A mother revealed to her child in a letter after her death that she had just one eye because she had donated the other to him.

Explanation: The one-eyed mother story expounds upon two moral messages: the unconditional, all-encompassing love we expect mothers to always feel for their children, and the admonition to not put off cherishing loved ones and appreciating their sacrifices while they’re still around.

In April 2005, we spotted a tearjerker on the Internet about a mother who gave up one of her eyes to a son who had lost one of his at an early age. By February 2007 the item was circulating in e-mail in the following shortened version:  My mom only had one eye. I hated her… She was such an embarrassment. She cooked for students and teachers to support the family. There was this one day during elementary school where my mom came to say hello to me. I was so embarrassed. How could she do this to me? I ignored her, threw her a hateful look and ran out. The next day at school one of my classmates said, “EEEE, your mom only has one eye!” I wanted to bury myself. I also wanted my mom to just disappear. I confronted her that day and said, “If you’re only gonna make me a laughing stock, why don’t you just die?” My mom did not respond… I didn’t even stop to think for a second about what I had said, because I was full of anger. I was oblivious to her feelings. I wanted out of that house, and have nothing to do with her. So I studied real hard, got a chance to go abroad to study. Then, I got married. I bought a house of my own. I had kids of my own. I was happy with my life, my kids and the comforts. Then one day, my Mother came to visit me. She hadn’t seen me in years and she didn’t even meet her grandchildren. When she stood by the door, my children laughed at her, and I yelled at her for coming over uninvited. I screamed at her, “How dare you come to my house and scare my children! GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!! !” And to this, my mother quietly answered, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I may have gotten the wrong address,” and she disappeared out of sight. One day, a letter regarding a school reunion came to my house. So I lied to my wife that I was going on a business trip. After the reunion, I went to the old shack just out of curiosity. My neighbors said that she died. I did not shed a single tear. They handed me a letter that she had wanted me to have. My dearest son, I think of you all the time. I’m sorry that I came to your house and scared your children. I was so glad when I heard you were coming for the reunion. But I may not be able to even get out of bed to see you. I’m sorry that I was a constant embarrassment to you when you were growing up. You see……..when you were very little, you got into an accident, and lost your eye. As a mother, I couldn’t stand watching you having to grow up with one eye. So I gave you mine. I was so proud of my son who was seeing a whole new world for me, in my place, with that eye. With all my love to you, Your mother. In its earlier incarnation, the story identified by implication its location as Korea through statements made by both the mother and the son (the son’s “I left my mother and came to Seoul” and the mother’s “I won’t visit Seoul anymore”). It also supplied a reason for the son’s behavior when his mother arrived unexpectedly to visit him (“My little girl ran away, scared of my mom’s eye” and “I screamed at her, ‘How dare you come to my house and scare my daughter!'”). A further twist was provided in the original: rather than gaining the news of his mother’s death from neighbors (who hand him her letter), the son instead discovered the woman who bore him lying dead on the floor of what used to be his childhood home, her missive to him clutched in her lifeless hand: Give your parents roses while they are alive, not deadMY mom only had one eye. I hated her … she was such an embarrassment. My mom ran a small shop at a flea market. She collected little weeds and such to sell … anything for the money we needed she was such an embarrassment. There was this one day during elementary school … It was field day, and my mom came. I was so embarrassed. How could she do this to me? I threw her a hateful look and ran out. The next day at school … “your mom only has one eye?!? !” … And they taunted me. I wished that my mom would just disappear from this world so I said to my mom, “mom … Why don’t you have the other eye?! If you’re only going to make me a laughingstock, why don’t you just die?!! !” my mom did not respond … I guess I felt a little bad, but at the same time, it felt good to think that I had said what I’d wanted to say all this time… maybe it was because my mom hadn’t punished me, but I didn’t think that I had hurt her feelings very badly. That night… I woke up, and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. My mom was crying there, so quietly, as if she was afraid that she might wake me. I took a look at her, and then turned away. Because of the thing I had said to her earlier, there was something pinching at me in the corner of my heart. Even so, I hated my mother who was crying out of her one eye. So I told myself that I would grow up and become successful. Because I hated my one-eyed mom and our desperate poverty… then I studied real hard. I left my mother and came to Seoul and studied, and got accepted in the Seoul University with all the confidence I had. Then, I got married. I bought a house of my own. Then I had kids, too… now I’m living happily as a successful man. I like it here because it’s a place that doesn’t remind me of my mom. This happiness was getting bigger and bigger, when… what?! Who’s this…it was my mother… still with her one eye. It felt as if the whole sky was falling apart on me. My little girl ran away, scared of my mom’s eye. And I asked her, “who are you? !” “I don’t know you!! !” as if trying to make that real. I screamed at her, “How dare you come to my house and scare my daughter!” “GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!! !” and to this, my mother quietly answered, “oh, I’m so sorry. I may have gotten the wrong address,” and she disappeared out of sight. Thank goodness… she doesn’t recognize me… I was quite relieved. I told myself that I wasn’t going to care, or think about this for the rest of my life. Then a wave of relief came upon me… One day, a letter regarding a school reunion came to my house. So, lying to my wife that I was going on a business trip, I went. After the reunion, I went down to the old shack, that I used to call a house… just out of curiosity there, I found my mother fallen on the cold ground. But I did not shed a single tear. She had a piece of paper in her hand…. it was a letter to me. My son… I think my life has been long enough now… And… I won’t visit Seoul anymore… but would it be too much to ask if I wanted you to come visit me once in a while? I miss you so much… and I was so glad when I heard you were coming for the reunion. But I decided not to go to the school. …for you… and I’m sorry that I only have one eye, and I was an embarrassment for you. You see, when you were very little, you got into an accident, and lost your eye. as a mom, I couldn’t stand watching you having to grow up with only one eye… so I gave you mine… I was so proud of my son that was seeing a whole new world for me, in my place, with that eye. I was never upset at you for anything you did… the couple times that you were angry with me, I thought to myself, ‘it’s because he loves me…’ my son. Oh, my son… I don’t want you to cry for me, because of my death. My son, I love you my son, I love you so much. With all modern medical technology, transplantation of the eyeball is still impossible. The optic nerve isn’t an ordinary nerve, but instead an inset running from the brain. Modern medicine isn’t able to “connect” an eyeball back to brain after an optic nerve has been severed, let alone transplant the eye from a different person. (The only exception is the cornea, the transparent part in front of the eye: corneas are transplanted to replace injured and opaque ones.) We won’t try to comment on whether any surgeon would accept an eye from a living donor for transplant into another — we’ll leave that to others who are far more knowledgeable about medical ethics and transplant procedures. But we will note that the plot device of a mother’s dramatic sacrifice for the sake of her child’s being revealed in a written communication delivered after her demise appears in another legend about maternal love: the 2008 tale about a woman who left a touching message on her cell phone even as life ebbed from her as she used her body to shield the tot during an earthquake. Giving up one’s own life for a loved one is central to a 2005 urban legend about a boy on a motorcycle who has his girlfriend hug him one last time and put on his helmet just before the crash that kills him and spares her. Returning to the “notes from the dead” theme is the 1995 story about a son who discovers only through a posthumous letter from his mother what their occasional dinner “dates” had meant to her. Another legend we’re familiar with features a meme used in the one-eyed mother story (the coming to light of the enduring love of the person who died for the completely unworthy person she’d lavished it on), but that one involves a terminally ill woman and her cheating husband. In it, an about-to-be-spurned wife begs the adulterous hoon she’d married to stick around for another 30 days and to carry her over the threshold of their home once every day of that month as her way of keeping him around long enough for her to kick the bucket and thus spare their son the knowledge that his parents were on the verge of divorce.


Study says too many Americans still drink too much.

Explanation: On any given day in the United States, 18 percent of men and 11 percent of women drink more alcohol than federal guidelines recommend, according to a study that also found that 8 percent of men and 3 percent of women are full-fledged “heavy drinkers.”

That means the great majority of Americans stay within the advised limit of two drinks a day for men and one for women, according to the study that appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “And in fact, most adults don’t drink at all on any given day,” said lead author Patricia Guenther, a nutritionist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. “But the fact remains that it is a significant public health problem that many people do drink to excess.”  Guenther said that members of the committee that drafted the current USDA guidelines on alcohol consumption wanted to know how many adults exceeded the limits. She and her colleagues collected data from a nationally representative survey on health and nutrition, which included about 5,400 adults over age 21. Among other things, each was asked how much alcohol they drank the previous day. The researchers found that 64 percent of men and 79 percent of women said they drank no alcohol at all that day, and another 18 percent of men and 10 percent of women drank within the recommended amounts. Nine percent of men said they had three to four drinks the day before and 8 percent of women said they drank two to three alcoholic beverages, the researchers said. The heaviest drinkers of all were the 8 percent of men who had five or more drinks, and 3 percent of women who had four or more. “Overall the study confirms that rates of unhealthy alcohol use in the U.S. are significant,” said Jennifer Mertens, a research medical scientist at Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California, who was not part of the study. Regularly drinking more than recommended levels is “linked to increased alcohol-related problems,” Mertens wrote in an email to Reuters Health. “Binge drinking (more than four drinks on any one day for men and more than three on any one day for women and older adults) even one time can increase the risk of injury from falls, motor vehicle accidents and other accidents,” she added. Among men, the 31-to-30-year-old age group had the most heavy drinkers, at 22 percent. Ammonal women, the heaviest drinkers - 12 percent - were between 51 and 70 years old. Guenther said that’s important to note because it highlights that heavy drinking is not just part of life among the college set. “People need to be aware that there are people of all ages who drink to excess,” she told Reuters Health, adding that the new study is also important because it may help people recognize whether they themselves are drinking more than recommended. "There are people who don't realize that they are drinking more than what's beneficial to their health," she said. SOURCE: bit.ly/X1NVtW


Viral image Says 80% of novel coronavirus cases are "mild.

Explanation: The website Information is Beautiful published a chart showing that 80.9% of novel coronavirus cases are "mild." PolitiFact couldn't find credible studies that matched that precise estimate. But reports from the World Health Organization and the U.S. CDC found that mild cases account for 75-to-80% of all cases.

Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Viral image,

Amid the spread of the novel coronavirus, many people are wondering how likely they are to get it. Often, their second question is: If I get coronavirus, how likely am I to survive it? One chart, created by the website Information is Beautiful, says that 80% of coronavirus cases are "mild." So is that true? The chart is a tad misleading. It makes a blanket statement about the virus while basing its claim on a study by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and a website called Statistica. The post doesn’t include links to the reports. An important note: The percentage of mild cases shouldn’t be confused with your likelihood of surviving a stint of the virus, also known as COVID-19. Mortality rates differ depending on a person’s age and health. The virus is relatively new. So there’s a lot researchers have yet to nail down. That said, the post is mostly consistent with available data. In February, CNN reported on the release of the study conducted by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and published in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology. The study itself said that in confirmed coronavirus cases, 70% were "normal," 25.5% were "severe" and 4.5% were "light." But Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of World Health Organization, said during a press conference on Feb. 17 that more than 80% of patients "have mild disease and will recover." Meanwhile, 13.8% of cases suffer severe symptoms and 6.1% are critical. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website on March 13 said a "complete clinical picture with regard to COVID-19 is not fully known." However, the CDC said "most cases" are mild, citing a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. That study looked at medical records for coronavirus patients documented by the National Health Commission between Dec. 11 and Jan. 29. "On admission, the degree of severity of COVID-19 was categorized as nonsevere in 926 patients and severe in 173 patients," the study reads. That means 84 percent were considered non-severe. Age and baseline health were factors in whether a patient’s illness became severe, the study said. "Patients with severe disease were older than those with nonsevere disease by a median of seven years. Moreover, the presence of any coexisting illness was more common among patients with severe disease than among those with nonsevere disease," it said. The chart says 80.9% of cases are mild. It’s important to note that different age groups have had different levels of severity. However, generally speaking, the chart is on track. We found that mild cases account for roughly 75-to-80% of cases, according to studies published by the WHO and CDC. The statement is mostly accurate but needs clarification or additional information.


An email says that 9-year old Craig Shergold of Carshalton, Great Britain is dying of Cancer.  As a dying wish, he wants to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by collecting the most greeting cards of anybody in history.  The email asks that the cards be sent to an address of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Explanation: Send greeting or business cards to cancer victim Craig Shergold

Craig Shergold is real and             in 1989 when he was 9-years old, a campaign was started on his             behalf to try to break the Guinness world record for greeting cards. The Make-A-Wish Foundation had nothing to do             with it, however, and Craig is now a 22-year old young man who is             alive and well. The story began in 1988 when Craig first complained of             earaches. Antibiotics didn’t help and one day when his             condition seemed desperate, Craig was taken to a hospital for tests,             which revealed a brain tumor. He was so ill his parents were             warned he might not survive. Surgery removed the tumor, but it             kept growing and the outlook was not good. When the             staff at Royal Marsden Hospital in London saw how much get-well             cards cheered it up, it was suggested that a card project be started             to break the Guinness world record. The London office of the             Children’s Wish Foundation (not Make-a-Wish) got on board and the             British press gave visibility to the story. The old Guinness             mark was slightly more than a million cards. That record was             broken by Craig within a few months, but the cards kept             coming. Then along the way, the rumor said he wanted business             cards, not greeting cards. The mail load got so heavy that             Craig’s family ultimately halted mail delivery to their home and             chose to move to a different residence. Now, Craig’s old             address has its own postal code and more than 350 million pieces of             mail have been received. Volunteers remove the stamps, which             are sold, and the mail is then recycled, with the proceeds going to             cancer research. The folks at Guinness have retired the             greeting card category. Although Craig and his family became overwhelmed by the volume of             mail, they ultimately became grateful for one aspect of the             visibility. Word of Craig’s condition reached Virginia             billionaire John Kluge, chairman of Metromedia. He arranged             for Craig to be flown to the U.S. for life-saving surgery at the             University of Virginia Medical Center. A PAX-TV movie about Craig was the result of producer Robert Woods having             received the rumor and sending a card to Craig. Through that,             he learned that Craig was no longer a little boy, but a healthy             young man and the story struck him as a good one for the screen. He and the family have hopes that the film will help quiet the             rumor. updated 11/18/01 For more information:Make A Wish Foundation Comments


Employees at a Five Guys restaurant in Daphne, Alabama, refused to serve local police officers.

Explanation: What's undetermined: As of this writing, Five Guys has not explicitly corroborated the police version of events.

In July 2020, amid a new wave of nationwide protests over racial injustice and police brutality, readers asked us to examine the accuracy of news reports and social media posts that claimed a Five Guys burger restaurant in Daphne, Alabama, had refused to serve police officers. On July 8, local television news channels WALA, WPMI, and WKRG broadcast reports that all relayed the claims of Daphne Police Department (PD) officers, who said they had entered the Five Guys restaurant at the Jubilee Square shopping center in Daphne on the previous evening, but employees there had refused to serve them. One officer reportedly heard a Five Guys employee remark to their colleagues, “I’m not serving them.” The three local outlets also published articles on their websites about the incident. At the time, Five Guys provided the following statement: Five Guys and the Franchisee of the Daphne, AL location were made aware of reports that local Police Officers had been denied service by employees at that location. Five Guys and the franchisee are actively investigating the situation and are committed to getting to the bottom of it. However, no matter what the details are, we do not want these police officers, or any customer, to feel disrespected or slighted in anyway. We apologize to those officers and also want to make it clear that Five Guys and its franchisees are committed to fair, respectful, and equal treatment for all customers. We will continue to investigate the matter. Additionally, if there are questions about masks, the three officers who entered the restaurant were wearing masks. In a statement, Daphne PD also clarified that the officers involved were wearing face masks at the time they were allegedly refused service. Some social media users misrepresented the alleged incident in Daphne, Alabama, calling for a boycott of all Five Guys restaurants on the false premise that the company had a policy of refusing service to police officers. On July 10, Five Guys announced that some of the employees in question had been fired, and some had been suspended: Five Guys and the Daphne, AL franchise want to thank the Daphne Police Department for their support in working together toward a resolution. The actions the Daphne, AL franchise have taken include termination and suspension of the employees involved. The store has temporarily closed for further education and customer service training with a representative from the Daphne Police Department and will reopen at 4PM today, July 10th. As we uphold our commitment to fair, respectful, and equal treatment for all customers, please know that the actions and sentiments of a few employees in Daphne, AL do not represent Five Guys or the local franchisee. According to WALA, an unnamed police source had confirmed that several officers had indeed been refused service by Five Guys employees and that the officers claimed those employees had turned their backs towards them. Neither Daphne PD’s nor Five Guys’ formal statements provided any details on what had actually taken place in the restaurant on July 7, with the police account saying only that, “The events that occurred while the officers were in the restaurant were unfortunate.” However, Snopes has obtained a written statement from a Daphne PD spokesperson. We asked whether the officers had been refused service because of their status as police officers or for some other incidental reason. In response, the spokesperson told us that: “Regular customers were served immediately before and immediately after the officers left the restaurant. When the officers came in the establishment, they were refused service by two employees that were directly responsible for taking orders. Two of the officers involved overheard one of the employees make the statement ‘I’m not serving them.’ After hearing this statement, the officers left the restaurant without incident.”


FBI agent Peter Strzok II grew up in Iran; had a father who engaged in clandestine activities overseas under the guise of doing charitable work; served as a "Middle East intel operative" in the Obama administration; and was a CIA agent "placed" in the FBI to help Hillary Clinton win the presidency.

Explanation: Peter Strzok spent several years of his childhood in Iran, but he did not “grow up” there. There is no evidence nor any good reason to suppose that he acted as an “envoy” or “intel operative” in U.S. dealings with Iran at any time during the Obama administration. And the claim that Strzok is or was a covert CIA operative “placed” in the FBI to help Hillary Clinton win the presidency and subvert the Trump administration is a flight of fancy divorced from all evidence and logic.

Longtime FBI agent Peter Strzok II, who until recently served as deputy assistant director of the agency’s Counterintelligence Division, gained public notoriety when he was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation for sending private text messages critical of the president. Formerly the lead FBI investigator into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state, Strzok has since come under investigation himself by the Justice Department’s inspector general, been grilled on his ethical integrity by the House Oversight Committee, and stands accused by conspiracy theorists of being a linchpin in a “deep state” plot to sabotage Trump’s presidency. A July 2018 salvo from the far-right blog Big League Politics attempted to make the case that Strzok, who spent part of his childhood in Iran, is a covert CIA operative who served the Iranian regime’s interests while allegedly acting as a “key Middle Eastern Intel operative” for President Obama, then was “placed in the FBI to ensure a win for Hillary Clinton” in the 2016 presidential election. That salvo was a mishmash of accusations derived in part from the supposed “insider” testimony of an anonymous former co-worker of Strzok’s, in part from misreadings of public documents (including decades-old press clippings about Strzok’s father), and in part from a labored effort to connect dots that simply aren’t there. The post began as follows: EXPOSED: Peter Strzok Grew Up In Iran, Worked As Obama and Brennan’s Envoy To Iranian Regime A former co-worker of Peter Strzok tells Big League Politics about Strzok’s extensive background in the intelligence community, including the fact that he grew up in Iran. Many intelligence officers like Strzok are complete ghosts with questionable history and gaps in their life story. But now we have some insight. Peter Strzok was born in the late 1960’s – he attended the American School in Iran up until 1978 when it closed down and then he attended the American School in Saudi Arabia. He supposedly attended a Catholic School, St. John’s Prep in Minneapolis (the school refused to confirm or deny attendance) and then completed a Bachelors at Georgetown and some form of graduate degree after that. The truth is that after Peter Strzok III turned 18 his life is arcane, which is the usual story of many like him. Did you know that Peter Strzok II (Strzok’s father) and Hillary Clinton have a lot in common? It turns out after advocating for Khomeni in Iran and then working in Saudi Arabia to calm the waters of an Iranian government (appeasing them with anti-Semitic rhetoric), Strzok’s father Strzok II also dabbled in “charity work.” Strzok’s father was involved in so-called charity work in Haiti but also helped dismantle and reassemble Upper Volta..now known as Burkina Faso. We interrupt here to point out that the author of the post appears to have misstated several details: Peter Strzok wasn’t born in the late 1960s; he was born on 7 March 1970 (according to a birth announcement in the Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan Evening News). His father is Peter Strzok Sr., not Peter Strzok II (Strzok Sr.’s father’s name was Michael, not Peter). Peter Strzok II is FBI agent Peter Strzok. Unless the latter fathered a namesake, there is no Peter Strzok III. The claim that Strzok “grew up” in Iran is an overstatement. The Strzoks moved there while Strzok Sr. was serving in the Army Corps of Engineers, from which he retired in July 1978. While we don’t know precisely how long the family resided there, the Eau Claire, Wisconsin Leader-Telegram reported in 1979 that the Strzoks left Iran in February of that year to return to the U.S. because of the political unrest that followed the overthrow of the Shah. Peter was eight years old at the time. The same article said that Strzok Sr. was then considering taking a job in Saudi Arabia. It’s unclear whether he did or not. If the Strzok family did move to Saudi Arabia, it was for a very short period of time, given that Strzok Sr. accepted a job with the international aid organization Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in 1980 and relocated his family to Upper Volta (a country in Africa now known as Burkina Faso). The Strzoks would be there for three years. As for his schooling, the younger Strzok attended the American School in Tehran (where his mother also taught), as claimed. We’ve not been able to confirm that he attended school in Saudi Arabia. Once back in the United States, Strzok didn’t “supposedly” attend St. John’s Preparatory School (as the Big League Politics blogger put it) — he did, in fact, attend that school (which is in St. Cloud, Minnesota, not Minneapolis) from 1983 through 1987, and his graduation notice appeared in the St. Cloud Times on 15 May 1987. He later earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Georgetown University (as noted on an alumni donor list published on the school’s web site). An outsized portion of the Big League Politics post was devoted to Strzok’s father’s life, as if to posit that father and son have been operating some sort of “deep state” conspiratorial family business for the past 40 years. The author went to great lengths to impute insidious motives to Strzok Sr.’s overseas humanitarian projects, which — far from being something he “dabbled” in (as the post describes it) — to all appearances became his life’s work after he retired from military service. Strzok Sr. served as the director of Catholic Relief Services in Upper Volta for three years. There is no evidence that he “helped dismantle and reassemble” that country, which underwent a military coup while he was there. Strzok ran a food assistance and nutrition education program that served some 150,000 children and mothers. Nor, contrary to another claim in the post, was he still present in Upper Volta when its name was changed to Burkina Faso in 1984 (not 1985, as claimed). In mid-1983 Strzok accepted the post of CRS director in Haiti. We know he was there for less than two years, because a New York Times report published in August 1985 names “former employee” Peter Strzok as one of three complainants in a dispute over Catholic Relief Services’ alleged mishandling of funds. His time in Haiti coincided with the final few years of the rule of Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, who would be overthrown in 1986. Our blogger took a special interest in the fact that Strzok Sr. lived and worked in a succession of international hot spots, repeatedly insinuating that he must have been engaged in espionage or other clandestine activities. “Looks like whenever there is a regime change in modern history a Strzok is lying in the shadows waiting,” the post said. But ironically, far from “lying in the shadows,” the only reason we know as much as we do about Peter Strzok Sr.’s whereabouts over the past 40 years is that he spoke so freely and openly about his activities in the press. We can’t prove he wasn’t a covert operative, of course, but neither has anyone else demonstrated that he was. One of the oddest claims in the post was that Strzok Sr. was involved in the Iran-Contra affair (involving the illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua), which took place during the mid-1980s under President Reagan. We were unable to find evidence that Strzok played any role at all in Iran-Contra, or was mentioned in the news coverage or congressional hearings that followed the scandal. The coverage that does exist about Strzok from that time indicates that he was actively engaged in doing humanitarian aid work in West Africa. There was also an attempt to link Strzok Sr. up with the Clintons: The Clinton Foundation and The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) seem to work in tangent [sic]. Coincidence? Peter Strzok Sr. was actually the director of CRS in Haiti. If we look into CRS financials they seem to overlap and feed into Clinton Global initiatives and balance sheets. Never mind that the Clinton Foundation wasn’t launched until 1997, more than a decade after Strzok left CRS and founded his own non-government agency, AFGRO (Agency to Facilitate the Growth of Rural Organizations). Whatever “overlap” there may be, or have been — if any — between the Clinton Foundation and Catholic Relief Services, no such thing could have existed when Strzok was involved with the latter organization. The purpose of asserting these nonexistent connections was to create the appearance of a continuum of father-son involvement with Iran, Haiti, and the Clintons: We know Peter Strzok III [sic], the man who sent those vile text messages about our President. The man who was biased and wanted to ensure a Clinton Presidency was raised in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Our source reveals how Strzok and his father both talked about Iran favorably and both accidently reminisced about the rose water smell of the ju-jeh kebab by Shemiran Hill… something that disappeared after 1987 and only those who are old enough to remember can discuss. Peter Strzok’s Persian is impeccable. Our insider tells us that Peter Strzok III [sic] is the key Middle Eastern Intel operative for the Iranian airline Mahan Air’s purchase of United States government planes during the Obama administration from 2011 to 2013 (when Iran sanctions were in place). He handled the Iranian relations from start to finish. Just like his father did for Reagan and just like he’s been doing for years under cloak and dagger says the BLP insider. Once again, we have searched for any scrap of documentation that might prove that Peter Strzok II (the FBI agent) served as “the key Middle Eastern intel operative” in negotiations between the U.S. and Iran during the Obama administration, and we found none. As an FBI counterintelligence officer, there is no reason why the younger Strzok would or could have played such a role anyway. Big League Politics had a ready explanation for this, though, namely that Strzok was actually working for the CIA: The BLP insider who’s worked with both [former CIA director John] Breannan [sic] and Strzok tells us that Strzok was never FBI he was part of the highest level of covert operatives, sliding into posts within the CIA or FBI to infiltrate, influence and observe. This is exactly what we saw with the Special Counsel appointment that resulted after a failed operation. Peter Strzok Jr. was placed in the FBI to ensure a win for Hillary Clinton and buffer negative press (like the Weiner laptop case, which he covered up). That’s the real deal. Revealing Peter Strzok’s identity would have been a problem because it’s called unmasking but since he is in the limelight and out of the shadows it’s time to lay all the cards FACE up on the table for all to see who Peter Strzok really is. In addition to citing the anonymous informant as the source of this claim, the post linked out to an article referencing an unclassified document that supposedly proved Strzok worked for the CIA and the FBI at the same time: A [sic] unclassified document printed on FBI letterhead dated January 20, 2016, which contains the subject line “Supplemental Classification Review and Determination” was addressed to the Bureau of National Security’s Assistant Secretary Gregory B. Starr from Peter Strzok who is listed as “Section Chief” of the “Counterespionage Section” in reference to Strzok’s CIA post. Keep in mind, this is not an FBI post as Strzok’s position at the FBI is “Deputy Assistant Director Counterintelligence Division” not “Section Chief” which is a CIA post. Which is utter nonsense. Although the specified document did list Strzok’s title as “section chief” of the Counterespionage Section, it’s patently untrue that section chief isn’t an FBI post. Both agencies have sections and chiefs (and assistant section chiefs). Not only was section chief precisely the position Strzok held before being promoted to deputy assistant director at the FBI, but others have held that title, too. The claim that Strzok was “placed in the FBI to ensure a win for Hillary Clinton” is flatly absurd. Strzok joined the agency in 1996. Was the plot to ensure a Hillary Clinton win in 2016 already in motion 20 years beforehand? The Big League Politics post was a clumsy, error-ridden effort to generate a “deep state” conspiracy theory around FBI agent Peter Strzok, who, up until the text message incident that derailed him in 2017, seems to have trodden a fairly straightforward career path in the agency over a period of more than two decades.


Roche's schizophrenia drug misses goal in two late-stage trials.

Explanation: An experimental Roche drug designed to treat the “negative symptoms” of schizophrenia failed to meet its main goal in two late-stage studies, dealing a blow to the Swiss drugmaker’s research hopes in the risky area of brain science.

Results of two Phase III trials found bitopertin in combination with antipsychotic therapy did not significantly reduce negative symptoms after 24 weeks of treatment compared with placebo. A third late-stage study is ongoing. Roughly 26 million people are affected by schizophrenia worldwide, but current treatment options for the disorder’s negative symptoms - which include social withdrawal, lack of motivation and reduced emotional reactivity - are limited. “These results are disappointing for people with negative symptoms because more effective treatments are needed for these debilitating effects of schizophrenia,” said Sandra Horning, Roche’s chief medical officer and global head of product development. The data are also a blow for Roche, which has upped its investment in neuroscience in recent years as it looks to branch out beyond its core cancer expertise. It is currently running late-stage studies in Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia. Many large pharmaceutical companies including Merck, Novartis and AstraZeneca have cut back on research in the area as new drugs prove hard to find. The success rate for brain drugs in Phase III is poor, averaging around 50 percent against 50-80 percent for other disease areas. Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Fabian Wenner said the results showed Roche was taking more time to succeed in new fields outside of oncology, which he said would be critical to secure sustainable growth in the long term. In recent years Roche has scrapped drugs to treat diabetes and boost levels of “good” high-density cholesterol. While a successful treatment for schizophrenia’s negative symptoms could have notched up more than a billion dollars a year in sales, many analysts had modest expectations for bitopertin. Current consensus forecasts point to annual sales of $407 million by 2017, according to Thomson Reuters Cortellis. Roche is conducting three additional Phase III studies investigating bitopertin for sub-optimally controlled symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions. The drugmaker said it would await the data from its remaining studies before deciding on the next steps for the drug.


Doctors end protest to demand flu vaccines for migrants.

Explanation: A group of doctors on Wednesday ended a three-day protest against the U.S. government’s refusal to allow the flu vaccine be administered to migrants, following the arrests of six demonstrators outside a Border Patrol regional headquarters in San Diego.

San Diego, Health, General News, Flu, Latin America, Border patrols, U.S. News

Dr. Bonnie Arzuaga said Customs and Border Patrol officials met briefly with her and other protest leaders and vowed to pass her organization’s request to start a pilot program to inoculate migrants in detention facilities in San Diego up their chain of command. In the past year, three migrant children have died from influenza after being detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents. They include a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy seen on security footage writhing in agony before he died of influenza in a Border Patrol holding cell. Customs and Border Protection has said they are not equipped to run a vaccination program. “It has never been a CBP practice to administer vaccines,” the agency said in a statement. It added that other agencies are in place to offer such vaccines to people in its custody when appropriate. Arzuaga, a pediatrician from Boston, said the Centers for Disease Control recommends all children above the age of six months be vaccinated against the flu. She said doctors showed up ready to administer vaccines to migrants at a San Diego-area detention facility for free but were kept locked out. So they held an hours-long protest Monday. “We are using our voices as public health physicians to sound the alarm,” said Arzuaga, the founder of Doctors for Camp Closure, representing about 2,000 medical professionals and students. “All we’re trying to do is prevent more deaths.” On Tuesday, about 70 doctors and others demonstrated outside the San Diego Sector Border Patrol headquarters, where four doctors and two others were arrested after laying down on a driveway, preventing employees from leaving. Officials met briefly with the group after the arrests were made, Arzuaga said. On Wednesday, about 40 people held a vigil for those who have died while in detention facilities, gathering at the San Ysidro port of entry, one of the world’s busiest pedestrian crossings. Then she and other demonstration leaders met again with Customs and Border Protection officials. The Department of Homeland Security’s press secretary defended the decision to not let in the doctors, saying on Twitter: “Of course Border Patrol isn’t going to let a random group of radical political activists show up and start injecting people with drugs.”    Arzuaga said she was saddened the administration was attacking her and others for addressing a public health issue. “We’re very much in middle of flu season now,” she said. “We’re sort of missing the window of opportunity to keep people protected, not only people in detention facilities, but also in our communities.” Medical professionals repeatedly asked to be able to vaccinate migrants in letters sent months ago to the Trump administration, including the secretaries of health and human services and homeland security, but got no response. Arzuaga said Wednesday they were told Dr. David Tarantino, the senior medical adviser to Customs and Border Protection, would get back to them. The agency said in a statement that “the men and women of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection also share the concern about the welfare of those who come into our custody, and we stand by our process.”  It noted that it has recently increased its medical staff to more than 250 health care employees working along the border, and migrants sent to longer-term facilities usually receive such vaccinations. But doctors say many migrants are sent from the short-term holding facilities back to Mexico to wait out their asylum requests under a Trump administration policy. There they often live in crowded shelters and unsanitary conditions. ___ This story has been corrected to show the protest was held at Border Patrol headquarters, not at a detention facility.


The Westmoreland News ran a KKK ad on the front page of their newspaper in April 2018.

Explanation: What's true: The Westmoreland News did publish a copy of a KKK flyer in full on their front page as part of their reporting on KKK flyers being distributed in the region. What's false: The document was not run as an ad in the paper, but was intended to be an illustration for their coverage of the KKK.

On 25 April 2018, the front page story of Virginia’s Westmoreland News described the disturbing occurrence of KKK recruitment flyers in front home homes in Colonial Beach, VA: Residents of Colonial Beach found zip-locked bags containing Ku Klux Klan recruitment flyers and DVDs on their front lawns on April 14. […] The material, which includes racist and anti-Semitic messages, appears to have been randomly dispersed to homes in Colonial Beach. The random distribution of recruitment flyers placed in plastic bags (usually including some grains of white rice as a symbol of white supremacy) is currently, and has been for decades, the central way the violent hate group has recruited members. In a move that has generated significant online controversy, the Westmoreland News reproduced a full, un-redacted version of that ad in their story, leading some to brand it has free advertising for the KKK. As reported by Newsweek and local CBS affiliate WTVR, many readers of the paper were outraged: They posted the whole flyer as if they were giving them free advertising,” Colonial Beach resident Betty Tate Thompson told WTVR. “It even had the number on flyer to contact the head of the KKK. Which I thought was totally ridiculous.” […] [On Facebook, Jeremy Edouard Whitfield wrote] “This story could have been told without promoting these lunatics. Them and any other racially biased hate group have no business on the front page of any paper. Or any page for that matter. It is utterly ridiculous that you would print something like this without thinking of the repercussions.” Local law enforcement — who provided the newspaper with a copy of the ad — also objected to its uncensored inclusion in the paper, which included phone numbers and contact info for how to join the group: “That kind of shocked me, and I wrote [the editor] a very strongly worded email,” said [Police Chief Danny] Plott. Plott said the editor called him back with an explanation. “She explained that she wanted to put it in to show people that those of us in Colonial Beach who may think there’s not racism; there is and I think she didn’t expect for this to blow up the way it did and with this outcome,” explained Plott. While the ad was reproduced in full, The Westmoreland News did post a disclaimer on the story with this text: Westmoreland News in no way condones or supports the content or message of this flyer, nor does it condone or support any branch of the Loyal White Knights, or the KKK. Decisions on how to report the occurrence of KKK flyers in the media have not been made consistently in the past. When the Gaston Gazette reported on the appearance of KKK flyers in their region in early 2017, the newspaper redacted the group’s contact information. Richmond, Virginia’s Daily Journal and Ohio’s Sandusky Register both ran partial photograph of flyers found in their respective regions, and those images did not include any recruitment contact info. In October 2016, however, the Huffington Post used a photograph of a KKK flyer found in British Columbia that included the contact info. In each of those cases, it should be noted, the flyer was reproduced as an obvious photograph of a paper document. The front page image used by the Westmoreland Times, however, could be confused for a paid advertisement. Because that was not the case here, however, we rank the claim that the newspaper “ran an ad” for the KKK as a mixture.


The new supplement InteliGEN can boost brain function.

Explanation: Tens of thousands of holiday makers fled seaside towns on Australia’s east coast on Thursday as bushfires approached, and military ships and helicopters began rescuing thousands more trapped by the blazes.

Fraud & Scams, health, Health Care, scams

Fueled by searing temperatures and high winds, more than 200 fires are burning across the southeastern states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, threatening several towns. The NSW state government declared a state of emergency, beginning on Friday, giving authorities the power to forcibly evacuate people and take control of services. “It is hell on earth. It is the worst anybody’s ever seen,” Michelle Roberts said by telephone from the Croajingolong Cafe she owns in Mallacoota, a southeastern coastal town where 4,000 residents and visitors have been stranded on the beach since Monday night. Roberts hoped to get her 18-year-old daughter onto a naval ship, which arrived off the town on Thursday, in order to escape the fires and thick smoke engulfing the town. The HMAS Choules is expected to make two or three voyages over the coming days, state authorities said. Elsewhere, long queues formed outside supermarkets and petrol stations as residents and tourists sought supplies to either bunker down or escape the fires, emptying shelves of staples like bread and milk. More than 50,000 people were without power and some towns had no access to drinking water. “Everyone’s just on edge,” said Shane Flanagan, a resident of Batemans Bay on the NSW coast. Authorities urged a mass exodus from several towns on the southeast coast, an area popular with tourists during the summer holiday season, warning that extreme heat forecast for the weekend will further stoke the fires. “The priority today is fighting fires and evacuating, getting people to safety,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Sydney. “There are parts of both Victoria and New South Wales which have been completely devastated, with a loss of power and communications.”  Eight people have been killed by wildfires in NSW and Victoria since Monday and 18 are missing, officials said on Thursday. Temperatures are forecast to soar above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) along the south coast on Saturday, bringing the prospect of renewed firefronts to add to the around 200 current blazes. “It is going to be a very dangerous day. It’s going to be a very difficult day,” NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said. Following are highlights of what is happening across Australia:  *Naval officials said they would open registration for evacuation on Thursday afternoon, with the HMAS Choules able to carry up to 1,000 people on the first trip. *”It’s 16-17 hours to the closest boat port, then we’ve got to come back,” HMAS Choules Commander Scott Houlihan said on Thursday afternoon. He said that leaving by boat was the only way out of the town. *Thousands of people had already been evacuated from the adjoining region of East Gippsland in Victoria, one of the largest such operations in the country since the northern city of Darwin evacuated over 35,000 people in the aftermath of cyclone Tracy in 1974. *Five military helicopters were en route to the south coast to back up firefighters and bring in supplies like water and diesel, the Australian Defence Force said. The aircraft will also be used to evacuate injured, elderly and young people. *A contingent of 39 firefighters from North America landed in Melbourne, bringing the number of U.S. and Canadian experts who have flown in to help deal with the crisis to almost 100. *Traffic on the main highway out of Batemans Bay on the NSW coast was bumper-to-bumper after authorities called for the town to be evacuated. Residents of the town reported there was no fuel, power or phone service, while supermarket shelves had been stripped bare of staples. *NSW’s Kosciuszko National Park, home to the Snowy Mountains, was closed and visitors were ordered to leave due to an extreme danger of fire. *Morrison urged those waiting for help and those stuck in traffic jams “to be patient ... help will arrive.”  *Morrison, forced to defend his government’s limited action on climate change, blamed a three-year drought and lack of hazard reduction for the unprecedented extent and duration of this year’s bushfires. *Bushfires so far this season have razed more than 4 million hectares (10 million acres) of bushland and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, including 381 homes destroyed on the south coast this week.


New Chemo Drug May Benefit Some Breast Cancer Patients

Explanation: The article clearly details the survival benefit of eribulin, but it fails to tell readers that the drug has been approved in the United States. It also fell short because it did not explain how much the drug costs or how often harms occurred in the study. Metastatic breast cancer becomes progressively more difficult to treat as various therapies become less effective. This study suggests that eribulin is the first single-agent chemotherapy that extended the survival time of women with metastatic breast cancer who had already been treated with two to five other chemotherapies. This study is likely to generate significant interest and may change clinical practice for metastatic patients.

There is no discussion of cost in the article. The benefit of eribulin over various treatments chosen by the physicians was clearly stated in the article. “The researchers found that among patients whose cancer had spread, those who took the drug (eribulin) lived a median of 2.5 months longer than those who received a physician-chosen treatment — 13.1 months versus 10.6 months.” Mixed bag. While the story points out the most common side effects, fatigue and depletion of white blood cells, occurred in both study groups, readers aren’t given any sense of how common these were. In fact, they were quite common: these side effects occurred in 54% of those on eribulin and 40% of patients in the treatment of physician’s choice group. This is why we expect stories to quantify harms. To its credit, the article does note that the most common adverse event that caused women to drop out of the eribulin arm was neuropathy, or numbness and pain caused by nerve damage – and it notes a 5% study drop out rate. The article does a good job of noting several times that the women in the trial, known as EMBRACE, all had metastatic breast cancer that had already been heavily treated with various chemotherapies. And it did give the number of women in each arm of the trial and at least mentioned that this was a “global phase 3 study” – although that’s expecting readers to grasp what that really means. We’ll call it barely satisfactory. It’s always a judgment call for journalists on where to draw the line on details to include or leave out. But some that maybe should have been included: The article also fails to mention potential weaknesses of the trial design that were highlighted in the study. The authors of the study pointed out that the treatment of physician’s choice group included several different chemotherapies precluding detailed comparisons with eribulin. There is no disease-mongering. The article includes quotes from an independent expert, Dr. Stephanie Bernik, chief of surgical oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and from a related editorial also published in The Lancet. The story points out that the study was funded by the company that markets eribulin but it should have further noted that several of the authors of the study received grants or consultancy fees from Eisai. In addition, five of the study authors are employees of Eisai. We’ll rule this one barely satisfactory. The survival benefit for women who were treated with eribulin is clearly presented. The article also included the definition of the treatment of the physician’s choice that was used by the study authors. The article does not report that eribulin, the drug studied, received approval in the United States based on the results of the study. Eribulin is approved for patients who have previously been treated for metastatic breast cancer with at least two chemotherapies, including an anthracycline and a taxane. As a result, the availability of the drug is unclear to readers. Information about drug approval and availability is valuable for patients with metastatic breast cancer. The article establishes the novelty of eribulin by quoting from the study authors, as well as from a related editorial in The Lancet and from an independent authority, Dr. Stephanie Bernik, chief of surgical oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Dr. Bernik said “This drug shows much promise, and it should certainly be included in additional trials to fully establish its benefit.” The article did not rely solely on a news release.


Jury finding upends Bayer's Roundup defense strategy: experts.

Explanation: Bayer AG had hoped a new trial strategy focusing jurors on scientific evidence could stem a burgeoning tide of U.S. lawsuits over its glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup, but a second jury finding on Tuesday that the product caused cancer has narrowed the company’s options, some legal experts said.

Bayer shares tumbled more than 12 percent on Wednesday after a unanimous jury in San Francisco federal court found Roundup to be a “substantial factor” in causing California resident Edwin Hardeman’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The jury decision was a blow to Bayer after the judge in the Hardeman case, at the company’s request, had split the trial, severely limiting evidence plaintiffs could present in the first phase. Tuesday’s defeat on terms considered advantageous to Bayer sets up the second phase to be even tougher and limits the grounds on which the company could appeal any final verdict, the experts said. “The fact that Bayer lost this trial despite it being set up in the most favorable way for them is a huge setback,” said Thomas Rohback, a Connecticut-based defense lawyer. Bayer in a statement on Tuesday said it stood behind the safety of Roundup and was confident the evidence in the second trial phase would show that Monsanto’s conduct was appropriate and the company not liable for Hardeman’s cancer. The company, which bought Monsanto last year, on Wednesday declined to comment beyond that statement. Tuesday’s finding did not address liability, which will be determined following the second trial phase that began on Wednesday. Bayer denies glyphosate or Roundup cause cancer. The German company faces more than 11,200 lawsuits over the popular weed killer. Last August, following the first Roundup trial, a California state court jury issued a $289 million verdict against the company. Two weeks after that verdict, which was later reduced to $78 million and is being appealed, Bayer Chief Executive Werner Baumann reassured analysts that the company had a new legal strategy based on focusing jurors on the scientific evidence. “Bayer and the joint litigation team are working to ensure that, going forward, this overwhelming science will get the full consideration it deserves,” Baumann said in an Aug. 23 conference call. There is a lot at stake for Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto last year for $63 billion. Though Bayer does not break out sales figures for Roundup, glyphosate is the world’s most widely used weed killer, and Roundup is the leading brand. Bayer’s new strategy was focused on keeping out plaintiffs’ allegations that the company improperly influenced scientists, regulators and the public about the safety of Roundup. Bayer has denied it acted inappropriately and said in public statements following the August verdict that it thought the jury was inflamed by the claims of corporate misconduct. Vince Chhabria, the San Francisco federal judge overseeing the Hardeman case, agreed with the company’s argument that such evidence was a “distraction” from the scientific question of whether glyphosate causes cancer. He agreed to split the trial in a January order. Had Bayer had won the first phase, there would have been no second phase looking at company liability. Now that it has lost, almost all of the previously excluded evidence can be presented to the jury. Plaintiffs’ lawyers hit Bayer with those allegations in their opening statements for the second phase on Wednesday. Aimee Wagstaff, one of Hardeman’s lawyers, said Monsanto influenced the science around Roundup through its “cozy” relationship with regulators. Bayer could convince the jury in the second phase that, despite their finding that Roundup played a substantial role in  Hardeman’s cancer, the company was not liable. Experts said that was unlikely. “They could present evidence of how careful they were in developing Roundup, but that’s an uphill battle given that the scientific evidence was their strongest argument,” said Alexandra Lahav, a law professor at the University of Connecticut. A lawyer for Bayer on Wednesday argued that Bayer could not be held liable because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as other regulators worldwide, approved Roundup without a cancer warning. If the Hardeman trial had not been split and a final verdict went against Bayer, the company might have been able to appeal any damages award to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by claiming the jury had been improperly swayed by inflammatory evidence, said Lori Jarvis, a Virginia-based mass tort defense lawyer. That argument will now be difficult to make. “It would not be surprising at all for the 9th Circuit to uphold what the jury did in this case, particularly given the great effort Chhabria put into creating a level playing field for Monsanto,” Jarvis said. Some lawyers said Bayer could still argue on appeal that plaintiffs’ experts and their scientific evidence were insufficient and statistically invalid and should not have been admitted at trial. But they noted the 9th Circuit, which oversees the San Francisco federal court, has generally been permissive in allowing expert testimony. However, experts said it was probably too soon to write off Bayer’s legal strategy, noting future Roundup cases could result in different outcomes. “It’s a relatively early phase in this litigation as a whole and we just need to see more trials to understand Bayer’s liability,” said Adam Zimmerman, a law professor at Los Angeles-based Loyola Law School.


The media covered up an incident in San Bernardino during which several Muslim men fired upon a number of Californian hikers.

Explanation: Secondary reporting claiming that Muslim men fired upon hikers (and that the media covered it up) appeared on a site that had previously inaccurately claimed Illinois had applied Sharia law to driver’s licenses, that Target introduced “Sharia-compliant” checkout lanes, and that Muslims successfully banned Halloween at a New Jersey school.

Uncategorized, apple valley, bare naked islam, muslims

On or around 29 March 2016, several unreliable web sites reported that Muslim men in San Bernardino had fired upon hikers in a nearby park, and that the news media (in complicity with local police) covered up the incident (for unspecified reasons): A heavily armed group of men with Middle Eastern appearance was arrested two hours ago outside Los Angeles after opening fire upon Hikers and Campers in a large State Park in the area. According to the victim/witness, there were two groups of men, about 15 per group, armed with heavy weapons, who began shouting “Allah u Akbar” and started firing. The firing allegedly lasted upwards of TWO HOURS before police were able to find callers in the vast California parkland. When police were responding, one group of 15 or so men took-off into the hills, while the other group was captured by police. CALIFORNIA TERROR COVER UP? Heavily-armed Muslims shouting “Allahu Akbar” open fire on campers and hikers in a park. Cops arrest them, then let them go! A heavily armed group of Middle Eastern looking Muslim men was arrested outside Los Angeles after opening fire upon hikers and campers in a large State Park in the area. According to these sites, a group of heavily armed, apparently “Muslim” men (shouting “Allahu Akbar”) shot at hikers and campers in the Deep Creek Hot Springs area of Apple Valley, California. Police responded to the scene and tracked down the armed individuals, but then decided to let them go, and the media supposedly completely ignored the bizarre incident. However, the Los Angeles Times (a major newspaper local to the incident, but somehow unaware of the coverup) published an article on the subject on 29 March 2016. According to the Times, police investigated the reports of shooting, and the armed men they interviewed at the scene were co-operative. No part of that reporting described the men as Muslim, claimed that they had fired at anyone, or indicated that anyone in the group shouted “Allahu Akbar”: The FBI was continuing to question people after receiving reports from campers that a group of armed men in a remote part of Apple Valley fired hundreds of shots Sunday morning. San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies and an FBI agent responded to the area known as Deep Creek Hot Springs after reports of gunshots and chanting in the predawn hours, officials said. According to law enforcement sources, 17 men of Middle Eastern descent were detained. But none were arrested or charged in connection with shooting firearms and they cooperated with deputies, authorities said. Also apparently ignorant of the suppression of news reporting on the incident were Los Angeles television station KCAL, the Victorville Daily Press, and the Press-Enterprise, all of whom also reported on the incident: The men had handguns, a rifle and a shotgun, all of which were registered with the California Department of Justice except for the rifle. Rifles and shotguns do not require registration in California, [Sgt. David] Rodriguez said. The men cooperated with the investigation, and none were found to have a criminal history, authorities said. Deputies also contacted several hikers in the area, but none reported seeing the men shooting guns. Rodriguez said deputies will not be doing any further investigation into the incident. The Press-Enterprise article also described initial reports of the men’s appearance as “inaccurate,” according to police in San Bernardino: Someone called 911 about 8:25 a.m. to report seeing five to seven “subjects wearing turbans” shooting various firearms and hearing more than 100 gunshots, the release said. Deputies later learned that the caller’s description of the men was not accurate, and that one man was wearing a scarf. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office also issued a press release about the incident on 27 March 2016, which read: DATE/TIME: March 27, 2016 / 8:25am INCIDENT: Incident LOCATION: Deep Creek Hot Springs, Apple Valley On Sunday, March 27, 2016, at about 8:25 am, deputies from the Victor Valley Sheriff’s Station responded to reports of shots fired in the Deep Creek Hot Springs area of Apple Valley. The reporting party told the 911 operator more than 100 shots were heard and 5 to 7 subjects wearing turbans were seen in the area shooting assault rifles, handguns, and shotguns. Due to this being a very rural location, Sheriff’s Aviation assisted to conduct an area check for the alleged shooters while patrol units from the Victor Valley Station responded. The sheriff’s helicopter arrived and located a group of males, 17 total, walking away from the creek carrying back packs and other items. Deputies from Apple Valley, Hesperia, and Victorville Police Stations also responded to assist. Shortly after deputies arrived to the area the subjects were detained and searched. Several handguns, a rifle, and a shotgun were found during a search of the backpacks and bedding the subjects had been carrying. The subjects were very cooperative and were interviewed. A local FBI agent responded to assist with interviews. A records check of the subjects, their weapons, and their vehicles was completed. The records check revealed none of the subjects had a criminal history or outstanding warrants, the weapons were registered with the Department of Justice except for the rifle, and the vehicles were also registered. Several hikers were contacted, but none of them witnessed the guns being fired. There was no evidence found that a crime had been committed by any of the subjects who were detained and they were released. As the official incident report stated, no one in the area questioned by police said they had witnessed guns being fired nor reported having been fired upon. Police found and interviewed the group of men in question and discovered that their possession of firearms was in compliance with the law and that none of them had any outstanding warrants or criminal histories. While the caller who reported the men to police claimed five to seven of the men wore turbans and fired assault rifles, police didn’t mention turbans or other headwear, and they noted that the men were in possession of “handguns, a rifle, and a shotgun” (but no “assault rifles”). No credible news reports made any mention of the “Allahu Akbar” claim, and no witnesses stated they had been “shot at” by the men while hiking or camping. Also, the police report described the men only as “males,” not “Middle Eastern males” or “Muslim males.” The web site that started this rumor was Superstation95, which is not a “superstation” at all but rather a repository of misinformation from Hal Turner, who in 2010 was sentenced to 33 months in prison for making death threats against three federal judges. (The name listed in the site’s Contact page is Turner’s criminal lawyer.) That same site similarly (and baselessly) claimed that a woman who crashed into pedestrians on the Las Vegas strip in December 2015 had shouted “Allahu Akbar” and was subsequently rebuked by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for spreading false information: @PatriotBroker This is false and we have addressed the misinformation with @SuperStation95. — LVMPD (@LVMPD) December 22, 2015  Superstation95 also falsely claimed that the December 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting occurred because the shooter was offended that pork was served at a Christmas party, that all cargo ships ceased transporting goods in January 2016, and that seafood was contaminated with “cancerous tumors” following the Fukushima nuclear disaster.


The mayonnaise oozing from a chicken sandwich turned out to be pus from a tumor in the chicken.

Explanation: The apocryphal discovery of a tumorous chicken breast in a fast food sandwich is a way of expressing distrust about the nature of food in this advanced age. Are chickens being force-fed chemicals to make them grow faster and bigger and so reach our dinner plates sooner? (In truth, they aren’t.) Are we happy about that? The moral of this legend is that you get out what you put in: feed a chicken chemicals and end up with tumorous meat.

A particularly yucky food tale from the early 1990s was a favorite of high school and college students and said a lot about how we feel about fast food:  A woman goes into a fast food restaurant and orders a chicken sandwich with no mayo. She bites into it, tastes some kind of sauce, and looking at her sandwich, realizes that it looks kinda like mayonnaise. She takes it back to the counter where they insist that there was no mayo on the sandwich. Eventually, it turns out that the piece of chicken contained a tumor, and when the woman bit into it it exploded, releasing some kind of pus-like substance. This tale was spread in many variant forms:       Unlike most contaminated food stories, this one couldn’t have happened as told. Fast food chicken sandwiches are made of chopped, processed meat: chicken is ground then reformed into breast-shaped patties. Even those sandwiches fabricated from whole chicken breast couldn’t possibly come through the preparation process with a pus-filled abscess intact, as the meat has to be pounded to spread it out to fit the bun, and to stop it from curving up in the middle the way an unmanipulated chicken breast would (which would make piling on the fixings that much harder). And then there’s frying process — no pus-filled anything is going to survive that. Not only is this a legend about what yucky things might be lurking in our fast food, it’s also a tale that dredges up the specter of cancer. (In the vast majority of tellings a tumor is discovered in the chicken sandwich, not an abscess or a cyst. This, by the way, also eliminates any remaining credibility the story might have, for tumors are hard masses of cancerous flesh without pus.)


Lawmakers consider spending, saving $128.5 million surplus.

Explanation: Maine legislative leaders differ about what to do, if anything, with a projected $128.5 million surplus this year.

Republicans are praising conservative fiscal policies and the elimination of a voter-approved surtax on the wealthy. Republican House Leader and gubernatorial candidate Ken Fredette claims Democrats are now rushing to increase state spending and grow government. Democratic House Speaker Sara Gideon says Maine’s fiscal health is only as meaningful as the health of its people at a time of an opioid epidemic and a workforce shortage. Democratic Rep. Drew Gattine says the surplus is a chance for a serious discussion about addressing issues like access to health care after voters approved Medicaid expansion in November. Maine’s Economic Forecasting Committee says it expects Republican President Trump’s federal tax reform to spur economic growth.


A film producer claimed actor Kevin Spacey had "drugged and raped" Justin Bieber.

Explanation: Accusations against Spacey came to light at the height of the #MeToo movement in October 2017, when victims of sexual assault came forward to share their stories, exposing how rampant the problem has been in arenas such as entertainment and politics. Actor Anthony Rapp told Buzzfeed News that Spacey assaulted him when he was only 14 years old. Since then more than 30 people have come forward with accusations against Spacey, who won an Academy Award in 2000 for his leading role in the 1999 film American Beauty, in which he played a disgruntled middle-aged suburb dweller who makes a pass at a high school student.

On 31 October 2017, the junk news site formerly known as Your News Wire, since rebranded as News Punch, published an article based entirely on an alleged quote from an anonymous “production staffer” accusing actor Kevin Spacey of having sexually abused musician Justin Bieber. Under the headline “Producer Claims Kevin Spacey “Drugged And Raped” Justin Bieber,” News Punch reported: “I’m not trying to play down what Harvey Weinstein is accused of doing,” the production staffer said, “But his victims were adults. Kevin has spent decades using his power and influence to fraternize with young, often underage boys. “Everyone in the industry knows about Kevin. Spacey’s crimes are some of the worst kept secrets in Hollywood. He preys on young usually ‘straight’ male child or teen stars early on in their career, and of course the ‘straight’ victims don’t say a word about it because they are ashamed. Spacey has been accused by numerous people of sexual misconduct, some describing incidents that happened to them when they were teenagers. He is facing felony assault and battery charges, to which he pleaded not guilty. However, YourNewsWire (and now News Punch) has a long track record of inventing sensational quotes and churning up false stories about celebrities or politicians, often quoting made-up “anonymous” sources. The site frequently plays on paranoia over “elite” pedophile rings drummed up by PizzaGate and Qanon conspiracy theories. No other reports to date have suggested that Bieber, who as a child achieved fame as a pop singer, is one of the people accusing Spacey of sexual assault, although some of the accusers have chosen to remain anonymous. And it is telling that the quotes from a supposed House of Cards “production staffer” included in the News Punch article never actually assert what the headline proclaims. Moreover, the quotes published by News Punch appear only on that website, and it’s highly unlikely a person would exclusively report a potential serious criminal act to a junk news site with a track record of fabricating sources. The News Punch article also linked to an earlier story of theirs which falsely claimed Just Bieber had stated that “Evil pedophiles run the music industry.”


Treating at the Earliest Sign of MS May Offer Long-Term Benefit

Explanation: This release summarizes a study that followed 11-year treatment outcomes of two groups of patients with early symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS). All of the patients had experienced a first episode suggestive of MS, called clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), and a  magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan suggesting MS. Up to 85 percent of people with CIS go on to develop MS. The two patient groups were randomized to either receive interferon beta-1 by injection immediately or receive a placebo for two years. After two years, the placebo group could receive their treatment of choice. The patients who received the drug immediately appeared to have fewer relapses over the 11 years of study, according to the lead author, but no advantages were observed in other patient outcomes such as overall disability and MRI scans. The release would have been stronger if it provided more context for judging the reduced number of relapses, especially in light of the two groups showing no difference in disability. The release also omitted mention of significant potential conflicts of interest, the high annual cost of interferon beta-1 and the drug’s side effects. Society faces tough questions because of the high prices of drugs that target the immune system, such as interferon beta-1b for multiple sclerosis. This news release suggests drug therapy should begin sooner for patients without including any of the controversy on cost playing out in the United States and Europe. Last year authors of a different research study, also published in Neurology, called the rise in MS drug prices “alarming” and wrote it was also puzzling, since some of the drugs are not new. “Why the costs of MS DMTs [disease modifying therapies] in the United States have risen so dramatically is uncertain. However, the simplest explanation is that pharmaceutical companies raise prices of new and old MS DMTs in the United States to increase profits and our health care system puts no limits on these increases,’ they wrote. Why is cost so important to mention? This drug study, in particular, has significant potential conflicts of interest, discussed below under the Funding Sources & Conflict of Interest Disclosure criteria.

American Academy of Neurology,interferon beta-1b

The news release does not mention cost. A year’s treatment of one form of interferon beta costs about $60,000, according to this article which suggests prices are rising much faster than inflation. Another concern is that some insurers are no longer covering some forms of interferon beta-A, For example, GoodRX.com says that some insurers are no longer covering Avonex, a top selling form of interferon, starting in 2016. Another article from the United Kingdom, however, argued that this kind of drug can be cost-effective over 20 years by reducing the disability of the patients. The release includes many numbers but does not include the statistically insignificant primary outcome results. The final result that researchers indicated they were measuring was the percentage of patients who had relapses at 11 years, which was much closer between the two patient groups than the other (secondary) results that they presented in greater depths. The final results: Those patients without definite MS at 11 years was 76/167 (45%) in the early treatment group and 43/111 (39%) in the delayed treatment group. This result is not statistically significant, a result that was not mentioned in the results section of the paper and represented only a 16% relative rate reduction and 6% absolute rate reduction. What are the risks of treating early vs. the benefit? This release does not mention any potential harms of treatment. There are significant side effects reported to therapy with interferon beta-1b, including depression and thoughts of suicide, according to the National Library of Medicine. No harms were mentioned in the study. We also wonder — if patients routinely receive a therapy before official diagnosis — whether that risks treating people for a condition they do not eventually develop. The published study states that about 85% of people who encounter a single episode of demyelination (often an  early sign of MS) go on to develop MS. Doesn’t that mean 15% never get the disorder at all? Taking injections for a disorder you don’t have seems like potential risk. In the paper, the authors mention but do not quantify the adverse effects and only say that they are consistent with those previously reported. This seems an inadequate description since some patients used the drug for two years longer than others. We rate this as borderline satisfactory. The release does a good job of explaining the double-blind randomized controlled study carried out on a beginning group of more than 400 patients. And to its credit, the release notes one limitation of the study: “participants and researchers learned after the fifth-year tests which participants received the drug and which received the placebo and that after the placebo-control phase of the study, all of the participants received treatment, so there was no untreated control group after that point.” But as noted under the Benefits criteria, the release would have been improved with a discussion of the primary outcome results. There was no disease mongering. The release states that this research was supported by the drug manufacturer Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals but did not spell out that Bayer markets interferon beta-1b under the brand name Betaseron. Nor does the release note that many of the researchers involved with the study have numerous financial ties to Bayer including stock, royalties, consulting, speaking, honoraria, travel and salaried employment. The study was addressing whether early therapy was better than later therapy, so the release should not be held to the standard of comparing interferon to other drugs. However, it’s worth noting here that the number of drugs for treating MS have nearly doubled to 20 over the past three years. The drug is widely available and the news release gives that impression as well. The release explains that this particular study is adding to evidence and is not particularly novel. “Our study adds to the evidence supporting treatment at the earliest sign of the disease and indicates that early treatment has a long-lasting effect on disease activity,” a researcher says in the release. However, another novelty of the study is starting treatment after one event and not waiting for any further events. This could lead to a much larger market for the drug. It could be concerning since some patients only have a few recurrences in their lifetime. There was no unjustifiable language.


Nathan Phillips falsely claimed to be a U.S. military veteran who served in the Vietnam War.

Explanation: What's true: Native American activist Nathan Phillips said he served in the U.S. Marines and told news outlets that he was a "Vietnam-times" or "Vietnam-era" veteran. What's false: Contrary to what multiple news reports initially stated, Nathan Phillips was not deployed to Vietnam at any time during his military service.

As a video showing an altercation between Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist, and a group of students from Covington Catholic school wearing Trump-slogan “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) hats went viral in January 2019, a number of news outlets published articles identifying Phillips as a “Vietnam Veteran” or a “veteran of the Vietnam War.” Some news sites, though, such as the Washington Times, noted that this label was improbable due to Phillips’ age and reported years of service:  Native American activist Nathan Phillips faces questions about reports that he’s a veteran of the Vietnam war. According to multiple news accounts, the activist is 64 years old, which means he would have been 18 years old in 1973, the last year any U.S. combat units were stationed in Vietnam. Mr. Phillips also claims to be a Marine veteran, although the last Marine combat units left Vietnam in 1971. Other sites, such as the “Conservative Daily News,” more harshly classified the discrepancy over Phillips’ military service as “stolen valor” and claimed that the Native American elder had outright lied about his military service. While it’s true that a number of January 2019 accounts from national news outlets incorrectly labeled Phillips as a “Vietnam veteran,” the use of that label in those reports did not, as far as we can tell, originate with Phillips himself. The Native American activist told reporters in January 2019 that he was a “Vietnam-times” or “Vietnam-era” veteran, meaning that he was an active member of the armed services during the time of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam (not that he had been deployed to Vietnam during that period). News outlets such as the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times all published updates to their stories to correct that reporting:  Washington Post: Correction: Earlier versions of this story incorrectly said that Native American activist Nathan Phillips fought in the Vietnam War. Phillips said he served in the U.S. Marines but was never deployed to Vietnam. New York Times: Correction: Jan. 22, 2019 An earlier version of this article, using information from the Indigenous Peoples Movement, gave an incorrect description of Mr. Phillips’s military service. While Mr. Phillips said he served in the military during the Vietnam era, he told The Times after publication that he was not deployed in Vietnam. The Times has requested his service record from the Pentagon. CNN Correction: This video states that Nathan Phillips is a Vietnam veteran. Phillips told CNN he is a “Vietnam-era veteran.” Phillips told the New York Times that though he did serve in the military during the Vietnam War, he was not deployed to Vietnam. CNN requested his service records from the Pentagon but was told those records are part of an archive not easily accessible during the government shutdown. But the corrections indicated the misinformation had not come from Phillips himself. CNN’s transcript of their interview with Phillips twice included Phillips’ referring to himself as a “Vietnam veteran,” but the first instance was obviously a transcription error, as Phillips could clearly be heard saying that he was a “Vietnam-times veteran” (not a “Vietnam veteran”) in the network’s video at the 38-second mark:   When I was there and I was standing there and I seen that group of people in front of me and I seen the angry faces and all of that, I realized I had put myself in a really dangerous situation. Here’s a group of people who were angry at somebody else and I put myself in front of that, and all of a sudden, I’m the one whose all that anger and all that wanting to have the freedom to just rip me apart, that was scary. And I’m a Vietnam veteran and I know that mentality of “There’s enough of us. We can do this.”  Another portion of the interview transcript also quoted Phillips as using the term “Vietnam veteran” in reference to himself, but since the CNN video only included selected excerpts from the longer interview (not including the part quoted below), we couldn’t verify whether Phillips actually said “Vietnam veteran” in that case or whether it was once again a transcription error:  They were there looking for trouble, looking for something. Everybody knows the right to life and (pro-choice), it’s been like this and they’re hateful to each other. And it’s because I’m a veteran — I’m a Vietnam veteran — that these two groups even have the right in this country to have protests, to have conflicting opinions. If they were doing that, they should’ve done that there and then when they come into public, that wasn’t the place for that. That was a public forum where we was at. We were still under the protection of our permit for the indigenous peoples rally. The New York Times stated that their incorrect description had come from information provided by the Indigenous Peoples Movement, and the Washington Post noted that the leader of the Lakota People’s Law Project said that group had erroneously represented Phillips as a Vietnam veteran, but that “Phillips never told him that he served in Vietnam”:  In reality, Phillips served from June 1972 to May 1976 in the Marine Corps Reserve, a service spokeswoman, Yvonne Carlock, said. He spent much of his enlistment in California, did not deploy and left the service as a private after disciplinary issues. From October 1972 to February 1973, he was classified as an antitank missileman, a kind of infantryman, Carlock said. He then became a refrigerator technician for the majority of his service. Daniel Paul Nelson, a leader in the Lakota People’s Law Project, said in an interview that his group made the error and that Phillips never told him that he served in Vietnam. The group, Nelson said, “trusted what we had seen” in previous stories about Phillips, some of which also referred to him erroneously as a Vietnam veteran. In an older, rambling Facebook video that surfaced after the controversy broke, though, Phillips could seemingly be heard to say (at around the 9:35 mark) “I’m a Vietnam vet, and I served in Marine Corps 72 to 76. I got discharged May 5th, 1976 … I don’t talk much about my Vietnam times. I usually say I don’t recollect, I don’t recall those years”:  But in other similar videos, Phillips described himself as a “Vietnam-era vet” or referenced his Marine Corps service without mentioning Vietnam:   In those many hours of interviews and videos, Phillips has made a number of unclear or ambiguous statements about his service that allow for a variety of interpretations (or misinterpretations). In the first Facebook video linked above, for example, he stated — in reference to a form related to his discharge — that he left the service in peacetime and “what my box says is that I was ‘in theater. '”  He didn’t say what theater, though, nor did he directly declare that he was in fact ‘in theater’ during his time in the Marines. He cryptically observed something about a “box” on his discharge form, and it was unclear whether he garbled whatever he was trying to say, was being deceptive, or was pointing out a mistake. In a 2018 Vogue article about Standing Rock, Phillips referenced Vietnam and his being “a recon ranger,” but again the statement was ambiguous — he said he was “from Vietnam times” and that “I’m what they call a recon ranger,” but it was again unclear whether he intended his statement to convey that he had actually served as a “recon ranger” in Vietnam (which he did not), or whether he was using the term “recon ranger” to describe his post-military activities:  “I have a relative here who said he’d lead the way and scout ahead for us,” Phillips continued, his voice breaking. “You know, I’m from Vietnam times. I’m what they call a recon ranger. That was my role. So I thank you for taking that point position for me.” According to Daniel Paul Nelson, Phillips’ comments “were taken out of context and [he] actually was referring to the work they were doing at the time on the reservation.” In a 2008 article about Native American veterans, Phillips was cited as maintaining that he had been called “a baby killer” and spat upon — experiences commonly reported by Vietnam veterans returning to the U.S. — but that article now identifies him as a “veteran of the Vietnam era” and notes in a correction that “This article has been adjusted from its original version to show that Nathan Phillips was a Vietnam-era veteran and that he was spit on while in uniform as opposed to when he was returning from combat.”  Did Phillips explicitly say he suffered such indignities while returning to the U.S. from Vietnam, or did the writer mistakenly assume that from something less specific that Phillips said to him? Another Vogue article from January 2019 about Phillips stated that he “joined the Marines and served as an infantryman in the Vietnam War,” but that reference was soon excised from the article (without a correction notice). Again, did Phillips explicitly tell the writer he was “an infantryman in the Vietnam War,” or was that yet another misunderstanding of something Phillips (or someone else) said? It’s difficult to determine at this point whether Phillips has deliberately misrepresented the nature of his service, whether he has been so vague and ambiguous in many of his descriptions (unintentionally or otherwise) that misinterpretations have entered his narrative, or whether he has tried to be accurate but may have just occasionally slipped up in his many, many hours of conversation and sometimes neglected to include the qualifiers about his service that he has used in many other videos and press interviews. Nonetheless, at times it has certainly sounded as though Phillips was trying to foster the impression that he had both served during the Vietnam War and had been deployed to Vietnam at some point during his service, even if he didn’t literally say so. We note that Veteran’s Affairs (VA), for the purposes of determining eligibility for VA Pension benefits, considers the Vietnam era to be the period between 28 February 1961 to 7 May 1975 for those who served in Vietnam, and between 5 August 1964 and 7 May 1975 (a window during which Phillips’ reported service falls) for those who served elsewhere. The Military Times noted that Phillips had “spent four years in the Marine Corps Reserve and left in 1976 with the rank of private, or E-1, the Marines said in a statement providing his personal releasable information,” but we haven’t yet been obtained copies of Phillips’ official service records to verify exactly when and where he might have served. (We note that an image purporting to be a copy of Phillips’ DD Form 214 — Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty — has been circulated on social media, but that image has not yet been verified.)


Public warned of possible measles exposure in Pennsylvania.

Explanation: State health authorities are warning the public about possible measles exposure at a number of Pennsylvania locations over the past week.

Health, Measles, General News, Pennsylvania, York

The Pennsylvania Department of Health says people may have been exposed to measles between Aug. 22 and Aug. 29 in York County and Hershey. Health officials say a patient in WellSpan York Hospital has a confirmed case of measles, which can be highly contagious. The hospital is notifying patients, staff and visitors who were in either the hospital or WellSpan Stony Brook Health Center. Officials say the risk of getting measles is minimal for anyone properly immunized against the disease.


“While California is dying … Gavin (Newsom) is vacationing in Stevensville, MT!”

Explanation: Newsom has not been vacationing in Stevensville in recent weeks, his office said. The Montana governor’s office and Stevensville mayor said the same thing.

Facebook Fact-checks, California, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,

As states begin to reopen in the face of the coronavirus, social media users are ly claiming California Gov. Gavin Newsom defied his own stay-at-home order to vacation in Montana. "While California is dying, not because of COVID, but because of the Newsom/Democrat lockdown, I hear Gavin is vacationing in Stevensville, MT!" said a May 18 Facebook post, adding that locals should "tape confirmation and share their videos." It was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat  news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) According to the Associated Press, social media users have been claiming Newsom fled to Montana for weeks. The content of the post is wrong. For starters, COVID-19 has killed thousands of Californians — more than 3,600 as of May 22, according to Johns Hopkins University. More to the point, Newsom is not on vacation in Montana, nor has he been there in recent weeks. "The governor and his family have been in California for the duration of the pandemic," said Jesse Melgar, Newsom’s press secretary. Newsom has provided live updates about the state of the coronavirus in California throughout May, broadcasting them to his YouTube channel and social media pages. On May 18, he gave a press conference from Mustards Grill, a restaurant in Napa, California. Montana officials said they’re not aware of any recent trips Newsom has made to their state. "Gov. Newsom was not in Montana to our knowledge," said Erin Loranger, press secretary for Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. "We can confirm that Gov. Newsom has not been in Stevensville," added Stevensville Mayor Brandon Dewey. We searched Google and the Nexis news database and found no credible reports to indicate that Newsom has been to Montana in recent weeks. Other fact-checkers and local news outlets also concluded that posts saying Newsom went there were wrong. California law dictates that Newsom must be within the state’s borders to have the powers of his office, according to the Los Angeles Times. When Newsom has left California in the past, he has typically transferred the governor’s duties to Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis. "When the governor leaves the state, he is required to give notice, and the lieutenant governor serves as acting governor in his absence," said Katie Hanzlik, a spokesperson for Kounalakis. But Kounalakis’ office hasn’t received notice that Newsom would be out of California since early February, Hanzlik said. She shared with PolitiFact a pair of press releases, from Feb. 7 and Feb 11, that said Newsom "has left the state" and "has returned to the state." On Feb. 10, Newsom appeared as a guest on ABC’s "The View," which is filmed in New York. The parents of Newsom’s wife, filmmaker and actress Jennifer Siebel Newsom, do own a ranch near Stevensville. The two got married there in 2008, when Newsom was mayor of San Francisco, according to an Associated Press report from the time. Newsom issued a stay-at-home order on March 19, and he recently loosened the criteria that counties must meet in order to begin easing some restrictions. A Facebook post said, "While California is dying … Gavin (Newsom) is vacationing in Stevensville, MT!" There is no evidence of this. Newsom’s office said he has not been vacationing in Stevensville, and so did the lieutenant governor’s office, the Montana governor’s office and the Stevensville mayor. Newsom gave a live press conference from a California restaurant on May 18, the day the post went up.