Says Austin is the safest big city in Texas with an unemployment rate under 3% that has been named the best place to live in the entire United States two years running.
Austin MayorSteve Adler, who seeks a second term this November, reacted to a game-show moment with a swaggering claim. In anApril 25, 2018, tweet, Adler responded to this clue fromthat nights episodeof Jeopardy: Per Rick Perry, its the blueberry in the tomato soup. Perry, the Republican former governor,often offers the blueberry characterization of the Democrat-dominant capital. On the program, a contestant correctly answered Austin for $600. Next, Adler said in his tweet, accompanied by a photo of the Jeopardy clue: What is the safest big city in Texas with an unemployment rate under 3% that has been named the best place to live in the entire United States two years running? Is all of that true about Austin? Not all: In 2017,we found Half Truean Adler reference to Austin as the state's safest big city. Not for the first time, we noted then that theFBI advises againstusing crime data it collects to declare one city safer than another. That said, such statistics at the time suggested both that the five-county Austin region in 2015 had a lower violent-crime rate than other Texas regions and that El Paso had a lower violent-crime rate than Austin in the first half of 2016. Seeking mayors factual backup The morning after Adler posted his comment, which was retweeted more than 200 times, we reached mayoral spokesman Jason Stanford. Stanford advised by phone that Adler didnt have fresh information to offer in support of his 2018 safest big city in Texas statement. He suggested we check federal statistics to confirm Austins jobless rate and told us that U.S. News had consecutively named Austin the nations best place to live. Checking Austins unemployment Our search for Austins jobless rate on the Texas Workforce Commission website showed that from January through March 2018, the latest month of available data, the city's jobless rate ran shy of 3 percent. We also fetched a longer view showing the citys jobless rate mostly staying below 3 percent from January 2017 on (all the rates not seasonally adjusted). Austin's unemployment rate was last above 3 percent, according to the TWC, when it was 3.1 percent in August 2017. The Austin rate's 15-month low, 2.5 percent, occurred in December 2017:          SOURCE:Website,Unemployment,Texas Labor Market Information, Texas Workforce Commission (search completed April 26, 2018) Austin ranked best place to live two times in a row On April 10, 2018, U.S. Newsannouncedthat for the second straight year, the online publication found Austin the best place to live in the United States among the country's 125 largest metropolitan areas;Colorado Springs, Colo.,placed second. The rankings were based on affordability, job prospects and quality of life, U.S. News said, and on surveying thousands of U.S. residents to find out what qualities they consider important in a home town. The methodology, U.S. News said, also factored in data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI and the Bureau of Labor Statistics--plus U.S. News rankings of the countrys high schools and hospitals. Austin, the self-proclaimed Live Music Capital of the planet,earneda score of 7.7 out of 10 for the 2018 rankings, U.S. News said, with even its few downsides having upsides. The story says: The median sale price for a single-family home in Austin is well above the national median. Then again, the story says, Austinites' pocketbooks benefit from no personal or corporate income tax, and a low state and local tax rate. Another semi-warning in the story: Summers in Austin take some getting used to, with temperatures often scorching. Though, the story says, the metro area experiences mild weather throughout the rest of the year, though temperatures have been known to drop in the winter. The story also notes: Austin is among the nation's worst metro areas for traffic congestion. But, the story says, that can be addressed with flexible work schedules, due diligence when choosing a neighborhood and, for those wanting to get in some exercise while commuting, using public transportation, walking and biking. Our ruling Adler referred to Austin as the safest big city in Texas with an unemployment rate under 3% that has been named the best place to live in the entire United States two years running. Hizzonerwas right about Austins jobless rate of late and Austin getting named the citys best place to live two years in a row though its worth clarifying that the rankings considered only the countrys 125 largest metro areas. Whether Austin is the safest big Texas city rests on interpreting crime data the FBI counsels against using to compare communities. This said, we previously found that the five-county Austin region in 2015 had a lower violent-crime rate than other Texas regions while in the first half of 2016, El Paso had a lower violent-crime rate than Austin. On balance, we rate this Adler claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check.
In a free-wheeling interview on the Fox News Network, Bill O'Reilly and Hillary Clinton mixed it up over gas prices, health care, and taxes. On taxes, Clinton and O'Reilly argued about what tax rates were like when their fathers were working. Clinton: You were growing up on Long Island. I was growing up outside of Chicago. You know, my dad got up every day. He was a small business man. He worked his head off, but he didn't feel like the deck was stacked against him. He thought, OK, I'm going to be treated fairly if I do my part. O'Reilly: Here's where you're wrong. In my neighborhood, Levittown, there was no income distribution at all. There was earning money. And you kept most of it because taxes were really low. Clinton: That is not true. Look at the tax rates in the '40s, the '50s, and the '60s. O'Reilly: For the wealthy they were high, but not for my dad. Clinton: Well, so why don't we go back to what we had in the '50s and the '60s then? Go back to 70 percent... O'Reilly: Because there were no wealthy people then. There were very, very few. Clinton: When President Kennedy made that dramatic announcement he was going to cut the top rate from 90 percent to 70 percent, people stood up and cheered. All I want to do is get back to what worked in the '90s. We wondered who was right in this exchange and what the tax rates were when Clinton and O'Reilly were young. Today, tax rates range from 10 percent for lower incomes to 35 percent for the highest incomes. (See a chart of tax rates over timefrom the Tax Foundation here.) Kennedy urged tax cuts that went into effect in 1964. Prior to that, tax rates started at 20 percent for the lowest bracket and went up to 91 percent for the highest bracket. The rates were similar throughout the 1940s and 1950s. We looked at incomes and tax rates in 1963, then adjusted for inflation and looked at today's tax rates. We found: * A person making $2,500 a year in 1963 was taxed at 22 percent. Today that would be $17,445, taxed at 15 percent. * A person making $5,000 a year in 1963 was taxed at 26 percent. Today that would be $34,890, taxed at 25 percent. * A person making $10,000 a year in 1963 was taxed at 34 percent. Today that would be $69,780, taxed at 25 percent. * A person making $15,000 a year in 1963 was taxed at 47 percent. Today that would be $104,670, taxed at 28 percent. * A person making $25,000 a year in 1963 was taxed at 59 percent. Today that would be $174,450, taxed at 33 percent. The 1963 rates are higher than today's rates. It's true that the tax code is substantially different today, with many credits and rules that didn't exist then. But on the question of income tax rates, we find that Hillary Clinton has her history right. We rate her statement True. Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. here After a months-long political debate over how to address America's pandemic-stricken economy and just 13 days before the 2020 presidential election, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office announced she and U.S. President Donald Trump's top emissary, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, were inching toward an agreement on a new economic stimulus package. "Both sides are serious about finding a compromise," tweeted Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Pelosi, on Oct. 20. The announcement came after repeated claims by Trump that Pelosi was the sole roadblock in his administration's plans to spend about $1.8 trillion on unemployment benefits, schools, and other initiatives  adding to $3 trillion in emergency relief that the federal government approved in spring 2020. In a nationally televised town hall on Oct. 15, for instance, Trump said of Pelosi: "We are ready to sign and pass stimulus, but shes got to approve it," he said. "Shes penalizing our people. Im ready to sign a big, beautiful stimulus."   Days later, while speaking to a Milwaukee news reporter, Trump suggested that Pelosi, who was running a reelection campaign to represent California's 12th Congressional District, was not negotiating in good faith and purposefully delaying a consensus until after the Nov. 3 election. That way, in theory, she and Democrats could restart stimulus talks with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the White House. "She thinks it's good politically for her not to approve it," Trump said. In an interview with Bloomberg, Pelosi denied that accusation by the president and his supporters and said she would not be negotiating with the White House if she did not want an agreement. Nonetheless, a closer look at the stimulus negotiations showed a more complex debate. It was not just Pelosi with whom the White House needed reconciliation to pass COVID-19 economic relief in fall 2020 as the president alleged. Here's what was true: Members of Congress and the White House reached an impasse over COVID-19 emergency spending in fall 2020. Mnuchin and Pelosi had intermittently negotiated terms of a comprehensive relief package since August, and the Democrat-led House approved a package totaling about $2.2 trillion concurrently. Weeks later, as the election crept closer, Trump said in media interviews that he would sign a package that was greater than House Democrats' proposal, even though key Republicans wanted him to go the opposite direction in negotiating. "I would rather go bigger than that [$2.2 trillion] number, but we'll see," he said on Fox & Friends. "[Pelosi] doesn't want to do anything until after the election, because she thinks it helps her. I actually think it helps us because everyone knows she's the one who's breaking up the deal." Fox & Friends All of that said, the Democrat-approved plan overlapped in some areas with the White House's proposal to help small businesses and pay each eligible U.S. citizen a one-time $1,200 check. But this was key: Trump's GOP allies in the Senate were skeptical of any proposal greater than $1 trillion. For months, they had debated economic stimulus measures smaller than the White House's initial proposal of about $1.6 trillion, which later grew to $1.8 trillion before Trump said he wanted to spend more than Democrats. Reuters reported: "Senate Republicans have repeatedly stated their opposition to additional COVID-19 relief spending near the $2 trillion mark and have focused instead on smaller initiatives." Reuters reported The Republicans were focusing on one-off initiatives to help businesses and families instead of a comprehensive spending bill. They supported one measure in particular that totaled about $650 billion in emergency economic relief, or about one-third the amount of Trump's proposal. In other words, the disagreement over funding was not along party lines, with Senate Republicans taking Trump's side and Pelosi leading an oppositional force, like most political battles over Trump's first term. Rather, key Republicans were skeptical of a relief package greater than $1 trillion and had not expressed support for the White House's proposal. As proof of that lack of enthusiasm for Trump's COVID-19 spending plan, the leading GOP vote-counter, Sen. John Thune, told reporters on Oct. 19 that "itd be hard" to find the necessary Republican support to pass the $1.8 trillion package.  Additionally, multiple news reports said McConnell told Senate Republicans the following day that he had advised the White House against making any deal with Pelosi before the election  significant evidence that the House Speaker was not the only barrier to a compromise. The New York Times reported: multiple The New York Times Mr. McConnells counsel, confirmed by three Republicans familiar with his remarks, threw cold water on Mr. Trumps increasingly urgent push to enact a fresh round of pandemic aid before he faces voters on Nov. 3. It underscored the divisions within the party that have long hampered a compromise. Republicans are growing increasingly anxious that Mr. Trump and his team are too eager to reach a multitrillion-dollar agreement and are conceding far too much to the Democrats. Republicans fear that scenario would force their colleagues up for re-election into a difficult choice of defying the president or alienating their fiscally conservative base by embracing the big-spending bill he has demanded. The Washington Post added: added Many Senate Republicans oppose a massive new spending bill and McConnell is not eager to hold a vote that would divide his conference just before the election, when most Senate Republicans want attention focused on the Barrett nomination. [...] McConnells remarks Tuesday indicate that even if Pelosi and Mnuchin do manage to reach a deal, any vote in the Senate would wait until after the election. If Democrats win a number of seats in the November elections, they could seize control of the Senate beginning in January. Nonetheless, if or when Pelosi and Mnuchin reached an agreement, Trump suggested on multiple occasions without evidence that he could convince naysayers to agree to whatever he wanted. "He'll be on board if something comes," Trump said of McConnell's reluctance in the Fox News interview. "Not every Republican agrees with me, but they will." Fox News interview The time window for an agreement before the Nov. 3 election was narrowing as of this report. Hammill, the spokesman for Pelosi, on Oct. 20 tweeted that Mnuchin and Pelosi had a 45-minute conversation earlier in the day that showed they were "serious about finding a compromise" and moving closer to an agreement in the coming days or weeks with the help of congressional committee chairs.   In sum, considering McConnell, the Senate Majority leader, had reportedly told the White House to not make a deal with Pelosi  proof that the House Speaker was not the only barrier to an agreement  as well as a comment by another Senate Republican that "it'd be hard" to rally his colleagues around Trump's plan for emergency economic spending, we rate this claim a "Mixture" of truth and falsehoods. Factba.se. "Interview: Charles Benson of WTMJ4 Milwaukee Interviews Donald Trump - October 17, 2020."
  Accessed 20 October 2020. Rev. "Donald Trump NBC Town Hall Transcript October 15."
  Accessed 20 October 2020. Nancy Pelosi Newsroom.  "Dear Colleague: Update on Effort to Reach Coronavirus Relief Agreement Before Election."
  18 October 2020. Nancy Pelosi Newsroom.  "Transcript of Pelosi Interview on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos."
  18 October 2020. Nancy Pelosi Newsroom.  "Dear Colleague on Urgency to Pass Relief Bill with Values and Common Sense."
  15 October 2020.  Nancy Pelosi Newsroom.  "Transcript of Pelosi Interview on MSNBC's The ReidOut with Joy Reid."
 19 October 2020. Taylor, Andrew.  "Deadline Looms, But COVID Relief Deal May Be Far Off."
 The Associated Press.  20 October 2020. Zeballos-Roig, Joseph.  "Senate Republicans Are Pouring Cold Water on Approving A Multi-Trillion Dollar Stimulus Deal As Trump Pushes For A Larger Relief Package Than Democrats."
 Business Insider.  20 October 2020. Henney, Megan.  "Trump Says He Want A Bigger Coronavirus Relief Package Than Pelosi's $2.2T Proposal."
 FOXBusiness.  20 October 2020. Stein, Jeff, et. al.  "Trump Makes $1.8 Trillion Economic Relief Offer, But Deal With Pelosi Remains Elusive."
  The Washington Post.   9 October 2020. Cornwell, Susan.  "Trump Pushes For Major COVID-19 Deal Over Senate Republican Objections."
 Reuters.  20 October 2020. House, Billy, et. al.  "Pelosi Mnuchin Narrowing Gap on Stimulus, to Talk Again Tuesday."
 Bloomberg.  19 October 2020. Fandos, Nicholas. "McConnell Advises White house Not to Strike Pre-Electino Stimulus Deal With Pelosi."
 The New York Times. 20 October 2020. Stein, Jeff, and Werner, Erica. "McConnell Warns White House Against Making Stimulus Deal Before Election, Sources Say."
 The Washington Post.  20 October 2020. Columbus politics is dominated at the moment by a fiery debate over a proposal to overhaul collective bargaining laws for public workers. Known as Senate Bill 5, the legislation is drawing raucous crowds to the normally serene Statehouse atrium.Republican Gov. John Kasich, backed by a Republican-controlled legislature, wants to end collective bargaining for state workers and abate the ability of city workers, including firefighters and police officers, to bargain for pay and benefits. Republican leaders say such reforms are needed to lower costs and ease the financial burden on the state and city budgets.Democratic leaders, flanked by a few Republcian office holders and lots of labor leaders, argue that teachers and firefighters and other union workers are not overpaid and that collective bargaining keeps both workers and employers in check at a minimal cost.The Ohio Democratic Party on Feb. 14 boiled down its argument in a Twitter message. Both the brevity and first word of the tweet caught Politifact Ohios attention: FACT: the special assistant in @johnkasich's office makes over three times more than an average #OH firefighterGiven the debate that rages on behind the tweet, we thought it was worth checking out.The tweet refers to Jai Chabria, a senior advisor, or special assistant, to Kasich, says ODP communications director Seth Bringman.Chabria, who worked with Kasich at the defunct Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, is part of governors inner-circle, whose members are paid six-figure salaries, a point that received a good bit of attention earlier this year. Chabrias annual salary is $145,000 and is not subject to any collective bargaining deal. He serves at the pleasure of the governor.ODPs Bringman says the tweet also refers to the average annual salary of an Ohio firefighter of $41,160. He cities the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the tweets source.The bureau indeed shows that the mean, or average, salary of an Ohio firefighter is $41,160. The figure does not include benefits and is based on the data compiled in May 2009, the latest available.Its important to note that the figure, however, is based on six surveys of 200,000 employers collected over a three-year period, not on an actual accounting of every Ohio firefighters salary.Looking for something more current, Politifact Ohio compared the bureaus survey data to actual salary data collected by the Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund, which manages the retirement plans for safety officers. Spokesman David Graham says the fund doesnt track the average salary of an Ohio firefighter but actual raw data is compiled in actuary reports.According to one such report in 2010 by Buck Consultants, there are 13,001 full-time fire personnel in Ohio whose collective annual salary totaled $860,966,828. Dividing the total salary by the number of personnel produces an average annual salary of $66,000.The actuary reports also reveal that firefighters with one-year of experience are paid an average salary of $45,000. Fire personnel with 40 years of experience can earn $80,000. The data can also be sliced numerous other ways to produce a range of salary figures.But the pension fund figures also include other ranking officers, like captains or chiefs, who earn more and would raise the average. The data also doesnt separate firefighters who are cross-trained as paramedics or in hazardous materials and typically earn more than others firefighters.It includes the fire chief from Cleveland to the firefighter from Piqua, Graham said. He couldnt say exactly what ranks and specialties are in the latest figures but said captains and others all qualify under Ohio Revised Code as firefighters and therefore are members of the pension fund.So where does this leave the Ohio Democratic Partys tweet on the Truth-O-Meter?Chabrias salary of $145,000 is more than three times the salary figure of $41,160 that the party cited. And its based on widely accepted data produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is widely regarded as a reliable source for statistics. But its important to know that some of that data, collected in surveys, is several years old.Chabrias salary is also more than three times the average salary of a firefighter with one year of experience, according to the Ohio Police & Fire Pension Funds actuary reports. (But only 3.7 percent of current firefighters had 1 year of experience, the report shows. )While we would like to have more current data, the overall pension fund numbers are skewed because they also include pay figures from higher ranking, higher paid officers.All of this  also underscores the point often made by the Politifact: Statistics often need illumination. We rate the tweet as Mostly True. On 27 May 2016, President Obama became the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, Japan since the end of World War II. While some media outlets painted the historic visit as another stop on Obama's "apology tour," the president did not actually apologize. apology tour Still, social media users were outraged at the President's supposed apology:    On 26 May 2016, the New York Post published an article criticizing the president for his "shameful" apology tour. While the author assumed that Obama would apologize (despite the White House saying that an apology would not be forthcoming), the article came out a day before Obama's speech and therefore did not serve as evidence: article An American presidents highest moral, constitutional and political duty is protecting his fellow citizens from foreign threats. Presidents should adhere to our values and the Constitution, and not treat Americas enemies as morally equivalent to us. If they do, they need not apologize to anyone. The White House says that President Obama wont apologize as he visits Hiroshima Friday. But who believes his press flacks? The president did make an apology while he was in Japan, but it wasn't for the atomic bomb. On 25 May 2016, the President offered his "deepest regrets" for the death of a Japanese woman who reportedly had been murdered by a former U.S. Marine: murdered "The U.S. will continue to cooperate fully" and will continue to ensure "justice is done under the Japanese legal system," Obama said. While critics of President Obama preemptively condemned him for apologizing for the United States' 1945 actions (which collectively killed more than 100,000 people), and while the President did apologize for an unrelated incident, he did not actually offer an apology during his speech. Obama did offer condolences for the loss of those who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but nowhere in the full text of his remarks did he offer an apology: actions apology ull text Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself. Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.  NY Times.  "Text of President Obamas Speech in Hiroshima, Japan."
  27 May 2016 . Spitzer, Kirk.  "Sympathy for victims but no apology as Obama makes historic Hiroshima visit."
  USA Today.  27 May 2016. Bolton, John.  "Obama's Apology Tour Lands In Hiroshima."
  NY Post.  26 May 2016. Sometimes, Snopes readers stumble on old stories that require us to revisit key moments of history. One such story was of the courageous actions of Neerja Bhanot, an Indian flight attendant on Pan Am flight 73, which was hijacked in 1986 by Palestinian militants on its way to the United States while on a stopover in Karachi, Pakistan. Neerja Bhano Many of our readers shared social media posts, and queries, asking us to detail some of the main events of the hijacking, including Bhanots death from a gunshot wound. posts   One reader asked us to confirm the following: When radical Islamic terrorists hijacked her A/C in Karachi, Pakistan she informed the pilots (who used their escape hatch to runaway) and kept both the passengers/remaining crew calm. When the terrorists demanded to know who the Americans were on the flight so they could execute them she gathered all the passports and hid the ones belonging to Americans under seat cushions. The terrorists confused and unable to determine the national origins of the passengers didn't execute anyone. When Pakistani police raided the plane she was able to nearly singlehandedly evacuate all the passengers as the firefight ensued. She being one of the last people on board did a last check and found three children still hiding. As she led the children to safety the surviving terrorists spotted the children and opened fire on them. Neerja jumped in the way of the bullets and was mortally wounded. She was able to evac the children to safety before dying from her wounds. Neerja was awarded the Ashok Chakra Award by India, the highest peacetime gallantry award possible. She was the youngest and first civilian to ever be awarded this honor. Through testimonies from the flight crew and passengers during the sentencing of one of the hijackers, and interviews done by the BBC, we were able to gather key facts from that fateful day. In 2004, Zayad al Safarini, a Jordanian hijacker who was part of the attack, was sentenced by a U.S. district judge to 160 years in prison. At the hearing for his sentencing, a number of passengers, flight attendants, and Bhanots brother, came forward to recount the events of the hijacking. The full transcript of their testimonies can be read here. testimonies BBC sentenced here The Palestinian militants who hijacked the aircraft were affiliated with the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), which was opposed to U.S. and Israeli policies in the Middle East, and was described as a secular international terrorist organization. When the hijackers boarded the plane, they began trying to identify any Americans on board. A 2016 BBC report included interviews with the surviving flight attendants, described the scene: described BBC report Sunshine, Madhvi Bahuguna and another flight attendant began collecting passports, quietly avoiding collecting any that were American. They then went through the bags of passports they had collected, secretly sifting out any remaining American ones and tucking them under their seats or concealing them in their clothing. Mike Thexton, a passenger on the plane, describes the act in his book What Happened to The Hippy Man? as "extremely brave, selfless and clever". "I may be biased but I feel that day proved that the flight attendants on board were some of the best in the industry." Descriptions from passengers and family members from the sentencing of Safarini detailed the moment that flight attendants were told to gather passports, and the ways in which they tried to protect the Americans among them. Aneesh Bhanot, Neerjas brother, who was not on the plane as these events took place, described this effort as one carried out by all the flight attendants together: Descriptions Neerja was an Indian citizen. All the other flight attendants were also Indian citizens. Mr. Safarini and his gang were targeting Americans, as was very obvious from the passenger calls which you heard later on. Neerja and all the other attendants knew this. That is why when they asked them to get the passports of all the passengers, they hid the American passports on the airplane. He also cited the testimony of another passenger that was published in the Cincinnati Enquirer in September 1986. A clipping of that paper is available below (in which Bhanot is referred to as Neerja Mishra):   Michael John Thexton, a British passenger, recounted the following: recounted Then came the call for passports, and I should have ignored it. But I felt that I had to obey orders. So I took out my passport and I handed it in, still thinking that the Americans would be in front of us, not reckoning the ingenuity and the extraordinary bravery of the stewardess who was making the collection in discarding American passports that had a white face. I suppose the British were [the] third choice for the terrorists. And after the Americans and the Israelis, mine was the only one of a small handful of British passports with a white face in that pile. I think maybe six or seven, something of that sort. So the call came over the public address for passenger Michael John to come forward, then Michael John Thexton, and I knew that they wanted to shoot me. Darrell Pieper, an American passenger, credited flight attendant Sunshine Vesuwala for protecting his identity. In his testimony, he said, Sunshine hid my passport when she realized the hijackers are looking for Americans. I'm grateful to her for her quick thinking and action, which again saved my life. credited Gregg Maisel, the attorney representing the U.S. government, said, the flight attendants, risking their own lives, deliberately refused to accept United States passports from some passengers and hid several United States passports under seat cushions. said Given that Bhanot played a big role in protecting the American passengers by hiding their passports, but was not the only flight attendant doing this, we rate this part of the claim as true. In this instance, even as Bhanot showed remarkable bravery in getting passengers to safety, she was not alone in this effort. According to Maisel, passengers escaped after Bhanot and others were able to open up some exits: escaped As the bullets and grenades flew, Neerja Bhanot, as well as other flight attendants and passengers, heroically managed to force open two exits in the economy section. The opening of the rear exit triggered inflation of the emergency slide, but the opening of the exit over the wing did not trigger the inflation of a second emergency slide. People clamored to reach both exits fearful that the hijackers would resume the assault.[...]This diagram illustrates the efforts of surviving hostages to escape the aircraft using the emergency slide and climbing onto the wing of the plane. While the slide was a safer escape route, the sheer number of people attempting to leave the plane through this exit at night resulted in additional injuries to some who were unable to exit quickly enough to avoid being crushed by others behind them.[...]At the direction of several flight attendants, other passengers reentered the plane climbing over the wounded and the dead and used the rear exit where the slide was inflated to the safer escape route. Aneesh Bhanot also recounted an article written by a Pakistani passenger: recounted There's another passenger from Pakistan, a gentleman called Hussein, who had written an article in a newspaper called the Star of Pakistan. And he wrote again that says as the lights went out at 10:00 p.m. we was herded with the passengers and the shooting started. From nowhere, his savior, Neerja, and I'm sure other flight attendants also did the same thing, had the presence and the nerve to steer through the pandemonium to lead the passengers where to go. Neerja, by sheer zest, it seems, single-handedly opened the chute. Her favorite words to him and other passengers were, get out, run. In this instance, since Bhanot appeared to have taken the lead in helping passengers escape and was also aided by other crew and passengers, we rate this part of the claim as a mixture, given that she did not do this alone. Bhanots death was described through different accounts, based on information gathered in the aftermath of the attack. Some reports said she was protecting three children, while flight attendants described her being shot during the escape. Jennifer Levy, another attorney representing the U.S. government, described Bhanots final moments: described When the lights went out just before the final assault, Ms. Bhanot ran for the emergency door and activated the inflatable chute. Instead of escaping as one of the first off the aircraft, she remained on board to help others out of the plane. She was shot in the final assault. Although she was taken off the plane alive by her fellow flight attendants, she died shortly afterwards of massive bleeding. Viraf Daroga, Pan Ams director in Pakistan, described how Bhanot was brought down from the aircraft through the emergency chute: described Those who were injured were picked up as they came down the chute, put in ambulances that came rushing to the aircraft, and were driven off to various hospitals. Neerja, the senior purser, was brought down by her colleagues and was taken to the hospital. She died in the hospital in the arms of one of my staff. Aneesh Bhanots testimony described how Bhanot was indeed protecting three children when she was shot and killed: described Neerja could have been the first one to escape from the aircraft as she opened the emergency door, yet she chose not to do that. Instead, she got the passengers out and gave her own life, as we are told, while shielding three small children from gunfire. Her actions probably saved hundreds of lives. The Pan Am Historical Foundation also described her death by saying As the hijackers opened fire on passengers and crew, Neerja Bhanot lost her life shielding three children from bullets. described Since reports differ on what happened during Bhanots final moments, and some details remain uncertain, we rate the overall truth of this claim as "Mixture." But there is no doubting that her actions, as well as the actions of other flight attendants and crew, saved many lives. She was posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra award, which is India's highest civilian decoration for bravery.  Ashok Chakra award In the early months of 2024, as U.S. President Joe Biden ramped up his campaign for reelection in November, a controversial, years-old quote attributed to him was resurrected on social media. Biden, whose public verbal blunders are so legendary he has described himself as a "gaffe machine," allegedly told a racially mixed audience at a Danville, Virginia, campaign rally in 2012 that the Republican Party was going to "put y'all back in chains." gaffe machine That notorious statement, which surfaced in late April and early May 2019 (shortly after Biden announced his 2020 candidacy), was cited anew on platforms from X to TikTok as an instance of his "playing the race card" to disparage Republicans: X TikTok  (@PatriotsStevie / X)   Although it's unclear, based on contemporaneous press coverage of the event, whether the audience was most accurately described as "predominantly" or "largely" Black (more about which later), Biden did in fact utter the words attributed to him at an Aug. 14, 2012, rally attended by a racially mixed crowd that included hundreds of Black attendees. The following report is from the New York Times blog "The Caucus," posted the same day as the event: The Caucus Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. created a stir at a campaign speech in Virginia when he told the crowd that Mitt Romney's policies would enable the banking and financial sectors to "put you all back in chains." The remark came roughly two-thirds of the way through Mr. Biden's 30-minute speech, which was delivered to a crowd that included many African-Americans at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville, Va. "Romney wants to let the  he said in the first hundred days, he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules, unchain Wall Street," Mr. Biden said. "They're going to put you all back in chains." The moment was captured for posterity in a C-SPAN video. C-SPAN video We would probably not be talking about this today had Biden's remark not been widely interpreted as a direct reference to slavery. As such, it drew instant condemnation, beginning with the Romney campaign, which released a statement saying: "After weeks of slanderous and baseless accusations leveled against Governor Romney, the Obama campaign has reached a new low. The comments made by the vice president of the United States are not acceptable in our political discourse and demonstrate yet again that the Obama campaign will say and do anything to win this election." Romney himself echoed that statement in a speech he gave later the same day in which he held President Barack Obama responsible. "His campaign and his surrogates have made wild and reckless accusations that disgrace the office of the Presidency," Romney said at a rally in Chillicothe, Ohio. "Another outrageous charge came a few hours ago in Virginia. And the White House sinks a little bit lower." Though he didn't specifically mention race, Romney accused Obama of pursuing a strategy of divisiveness: "Over the last four years, this President has pushed Republicans and Democrats as far apart as they can go. And now he and his allies are pushing us all even further apart by dividing us into groups. He demonizes some. He panders to others. His campaign strategy is to smash America apart and then cobble together 51 percent of the pieces." Media pundits and campaign surrogates were more explicit in their criticism of Biden. In an opinion piece for Breitbart, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said the vice president's statement was "race-baiting at its finest." Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, declared on "Face the Nation" that it was "an absolutely blatant appeal to racism." Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, also a Republican, accused Biden of "play[ing] the race card." Some Democrats agreed with the criticism. "First of all, without question they were appeals to race," said former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder. "The important thing I got out of this was Biden separated himself from what he accused the people of doing. As a matter of fact, what he said is they are going to do something to y'all, not to me. Not us. So he was still involved with that separate American." said CBS News reported that then-U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., called Biden's comment "stupid" during a radio interview: reported "Was he talking about slavery? You bet your a** he was. Was he using the vernacular? Yes, he was," said Rangel, a longtime New York Democrat who is a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. "Did he think it was cute ... Yes, he did. Was it something stupid to say? You bet your life it was stupid." Rangel added that if an African-American had made the joke, "We would have been laughing, because we would know that deep down, they may be beating the hell out of us but they ain't thinking about putting us into any chains." Ebony magazine contributor Jamil Smith agreed with Rangel's perception that Biden was "using the vernacular," or "code-switching," as Smith called it, "to acclimate to a particular environment or audience." Phonetically rendered, this is what Biden actually said: "They gonna put y'all back in chains." But the vice president stood by the remark in an Aug. 14 campaign stop in Raleigh, North Carolina, insisting that the message he was trying to convey wasn't about race, but rather the negative impact the opposition party's vow to "unshackle Wall Street" would have on middle-class Americans: The last time these guys unshackled the economy, to use their term, they put the middle class in shackles. That's how we got where we are. Nine million jobs lost, wage stagnation, 16 trillion dollars in wealth you all lost, in your home equity, in your 401ks, and your pension plans  you're the ones that got nailed. All of America except for the very few. And I'm told when I made that comment earlier today in Danville, Virginia, the Romney Campaign put out a Tweet, you know Tweets, and went on the air, went on the airwaves saying "Biden's outrageous in saying that  I think I said, instead of unshackled, unchained or  anyway, outrageous to say that, that's what we meant. I'm using their own words. I got a message for them, if you want to know want to know what's outrageous, it's their policies, and the effects of their policies on middle class America, that's what's outrageous. Biden had, in fact, used precisely the same trope before to characterize the impact of Republican economic policies on the middle class. The day after a Republican primary debate in October 2011, Biden said, referring to economic conditions under the George W. Bush administration: "The last time we liberated the economy under their proposals, the last eight years put the middle class in chains. My lord, how many times we have to go back to that horror movie?" said Obama took Biden's side, defending the Danville speech in an interview with People magazine: interview Biden's comment sparked Romney to call the Obama campaign one of "division and hate and anger." But Obama, speaking to PEOPLE in Dubuque, Iowa, seemed unrattled by the controversy. He said Biden's words needed to be considered in context; that he was only saying "you, consumers, the American people, will be a lot worse off if we repeal these [Wall Street reform] laws as the other side is suggesting." "In no sense was he trying to connote something other than that," Obama added. The racial composition of the audience is relevant to this debate, though not decisive, partly because estimates in the press were rough and contradictory. Although it was consistently reported that approximately 900 people were in attendance, and we know, from both press reports and video of the event, that a significant percentage of the attendees were Black, the media couldn't agree on whether more Black people were present than white people, fewer Black people than white people, or roughly the same number of each. The majority of mainstream news outlets reported that the audience was "predominantly," "largely," or "mostly" Black. Among these were the Los Angeles Times, Politico, CBS News, Fox News, The Daily Beast, National Public Radio, and NBC News. Significantly fewer outlets reported that the audience was "about 50%" Black. Some described it as "racially mixed." A small minority of venues said the makeup of the crowd was "partially" Black. We asked Tiffany Holland, a reporter who live-blogged the event for the Richmond Times-Dispatch website, for her impression of the racial makeup of the crowd. "If memory serves, the crowd was about half-African-American and half-white," she said in an email, adding that in her experience, Democratic Party events in Danville usually drew a "healthy mix of diversity." But she also said that this was just the impression she came away with, and could be remembering it wrongly. In any case, even if only 50% of the attendees were Black, Biden would have found himself gazing out over an audience that included hundreds of Black faces. The crowd need not have been "predominantly" Black to inspire a politician so inclined to engage in racial pandering. That Biden uttered the sentence "They gonna put y'all back in chains" before just such a crowd stands confirmed. Whether it should taken as a racially charged, pandering reference to slavery we leave it to readers to judge for themselves. Berg, Rebecca.  "Biden Warns Romney Policies Would Put Crowd 'Back in Chains.'"  The New York Times ("The Caucus" blog).  14 August 2012. Cain, Andrew.  "In Danville, Biden Says Romney's Policies Will 'Put Y'all Back in Chains.'"  Richmond Times-Dispatch.  14 August 2012. Condon, Stephanie.  "Rangel: Biden's Gaffe Was Clearly About Slavery."   CBS News.  24 August 2012. Holland, Steve and Jeff Mason.  "Biden Draws Romney's Ire with 'Chains' Comment."   Reuters.  14 August 2012. Holland, Tiffany.  "Biden: We Need to Finish What Obama Started."   Richmond Times-Dispatch.  14 August 2012. Montopoli, Brian.  "Joe Biden Clarifies 'in Chains' Remark."   CBS News.  14 August 2012. O'Neil, Luke.  "I Am a Gaffe Machine': A History of Joe Biden's Biggest Blunders."   The Guardian.  25 April 2019. Rainey, James.  "Joe Biden Used 'Chains' Metaphor Before to Hit Republicans."   Los Angeles Times.  15 August 2012. Roberts, Allison.  "Before VP Visit, Lots of Prep."   GoDanRiver.com.  17 August 2012. Schwarz, Gabriella.  "Biden Hits Cain's '9-9-9' Plan."   CNN.  12 October 2011. Shapiro, Ben.  "Biden in 49% Black Danville, VA: 'They Gonna Put Y'All Back in Chains."   Breitbart.  14 August 2012. Shield, Gerry.  "Republicans Blast Biden for 'Chains' Remark."   New York Post.  20 August 2012. Smith, Jamil.  "Biden 'Unchained.'"   Ebony.  17 August 2012. Tau, Byron.  "Obama Defends Biden on 'Chains' Remark."   Politico.  15 August 2012. Westfall, Sandra Sobieraj.  "President Obama: No Apologies, No Scolding for Joe Biden's Remark."  < em>People.  15 August 2012. Wise, Scott.  "Doug Wilder Criticizes Biden, 'Chains' Comment."   WTVR.  16 August 2012. C-SPAN.  "Vice President Joe Biden in Danville, Virginia.   14 August 2012. MSNBC.  "Obama Campaign Backs Biden's Controversial 'Chains' Remark."   16 August 2012. Since November 2020, an identically worded bit of text alleging that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) "is a private nonprofit corporation" has been shared across multiple social media platforms. The claim has its origins on the website Armstrong Economics  which sells a variety of self-published conspiracy books by the titular Martin Armstrong  and would become a well-shared bit of copy-and-paste "copypasta," reproduced in part below: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention its origins well-shared Did you know the CDC is a private nonprofit corporation? [...] The CDC is quasi-government under the Department of Health and Human Services which strangely has sources of funding that are predicated on the fact that it also has a private 501(c)(3) public charity, like the Clinton Foundation. The CDC Foundation receives charitable contributions and philanthropic grants from individuals, foundations, corporations, universities, NGOs and other organizations to advance the work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is NOT a government-funded organization. It is not exclusively a government-funded [sic]  very curious. Natural News, which boasts a massive audience of conspiracy theorists, republished it in December 2020. At the time of this writing, versions of this copypasta still creep up on various social media platforms. On May 3, 2021, a Facebook account named The Daily Callout published it along with a picture of purported CDC funding sources. Commenters to that post were evidently confused: republished published   The allegations leveled against the CDC are not all that coherent in these posts. The copypasta suggests the CDC is both a non-profit and a "quasi-government" agency. Further, those issues are tangled up in the separate issue of corporate donations to the CDC. The title of the post, however, provides Snopes with a clearly stated contention: "Did you know the CDC is a private nonprofit corporation?" You most likely did not know this, because it is, in fact, not true. The CDC is a federal agency housed in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The confusion stems from the fact that, in 1992, Congress mandated the creation of a non-profit foundation  the CDC Foundation  that would "not be an agency or instrumentality of the Federal Government" and whose purpose would be "to support and carry out activities for the prevention and control of diseases, disorders, injuries, and disabilities, and for promotion of public health." As part of that goal, the foundation has an endowment and accepts charitable gifts from a variety of entities, including corporations, which are forwarded to the CDC to support specific initiatives.  housed in in 1992 mandated the creation CDC Foundation "The government has unique capacities as well as limitations. The same is true for the private and philanthropic sectors," the CDC Foundation argues on its website. "We believe that people, groups and organizations have greater positive impact and can accomplish more collectively than individually." Funds raised by the CDC foundation are donated to various programs and initiatives within the CDC. its website The CDC Foundation is one of two ways corporations can legally provide funds to the CDC. Donations to the CDC foundation are an indirect route as, by law, "officers, employees, and members of the board of the Foundation shall not be officers or employees of the Federal Government." Direct gifts by corporations to the CDC are also allowed under a portion of the U.S. Code that authorizes the secretary of HHS "to accept on behalf of the United States gifts made ... for the benefit of the Service or for the carrying out of any of its functions." by law a portion For both direct gifts to the CDC and gifts made via the CDC Foundation, conditional funding is allowed so long as those requirements are not, as outlined in CDC policy documents: policy documents The acceptance of corporate donations earmarked for specific causes  both to the CDC Foundation and to the CDC itself  have caused apparent conflicts of interest. In 2015, the medical journal BMJ published an editorial outlining several examples of potential conflicts, including these examples: an editorial In 2010, the CDC, in conjunction with the CDC Foundation, formed the Viral Hepatitis Action Coalition, which supports research and promotes expanded testing and treatment of hepatitis C in the United States and globally. Industry has donated over $26m to the coalition through the CDC Foundation since 2010. Corporate members of the coalition include Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie, Gilead, Janssen, Merck, OraSure Technologies, Quest Diagnostics, and Siemenseach of which produces products to test for or treat hepatitis C infection. [...] In 2012, [a company named] Genentech earmarked $600,000 in donations to the CDC Foundation for CDCs efforts to promote expanded testing and treatment of viral hepatitis. Genentech and its parent company, Roche, manufacture test kits and treatments for hepatitis C. The CDC argues that it has policies in place to prevent such conflicts. Its website states that "when we engage with the private sector  we maintain our scientific integrity by participating in a gift review process that is rigorous and transparent. CDCs gift acceptance policy requires a comprehensive gift review prior to accepting a gift. This includes CDC Foundation (CDCF) gifts and gifts given directly to [the] CDC, whether they are monetary or non-monetary." These processes have been refined and standardized several times since 2014. has policies since 2014 While the issue of potential corporate influence over public health policy merits scrutiny, it is also important to consider the scale of private funding compared to the overall congressionally appropriated budget of the CDC. In the 2020 fiscal year, the CDC received $13 million in conditional gifts from the CDC Foundation and $10 million in conditional and unconditional direct contributions from the private sector. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly $8 billion in funding the CDC receives from Congress: 2020 fiscal year compared to   Even from a rhetorical standpoint it would be a stretch to argue the CDC proportionally is awash in corporate funding. Narrowly speaking, however, the assertion that the CDC is a non-profit, non-government organization is incorrect because that claim conflates the CDC (a federal agency) and the CDC Foundation (a 501(c)(3) charity). As such, the claim is Critics of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obamas health care law, have assembled a long list of complaints about the law. One provision thats getting increasing scrutiny these days is the penalty on employers who dont provide their workers with health insurance. For workers who are on the job at least 30 hours per week, companies must offer health coverage or be hit with a financial penalty. The Obama administration twice delayed enforcement of this requirement, but it finally took effect this month for companies with at least 100 workers, and it is set to start next year for companies with between 50 and 99 workers. (The rule will not apply to small businesses with fewer than 50 workers.) Some Republicans have urged changing the rule so the cutoff is 40 hours a week, rather than 30. The House has passed a bill to do that; its now heading to the Senate, though the White House has pledged to veto it. A reader asked us to check out a Jan. 13 column on this topic in theWall Street Journal.It was written by Andy Puzder, the chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants, which is the parent company of Carls Jr. and Hardees. In the column, Puzder explained his companys thought process about whether and how it should provide health coverage to its employees. Puzders column makes clear that hes no fan of the Affordable Care Act, particularly the employer mandate: So what does Obamacares 30-hour rule accomplish? Some would argue that it does a lot, pointing to the previously uninsured who now have employer-sponsored health insurance. In our company, that would be 2 percent of total employees and 6 percent of eligible employees. For results like that, Obamacare has caused millions of full-time jobs to become part-time, imposed a tax on lower-income workers who cannot afford it, forced millions of people out of insurance they liked, restricted access to doctors for millions of others, and created an enormous bureaucracy that discourages our doctors and nurses while suppressing health-care system innovation. Here, well take a look at just one of these claims -- that Obamacare has caused millions of full-time jobs to become part-time. The bottom line, we found, is that there isnt enough data to state a number with any specificity. Suggesting that its millions, as Puzder did, is speculative -- something he acknowledged to PolitiFact. At the same time, the number of people experiencing a cut in hours isnt trivial, with informed estimates putting it into the low hundreds of thousands of people. Puzder elaborates When we reached out to Puzder, he sent us a detailed response. (Weve posted the full text of ithere, but well excerpt it in this article.) Puzder acknowledged that there is no definitive data available on the question. That said, there is also nothing definitive to the contrary of which I am aware, he added. Puzder noted -- and other economists agree -- that employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is imperfect for answering this question. The BLS threshold in hours per week for full-time employment is different than it is for the Affordable Care Act. In addition, BLS counts someone who works two 20-hour-a-week part time jobs as one full-time worker. Both of these factors complicate any calculations using BLS data. The available evidence is also murky for another reason: Its impossible to tell whether any changes actually stem from the Affordable Care Act, as opposed to the labor-market dynamics of the recovery to the Great Recession. However, Puzder provided some anecdotal evidence from his own sector -- restaurant chains -- that suggests a plausible case for millions. Many restaurant chains, he noted, are operated as franchises. In his own companys case, 230 franchisees own 73 percent of the companys 2,920 restaurants in the United States; the company itself owns the rest. While the parent company employs about 20,000 people, its domestic franchisees employ many more -- about 55,000. And industry leaders like McDonalds and Burger King have more franchises and franchise employees. The disparate nature of franchise ownership makes it difficult to calculate the number of workers who may have had their hours cut. Based on his own experience at his company and the conversations hes had with other industry CEOs, Puzder thinks its reasonable (but, he acknowledges, unscientific) to assume that 20 percent to 25 percent of their operational employees have had their hours cut to under 30 per week due to the employer mandate. And if thats the case, the math adds up quickly. TheInternational Franchise Associationcounted nearly 8.1 million employees in 2012, working at 750,000 franchise establishments. If these franchise employers lowered the hours of 20 percent of these employees, that would equal 1.6 million employees. Adjusting the hours for 15 percent would impact 1.2 million. And this number doesnt include employees of the parent company; nor does it include the employees of retail companies that do not franchise. Puzder also referenced adata setbeing compiled by Jed Graham, a journalist withInvestors Business Daily. (Editorially, Grahams publication has argued firmly against the Affordable Care Act, but several of the economists we checked with said Grahams information is valuable.) When we accessed Grahams database in January 2015, he had documented just over 450 employers that had made cuts to work hours or staffing levels as a result of Obamacare. However, this list by itself doesnt get to millions, and because it has been compiled anecdotally rather than using scientific sampling, it cant simply be scaled up to estimate a national figure. (Well also note that a full 81 percent of the employers that made cuts documented by his list are government entities; the share of private companies, which were the the focus of Puzders op-ed, accounted for just 19 percent of his list.) What all this means is that its easy build a scenario in which millions of workerscouldsee their hours cut. But neither Puzder nor our own research has produced incontrovertible evidence that it has actually happened. What the data shows That said, its likely that the law is having some impact on part-time hours, albeit a smaller one than millions. Onestudy-- authored by Bowen Garrett of the Urban Institute and Robert Kaestner of the University of Illinois and published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation -- found a modest (0.6 percentage-point) increase in the share of employees working part-time during the first seven months of 2014 compared to what would typically be expected based on previous economic recoveries. However, the authors attributed this finding to the dynamics of the recovery from the Great Recession, rather than to the Affordable Care Act. Ultimately, they found little change during the run-up to the implementation of the employer mandate -- an indication that the provision wasnt having a big effect on pushing workers involuntarily into part-time work. Anotherstudy, by Helene Jorgensen and Dean Baker of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, did find a small rise in the share of employees working 25 to 29 hours a week during the first half of 2013 -- but this bump came at the expense of those working fewer than 25 hours a week, not at the expense of those working 30 or more hours a week. Thats not the dynamic one would expect if Obamacare was pushing employers to cut hours. Neither of the previous two studies offered hard estimates of how many workers saw their hours cut. But one analysis did -- one written by Ben Casselman, the chief economics writer at the website fivethirtyeight.com. When Casselman looked at the data, he found that the proportion of part-time workers working just below 30 hours a week had been rising for about two years, while the share working just over 30 hours was falling. Thats consistent with the trend Puzder pointed to. Heres a chart that accompanied his story:  Overall, Casselman concluded that the health law has likely led a few hundred thousand workers to see their hours cut or capped. Thats small in the context of an economy with 150 million workers. But it isnt a minor issue for those workers. Most of them are among the economys most vulnerable: low-wage, part-time workers who likely have few other options. Several economists we checked with said Casselmans estimate of a few hundred thousand was more plausible than Puzders millions. I think we can safely say that at this point it's clearly not millions, because that size shift would be noticeable in the aggregate data, said Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist. A few hundred thousand seems a lot more plausible. Its worth noting that Casselmans a few hundred thousand and Puzders millions are not apples-to-apples figures. Casselman included employees who were already working part-time when their hours were cut, not just those who (as Puzder wrote) saw their full-time jobs shrink to part-time jobs. So Casselmans figure may actually overstate the number of employees who saw their jobs specifically shift from full-time to part-time. That makes it even harder to reach the millions threshold. Possible benefits Finally, several of the economists told us that focusing only on the negative aspects of Obamacare-inspired changes in working hours painted an incomplete picture. While its true that the law hurts employees who would like to work longer hours, the law also aids unemployed workers who are only too happy to work in newly created part-time jobs, as well as older workers who would like to retire but havent yet reached Medicare age and individuals who prefer part-time work and no longer have to take full-time jobs in order to secure health insurance. Indeed, the law makes it easier for Americans to start businesses on their own, since they are able to leave jobs where they work for someone else and still be able to secure affordable health care for themselves and their families. And it may be having that effect: Baker noticed that during the final quarter of 2014, the number of self-employed Americans rose by a whopping 400,000 compared to the previous years fourth quarter. Those 400,000 jobs are not counted in the widely reported BLS job-creation numbers, which only survey companies with payrolls. Our ruling Puzder said that Obamacare has caused millions of full-time jobs to become part-time. The statistics, in this case, are inadequate to either prove or disprove that millions of Americans have seen their job go from full-time to part-time due to the law. That number is possible, but unsupported. That said, theres evidence suggesting that hundreds of thousands of workers may have seen their hours cut as the laws impact began to be felt. Thats not millions, but its not insignificant either. On balance, we rate the claim Half True. Sometimes, Snopes readers stumble on old stories that require us to revisit key moments of history. One such story was of the courageous actions of Neerja Bhanot, an Indian flight attendant on Pan Am flight 73, which was hijacked in 1986 by Palestinian militants on its way to the United States while on a stopover in Karachi, Pakistan. Neerja Bhano Many of our readers shared social media posts, and queries, asking us to detail some of the main events of the hijacking, including Bhanots death from a gunshot wound. posts   One reader asked us to confirm the following: When radical Islamic terrorists hijacked her A/C in Karachi, Pakistan she informed the pilots (who used their escape hatch to runaway) and kept both the passengers/remaining crew calm. When the terrorists demanded to know who the Americans were on the flight so they could execute them she gathered all the passports and hid the ones belonging to Americans under seat cushions. The terrorists confused and unable to determine the national origins of the passengers didn't execute anyone. When Pakistani police raided the plane she was able to nearly singlehandedly evacuate all the passengers as the firefight ensued. She being one of the last people on board did a last check and found three children still hiding. As she led the children to safety the surviving terrorists spotted the children and opened fire on them. Neerja jumped in the way of the bullets and was mortally wounded. She was able to evac the children to safety before dying from her wounds. Neerja was awarded the Ashok Chakra Award by India, the highest peacetime gallantry award possible. She was the youngest and first civilian to ever be awarded this honor. Through testimonies from the flight crew and passengers during the sentencing of one of the hijackers, and interviews done by the BBC, we were able to gather key facts from that fateful day. In 2004, Zayad al Safarini, a Jordanian hijacker who was part of the attack, was sentenced by a U.S. district judge to 160 years in prison. At the hearing for his sentencing, a number of passengers, flight attendants, and Bhanots brother, came forward to recount the events of the hijacking. The full transcript of their testimonies can be read here. testimonies BBC sentenced here The Palestinian militants who hijacked the aircraft were affiliated with the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), which was opposed to U.S. and Israeli policies in the Middle East, and was described as a secular international terrorist organization. When the hijackers boarded the plane, they began trying to identify any Americans on board. A 2016 BBC report included interviews with the surviving flight attendants, described the scene: described BBC report Sunshine, Madhvi Bahuguna and another flight attendant began collecting passports, quietly avoiding collecting any that were American. They then went through the bags of passports they had collected, secretly sifting out any remaining American ones and tucking them under their seats or concealing them in their clothing. Mike Thexton, a passenger on the plane, describes the act in his book What Happened to The Hippy Man? as "extremely brave, selfless and clever". "I may be biased but I feel that day proved that the flight attendants on board were some of the best in the industry." Descriptions from passengers and family members from the sentencing of Safarini detailed the moment that flight attendants were told to gather passports, and the ways in which they tried to protect the Americans among them. Aneesh Bhanot, Neerjas brother, who was not on the plane as these events took place, described this effort as one carried out by all the flight attendants together: Descriptions Neerja was an Indian citizen. All the other flight attendants were also Indian citizens. Mr. Safarini and his gang were targeting Americans, as was very obvious from the passenger calls which you heard later on. Neerja and all the other attendants knew this. That is why when they asked them to get the passports of all the passengers, they hid the American passports on the airplane. He also cited the testimony of another passenger that was published in the Cincinnati Enquirer in September 1986. A clipping of that paper is available below (in which Bhanot is referred to as Neerja Mishra):   Michael John Thexton, a British passenger, recounted the following: recounted Then came the call for passports, and I should have ignored it. But I felt that I had to obey orders. So I took out my passport and I handed it in, still thinking that the Americans would be in front of us, not reckoning the ingenuity and the extraordinary bravery of the stewardess who was making the collection in discarding American passports that had a white face. I suppose the British were [the] third choice for the terrorists. And after the Americans and the Israelis, mine was the only one of a small handful of British passports with a white face in that pile. I think maybe six or seven, something of that sort. So the call came over the public address for passenger Michael John to come forward, then Michael John Thexton, and I knew that they wanted to shoot me. Darrell Pieper, an American passenger, credited flight attendant Sunshine Vesuwala for protecting his identity. In his testimony, he said, Sunshine hid my passport when she realized the hijackers are looking for Americans. I'm grateful to her for her quick thinking and action, which again saved my life. credited Gregg Maisel, the attorney representing the U.S. government, said, the flight attendants, risking their own lives, deliberately refused to accept United States passports from some passengers and hid several United States passports under seat cushions. said Given that Bhanot played a big role in protecting the American passengers by hiding their passports, but was not the only flight attendant doing this, we rate this part of the claim as true. In this instance, even as Bhanot showed remarkable bravery in getting passengers to safety, she was not alone in this effort. According to Maisel, passengers escaped after Bhanot and others were able to open up some exits: escaped As the bullets and grenades flew, Neerja Bhanot, as well as other flight attendants and passengers, heroically managed to force open two exits in the economy section. The opening of the rear exit triggered inflation of the emergency slide, but the opening of the exit over the wing did not trigger the inflation of a second emergency slide. People clamored to reach both exits fearful that the hijackers would resume the assault.[...]This diagram illustrates the efforts of surviving hostages to escape the aircraft using the emergency slide and climbing onto the wing of the plane. While the slide was a safer escape route, the sheer number of people attempting to leave the plane through this exit at night resulted in additional injuries to some who were unable to exit quickly enough to avoid being crushed by others behind them.[...]At the direction of several flight attendants, other passengers reentered the plane climbing over the wounded and the dead and used the rear exit where the slide was inflated to the safer escape route. Aneesh Bhanot also recounted an article written by a Pakistani passenger: recounted There's another passenger from Pakistan, a gentleman called Hussein, who had written an article in a newspaper called the Star of Pakistan. And he wrote again that says as the lights went out at 10:00 p.m. we was herded with the passengers and the shooting started. From nowhere, his savior, Neerja, and I'm sure other flight attendants also did the same thing, had the presence and the nerve to steer through the pandemonium to lead the passengers where to go. Neerja, by sheer zest, it seems, single-handedly opened the chute. Her favorite words to him and other passengers were, get out, run. In this instance, since Bhanot appeared to have taken the lead in helping passengers escape and was also aided by other crew and passengers, we rate this part of the claim as a mixture, given that she did not do this alone. Bhanots death was described through different accounts, based on information gathered in the aftermath of the attack. Some reports said she was protecting three children, while flight attendants described her being shot during the escape. Jennifer Levy, another attorney representing the U.S. government, described Bhanots final moments: described When the lights went out just before the final assault, Ms. Bhanot ran for the emergency door and activated the inflatable chute. Instead of escaping as one of the first off the aircraft, she remained on board to help others out of the plane. She was shot in the final assault. Although she was taken off the plane alive by her fellow flight attendants, she died shortly afterwards of massive bleeding. Viraf Daroga, Pan Ams director in Pakistan, described how Bhanot was brought down from the aircraft through the emergency chute: described Those who were injured were picked up as they came down the chute, put in ambulances that came rushing to the aircraft, and were driven off to various hospitals. Neerja, the senior purser, was brought down by her colleagues and was taken to the hospital. She died in the hospital in the arms of one of my staff. Aneesh Bhanots testimony described how Bhanot was indeed protecting three children when she was shot and killed: described Neerja could have been the first one to escape from the aircraft as she opened the emergency door, yet she chose not to do that. Instead, she got the passengers out and gave her own life, as we are told, while shielding three small children from gunfire. Her actions probably saved hundreds of lives. The Pan Am Historical Foundation also described her death by saying As the hijackers opened fire on passengers and crew, Neerja Bhanot lost her life shielding three children from bullets. described Since reports differ on what happened during Bhanots final moments, and some details remain uncertain, we rate the overall truth of this claim as "Mixture." But there is no doubting that her actions, as well as the actions of other flight attendants and crew, saved many lives. She was posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra award, which is India's highest civilian decoration for bravery.  Ashok Chakra award In late March 2021, Facebook users shared a copypasta meme promising that Tim Hortons, a Canadian fast food chain, would give away a hamper full of "surprises that will make your heart flutter" and a $60 dollar gift card in commemoration of the company's 57th anniversary. All users had to share the post and comment on it. Here's an example of the post, with the user's name cropped out for privacy:   "Tim Hortons is going to celebrate its 57th anniversary on March 24, 2021, and In order to help our loyal customers every single person who has shared & commented before 5PM Wednesday will be sent one of these hampers containing a $60 gift-card plus surprises that will make your heart flutter!" Tim Hortons does offer occasional promotions on its official Facebook page, but those promotions don't involve prompting customers to share posts or comment on posts. Facebook page The post pictured above isn't a legitimate offer from Tim Hortons. It's a type of scam the Better Business Bureau calls "like farming." The purpose of this type of scam is as follows, according to the BBB: like farming As with many scams, like-farming has several different aims. When scammers ask you to register in order to win something or claim an offer, this is a way to steal your personal information. Other versions can be more complex. Often, the post itself is initially harmless  albeit completely fictional. But when the scammer collects enough likes and shares, they will edit the post and could add something malicious, such as a link to a website that downloads malware to your machine. Other times, once scammers reach their target number of likes, they strip the pages original content and use it to promote spammy products. They may also resell the page on the black market. These buyers can use it to spam followers or harvest the information Facebook provides.