at the Landmark Best Western Hotel in Metairie, Louisiana, in May 2002.  (EURO was a renamed version of Duke's NOFEAR group that advocated fighting for "white civil rights" for "Europeans and Americans wherever they may live.") article EURO NOFEAR The dozen years elapsed between the EURO event in 2002 and the article's publication in 2014 made it markedly difficult to investigate the article's claims. At the time of the convention, much internet-based political discussion occurred solely on message boards, many of which have long since been retired due to inactivity, abandoned, or became otherwise inaccessible for a variety of reasons. Following the article's publication, the claim was circulated and reposted on a number of left-leaning web sites. This repetition created the impression multiple sources were documenting the claim, but the information all pointed back to the same single source: Stormfront.org, a white supremacist message board with a lengthy and notorious history on the web. A 2002 post claiming Scalise attended the EURO conference held in Metairie that year became suddenly notable in late 2014. In that post, the writer stated: stated EURO's recent national convention held in the greater New Orleans area was a convergence of ideas represented by Americans from diverse geographical regions like California, Texas, New Jersey and the Carolina's. This indicates that concerns held are pervasive in every sovereign state and Republic alike, within an increasingly diminishing view of where America stands on individual liberty for whites.  In addition to plans to implement tactical strategies that were discussed, the meeting was productive locally as State Representative, Steve Scalise, discussed ways to oversee gross mismanagement of tax revenue or "slush funds" that have little or no accountability. Representative Scalise brought into sharp focus the dire circumstances pervasive in many important, under-funded needs of the community at the expense of graft within the Housing and Urban Development Fund, an apparent give-away to a selective group based on race.  There was also a call for the many women active in the movement to not only let their voice be heard, but their presence known. Recognizing the duties placed on white mothers to maintain decreasing birth rates, it was an appropriate call to arms to emphasize the unity message forming the basis of EURO. Aside from the single mention by a single user on one internet forum back in 2002, no other record of such an appearance by Scalise emerged. A newsletter of indeterminate origin appearing to be the work of David Duke, EURO's founder, listed the May 2002 event's speakers but did not mention Scalise: newsletter   On 29 December 2014 Moira Bagley Smith, a spokeswoman for Scalise, addressed the controversy by releasing a statement seemingly acknowledging Scalise's appearance at the 2002 EURO event (without actually stating that he was there), maintaining that Scalise spoke to a number of diverse groups at the time in order to publicize his political platform and that Scalise held no affiliation with or sympathy for EURO and its objectives: Throughout his career in public service, Mr. Scalise has spoken to hundreds of different groups with a broad range of viewpoints. In every case, he was building support for his policies, not the other way around. In 2002, he made himself available to anyone who wanted to hear his proposal to eliminate slush funds that wasted millions of taxpayer dollars as well as his opposition to a proposed tax increase on middle-class families. He has never been affiliated with the abhorrent group in question. The hate-fueled ignorance and intolerance that group projects is in stark contradiction to what Mr. Scalise believes and practices as a father, a husband, and a devoted Catholic. Scalise himself also seemingly confirmed that he addressed a EURO group (again without actually stating that he did) in an interview with the New Orleans Time-Picayune, asserting that he didn't remember speaking at the event: interview Q: Please walk me through how you came to appear at the white nationalist event.  A: "I don't have any records from back in 2002, but when people called and asked me to speak to groups, I went and spoke to groups. It was myself and [former state Sen.] James David Cain who were opposed to the Stelly tax plan. I was the only legislator from the New Orleans area who was opposed to the plan publicly, so I was asked to speak all around the New Orleans region. I would go and speak about how this tax plan was bad. I didn't know who all of these groups were and I detest any kind of hate group. For anyone to suggest that I was involved with a group like that is insulting and ludicrous. I was opposed to a lot of spending of spending at the state level. When people asked me to go speak, I went and spoke to any group that called." Q: You don't remember speaking at the event?  A: "I don't. I mean I've seen the blog about it. When you look at the kind of things they stand for, I detest these kinds of views. As a Catholic, I think some of the things they profess target people like me. At lot of their views run contradictory to the way I run my life. Kenny Knight, a longtime associate of David Duke who said he booked space for the 2002 EURO conference, asserted that Scalise didn't actually speak at the EURO conference itself, but rather to a contingent of people (including some EURO attendees) who had gathered earlier in the day prior to the EURO conference kick-off: asserted According to Knight, the EURO conference was slated to start in the early afternoon, roughly around 1 p.m. But his reservation at the hotel gave him access to the conference space for a few hours before the events official kickoff. At the time, Knight headed the Jefferson Heights Civic Association, which was largely comprised of elderly people who lived in his and Scalises neighborhood. Knight said he set up a morning event for his own civic association in the hotel space before the EURO conference started. Though that event was in the conference's hospitality room, it wasn't at all related to the EURO event, he said. Knight invited thenstate Rep. Scalise as well as a representative from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and a person from the American Red Cross to speak to the civic association at the hotel.  Knight estimates that about two-thirds to three-quarters of the people in the hospitality room at the civic association meeting were local residents who weren't there to attend the EURO event, and about one-third to one-quarter were EURO convention attendees who arrived early and filtered into the hospitality room to drink coffee and kill time. Barbara Noble, Knight's then-girlfriend who was also present at the hotel event, corroborated Knight's account. "[Scalise] was just up there for a few minutes, maybe 10, 15 at the most, and it was in the morning," she said. However, the Times-Picayune then poked holes in a number of Knight's statements, namely his claims that he was not himself a member of EURO, did not line up speakers for the 2002 EURO conference, and was not himself present at the conference: poked holes Kenny Knight [said] that he was not a member of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, but documents filed with the Louisiana secretary of state's office list him as treasurer of its predecessor, the National Organization for European American Rights, in 2000. Further, a May 16, 2002, news release on an an archived version of EURO's former website, www.whitecivilrights.com, lists Knight as "EURO Louisiana State Representative Kenny Knight." The release says Knight was expected to address the group's May 17-18, 2002, conference. When asked by telephone about the records listing him as EURO's treasurer, Knight twice hung up on a reporter. "Is that 15 years ago? I don't even remember that," he said. "I'm not communicating any more with the news media. I'm finished with y'all." EURO head David Duke himself stated in a Washington Post interview that Scalise had indeed been invited to address the EURO gathering and had accepted that invitation and was present at the conference (although Duke was not himself present at the event and therefore didn't personally witness whatever Scalise may have done there): interview Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke said that his longtime political adviser, Kenny Knight, was "friendly" with House Majority Whip Steve Scalise in 2002, and cited that relationship as the reason Scalise accepted an invitation that year to speak at a gathering of white supremacists. Duke recalled Scalise as a "nice guy" and said he was invited to the conference by two of Duke's longtime associates: Howie Farrell, who had worked on Duke's gubernatorial campaign, and Kenny Knight. "Scalise would communicate a lot with my campaign manager, Kenny Knight," Duke said. "That is why he was invited and why he would come. Kenny knew Scalise, Scalise knew Kenny. They were friendly." Duke, who spoke to the crowd remotely, recalled Knight reaching out to Scalise in the weeks before the conference to come and update attendees on state affairs, and that Scalise accepted without reservation. "Maybe that is evidence he knew what he was doing when he came to the meeting," Duke said. "Who knows? All I know is that Kenny liked him." Duke said he spoke to the conference twice, once by phone and later by video hookup. But he did not hear Scalise speak, he said, and does not know whether Scalise heard him speak. Claim:  After the implementation of "Check 21" on 28 October 2004, consumers will no longer be able to "float" checks. Status:  Multiple  see below. Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2004] "Check 21" starting in late October You've probably bought something in a store with a check even though you don't have the money in your account at the time. You figure you have a few days for the check to clear, and by then the money will be there. It's called the "float." Well, the float is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Because of a new law going into effect in October, money will be drafted from your account immediately when you write a check. It's called "Check 21," and it allows retailers to scan your check through a machine that deducts the cash within minutes. It's essentially the end of the paper check system, as well, because the check will eventually be destroyed. There will be an image of the check online and that will serve as proof if you need it. But everything is becoming electronic, and a bank will know if a check is good right away. So, be prepared to move to an electronic bill pay system. It's the smart way to go. What about checks that you deposit? Well, the float is no longer available to you, the customer. But the bank still will hold a deposit for a few days to make sure it clears. It's not fair, but it's the way it's happening. What are the main effects of "Check 21" on consumers? You won't be able to get your original paper checks back, because your bank will no longer have them. Checks you write will clear sooner, increasing the risk that a check will bounce if funds are not in the account when you write the check. Don't write a check unless the funds are already in the account to cover it.  You may not get access to the funds from checks you deposit any sooner, because the new law does not shorten check hold times. After 30 months, there must be a study on whether banks are making funds available to consumers earlier than the allowable hold periods. Banks will save money on processing checks, but banks are not required to share these savings with consumers. Different kinds of copies of a check will have different rights attached. Check 21 creates a new kind of paper copy of an electronic image of a check. This special kind of copy is called a "substitute check." Only a substitute check can be the legal equivalent of the original check, and only a substitute check triggers your right to recredit of disputed funds. A regular copy of a check does not carry these same protections. If you ask for a copy of a check, your bank may send you an ordinary copy insteadof this special kind of copy which triggers legal rights and protections unless you ask for a substitute check. A bank other than your bank will have your original check, and will decide whether to destroy it. Neither Check 21 nor other law requires a bank to keep your original check for any period of time. Before Check 21, your own bank decided how long to keep your original checks, if you didn't get them returned with your statement. Under Check 21, the bank of the person you wrote the check to may decide when to destroy your check. Consumers will get new rights for some electronically processed checks, but not for others. When a so-called "substitute check" is provided to a consumer, Check 21 gives the consumer a right to have funds of up to $2,500 recredited to the consumer's account in 10 business days if the check is paid twice, paid for the wrong amount, or otherwise paid in error. The statute is ambiguous about whether this new right applies when a paper substitute check is used in the processing of the check but is not returned to the consumer. The regulations restrict the right of recredit only to checks where the consumer was provided with a substitute check. If a check is processed electronically by all the banks it is routed through without the use of a substitute check and the consumer is not providedwith a substitute check, then the check remains under state check law. In that case, the consumer does not receive a 10 day right of recredit even if the electronic image of the check is paid twice, paid for the wrong amount, or if both the electronic image and the paper check are paid. Consumers who want to maximize their consumer rights should ask for return of "substitute checks" with their checking account statements. Watch out for fees associated with a substitute check-returning account. Look for another bank if your bank charges a high fee to get copies of all your checks as substitute checks.  Only the special "substitute check" can be legally equivalent to the original check to prove payment. The copies that a bank sends to consumers under a so-called "voluntary truncation" agreement, where the consumer agrees not to get the checks back, do not prove that a payment has beenmade, and do not trigger your Check 21 recredit right. When do these changes go into effect? Check 21 becomes effective October 28, 2004. Origins:  On 28 October 2004, the provisions of the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (commonly known as   "Check 21") will go into effect.  The intent of the act is to eliminate check-clearing delays, primarily by removing the requirement that checks must be physically transported to the banks that issued them in order to be cleared for payment.  After 28 October 2004, banks will be allowed to transmit and clear checks by electronic facsimile, a practice that should avoid any clearing delays caused by circumstances that make the physical transportation of checks difficult or impossible (e.g., severe weather, power failures, terrorism). Check 21 Of course, one result of faster check processing will be a much shorter gap between the time consumers issue checks for payment and the time the covering funds are withdrawn from their accounts (usually referred to as the "float" time).  After Check 21 goes into effect checks may be processed in a matter of hours or even minutes, so consumers can no longer safely assume they have a grace period after writing checks before the funds are actually tapped from their accounts.  Check 21 does not, however, change the rules affecting how long banks can hold for clearance checks deposited by their customers.  Generally, banks can hold local checks for up to two days, out-of-town checks for up to five days, and other types of checks (e.g., checks over $5,000, checks drawn on new accounts, checks written against consistently overdrawn accounts) for up to thirty days.  The bottom line is that consumers will have to be more careful than ever to ensure that adequate funds are always available to cover the checks they  write. Also, under Check 21 banks will no longer be required to return canceled checks to their customers; they may return photographic images of the checks instead.  Banks will be able to issue certified photocopies of checks known as "substitute checks," and these copies will have the same evidentiary standing in courts of law as the originals.  (Although banks may allow customers to view and print out images of their checks over the Internet, those self-printed copies will not technically be considered substitute checks even though most courts will likely still accept them as evidence of payment.)  Check 21 will not explicitly require banks to provide substitute checks, so consumers may want to check with their banks to ensure they receive substitute checks with their statements.  Another provision of Check 21 will speed up resolution of customer claims regarding fraud and error.  Currently banks do not need to credit the accounts of customers who complain of error or fraud until their investigations are complete. After Check 21 banks must prove within ten days that disputed transactions were not their fault; if they do not provide such proof, they must credit their customers' accounts for the disputed amounts even if they have not completed their investigations. Although the Check 21 act goes into effect on 28 October 2004, banks do not have to begin electronically clearing checks on that date  Check 21 merely authorizes banks to begin use of electronic check clearing.  Most major banks already have imaging technology in place, but not all banks do, and some banks may therefore continue to process checks the "old" way until they upgrade their processing systems. Additonal information:       Frequently Asked Questions About "Check 21"   (Federal Reserve Board)     Questions and Answers About "Check 21"   (Consumers Union)   Last updated:  28 October 2004    Sources:   Kristof, Kathy M.  "Checks About to Be Put on Fast Track."   Los Angeles Times.  5 September 2004.    Associated Press.  "Banks Implement Check 21 Starting Thursday."    28 October 2004.