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FMD0 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Could this image be depicting the Bitterroot Forest Fire? Claim summaries: An awe-inspiring photograph reportedly captured wildlife fleeing a fire in Bitterroot Forest, Montana.
contextual information: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Photo of a Forest Fire in Bitterroot Forest, Montana
This awesome picture was taken in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana on August 6, 2000, by a fire behavior analyst from Fairbanks, Alaska, named John McColgan, using a digital camera. Since he was working when he took the picture, he cannot sell or profit from it, so he should at least be recognized as the photographer of this once-in-a-lifetime shot. The year 2000 brought one of the worst fire seasons in half a century to the United States. By August, more than 4 million acres (an area greater in size than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined) had been burned by wildfires, and dozens of blazes raged out of control in eleven western states, with nearly half of the conflagrations occurring in Idaho and Montana. On August 6, 2000, as several fires converged in the Bitterroot National Forest near the town of Sula in western Montana, John McColgan, a fire behavior analyst employed by the USDA Forest Service, snapped the spectacular photograph shown above with a digital camera and described the experience to a writer for the western Montana newspaper The Missoulian: "That's a once-in-a-lifetime look there. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I've been doing this for 20 years, and it ranks in the top three days of fire behavior I've seen." The day was August 6, the Sunday when several forest fires converged near Sula into a firestorm that overran 100,000 acres and destroyed 10 homes. Temperatures in the flame front were estimated at more than 800 degrees. Nevertheless, McColgan said, the wildlife appeared to be taking the crisis in stride, gathering near the East Fork of the Bitterroot River where it crosses under U.S. Highway 93. "They know where to go, where their safe zones are," McColgan said. "A lot of wildlife did get driven down there to the river. There were some bighorn sheep there. A small deer was standing right underneath me, under the bridge." McColgan snapped the photo with a Kodak DC280 digital camera. Since he was working as a Forest Service firefighter, the shot is public property and cannot be sold or used for commercial purposes. After McColgan downloaded his amazing image to an office computer, a friend found it, e-mailed a copy to another friend, and by mid-September 2000, the picture was blazing its way across the Internet. Because many forwarded copies of the image lacked any attribution or explanation, e-mail recipients began to circulate rumors about its origins and authenticity; some claimed that the photo was snapped by a tourist, that it was taken during the extensive Yellowstone National Park fire of 1988, or that it was yet another digital fake. As John McColgan said afterward, "I couldn't have profited from [the photograph], so I guess I'm glad so many people are enjoying it." We're happy to help him at least receive proper credit for his work. This picture has also been circulated with text identifying it as a photograph of August 2003 forest fires in British Columbia, of October 2007 California wildfires, of the June 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and of the November 2016 forest fires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Chaney, Rob. "Mystery Solved: Forest Service Firefighter Captured Tragedy with Digital Camera." The Missoulian. 15 September 2000. CNN.com. "Montana Homes Threatened by Wildfires." 7 August 2000. | 1 | [
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FMD1 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Six pieces of information about healthcare in Japan. Claim summaries: We fact-check a series of claims about Japan's healthcare and medical insurance system.
contextual information: Healthcare reform has been a perennial political project in American politics, spanning the presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump. Both proponents and opponents of the United States adopting a universal health care system often use comparisons between the U.S. and other countries to advocate for their positions. A notable example is a post from April 20, 2018, on the "U.S. Democratic Socialists" Facebook page, which featured a widely shared meme purportedly outlining the main features of the Japanese healthcare system. We examine this meme point by point below:
1. 100 percent of Japanese have health insurance. This is essentially true. Japan has universal health care, meaning that everyone who lives there (except undocumented immigrants and short-term visitors) can access affordable care and is required by law to be covered by some form of insurance. Most residents obtain this coverage through two types of insurance administered by the government: employment-based health insurance and National Health Insurance (known as "Kokumin Kenko Hoken"). However, Japan's aging population, low birth rate, and economic stagnation have placed a burden on the country's universal health care system, prompting reforms.
2. Costs are half of what is spent on healthcare in the United States. By the two most commonly used metrics, this is approximately accurate. A country's health spending is typically measured in a couple of ways: the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) spent on healthcare and healthcare spending per capita (the total amount spent on health care divided by the number of people living in the country). According to 2016 data published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States spends 17.2 percent of its GDP on healthcare, by far the highest proportion among developed countries. Japan spends 10.9 percent of its GDP, about two-thirds of what the United States spends. In 2016, total healthcare spending in the United States amounted to $9,892 per person per year, again the highest level in the developed world. In Japan, that figure was $4,519 per person, which is less than half of what the United States spends.
3. Japanese can choose their own doctors and see them twice as often as Americans. Japan has what is known as a "free access" system, which means, as the meme correctly states, that for the most part, patients can use whichever doctors and hospitals they choose. According to the Health and Global Policy Institute, patients should obtain a referral letter before presenting at larger hospitals. This is partly because the free access system can sometimes lead individuals with only minor ailments to present at hospital emergency rooms, creating a backlog for patients in more urgent need of care. Japanese people visit doctors even more than twice as often as Americans do, at least according to OECD data. Figures from 2011 (the most recent year for which a direct comparison is possible) show that U.S. residents averaged four doctors' consultations per person that year, while in Japan, the figure was more than three times higher, at 13 doctors' consultations per person. (In 2014, that figure was 12.7 doctors' visits per person per year in Japan.)
4. Japanese have the world's longest life expectancy and the second lowest infant mortality. This is true. According to United Nations data, a Japanese person born in 2014 could expect to live, on average, until the age of 83.6, the highest life expectancy figure among more than 200 countries. (Children born in Hong Kong can expect to live to 84, but Hong Kong is a territory of China, not a sovereign nation.) Research has shown that the relatively healthy diet and lifestyle of Japanese people, along with good healthcare, plays a significant role in their longevity. United Nations data also show that in 2013, the most recent year for which data are available, Japan had the joint second-lowest rate of infant mortality in the world, defined as the number of children who died under the age of one for every 1,000 live births. With 2.1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, Japan was ranked second, along with Finland, just behind Iceland and Luxembourg.
5. 95 percent of Japanese healthcare is not-for-profit. It's unclear what this claim means, so we can't really evaluate its accuracy. Does this mean 95 percent of healthcare providers operate on a not-for-profit basis? That 95 percent of procedures are performed on a non-profit basis? That 95 percent of all healthcare expenditures relate to not-for-profit providers? We do know that by law, hospitals in Japan cannot operate for profit, with the exception of large for-profit companies that build hospitals for their own employees. According to an analysis by Ryozo Matsuda, a health policy expert at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, 80 percent of hospitals are privately run. Facilities that provide care for the elderly and disabled (e.g., nursing home care, respite care, home care) can operate for profit, and according to Matsuda, most do.
6. The government sets all fees for medical services and drugs. This is true. More specifically, the fees are set by a government-appointed body called the Central Social Insurance Medical Council. A 2016 study in the journal Risk Management and Healthcare Policy described the system as "a uniform fee schedule at the national level," noting that "All providers, no matter whether private or public, share the same prices for their medicines, devices, and services under this nationwide fee schedule." | 2 | [
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FMD2 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Macy's wrote a letter to Rick Perry, asking him to reject the equal pay bill.
contextual information: A reader forwarded anemailto us in which state Rep. Senfronia Thompson urged a boycott of Macys department stores on the day after Thanksgiving 2013. The fact that Macy's doesn't support equal pay for women should stop you from shopping there on Black Friday, the Houston Democrat wrote, saying that her equal-pay proposal cleared the Legislature earlier this year, but then Macy's sent a letter to Rick Perry urging him to veto the law, which he ultimately did. Thompsons House Bill950was among 24 bills PerryvetoedJune 14, 2013. It would have created state law similar to 2009s federal Lilly Ledbetter Act, which gave plaintiffs more time to sue over pay discrimination in federal courts. AnAug. 6, 2013,news storyin theHouston Chroniclereported that Texas Retailers Association members including Macys and Krogers had written Perry in May asking him to kill the legislation because, they said, it would lead to open-ended litigation and duplicate federal law. Thompson spokeswoman Milda Mora told us by phone that the representative learned of the letters from theHouston Chroniclereporter in August and checked with the governors office, which provided her with copies that Moraemailedto us. One written on Macys letterhead (clickhereor scroll down to view it) concluded, The federal requirements under Lilly Ledbetter are unnecessary and would be harmful to Texas employers. We urge you to veto this legislation. Macys spokeswoman Bethany Charlton confirmed that her company sent the May 31, 2013, letter, which was signed by a company vice president. By email, Charlton said the company absolutely supports equal pay for equal work among men and women but believes existing laws provide strong remedies for discrimination. Perrys logic was similar: House Bill 950 duplicates federal law, which already allows employees who feel they have been discriminated against through compensation to file a claim with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said his June 14, 2013,veto statement. Progress Texas, the pro-Democratic organization that distributed Thompsons email and is organizing theboycott,disputesPerrys statement that the bill would have duplicated federal law, saying that the Ledbetter protections need to be codified in state law for them to apply to cases in state courts. The groups executive director, Ed Espinoza, told us by email that his group launched a boycott of Macys and other retailers when the news broke in August. An Aug. 7, 2013,Chroniclenews blog postsaid Thompson took part in that boycott also, canceling a planned appearance at a Macys store to mark the states annual sales-tax holiday. Mora said that Thompson, who was quoted in an Aug. 9, 2013 Texas Public Radionews storyas saying she had previously been a card-packing member of Macys, but had not shopped there since the letters became public. Our ruling Thompson said Macy's sent a letter to Rick Perry urging him to veto her equal pay measure. As the Houston newspaper reported, Macys wrote the governor May 31, 2013, saying We urge you to veto this legislation. The claim is True. TRUE The statement is accurate and theres nothing significant missing. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | 1 | [
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FMD3 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Spokane, Washington Defeats Monsanto’s Motion to Dismiss PCB Lawsuit Nov 20, 2016 0 0
For years now, high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, have been documented in the Spokane River. These are a dangerous class of chemicals produced in the United States, solely by Monsanto, from 1930 until 1977. A lawsuit was launched by numerous U.S. cities against Monsanto in an attempt to remove PCBs from their waterways, and Spokane Washington was among them. In the most recent turn of events in the ongoing PCB saga, Monsanto failed to have Spokane’s lawsuit dismissed by courts . This is a win for the water movement, no less significant than the recent developments at Standing Rock.
There have been numerous outspoken defenders of our water supply, and their voices have grown louder. This issue has become paramount at the Standing Rock stand-off where Native American ‘water protectors’ are standing up for clean water, along with a number of other unalienable human rights , but Standing Rock speaks to a wider environmental catastrophe happening all around us.
Judge Mendoza who commented on the court’s decision stated, “The public harm at issue here comes from PCBs reaching the River, but the nuisance itself is Monsanto’s production, marketing, and distribution of the PCBs.”
Lakes, rivers, oceans and groundwater supplies have been compromised more recently with fracking chemicals , lead, agricultural poisons including pesticides , herbicides , fungicides, and petrochemical fertilizers, PFOA and PFOS ( perflourinated chemicals ), as well as tainted with neurologically impairing fluoride , along with pharmaceutical company drugs including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones, but PCBs have been contaminating our waterways for nearly a century now. The seemingly clear Spokane River contains some of the most toxic waters in Washington.
PCBs are but one type in the chemical onslaught we are being subjected to, but they are extremely dangerous. Congressman Gude issued a statement in 1976 which called attention to this contaminant:
“The most important thing about PCB’s … is that we have identified a mad dog—a known bad actor in the case of PCB. There is no doubt about its toxicity and danger in the environment. It has caused millions of dollars worth of damage in the United States; the time has arrived to get rid of it.”
Though the probable damage caused by PCBs has been known for decades now, with Monsanto completely aware of the chemicals’ health-damaging nature all along, there are still 1.4 billion pounds of PCBs that the company produced which haven’t been cleaned up. PCBs are an extremely toxic, persistent chemical that can cause cancer, neurological damage, immunological damage, and many other severe human health problems.
Spokane’s defeat against Monsanto and the company’s attempt to dismiss responsibility for contaminating the entire planet with PCBs is an enormous win – on par with recent developments at Standing Rock.
As the Spokesman reports ,
“The lawsuit, which does not specifically state what the city is seeking in monetary damages, also alleges that Monsanto is responsible for the high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in the Spokane River.
Marlene Feist, the city’s utilities spokeswoman, called the suit “long-term litigation,” and noted that the city will spend $300 million to keep PCBs and other pollutants from entering the river in coming years .
PCBs have entered the river by various means, including through commercial and industrial products such as paint, hydraulic fluids, sealants, inks and others.”
A spokesman for Monsanto, Charla Lord, says that “Monsanto is not responsible for the costs alleged in this matter.”
This is a contentious point, after all, since these international companies have no problem ruining ancient burial grounds, and destroying water supplies in the name of profit – all the while denying responsibility for any ‘collateral’ damage their practices (manufacturing carcinogenic chemicals, fracking or dumping oil in our oceans, etc.) cause.
Spokane’s lawsuit names two companies that spun off from Monsanto in the 1990s, and joins other municipalities seeking damages from the company, including San Diego, San Jose and Westport, Massachusetts. Though monetary compensation does little to repair the environmental and health damage that has already occurred, it will at least force these corporations to think twice about polluting on purpose – a practice they’ve become habitual about.
This lawsuit also brings light, the fact that Monsanto has not only damaged our agriculture through GMOs and their associated chemical herbicides , but that the multinational corporation has been in the poison business from the very beginning. Our water represents only a fraction of the damage this single company has done. It is time to put a stop to their war on human health and the planet at large. We can only hope Spokane finishes this lawsuit successfully and other U.S. cities follow, to start lawsuits of their own. | 0 | [
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FMD4 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday that he would “take our campaign for transforming the Democratic Party into the convention,†refusing to concede the presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton though not explicitly saying he would challenge her for it. Mrs. Clinton earned enough delegates to clinch the nomination last week, but Mr. Sanders has declined to end his campaign. He has contended that he could persuade enough superdelegates, the party leaders who have overwhelmingly backed Mrs. Clinton, to switch their support to him by arguing that he would be the stronger candidate against Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. That plan became more improbable last week as Democrats supported Mrs. Clinton. President Obama endorsed her on Thursday, calling her the most qualified candidate ever to seek the White House and imploring Democrats to unite behind her. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also endorsed Mrs. Clinton. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the only senator to endorse Mr. Sanders, told CNN on Friday that he now supports Mrs. Clinton. In recent days, Mr. Sanders appeared to acknowledge the odds against him, and began speaking less about beating Mrs. Clinton and more about working to defeat Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. On Sunday, he gathered with about 20 key supporters and advisers at his home in Burlington, Vt. to discuss how to proceed. “We are going to take our campaign to the convention with the full understanding that we are very good at arithmetic and that we know, you know, who has the received the most votes up to now,†Mr. Sanders said after the meeting, standing on his front lawn with his wife, Jane. Among the dozen or so people who attended the gathering were Benjamin T. Jealous, a former president of the N. A. A. C. P. Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator and Bill McKibben, the environmentalist and author. Notably, Mr. Sanders also said he would continue his efforts aimed at “transforming the Democratic Party,†a sign that his main goal may no longer be to become the nominee. Besides defeating Mr. Trump, advisers say his focus is to get his ideas, like universal health care and free public college, reflected in the party platform. Refusing to concede and release his delegates to vote for Mrs. Clinton could be a negotiating tactic for winning concessions on the platform. If his delegates tried to nominate Mr. Sanders from the floor of the convention next month, the scene could damage Mrs. Clinton at a time she is trying to project strength and party unity. In recent days, it had been unclear whether Mr. Sanders intended to stay in the race, and even on Sunday he did not rule out the possibility that he would formally concede the nomination in the coming days. After he met with Mr. Obama on Thursday he said he looked forward to exploring how he could work with Mrs. Clinton “to defeat Donald Trump and to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent. †Then he held a rally that night in Washington urging voters to cast ballots for him on Tuesday in the nation’s final primary. When asked by Chuck Todd on Sunday’s “Meet the Press†on NBC whether he was an “active candidate,†he responded that he wanted to see Mr. Trump defeated. Mr. Sanders said that he and Mrs. Clinton planned to meet on Tuesday and that he would ask her “whether she will be vigorous in standing up for working families in the middle class, moving aggressively in climate change, health care for all, making public colleges and universities . †“And after we have that kind of discussion and after we can determine whether or not we are going to have a strong and progressive platform,†he said, “I will be able to make other decisions. †There have been signs that he was winding down his run. While Mrs. Clinton has been hiring campaign workers, Mr. Sanders started laying off at least half of his campaign staff members last week. He has let go of a number of advance staff members who help with campaign logistics, as well as field workers who have been canvassing for votes. According to a person who attended the meeting at Mr. Sanders’s home Sunday, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private gathering, there was no talk from Mr. Sanders about trying to win the nomination. The group was keenly interested in how the senator’s meeting with Mrs. Clinton on Tuesday will turn out, and whether he would get assurances that she would fight for his ideas, this person said. While he is effectively no longer a threat, Mrs. Clinton and the Democrats are counting on Mr. Sanders to eventually get behind her candidacy. He has a loyal base of more than 10 million voters and an enormous donor list that Mrs. Clinton will want to tap into. Some of his supporters say they will not vote for anyone but Mr. Sanders, so Mrs. Clinton’s success may depend on how vocally the senator supports her. | 1 | [
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FMD5 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Is This a Line of Customers Outside First Republic Bank in Late April 2023? Claim summaries: The U.S. government seized the struggling First Republic Bank on May 1, 2023, and sold it to JPMorgan Chase Bank.
contextual information: On April 28, a Twitter user shared a photograph that purportedly showed a long queue of people waiting outside a First Republic Bank that morning, amid news that the bank was failing. shared a photograph "Can anyone confirm if this was taken outside of $FRC First Republic Bank this morning????," the tweeter asked. (Image Via @GregoryLanzillo/Twitter) This was not an authentic photograph of people standing in a line outside a branch of First Republic Bank. A reverse image searchonGoogle showed that it was a stock photo that had previously appeared on other websites, including on a Purdue University article in September 2016. The image also featured on Twitter in October 2021, in this May 2022 piece on teachers and toilets and on an undated article about college admission waitlist. Additionally, some people in the photo were repeated throughout the line, clearly showing it was digitally created. article Twitter in October 2021 May 2022 piece on teachers and toilets college admission waitlist Snopes reached out to the tweeter who posted photograph and asked whether the user stood by their claim, but we have not heard yet. We will update the report when and if we get a response. Reports and claims about First Republic Bank surfaced soon after it became public that the bank was struggling. Panicky depositors at First Republic Bank withdrew more than $100 billion out of the bank, fearing another bank failureafter the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bankin March 2023. withdrew more than $100 billion after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank On May 1, 2023, the U.S. regulators seized First Republicand promptly sold all of its deposits and most of its assets to JPMorgan Chase Bank. promptly sold all of its deposits and most of its assets to JPMorgan Chase Bank Snopes fact-checked a number of related claims after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. One was about a photograph of "private jets" owned by bank CEOsasking "to get bought out by Warren Buffett," another held that15 banks failed during former U.S. President Donald Trump's term, and another posited that "The Simpsons" predicted the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. photograph of "private jets" owned by bank CEOs 15 banks failed during former U.S. President Donald Trump's term predicted the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank Given that the photo, above, was not of the people standing outside First Republic Bank, we rate the claim "After Two Historic US Bank Failures, Here's What Comes next." AP NEWS, 13 Mar. 2023, https://apnews.com/article/banks-federal-reserve-silicon-valley-lending-rescue-a04875a164165b50e971ff4576bf4e27. All Things Toilets and Would You Encourage Your Children to Become Teachers? This, and More... - Teacher Tapp. 1 May 2023, https://web.archive.org/web/20230501135659/https://teachertapp.co.uk/articles/all-things-toilets-and-would-you-encourage-your-children-to-become-teachers-this-and-more/. "First Republic Bank Seized, Sold to JPMorgan Chase." AP NEWS, 1 May 2023, https://apnews.com/article/first-republic-bank-silicon-valley-fdic-5ab48702b7136d42f73ac13e0a20955d. "First Republic Clients Pulled $100B in Deposits during Panic." AP NEWS, 24 Apr. 2023, https://apnews.com/article/first-republic-bank-silicon-valley-federal-reserve-fdic-dimon-a6a5de4b82708573a846f24006b9f4c1. News Features - Purdue Business. https://business.purdue.edu/news/features/?research=3000. Accessed 1 May 2023. On a College Waitlist? Here Are Some Tips - Merit Educational Consultants. 1 May 2023, https://web.archive.org/web/20230501135600/https://meritworld.com/gakkomom/on-a-college-waitlist-here-are-some-tips/. | 0 | [
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FMD6 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: New American Tea Party Claim summaries: Protest against federal spending encourages Americans to mail tea bags to the White House.
contextual information: Claim: Protest against federal spending encourages Americans to mail tea bags to the White House. Example: [Collected via e-mail, March 2009] Mailing Tea Bags to Washington, DC What a wonderful idea, I just wish it had been mine. I have a feeling that USPS is going to have a hell of a lot of tea to contend with, after all it only costs 42 cents to send a message, hopefully heard round the world!!! So please mark your Calendars There's a storm abrewin'. What happens when good, responsible people keep quiet? Washington has forgotten they work for us. We don't work for them. Throwing good money after bad is NOT the answer. I am sick of the midnight, closed door sessions to come up with a plan. I am sick of Congress raking CEO's over the coals while they, themselves, have defaulted on their taxes. I am sick of the bailed out companies having lavish vacations and retreats on my dollar. I am sick of being told it is MY responsibility to rescue people that, knowingly, bought more house than they could afford. I am sick of being made to feel it is my patriotic duty to pay MORE taxes. I, like all of you, am a responsible citizen. I pay my taxes. I live on a budget and I don't ask someone else to carry the burden for poor decisions I may make. I have emailed my congressmen and senators asking them to NOT vote for the stimulus package as it was written without reading it first. No one listened. They voted for it, pork and all. O.K. folks, here it is. You may think you are just one voice and what you think won't make a difference. Well, yes it will and YES, WE CAN!! If you are disgusted and angry with the way Washington is handling our taxes. If you are fearful of the fallout from the reckless spending of BILLIONS to bailout and "stimulate" without accountability and responsibility then we need to become ONE, LOUD VOICE THAT CAN BE HEARD FROM EVERY CITY, TOWN, SUBURB AND HOME IN AMERICA. There is a growing protest to demand that Congress, the President and his cabinet LISTEN to us, the American Citizens. What is being done in Washington is NOT the way to handle the economic free fall. So, here's the plan. On April 1, 2009, all Americans are asked to send a TEABAG to Washington, D.C. You do not have to enclose a note or any other information unless you so desire. Just a TEABAG. Many cities are organizing protests. If you simply search, "New American Tea Party", several sites will come up. If you aren't the 'protester' type, simply make your one voice heard with a TEABAG. Your one voice will become a roar when joined with millions of others that feel the same way. Yes, something needs to be done but the lack of confidence as shown by the steady decline in the stock market speaks volumes. This was not my idea. I visited the sites of the 'New American Tea Party' and an online survey showed over 90% of thousands said they would send the teabag on April 1. Why, April 1?? We want them to reach Washington by April 15. Will you do it? I will. Send it to; 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, D.C. 20500. Forward this to everyone in your address book. Visit the website for more information about the 'New American Tea Party'. I would encourage everyone to go ahead and get the envelope ready to mail, then just drop it in the mail April 1. Can't guarantee what the postage will be by then, it is going up as we speak, but have your envelope ready. What will this cost you? A little time and a 40 something cent stamp.. What could you receive in benefits? Maybe, just maybe, our elected officials will start to listen to the people. Take out the Pork. Tell us how the money is being spent. We want TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY. Remember, the money will be spent over the next 4-5 years. It is not too late. Of course, if you agree with the way things are being done now, just delete!!!!! Origins: On the evening of 16 December 1773, a group of American colonists who called themselves "The Sons of Liberty" furtively boarded the ship Dartmouth, which was docked in Boston harbor with a load of East India Company tea. Working through the night, the colonists dumped over 45 tons of tea into the waters of the harbor as a protest against the Tea Act passed by the British government. The event, which came to be known as "The Boston Tea Party," was one of the seminal events of the American Revolution and remains one of the most iconic moments in all of U.S. history. In 2009, the iconic status of that event was referenced in the name of the New American Tea Party, described as a "coalition of citizens and organizations concerned about the recent trend of fiscal recklessness in government" who have begun coordinating events around the U.S. with the announced goal of protesting largesse in federal spending. The item quoted above seeks to take up the "Tea Party" spirit by encouraging Americans to mail tea bags to the White House on 1 April 2009 (in order to arrive by 15 April, the day on which income tax filings are due) as a form of symbolic protest against "the way Washington is handling our taxes." (The concept is vaguely reminiscent of a 1955 campaign that had citizens mailing small bags of wheat to President Eisenhower to encourage the U.S. to provide surplus food to flood victims in China.) New American Tea Party events wheat Of course, everyone is free to choose whether or not to participate in symbolic protests, so such actions don't have much in the way of verifiable "true" or "false" aspects the only issue is how effective the chosen form of protest is likely to be. With that in mind, we offer a few caveats for those inclined to participate: An entry in the New American Tea Party blog states that they don't endorse the effort: entry We have received hundreds of questions about an email circulating that urges folks to send tea to Washington on April 1st or April 15th. This effort is not endorsed by the New American Tea Party, so we can't answer any questions about it. Given the more stringent security procedures for mail handling enacted after 9/11, there are no guarantees envelopes containing mailed teabags will get through to the White House without being discarded or significantly delayed, something also noted in the New American Tea Party blog: It is a neat idea, but things like that will likely either be held up getting scanned or end up getting thrown away due to security precautions. (A subsequent New American Tea Party blog entry suggested that just mailing the labels from tea bags might be a way of avoiding this potential pitfall.) entry Envelopes that cannot be run through USPS sorting machines are subject to an additional 20 postage surcharge. A mailed item is considered nonmachinable if: nonmachinable It is a square letter (the minimum size for a square envelope is 5 x 5 inches) It is too rigid does not bend easily It has clasps, string, buttons, or similar closure devices It has an address parallel to the shorter dimension of the letter It contains items that cause the surface to be uneven The length divided by height is less than 1.3 or more than 2.5 The specific aims of the tea bag protest are not clearly articulated in the e-mail quoted above, so senders might wish to include explanatory notes with their envelopes stating the desired outcome, such as: "I enclose this teabag as a protest against the passage of any further economic stimulus packages that provide money to businesses without provisions for strict transparency and accountability in how that money is to be spent" or "I enclose this teabag as a protest against the passage of any further economic stimulus packages that include earmarks." Last updated: 12 March 2009 Idaho Statesman. "Local Group Stages 'Reckless Federal Spending' Protest." 27 February 2009. WJXT-TV [Jacksonville, FL]. "'Tea Party' Protests Wasteful Spending." MSNBC. 2 March 2009. | 0 | [
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FMD7 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A Canadian judge on Monday temporarily suspended a new Montreal law that would have prevented residents from adopting or buying pit bulls and would have required anyone who already owns one of the dogs to register the animal, the Associated Press reported. The regulations, approved last Tuesday, were drawn up after a woman was fatally mauled by a dog in June, and they were set to go into effect on Monday across all 19 boroughs in the Canadian city. The bylaw requires owners to pay higher fees for the animals than for bull types to go through a check and to keep a muzzle on the dogs outside, even in fenced backyards. “The safety and sense of security of Montrealers are a priority,†Mayor Denis Coderre said in a statement after the vote, which he said provided for more stringent control measures. “I was deeply shocked at the recent events involving dog attacks,†he added. “As a responsible administration, it was our duty to examine this issue closely and make the appropriate decisions. †But opponents denounce the regulations, saying that they unfairly paint all pit bulls, and those dogs similar in appearance, as dangerous. Opposition council members, animal advocates and social media campaigns have protested, saying that the bylaw does not define “pit bull†and that it uses a approach that has not worked in Canadian cities before. “We call it panic †said Sterling Downey, an opposition councilman with the Project Montreal party. The regulations are suspended until Wednesday as Judge Louis Gouin considers a request from the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to throw them out, the Associated Press reported. The group filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the city, saying it would seek to prevent the regulations from being enforced. It said that the bylaw would discourage adoptions and lead to more dogs being euthanized. The decision to enact the measure came after a Montreal woman was bitten and killed by a dog in June. A Montreal police spokesman, Benoit Boisselle, said a neighbor found the woman dead in her backyard. The police shot and killed the dog when they arrived because it was too aggressive for the officers to approach, he said in a telephone interview on Friday. He said he did not know the breed of the dog. With their blocky heads and square jaws, pit bulls have a fearsome reputation in popular culture. They have often been portrayed as overly aggressive toward humans, or fighters and guard dogs. The dogs known by the catchall phrase as pit bulls fall into four breeds: the American pit bull terrier, the American Staffordshire terrier, the Staffordshire bull terrier and the American bully. But pit bulls are also known as any dog with a blocky head and muscular build. Online, they are either vilified or defended. There are videos of pit bull fights, gruesome bite photographs and archives of attacks. Animal experts say that the dogs’ reputation is unfounded and that blame for aggressive behavior should fall on their handlers. “There is this idea that somehow they are unstable, relentlessly aggressive and treacherous,†said Bronwen Dickey, whose book “Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon†also questioned the basis for the fearful reputation of the animals, such as that they have extraordinarily strong biting jaws and are prone to using them. “There is always this narrative that they turn on you, that they are unpredictable,†she said. The dogs are generally about 65 to 80 pounds. Centuries ago, they were bred to be used in slaughterhouses to prevent bulls from escaping, said Dr. Bonnie Beaver, a professor at Texas AM University’s veterinary medicine college. As terriers, they tend to be territorial and individualistic. “They are not more aggressive than any other dog,†she said in an interview. “But the terriers tend to have, I would call them, a shorter temper,†she said, meaning they switch “from their thinking brain to their emotional brain faster. †“If the human owner doesn’t have the ability to prevent that switch into the emotional brain, then that dog is off on its own,†she said. “Most of the times when these bans come into effect, it is one or two very tragic events that involved big dogs. †Harout Chitilian, a council member and the chairman of Montreal’s executive committee, said that since January 2015, there were 426 situations involving dog bites. Of the 362 cases in which the dogs could be identified, about half were pit bulls. “It was a very, very difficult debate, but we looked at the figures,†he said. “We had a choice to be even more harsh, to eliminate ownership, but we recognized that they are part of the family. †But Mr. Downey noted that the dog in the June attack was registered as a “bulldog†and that there were no DNA tests to prove it was a breed of pit bull or a mixed breed. Certain breeds of dogs have also been banned in the United Kingdom, and in the United States the effectiveness of such laws is controversial because it is not clear whether they work, and they single out one type of animal. Other Canadian boroughs and cities, like Calgary, have tightened measures on animal ownership instead of instituting an outright ban. In Ontario, Ottawa has said it does not enforce the province’s ban, and Toronto is revising its ban to include dangerous dogs, but not those specific to a breed, Mr. Downey noted. | 1 | [
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FMD8 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Setting the Stage of the Press-President War.US ruling ideology and Washington power have become unstuck as never before. A war of opposing certitudes and denunciations is waged day to day between the long-ruling US corporate media and the White House. Both continuously proclaim ringing recriminations of the other s fake news . Over months they both portray each other as malevolent liars. Prof. John McMurtry Global ResearchUS bully pulpits are now beyond show disagreements and successful media inquisitions of the past. Slanderous accusations long confined to vilifying the designated Enemy have crept into accusations of the President himself. The Russians are coming is returning as the final recourse of smear to stop deviations from the global program of hugely profitable enemy hate and perpetual preparations for foreign war.The ruling big lies of the US money party and corporate globalization have divided into opposing camps. The Press and the President denounce each other non-stop on the public stage, while US dark state agents take sides behind the scenes.Fake news is the medium of battle.Tracking the Real Fake News Built into Corporate GlobalizationBeneath the civil war of official narratives, cognitive space opens for truth long suffocated by the Washington Consensus . Even the US-led G-20 has recently agreed not to automatically condemn protectionism as an economic evil. The battle slogan of transnational corporate rule over 30 years has been quietly withdrawn on the global stage.Is the big lie of free trade finally coming to ground? It has long led the hollowing out of societies and life support systems across the world in a false mass promotion as freedom and prosperity for all . In fact beneath the pervasive fake news, a closed-door transnational corporate command system forces all enterprises across borders into a carbon-multiplying trade regime with thousands of rules to protect the transnational corporate looting and ruin of home economies and environments as the only rights enforced.Propagandist names and fake freedoms are proclaimed everywhere to conceal the reality. The corporate-investor regime has stripped out almost all evolved protections of workers, ecologies and social infrastructures. Non-stop liquidations and roboticizations of local jobs and enterprises are reversed in meaning to jobs, jobs, jobs and higher living standards , the very opposite of the facts. Destabilization and bombing wars attack resource-rich and air-defenceless societies outside the circle of treaty subjugation.False news allows every step. Even the happy-face Trudeau regime is taken aback by the tidal shift to national priorities. Its ministers scuttle around the US in near panic to find common cause for restoring the unaccountable regime. Multiplying carbon, disemployment and ecological plunder are ignored throughout in the longest standing fake news of all economic growth .In fact, there is no real economic growth in universal life necessities or reduction of waste. The only growth is of volumes and velocities of transnational money exchanges, foreign commodities, and private profits to the top. More prosperity for nations and the world means, decoded, more transnational corporate-state treaties to deprive nations of their rights to organization and production for citizens real needs as well as organically regulated protection of environments and ecosystems.The consequences covered over by pervasively false cover stories are speeded-up ecocidal extractions, permanent disemployments, and wastes hemorrhaging into cumulatively more polluted oceans, air, atmosphere and life habitats. Corporate-state solutions of carbon markets for pollution rights have nowhere reduced any of these life-and-death crises, but only further and selectively enriched transnational corporations.As for the Obama solution, we need more Canadas , fake news again conceals the reality. Beneath the global celebrity hype covering empty and broken promises, Canada s Trudeau regime is essentially a brand change of PM rhetoric to advance transnational corporate dictates as free trade and to ensure oil pipelines out of the most polluting oil basin in the world, Alberta s tar-sands, are built through water basins and indigenous lands across Canada and the US. One cannot help but observe this is Trump s plan too, and overrides Trudeau s promises to protect Canada s first peoples.I recently sent a letter to my local MP requesting evidence for what PM Trudeau promises over months of repetition that more free trade means a better life for those in the middle class and those wanting to join the middle class . As always, there is no evidence to support the non-stop false news from the PMO. Revealingly, the middle class turns out to be people making $180,000 a year slated to get significant tax cuts.Trump s rogue elephant charge on Washington-led lies, war, and dispossession of the working class is no solution to life-blind corporate globalization. Trump in office is a US nationalist oligarch commanding policies even more blindly rapacious in despoliation of the environment and transferring far more public wealth to the rich.The common ground of all our lives, collective life capital, does not exist for any government in the free world or any policy of globalization . The lies that must be promulgated to advance the private corporate agenda are built into its transnational command system from the beginning.Out of the Ruling Memory Hole with the Internet CommonsJoining the dots shows that every step of US money-party globalization has, in fact, been driven by fake news.No corporate media tolerance has been given in a quarter of a century to any voice demanding accountability to the common life-ground of citizens. A new game of numbers has proceeded instead. At most, a euphemistic climate change has been endlessly debated while the totalizing destabilization of human and planetary life cycles remains without a name or collective response. Only more profitable market panaceas which do not reduce any pollution continue to divert from the deepest degenerate trends destroying the planetary life host.On the upside, the big lies of free trade and humanitarian wars have been called into official question for the first time by the Trump presidential campaign, and he has been elected against the official line. Yet opposing camps are still at each other s throats. So the perpetual fallback on accusing the long-designated foreign enemy is triggered by the fallen establishment. The fake news chorus of Russia s aggressions now includes collusion of the Trump administration with its officials to win the US election. This mainspring diversion from reality is called back from the dead witch-hunts of the past. As then tool, facts do not count, only accusations do. The official media line is almost predictable: Russia is behind Trump s election victory. As always, reverse projection is the mass-psyche operation to blame an official Enemy to divert attention from the life-and-death facts. The Enemy is once again accused of doing what the US has always done worse as the reason for attacking It. Russia is the usual placeholder in this reverse-blame operation. The 2016 US election of Trump is the latest variation.Meanwhile throughout the election and its aftermath, the new transnational internet commons including Wiki-leaks over a decade has increasingly laid bare the greatest propaganda machine in history now in many-leveled crisis. The long normalized half-truths, one-sided slanting of the facts, and non-stop fallacies of inference are coming out into the open as never before. The pretexts and lies for US imperial bullying and war are exposed beyond any corporate-media gate.This time the accusation is interference and attack on the US presidential election with no evidence of wrongdoing or vote manipulation whatsoever. Yet as in the long past, the method is smear with no evidence for the accusations. Ever more media repetition and shadowy insinuation does the job. It has always worked before, why not again since all the other media buttons pushed on taking down the Trump peace initiatives with Russia and opposition to globalization of US jobs have failed.Having wondered during the election campaign whether we could be friends with Russia and promoted diplomatic relations into his administration, Trump can be named as the enemy in hiding to be rooted out. The real problem the fake news never mentions is that he threatens the cornerstone of the US war state over 70 years.So when Trump won the election with his heresy still intact, the ever-ready accusation of evil-Russia connection moves into high gear although the target is the opposite of communist and an epitome of capitalist riches and connections. We see here the historical mind-lock compulsion to blame the Enemy Russia and smear whoever dissents from it, even if it is a bully-capitalist president. There are very big stakes in keeping the game going.Yet the no-profit and unpaid analyses from the internet commons have no such ulterior motive and interest in false accusations. With more objectively informed analysts than the commercial press and unimpeachable facts like WikiLeaks going to tens of millions of readers across the world, the genie is out of the bottle. The official grand narrative and its normalized big lies are coming apart at the seams.So blame as usual is diverted onto the accepted Enemy, now conniving with Trump to attack the 2016 US presidential election. Beneath the fake news, the fact is that positive diplomatic relations with Russia not only threaten to stop the highly profitable permanent war against it, but spike the longest pretext for US war and military domination now moving through Ukraine.The free internet commons cannot be gagged for telling the truth. Freedom of speech in the US cannot be openly stopped without fatal loss of legitimacy of rule.So the rest follows. All the non-corporate and non-profit messages from the critical sites on the internet commons which are speaking against the US war state inside are now vilified as fake news . A third, unofficial protagonist has entered the battle with no private profit or career motive or corporate boss to serve and a wealth of proven professional knowledge and talent at work. It has to be denounced to sustain the big lies of the ruling money-war game which is in deepening crises and conflicts all the way to the unprecedented US President-Press civil war.The Harvard Proclamation of a New Memory HoleThe innermost fount of US ideology and war, Harvard University, has now stepped in. It is officially naming and denouncing US-critical internet sites for fake news .Not even the medieval Church went so far in its Index Librorum Prohibitorum of prohibited writings. It was at least innocent of scientific method and openly declared its dogmas. Not Harvard.Underneath notice, all the sites it attacks are internet commons, and none are financed by private corporate donors and captive institutions while Harvard and the corporate media are. This is the real battle agenda underneath, the long war to privatize the news for profit as everything else with anti-establishment internet criticism now the target.In the background, Harvard University has long propagated an unexamined academic method. It normally cuts off any faculty or learned source of opposition to the private corporate rule of America and the wars of aggression to impose it on the world. Accordingly, the underling grand narrative equations of the US is Good and the designated Enemy is Evil is not questioned. It is presupposed. Malevolent motives are always assumed of the designated Enemy, down to Harvard-produced geostrategic economic and war models. So when a host of internet commons sites challenge the grand narrative framework, Harvard and satellites denounce them to stop people reading them. A long list of critical sites is accused without criteria, proof or evidence as all spreaders of fake news .What is not recognised here is that only on the internet commons can the process of truth be free from ruling pressures to control message for external sponsors.Here there is no commercial-profit condition to speak and write, and no livelihood dependence on private profit. There is no inducement to avoid life-and-death issues in academic obfuscation or ad-vehicle style. Internet authors not on the payroll can be free of the game of all games behind the scenes enriching the rich further with no life-coherent criterion of truth.These underlying conditions of the internet commons and free speech itself cannot be recognised by the academy or the corporate press without undercutting their proclaimed status as the only legitimate founts of truth. The internet commons is a new world of competitive capacities to research, understand and disseminate not bound by private money patronage (as over centuries in Harvard University).When challenged in this way, Harvard (and the official press) are set back on their heels. They cannot think the facts through because their instituted presumptions have long been what they must presuppose and not question to acquire their credentials and pay for public speech. They must attack what calls all this into question if it effectively speaks truth to power to expose or de-legitimate the ruling system narrative as false. Harvard and the US press thus follow the reigning method of reverse projection. They accuse the effective opposition of fake news .The most revealing fact here is that Harvard authority as other academic administrations proceed in name-calling without any valid argument or demonstration the very basis of reasonable conclusion. Yet this is such a long tradition of presumptive accusation allowed against anyone designated as the Enemy, and anyone else exposing the falsehood of the ruling US story of moral superiority over all others and God s blessing to lead the world by force or money.This is why only dissenting sites from the official storyline of US freedom and rightness in all things are accused as fake news . Accusation of opposing positions is so well-worn into conditioned brains that endless repetition locks it in as self-evident. This is why attributions of vile motive are automatic from Harvard or the New York Times for any outside leader opposing US interference in their countries including elections. US hypocrisy here is staggering, but unreported. In fact, Harvard s life-blind elite of war criminal geo-strategists, economic modellers and so on are fawned upon within the wider corporate rule they serve.None can engage critical facts and thought challenging the US moral superiority assumptions because they have never been required to consider them. So they denounce them as once the Church denounced apostasy.In the end, US system worship is a war-state religion. It eliminates all enemies to its right to rule. Its globalizing system institutes the market laws of God. War crimes are God-blessed justice.Freedom of Speech, the Process of Truth, and the US ConstitutionLed by senior academics, journalists and technical expertise, the internet commons provide for the first time impartial witness and free speech open to public examination and circulation across borders. They are free from corporate-rank dictate and private copy-right control.In consequence, the internet commons are liberated from private corporate profit as controlling goal. Those who know what they are talking about can speak truth to dogma and power without words to appease editors, business boards and ad revenues. Truth itself is not defined, but its principle of process is a more inclusively consistent taking into account towards life-coherent conclusionDespite Google black-holing of radical legal facts, CIA penetration of Wikipedia, and so on, the internet commons freedom of speech is far beyond anything guaranteed in the US constitution. In fact, the sacred US Constitution that all presidents give oath to preserve, protect and defend guarantees in the end only freedom of public speech to private money demand.Long before the Supreme Court s 2010 decision reverse-titled as Citizens United , the US constitution was structured to one overriding end to remove prior limits to private-money right over all else,including to begin, the rule of British law and the lands of the first nations West of the Appalachians.This is why no common life interest exists in the US Constitution from the start. People s universal human life necessities of water, food, protection and liveable environment are ruled out a-priori. This is why civil rights themselves were first federally enforced by the commerce clause protecting freedom of commercial bus passengers including blacks to cross borders.It is also why the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the equal rights of freed slaves ended up being the legal basis for private-profit corporations and wealthy funds to acquire the constitutional rights of living persons (e.g., to freedom of speech for big money to buy elections and to avoid government access to financial records).Even the iconic rights of life, liberty and happiness turn out to be in fact only private market rightswhich allow corporate fictive persons to unlimited money wealth, protection against public redistribution, and the freedom of private wealth alone to speak to America by buying corporate self promotions and election attack ads.The US Constitution fix goes all the way back to 1787. As professor of constitutional law at Chicago s iconic Kent College of Law, Matthew Stanton, explains in personal correspondence: [The fix] goes all the way back to the 1787 coup where the 39 signatories to the Constitution sequestered themselves in a Philadelphia meeting house, with locked doors and shuttered windows, to ostensibly make adjustments to the Articles of Confederation, but instead delivered an entirely new document that enabled creating a federal system centralizing control of the economy by propertied wealth .Russia the Enemy: the Deus ex Machina of Fake NewsWe may recall that the corporate-press and Wall-Street-enriched candidate for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, started the accusation of fake news to explain her defeat. As establishment mask of the politically correct masses with the money-war party as her paymaster, Clinton blamed her fall in the 2016 US election on the new enemy she saw arising against the official story and herself. When the glass mirror story line did not take, she joined forces with the corporate media on another plane. Fake news misled Americans. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the TV Networks, and other establishment tale tellers saw pay-dirt far beyond Clinton s failed bid for president.In fact, the corporate mass media were losing marketability by the escalating appeal of free social media. The once all-powerful press propaganda system has been increasingly deserted. The fake news story provided a media base to condemn free internet news and commentary as immoral. The 2016 election became the leverage for a big market grab back.Very soon it was not just fake news to spike news cycles and subscriptions. War as peace and corporate globalization as freedom found its long place of rule the enemy of Russia to blame. Now the news can be that Russia hacked and attacked the lost 2016 election. Russia may be a hollowed-out shell by global corporate and oligarch dispossession. But it can still continue as pretext for US-NATO war crimes and aggression reverse-blamed on it. As the European breadbasket and newly discovered fossil-fuel rich nation, Ukraine is a very big prize. Now in Ukraine s US-led coup aftermath and ethnic civil war, evil Russia can be an ace card again to accuse for attacking the US election.Since Russia led by Putin is drawing the line as in Crimea to support the Russia-speaking region against US-led war crimes under international law (documented in previous articles), all roads connect. Russia s uncontrolled aggression is reverse-projected onto the victim again in a glorious new use. Reverse blame it for interference in the US election of Trump and kill Russia-US peace initiatives at the same time. No fact is required to verify the accusation, and no law broken is needed to insinuate treason of whoever relates with Russia s officials in peace initiative. It can work even against an elected US president.At the same time, the US s own record attacking other nations elections and societies is thereby erased as well continually orchestrating mass-murder and dictatorship to sabotage the electoral process from Vietnam and Chile to Ukraine in 2010 and Latin America social democracies since.If it were a story of reverse projection by a mass-murderous psychopath, it would be too much to believe. Yet it now runs the US news cycle as the big story unfolding with no evidence of US illegality, force, or non-compliance with international law. The accusations run by themselves in US media culture and across the empire. So as 2017 Spring breaks, endless media insinuations of treason seep into the populace from corporate media sites across borders with backrooms and Congress setting up for another presidential inquisition.It is interesting to observe two precedents. Past inquisitions were unfolded soon after Bill Clinton said in India, it s time to level up rather than down in global trade and Richard Nixon founded the Environmental Protections Agency, stopped corporations from outsourcing US jobs, and made peace with China as Trump sought with Russia.The ludicrous hypocrisy, factual vacuum, and war-drums of blame-the-enemy go into high-volume operation again, led by an attack-dog media against the elected US president whose only action has been to have business-like relations with Russia. Few observe the immense stakes of the US media and war establishments in this process. Cui bono? who benefits? is the question never asked Continue this article at Global ResearchREAD MORE ABOUT FAKE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Fake News Files | 0 | [
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FMD9 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Ulta Beauty Email Scam Promises $500 Gift Card Claim summaries: The email phishing scam led to a survey that asked for a credit card number, which we strongly advise against providing to suspicious websites.
contextual information: On Jan. 9, 2023, we reviewed an Ulta Beauty email scam that claimed recipients had won a $500 gift card. This was a phishing scam, and it did not come from Ulta Beauty. The Ulta Beauty email scam claimed to come from "Ulta Department 74130" via an email address that ended with the domain name, climatekids.net. "Answer and win a brand new $500 Ulta Beauty gift card," the email read. We scanned the link in the scam email with IPQualityScore.com's helpful malicious URL scanner, which readers can use for free. The scan found that the link was "very risky" and contained "suspicious activity." malicious URL scanner We visited the link in a safe way and noted that it began on cosmosis.org, then redirected to quinyspike.com. The browser then redirected once more to resonatorbang.com, where we were presented with the fake survey. The fake survey began, "Congratulations! You've been chosen to receive a brand new $500 Ulta Beauty Gift Card! To claim, simply answer a few quick questions regarding your experience with us.Attention: This survey offer expires today, January 9, 2023." After the fake survey, we were redirected for the final time togillydealdays.com, where we were asked to provide our personal information and a credit card number. The credit card number was supposedly needed to pay shipping costs for the $500 gift card. We strongly advise against providing any such details to websites that readers are unfamiliar with. Always safeguard your personal and financial data when browsing online. Remember that if an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. We checked the Whois domain information for the registration ofgillydealdays.com. According to the details we found, the website had been registered for the first time ever just four days before on Jan. 5. Brand new websites can often be a sign of a scam, and that's exactly what was happening here. "Malicious URL Scanner | Scan URLs for Malware | Malware URL Checker." IP Quality Score, https://www.ipqualityscore.com/threat-feeds/malicious-url-scanner. "Wayback Machine." Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/. "WHOIS Domain Lookup." GoDaddy, https://www.godaddy.com/whois. | 0 | [
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FMD10 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: America’s closest allies condemned U.S. President Donald Trump in unusually strong and personal terms on Wednesday after he put part of the blame for violent clashes in the state of Virginia on those marching against gun-brandishing neo-Nazis. British Prime Minister Theresa May, widely criticised at home for cultivating close ties to Trump during his first half year in office, spoke out after the president repeated his view that the white nationalists and counter-protesters were both to blame. “There’s no equivalence, I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them and I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them,†May said. The leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats said May should rescind her invitation to Trump to pay a state visit to Britain. “After. @realDonaldTrump whitewash of murder and hatred by #WhiteSupremacists why is he still on list of invited official guests to UK?†Vince Cable tweeted. Politicians in Germany, which has tough laws against hate speech and any symbols linked to the Nazis who murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, expressed shock at the images of people in Charlottesville, Virginia carrying swastikas and chanting anti-Jewish slurs. Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the “racist, far-right violenceâ€. Her challenger in next month’s election called Trump’s comments the “confused utterances†of a dangerous man. “We should not tolerate the monstrosities coming out of the president’s mouth,†Martin Schulz told the RND newspaper group in an interview. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas, like Schulz a member of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) which rules in coalition with Merkel, accused Trump of trivialising anti-Semitism and racism. His Israeli counterpart, Ayelet Shaked, a member of the ultranationalist Jewish Home party in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, tweeted: “The neo-Nazis in the United States should be prosecuted. This was not what the American constitution was meant for.†In a heated news conference on Tuesday, Trump said there was “blame on both sides†for the violence, which culminated in the death of a 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, after a car crashed into anti-racist demonstrators. A 20-year-old Ohio man said to have harboured Nazi sympathies has been charged with her murder. Trump’s remarks were praised by white supremacists like David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, who applauded the president’s “honesty and courageâ€. But in Europe, even far-right parties that have welcomed Trump’s nationalist message, were critical of his stance. “These were white supremacists and racists. They need to be condemned in very clear terms,†said Florian Philippot, vice president of France’s National Front and the manager of Marine Le Pen’s campaign for the French presidency. (This story has been refiled to delete typo in paragraph seven) | 1 | [
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FMD11 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: By ramping up US troop levels in Afghanistan, Trump is alienating many supporters. (Photo: DoD/USAF Tech Sgt Brigitte N Brantley. Source: Wikicommons)Miles Elliot 21st Century WireOn Monday night, US President Donald Trump made a speech in which he outlined his long-awaited new strategy for the war in Afghanistan. As predicted by 21WIRE in July, Trump will undertake a fourth US surge in Afghanistan, building up US troop levels in the country just like Bush and Obama did before him.However, to say that he outlined a new strategy in his speech is being very kind to Trump. He did very little outlining and what he did present does not exactly qualify as new, or as a strategy.One of the most notable features of his speech was his refusal to disclose troop numbers or timescales for their deployment. Granted, publicising those aspects of the US presence in Afghanistan did not create a win for Obama; the former president promised to pull out all the troops by 2014, but left office in January 2017 with over 8,500 US military personnel still stationed in the country. For Trump to keep such details from the American public, particularly the troop numbers, goes against basic democratic principles of transparency and accountability. As Finian Cunningham says: America s overseas wars are not just expanding under Trump; they are going secret and unaccountable. Furthermore, simply sending more troops and beefing up military deployments to Afghanistan is not a new strategy. George W Bush deployed a quiet surge to Afghanistan in 2008, and Obama presided over two separate surges in early and late 2009, none of which won the war. See 21WIRE s recent article which points out fundamental flaws and problems with the US strategy and modus operandi in Afghanistan; doubling down on these flaws with more personnel, money and weapons may only amplify them.The war was probably unwinnable from the outset anyway. There is a reason Afghanistan is referred to as the Graveyard of Empires. Justin Raimondo s latest article responding to Trump s announcement alludes to it: So I studied Afghanistan in great detail and from every conceivable angle, [Trump] claims. Really? Did he study it enough to realize that no one has ever conquered Afghanistan? Did he contemplate the storied history of that unforgiving land, which caused even Alexander the Great to turn back? Or for a more lighthearted approach, the following tweet plays on the seeming endlessness of the Afghan war in American political life.I made this political cartoon in 2010. Enjoy! https://t.co/fSosAGURCW pic.twitter.com/jyfQIZOFzY Matt Bors (@MattBors) August 22, 2017Another interesting feature of Trump s speech was its focus on Pakistan, which he sharply criticized for harboring terrorists and allowing them safe havens . However, as Michael Krieger points out in his excellent analysis: Guess which country he didn t mention? The greatest sponsor of Islamic radicalization the world has ever seen: Saudi Arabia. This once again proves that Trump represents the same old tired thinking that s been running the U.S. economy and society into the ground for decades. This is now a 100% establishment Presidency, which will be completely defined by establishment thinking. In other words, imperial collapse is coming. It seems an obvious point that talking about combating terrorism without addressing its primary causes and sources of support is somewhat foolish. However, it appears that Trump and his administration need a reminder.By far the most striking aspect of Trump s announcement, however, is that it represents a 180 U-turn, totally reversing the attitude he had to US involvement in Afghanistan since before he even began campaigning to become President. The following is just one of many tweets dating back quite a few years in which Trump complains about the US being in Afghanistan.When will we stop wasting our money on rebuilding Afghanistan? We must rebuild our country first. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2011Trump s announcement is already alienating much of his political base, especially supporters who wanted him to prioritize American jobs and infrastructure over globalist projects such as trade deals and foreign wars. More than that, it is unlikely to be popular with the overall US electorate, who are on the whole opposed to continuing the war. On the other hand it is no surprise that the announcement is gaining praise from neocons and lawmakers such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).Does it even need to be said that the US has had troops deployed to Afghanistan for 16 years? This might make Afghanistan one of the only truly inter-generational wars the US has fought.Met a man today who served in Afghanistan 16 yrs ago -now says his son serves there. Let that sink in as you support perpetual war Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) August 22, 2017There is of course a question as to how much of this plan is coming from Trump himself as opposed to from his advisers, deep state handlers or other influences. As Finian Cunningham argues below, there is reason to believe that Trump has been compromised by the deep state . Many even believe that soft coup has occurred and that Trump is no longer really in charge. Yet others question whether Trump had any authenticity to begin with; on the left especially some people perceive Trump to be thoroughly dishonest and merely a representative of robber-baron, capitalist fascism .These issues are part of the larger question of Trump s authenticity, but unfortunately we can t provide those answers here. Whatever one s position on this, however, none of the possible options lets the President off the hook. In all cases, he is the man responsible, it s his name on the door, and it is his responsibility to either make good on his promises to the American people or at the very least to keep them informed. In light of his announcement on Afghanistan, neither one appears to be happening.SEE ALSO: AFGHANISTAN: Forgotten, But Not GoneMore on this from RT US Army soldiers in Afghanistan. The country has been called the Graveyard of Empires for being notoriously hard to conquer (Photo: US Army. Source: Wikicommons)Finian Cunningham RTIf one moment stands out as the clearest signal yet of US President Trump turning his back on supporters, it was his announcement this week to re-escalate American military intervention in Afghanistan.His signature campaign promise of putting America First and ending the folly of overseas wars launched by previous administrations was shredded on prime time television when he gave orders for thousands of more US troops to be sent to Afghanistan. The already 16-year war in that country America s longest will now go on indefinitely longer.The Huffington Post headlined: Trump s vague new Afghanistan strategy continues an endless war. Not only that, but this president is refusing to give any public information on force numbers or timescale. America s overseas wars are not just expanding under Trump; they are going secret and unaccountable.This surge in militarism is precisely what candidate Trump said he would not do when he campaigned for votes among blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt states, vowing instead to channel US economic resources to revive forgotten communities at home. Recall his blustering inauguration speech on January 20 when he bemoaned the American Carnage, at home and abroad.As the Huffington Post writes: When Obama was still in office and overseeing a massive troop presence in Afghanistan, Trump repeatedly bashed the operation as a waste of money and called for a quick withdrawal from the country. How s that for a U-turn? This is at a time when support among Trump s voter base in the Rust Belt states has plummeted. There is weakness in the heartland, reported NBC, because workers fear Trump is reneging on past commitments to revitalize their livelihoods. Their concern is that this president is too interested in giving tax breaks to corporations and kowtowing to the Pentagon.Ironically, Donald Trump likes to portray himself as an alpha-male who is his own boss. It is abundantly clear now that Trump is a mere manikin who sits in the White House taking orders from his generals.When Trump ousted Stephen Bannon, his staunchest ally in the White House, it was under the orders of the military figures who are now dominant in his administration. Trump s chief of staff, former Marine General John Kelly, wanted Bannon out because of his contrarian views.When Bannon gave a surprise interview last week contradicting the militarist policy on North Korea that was the last straw. Bannon said there was no military option in solving the North Korea standoff, which flew in the face of what the Pentagon has been advising Trump, with all options on the table. Only days later, he was kicked out.Bannon has now returned to edit Breitbart News, the nationalistic website which has in the past served as a media booster for Trump. Following the announcement on Afghanistan, Breitbart News declared: Trump reverses course and blasted his speech a flip-flop, as reported by Politico.Bannon had been a vigorous counsel to Trump against overseas militarism and in particular about Afghanistan. He is thought to have been the primary influence behind Trump s economic nationalism of America First.It is no coincidence that Trump decided to get rid of Bannon while huddled with military generals and intelligence chiefs at Camp David last weekend. Then three days after his departure from the White House, Trump delivers his U-turn on re-escalating the military involvement in South Asia, exactly as the Pentagon top brass had been urging.With little or no policy achievements so far, Trump is emerging as a blowhard who is all too willing to toe the line to survive even if that means stabbing his supposed allies in the back. This is a president who has a big mouth and big ego, and not much else. All the promises to his voter base are being seen to be cruel hoaxes, perpetrated by one who is always denouncing others over hoaxes.The rise of the generals in Trump s administration, alongside a weak-kneed figurehead president, should surely be cause for concern for its sinister constitutional implications. But disturbingly, the drift toward a military government in the US hardly causes a public ruffle; indeed, it is actually welcomed by prominent news media.In an editorial last weekend condemning The Failing Trump Presidency, the New York Times seems to be oblivious in its endorsement of military control over the White House.It states: One measure of the despair caused by Mr. Trump s behavior is that we find ourselves strangely comforted by things that in any normal presidency would be cause for concern Americans accustomed constitutionally and politically to civilian leadership now find themselves relying on three current and former generals John Kelly, the new White House chief of staff; H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser; and Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense to stop Mr. Trump from going completely off the rails. Last week, too, when the five Joint Chiefs of Staff roundly rebuked Trump over his ambiguous comments on racial violence, the US media widely saw that intervention by the Pentagon as a welcome disciplining of the president.It s a sobering reality-check on how the supposed radical, populist president who promised to return governing power to the ordinary citizens is now firmly in the vice of a corporate-military cabal.Look at Trump s cabinet. Apart from the three generals, Kelly, McMaster and Mattis, the other key posts are run by an ex-oil CEO, Rex Tillerson at the State Department, and former Wall Street executives, Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary, Gary Cohn as national economic adviser, and Wilbur Ross as Commerce Secretary.This combination of military and industrial corporatism at the executive level of government is a definition of a fascist state. Combine that with a malleable megalomaniac who is willing to betray his allies and voter base, and that makes for a dangerous cabal.Trump s readiness to go to war in Venezuela, North Korea, and Iran and to give license to the Pentagon to step up its air force slaughter in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen are all signals of how far this presidency has degenerated.But it is Trump s brazen backtracking on Afghanistan that most transparently shows his unscrupulous character and just how much the Pentagon has taken control over this presidency.Last November, the American people voted for a radical change, one that would deliver economic revival and jobs at home, while implementing more peaceful foreign relations.Today, Americans have got the opposite of what they were calling for when they elected President Trump. The implications are blatant and disconcerting. American democracy no longer exists, if it ever did. The will of the people has been subverted by the will of the military-industrial complex. Trump is but a pathetic puppet who is taking orders from the generals and his oligarchic friends in Wall Street.The so-called exceptional nation the one that never tires of proclaiming its lofty democratic virtues to the rest of the world has degenerated into a military-corporatist state. Trump s betrayal is complete and stands out as one of the biggest cons in modern political history.READ MORE AFGHANISTAN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Afghanistan FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE AND BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 0 | [
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FMD12 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Hell has a special spot reserved for this horrible man According to an article published Sunday by World Net Daily, a Princeton University professor has suggested that severely disabled infants be killed to cut health care costs and for moral reasons. In a radio interview Sunday with Aaron Klein, broadcast on New York s AM 970 The Answer and Philadelphia s NewsTalk 990 AM, Princeton University ethics professor Peter Singer argued it is reasonable for government or private insurance companies to deny treatment to severely disabled babies.Several times during the interview Singer argued the health-care system under Obamacare should openly acknowledge health-care rationing and that the country should acknowledge the necessity of intentionally ending the lives of severely disabled infants. Singer also repeatedly referred to a disabled infant as it during the interview.According the WND, Singer is well-known for his controversial views on abortion and infanticide. He essentially argues the right to life is related to a being s capacity for intelligence and to hold life preferences, which in turn is directly related to a capacity to feel and comprehend pain and pleasure.Singer told Klein rationing is already happening, saying doctors and hospitals routinely make decisions based on costs. Klein is the host of Aaron Klein Investigative Radio, a syndicated radio program that airs in several markets across the US. Klein is also a columnist at WND. It s different in the U.S. system, in a way, because it doesn t do this overtly; maybe it doesn t do it as much, Singer explained. And the result is it spends about twice as much on health care as some other countries for very little extra benefit in terms of the outcome. During the interview Klein quoted from a section of Singer s 1993 treatise Practical Ethics, titled Taking Life: Humans. In the section, Singer argued for the morality of non-voluntary euthanasia for human beings not capable of understanding the choice between life and death, including severely disabled infants, and people who through accident, illness, or old age have permanently lost the capacity to understand the issue involved. Singer contends that the wrongness of killing a human being is not based on the fact that the individual is alive and human. Instead, Singer argues it is characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness that make a difference. When asked by Klein whether he envisions denying treatment to disabled infants to become more common in the US under the new health-care law, Singer replied: It does happen. Not necessarily because of costs. If an infant is born with a massive hemorrhage in the brain that means it will be so severely disabled that if the infant lives it will never even be able to recognize its mother, it won t be able to interact with any other human being, it will just lie there in the bed and you could feed it but that s all that will happen, doctors will turn off the respirator that is keeping that infant alive. I don t know whether they are influenced by reducing costs, Singer continued. Probably they are just influenced by the fact that this will be a terrible burden for the parents to look after, and there will be no quality of life for the child. So we are already taking steps that quite knowingly and intentionally are ending the lives of severely disabled infants. And I think we ought to be more open in recognizing that this happens. Klein then asked singer, I know that it happens and it happens certainly if the family gives consent. But do you think in the future in order to ensure a more fair rationing of health-care and health-care costs, that it should actually be instituted more? The killing of severely disabled babies? Singer responded by saying the killing of infants would be quite reasonable if it saved money that can be used for better purposes. He contended that most people would say they don t want their premiums to be higher so that infants who can experience zero quality of life can have expensive treatments. Singer s full response: I think if you had a health-care system in which governments were trying to say, Look, there are some things that don t provide enough benefits given the costs of those treatments. And if we didn t do them we would be able to do a lot more good for other people who have better prospects, then yes.I think it would be reasonable for governments to say, This treatment is not going to be provided on the national health service if it s a country with a national health service. Or in the United States on Medicare or Medicade. And I think it will be reasonable for insurance companies also to say, You know, we won t insure you for this or we won t insure you for this unless you are prepared to pay an extra premium, or perhaps they have a fund with lower premiums for people who don t want to insure against that. Because I think most people, when they think about that, would say that s quite reasonable. You know, I don t want my health insurance premiums to be higher so that infants who can experience zero quality of life can have expensive treatments. Via: Examiner.com | 0 | [
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FMD13 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Lebanon s Christian Maronite Patriarch began a historic visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday under heightened scrutiny amid political tensions that have thrust his country back to the forefront of the conflict between the Sunni kingdom and Shi ite rival Iran. Patriarch Beshara al-Rai heads the Maronite church, which has a presence in Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus and follows an Eastern rite of the Roman Catholic church. Maronites number about 900,000 in Lebanon, around a quarter of the population. An official visit to Saudi Arabia by such a senior non-Muslim cleric is a rare act of religious openness for the kingdom, which hosts the holiest sites in Islam and bans the practice of other religions but says it wants to open up more to the world. It is also the first trip to Riyadh by a senior Lebanese official since the start of a crisis sparked by Saad al-Hariri s resignation as Lebanese prime minister on Nov. 4 from the Saudi capital. Top Lebanese government officials and senior sources close to Hariri say Saudi Arabia coerced him into resigning and has put him under effective house arrest since he flew there more than a week ago. During his visit, Rai plans to meet Hariri as well as King Salman and his son and heir-apparent, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, both of whom he praised in an address to Lebanese living in Riyadh. Certainly his resignation surprised the Lebanese and saddened them and created a type of deadlock, he later told reporters between selfies with followers. We hope that with this visit we can speak about this topic. TOLERANCE AND CO-EXISTENCE But Rai said his visit, which was planned before the latest crisis, was not political but aimed at boosting religious tolerance and co-existence in a region torn by sectarian conflict. Hariri said in a television interview on Sunday that he was a free man and would return to Lebanon within days to affirm that he had resigned. He said Lebanon was at risk of Gulf Arab sanctions because of the Shi ite group Hezbollah s regional meddling. Asked when he expected Hariri to return to Lebanon, Rai said: I wish tonight ... we hope as soon as possible. Hariri s resignation and its aftermath have destabilized his country, where Sunni, Shi ite, Christian and Druze factions fought a civil war from 1975-1990, often backed by rival powers around the region. The only other visit to Saudi Arabia by a Christian patriarch took place in 1975, according to the Saudi information ministry. Rai thanked King Salman for the invitation and said he had never dreamed of visiting the kingdom, which bans all non-Muslim houses of prayer, forcing Christians there to risk arrest by praying in private homes. | 1 | [
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FMD14 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Rabbis representing four prominent Jewish organizations have decided that they will not hold their annual conference call with the President because the man currently holding that office openly supports white supremacists.Following Trump s atrocious response to the tragic events in Charlottesville, the rabbis issued a statement explaining that they simply cannot organize such a call this year. They said that this decision was made because Trump s reaction to Nazis marching in the streets and the death of Heather Heyer was lacking in moral leadership and empathy for the victims of racial and religious hatred. We have concluded that President Trump s statements during and after the tragic events in Charlottesville are so lacking in moral leadership and empathy for the victims of racial and religious hatred that we cannot organize such a call this year, the rabbis wrote. The President s words have given succor to those who advocate anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia, they wrote. Responsibility for the violence that occurred in Charlottesville, including the death of Heather Heyer, does not lie with many sides but with one side: the Nazis, alt-right and white supremacists who brought their hate to a peaceful community. They must be roundly condemned at all levels. In the days following the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that left three people dead, Trump insisted that many sides were to blame for the violence. The rabbis concluded by saying that they would pray that President Trump will recognize and remedy the grave error he has made in abetting the voices of hatred. They added that they will also pray that those who traffic in anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia will see that there is no place for such pernicious philosophies in a civilized society. The statement was signed by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, The Rabbinical Assembly, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.Featured image via Bill Pugliano/Getty Images | 0 | [
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FMD15 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: 'Marxist' Quotes from Hillary Clinton Claim summaries: A quiz about list of various statements supposedly made by Hillary Clinton.
contextual information: Claim: List reproduces various "Marxist" statements made by Hillary Clinton. Example: [Collected via e-mail, August 2007] A little history lesson: If you don't know the answer make your best guess Answer all the questions before looking at the answers. Who said it? 1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." A. Karl MarxB. Adolph HitlerC. Joseph StalinD. None of the above 2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity." A. LeninB. MussoliniC. Idi AminD. None of the Above 3) "(We) ... can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people." A. Nikita KhrushevB. Josef GoebbelsC. Boris YeltsinD. None of the above 4) "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own ... in order to create this common ground." A. Mao Tse DungB. Hugo ChavezC. Kim Jong IlD None of the above 5) "I certainly think the free-market has failed." A. Karl MarxB. LeninC. MolotovD. None of the above 6) "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched." A. PinochetB. MilosevicC. Saddam HusseinD. None of the above Answers: (1) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/29/2004(2) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 5/29/2007(3) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007(4) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007(5) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007(6) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 9/2/2005 Be afraid. Be very, very afraid and voteAnybody (woman) that would vote for her just because they think it's time for a female president has got to be out of their lunatic mind! Origins: This list of purported "Marxist" quotes by former first lady, senator, presidential candidate, and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is (like many collections of utterances from various political figures) difficult to rate as strictly "true" or "false": She did make the statements reported above, but they have all been stripped of any explanatory context, and some of them had portions elided, creating potentially misleading impressions about the nature of those statements. Below we verify the source and complete wording of each statement on this list and provide the context in which it was made. (All of these entries date from between 2004 and 2007, during which time Hillary Clinton represented the state of New York in the U.S. Senate.) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." This statement by Senator Hillary Clinton was not (as commonly assumed) addressed to the general public, but rather to a group of relatively well-to-do Democrats attending a June 2004 fundraiser for California senator Barbara Boxer. Her statement specifically referred to a desire to repeal tax cuts that had recently been enacted by the Bush administration, cuts which many Democrats had criticized as favoring the wealthy: tax cuts Headlining an appearance with other Democratic women senators on behalf of Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is up for re-election this year, Hillary Clinton told several hundred supporters some of whom had ponied up as much as $10,000 to attend to expect to lose some of the tax cuts passed by President Bush if Democrats win the White House and control of Congress. "Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few ... And to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity." This entry is a pieced-together passage from a 29 May 2007 economic policy speech given by Senator Clinton on the subject of "Modern Progressive Vision: Shared Prosperity." The supposedly "Marxist" nature of this statement is undercut when the sentences that immediately followed it (affirming support for a free market economy) are included for context: speech It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few and for the few, time to reject the idea of an "on your own" society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. I prefer a "we're all in it together" society. Now, there is no greater force for economic growth than free markets, but markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed. When we get our priorities in order and make the smart investments we need, the markets work well. "(We) ... can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people." "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own in order to create this common ground." "I certainly think the free-market has failed." The above three statements are all out-of-context passages taken from a 4 June 2007 CNN "Presidential Forum" conducted with three Democratic presidential hopefuls, senators John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. The second statement was part of a straightforward expression of the need to for people to reach a consensus (through metaphorically giving up some of their political "turf," not literally giving up their possessions) on how to proceed in order to tackle an issue such as universal health insurance, while the first statement is another pieced-together quote that omits the contextual references to the issues of health care, dependence on foreign oil, and climate change: Presidential Forum We can set the vision. We can even work to articulate the goal. But the pathway is extraordinarily complicated because of how we live today andhow we think of ourselves in relation to our fellow citizens. Take health care. I think we could get almost unanimous agreement that having more than 45 million uninsured people, nine million of whom are children, is a moral wrong in America. And I think we could reach that agreement, and then we would have to start doing the hard work of deciding what we were going to do to make sure that they were not uninsured, because an uninsured person who goes to the hospital is more likely to die than an insured person. I mean, that is a fact. So, what do we do? We have to build a political consensus. And that requires people giving up a little bit of their own turf, in order to create this common ground. The same with energy you know, we can't keep talking about our dependence on foreign oil, and the need to deal with global warming, and the challenge that it poses to our climate and to God's creation, and just let business as usual go on. And that means something has to be taken away from some people. The third statement was part of a passage in which Senator Clinton listed a number of entities (including churches, schools, and the government, as well as the free market) that she felt had failed in helping young people to make responsible decisions (particularly in reference to abortion): Q: Could you see yourself, with millions of voters in a pro-life camp, creating a common ground, with the goal ultimately in mind of reducing the decisions for abortion to zero? A: Yes. Yes. And that is what I have tried to both talk about and reach out about over the last many years, going back, really, at least 15 years, in talking about abortion being safe, legal, and rare. And, by rare, I mean rare. And it's been a challenge, because the pro-life and the pro-choice communities have not really been willing to find much common ground. And I think that is a great failing on all of our parts, because, for me there are many opportunities to assist young people to make responsible decisions. There is a tremendous educational and public outreach that could be done through churches, through schools, through so much else. But I think it has to be done with an understanding of reaching people where they are today. We have so many young people who are tremendously influenced by the media culture and by the celebrity culture, and who have a very difficult time trying to sort out the right decisions to make. And I personally believe that the adult society has failed those people. I mean, I think that we have failed them in our churches, our schools, our government. And I certainly think the, you know, free market has failed. We have all failed. We have left too many children to sort of fend for themselves morally. "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched." This passage was taken from a 2 September 2005 appearance by Senator Clinton in front of constituents in Elmira Heights, New York, where (in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) she expressed her opinion about the need for federal regulatory oversight of the oil industry in order to curb high gasoline prices and U.S. dependence on foreign oil: The anxiety and anger felt by motorists was evident at nearly every turn in her travels throughout the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. She made clear she shared the concern. "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in our entire economy that they're being watched," she said in explaining her call for an inquiry by the Federal Trade Commission. "I think human nature left to itself is going to push the limit as far as possible, and that's what you need a government regulatory system for: to keep an eye on people to make the rules of the game fair, to make a level playing field and not give anybody some kind of undue advantage." Clinton criticized the new energy bill, which she opposed, as inadequate to solve the country's long-term energy problem. She said the United States has regressed over the past three decades, since the first oil shocks of the early 1970s. "We've had 30 years to do some things we haven't done," she said. "In fact we've gotten, we've gone backwards in many respects. "I am tired of being at the mercy of people in the Middle East and elsewhere, and I'm tired frankly of being at the mercy of these large oil companies," Clinton said. Last updated: 30 March 2015 Fouhy, Beth. "San Francisco Rolls Out the Red Carpet for the Clintons." Associated Press. 29 June 2004. CNN. "The Situation Room: Sojourners Presidential Forum." 4 June 2007. | 2 | [
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FMD16 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Does Biden hail from the same Scranton that served as the setting for 'The Office'? Claim summaries: And is the home of world's most famous fictional paper company real?
contextual information: Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but misinformation continues to spread. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. Throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden frequently referred to his roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Some social media users questioned whether this was the same "Scranton" from the U.S. sitcom "The Office" and whether Scranton was indeed a real American city. Meanwhile, Biden's political rival, U.S. President Donald Trump, accused Biden of exaggerating his connections to the small Pennsylvania city. This topic arose once again during the final presidential debate of 2020. Twice during the debate, Biden mentioned his small-town roots while discussing middle-class families. Here are transcripts from these two moments: "Where I come from, in Scranton and Claymont, the people don't live off the stock market. This isn't about me. There's a reason why he's bringing up all this malarkey. There's a reason for it. He doesn't want to talk about the substantive issues. It's not about his family and my family. It's about your family, and your family's hurting badly. If you're making less than, if you're a middle-class | 1 | [
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FMD17 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: License DMCA The face of the Republican Party.
There is a light at the end of this tunnel called a presidential election campaign and, if the gods are not playing a cruel trick on us, that light is not on an engine with TRUMP emblazoned on its sides. In any event, the end is near and I am as weary of writing about this ugly affair probably as you are of reading about it.
The problem is, that's all most of the mainstream and social media care to talk about these days. In case you missed the other news: 1) The Cubs and Indians are in the World Series. 2) Heavily armed police in North Dakota attacked hundreds of protesters who joined the Standing Rock Sioux tribe trying to block construction of a pipeline they say threatens water supplies and sacred sites. 3) Soupy Sales, master of the pie-in-the-face, died. And 4) Tim Tebow is apparently just as good at baseball as he was at playing quarterback in the NFL.
But really, the only thing the media want to talk about are Donald Trump's repeated claims that the election is rigged and that the press -- meaning all the news outlets who report accurately on his words and actions -- lie.
These are claims that losers and demagogues resort to when everything else -- lies, threats, lies, threats, lies, threats -- fails. Honestly, it is disheartening to feel a need to point out to, apparently, millions of Americans, that Trump's claims are nonsense. It is even more disheartening to realize that many of the people who still support his candidacy don't seem to care. There is a major issue to address some day soon in that.
Meanwhile, as to his two claims: Voter fraud is virtually non-existent in America. You can check this with any legitimate news provider. The real threat is voter intimidation -- keeping some people from voting through excessive (illegal) regulations and perceived threats. Suggesting rigged elections is a serious threat to the very foundation of a free, democratic society -- an orderly transfer of power. This is something about which Trump knows little and seemingly cares less. As far as he's concerned, if he doesn't win, the powers that be must be against him. The press. Ah, the press. "They can say anything they want," he complained the other day. No kidding, Sherlock. You just noticed? He says if he's president he's going to change that and strip the major media companies of their power. He can try, of course. It won't be easy though. You see, Donald, those same forefathers who were so wise as to guarantee Americans the right to bear arms in that Second Amendment you and your followers are so fond of spouting and shouting about thought the idea of a free and unfettered press was so important to a functioning democracy that they wrote it into the First Amendment of the Constitution. That's one ahead of the guns amendment, which some might say suggests it is more important. Since a civics lesson is apparently in order for Trumpers, it should be noted that the First Amendment also guarantees everyone freedom of religion. Which is also to say, freedom from your religion.
But these are mere facts and Trump and the folks at Fox News have demonstrated the power of repeating false news over and over again until listeners -- like the inhabitants of Orwell's "1984" -- simply take it for fact. We have always been at war with Eurasia. We have never been at war with Eurasia. Love is hate. War is peace. I know Putin well. I never met the man. - Advertisement -
We are told that many Trump supporters -- virtually all of them white and the majority male -- are angry and frustrated with their lives. Somehow, goes the argument, all those black, brown, Muslim, Mexican, gay, Jewish, Arab, Asian people who don't belong here -- and some pushy American women as well -- have prevented these Trump fans from realizing the American Dream. They took all the jobs and live on welfare. Love is hate. Up is down. Bigotry has nothing to do with it. We just want to make America great again, like before all those other people said they wanted to enjoy the American Dream, too.
Enough already. At some point in a person's life, if he or she is lucky, the opportunity presents itself to take responsibility for one's actions. To take stock of how things are going. Not materially, but really. It can be frightening. It can also be rewarding. Among other things, this look in the mirror allows one to say -- if one can be honest -- "I've made some mistakes. I sincerely regret them. I hope to do better from now on." A lot of people never do this.
With that runaway train called Trump menacing the trust and tolerance that are the pillars of our, yes, already great nation, I'm thinking that a lot of people -- a lot of white, Republican people -- have a date with a mirror. It's far too late to undo the damage Trump has done or to deny any part in it, but it's not too late to admit the mistake of supporting him in spite of all the hateful, false things he said. It's not too late to admit to acting as if he didn't say them because, well, maybe because you were angry or confused or frightened or thought it would be disloyal. Maybe you feel you were lied to. Or maybe you just wanted to believe the lies.
Republican politicians who have stuck with Trump have no such out. The McCains and Ryans and Cruzes and Rubios knew Trump was bad news from day one. But he was their bad news and his lies became their lies even when they disagreed with him, because they never had the courage -- the humility, the simple decency -- to look in the mirror and say: "Enough. This man is obscene. He is an insult to our party and our nation. We made a grave mistake in pandering to the worst instincts of some of our party members in order to get their votes. Our pride kept us from admitting this. Fear drove our decisions. We allowed him to make fools of us. Indeed, we made fools of ourselves."
Speaking, if I may, for the rest of an angry, resentful nation, that day of reckoning can't come soon enough. - Advertisement - | 0 | [
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FMD18 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: SaysTed Cruz distributed the ad showing a nude Melania Trump on a rug.
contextual information: Call it the war over the wives. An ad suggesting that Donald Trump's wife, Melania, might not be modest enough to be first lady sparked a series of nasty exchanges between Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz that have dominated the campaign for more than a week. CNN's Anderson Cooper grilled Trump about the ad during a March 29 interview in Wisconsin, questioning him about his accusation, made in a March 22 tweet, that Cruz was responsible for the picture. "I did not start this," Trump told Cooper seven days after the tweet. "He sent out a picture, and he knew very well it was a picture..." "He didn't send out a picture," Cooper interrupted. "It was an anti-Trump super PAC." When Cooper asked Trump if he had any proof that Cruz was behind the ad, Trump replied, "No. Everybody knows he sent it out. He knew the people in the super PAC. He knew. I would be willing to bet he wrote the phrase," referring to the words that accompanied the nude photograph of Mrs. Trump, a model posed on a rug. "Meet Melania Trump, your next first lady," the ad stated. "Or, you could support Ted Cruz on Tuesday," a reference to the March 22 Utah primary. "I didn't send the photo to everybody in the state of Utah. He did," said Trump. "It was his people, who were his friends." For this fact-check, we'll examine whether Trump is correct in claiming that Cruz distributed this Facebook ad containing a nude photograph of Trump's wife. Federal law states that political ads must clearly identify their source, and this one lists the source as a political action committee called Make America Awesome. Such groups are known as super PACs because they can spend unlimited amounts of money advocating for or against a candidate or a point of view. Super PACs have one major restriction: They cannot coordinate their efforts with a candidate's official campaign, which is limited in its spending. If Cruz did arrange for the ad under the auspices of the super PAC, it would be a serious violation of federal law. The super PAC stated, "The Cruz campaign had nothing to do with this ad whatsoever. We didn't get the image or the idea for the ad from them," said Republican strategist Liz Mair, who is behind the super PAC. Make America Awesome, based in Virginia, was founded in December and reported $20,752 in contributions through February, with most of the money spent on small purchases of airtime in nine states, according to the Federal Election Commission website. "I would guess that including money that has come in since our last filing, we have raised about $35,000," said Mair. There's also no evidence that the PAC is a front for the Cruz campaign. When we checked the PAC's YouTube page, we found four commercials, only two of which are the standard length for broadcast. The Jan. 20 "Buyer Beware" commercial, obviously made on a shoestring budget, includes a light-hearted rundown of nine Republican presidential candidates as breakfast cereals. They include Jeb Bush ("Good source of experience and wonkiness. The brand you know."), Ben Carson ("With extra nice guy doctorness."), Chris Christie ("100% RDA of telling it like it is."), and Ted Cruz ("Two Scoops of Conservatism!"). In the ad, the shopper buys the Trump cereal ("Guaranteed success and a free 'Screw the Liberal Establishment!' voucher inside") and ends up regretting the purchase. The only ads we've run in favor of any candidate are the three Facebook ads we ran targeting Mormons in Utah and Arizona, of which the Melania one was one, and the one with the least money put behind it (about $300, maybe even less than that, honestly), Mair wrote in an email. The Melania ad, she wrote, was targeted only to Mormon women of (if I recall correctly) ages 45-65 living in Utah and Arizona who self-identified as moderate, conservative, or very conservative. "The shot we used was chosen because of the presence of handcuffs, which was particularly bothersome to the target audience," Mair said. However, there are definitely racier shots of her out there that would no doubt be considered more scandalous by a lot of voters across the entire political spectrum—too racy for us to use in Facebook ads, candidly. Although the ads urge voters to support the Texas senator, he was only one of two viable alternatives to Trump currently on the ballot in those states. In a March 27 interview with ABC News, Trump claimed Cruz or his campaign bought the rights to the Melania photo and gave it to the super PAC. There's no evidence that Cruz, the campaign, or Mair's group purchased rights to the photo, taken when she was Trump's girlfriend. "The image was, at the time we concepted out and then created the ad, already republished all over the Internet at numerous sites," Mair told us in an email. The photographer who took the image for the 2000 photo spread in British GQ, Antoine Verglas, told our friends at FactCheck.org that nobody contacted him to buy rights to the picture. The magazine reprinted that photo, along with other pictures from the shoot, online March 4 under the headline, "The Future First Lady? Sexy Melania Trump's Nude Photo Shoot." As for Cruz himself, Mair said, "I think I've met him at gatherings attended by many people maybe once or twice in my life (and it will have been some time ago), and I have never spoken to him privately." We contacted the Trump campaign but didn't receive a response. Our ruling: Trump said Cruz was responsible for the racy ad questioning whether people wanted Melania Trump to be first lady. One of the tenets of PolitiFact is that the person making the claim is responsible for substantiating it. Trump stated on CNN that he has no real proof. All the evidence we found points to the ad being the work of a political action committee whose goal has been to block Trump's nomination. There's no proof of Cruz working with that committee, which would be illegal. We rate Trump's claim as False. | 0 | [
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FMD19 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The uniquely uncivil presidential campaign is about to produce one of the biggest civic gatherings in decades: For 90 minutes on Monday night, a polarized nation will pause to watch the first encounter between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. The total audience, network executives and political strategists say, could be as high as 100 million viewers — Super Bowl territory. That would surpass the 80 million who watched Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980, the record for a presidential debate, and rank among television benchmarks like the finales of “MASH†and “Cheers. †Not all viewers will watch from their living rooms. At the Dreamland Theater in tiny Nantucket, Mass. so many are expected for a party that the town assigned a police officer to stand watch in case of rowdiness. In Paris, many of those abroad for Fashion Week are setting alarms so they can watch the debate live — at 3 a. m. local time. “I need to feel like I’m part of this,†said Laura Brown, InStyle’s editor in chief. And in Richardson, Tex. the Alamo Drafthouse had to switch to a bigger room after overwhelming interest in a screening with refreshments like a “build a wall around it†taco salad. Mass experiences — built around news events like the moon landing, and pop culture moments for older generations like the “Who shot J. R. ?†episode of “Dallas†— are rare in an age of fragmented media and the drift toward partisan outlets, where viewers can effectively choose their own news. But tight polls and curiosity about the unconventional Mr. Trump are luring viewers. In a New York News poll this month, 83 percent of registered voters said they were very or somewhat likely to watch on Monday. “It’s a throwback to a phenomenon that has essentially disappeared in the era of digital media,†said Andrew Heyward, a former president of CBS News. “This is Americans gathering around the electronic hearth. †Advertisers, including Audi cars and Tecate beer, are taking advantage, introducing commercials in the kind of marketing usually reserved for events like the Super Bowl. Although the debate will air without commercials, cable and broadcast channels have sold millions of dollars’ worth of ads for programming before and afterward. Television networks and online streaming sites, including Facebook and Twitter, will carry the same feed on Monday, showing a spare debate stage at Hofstra University, on Long Island, a format that predates the blaring graphics and sets that now dominate television news. Still, even if a large portion of the country is watching, what Americans see may be as much about their beliefs and preferred news outlets as what transpires onstage. About 8 percent of registered voters remain undecided, according to the New York News poll, a thin if crucial sliver of the electorate. And after Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump conclude on Monday, viewers are likely to return to their ideological silos, absorbing instant analysis from anchors on MSNBC or commentators at outlets like Breitbart News. The debate itself will be subject to instant, interpretation on social media. “Regardless of where you’re watching, whether it’s Facebook Live or NBC or Fox News, there will be a moment where we all witness it,†said Charles L. Ponce de Leon, author of “That’s the Way It Is,†a history of television news. “But that moment will quickly crumble when all the instant analysis and opining comes into play. †The event’s impact is unlikely to rival that of, say, 1960, when John F. Kennedy’s smooth performance in the first televised debate helped sway voters against his opponent, Richard Nixon. That debate aired without commentary — or graphics and captions on the screen. “Journalists were of the opinion they should wait and ruminate and think about what went down, and then, a day or a week later, talk about it,†Mr. de Leon said. Tom Sander, who runs a program on civic engagement at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, said he was worried that voters might not have a chance to remove partisan blinders. “Many of us come to these events more to confirm what we already think we know, rather than to search for common ground,†Mr. Sander said. The candidates may hope otherwise. Mrs. Clinton has told donors privately that she expects 100 million people to watch the debate, and that 60 million of those viewers may be focusing on the campaign for the first time, a prime opportunity for her to make inroads. Many may tune in merely for the spectacle. “It’s like waiting for the fight,†said Dick Cavett, the longtime host, referring to the highly anticipated boxing bouts between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in the 1970s. Mr. Cavett said he would cut short a dinner on Monday to ensure he would be in front of a TV by 9 p. m. “There’s possible drama and fireworks and insults and horror and disaster and potential enlightenment,†Mr. Cavett said. “It would attract anybody. †Some in TV noted that the 2008 meeting between Joseph R. Biden and Sarah Palin attracted 70 million viewers, more than any of that year’s presidential debates, a sign that civic interest may be less of a draw than seeing a colorful candidate like Ms. Palin — or Mr. Trump. The 1980 debate scored a record audience in part because it was the only matchup between the candidates in a precable era. But Neal Shapiro, a former president of NBC News, recalled that Mr. Reagan’s unusual background as a Hollywood actor spurred interest. “People wanted to see, would they really feel comfortable with Reagan as president?†Mr. Shapiro said. “People were wondering, ‘Can I live with this guy? ’†The first debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012 drew 67 million viewers. Advertisers, anticipating even more this time, are using the opportunity to unveil new ads with themes that may resonate with Americans focused on the campaign. Audi’s commercial shows a man and woman, both hotel valets, battling for the right to drive an Audi RS7 luxury car, and features the slogan “Choose the next driver wisely. †American flags, and ice sculptures of a donkey and an elephant, convey the message that the car, as an Audi vice president for marketing put it, is “a metaphor for the importance of America. †In a spot set for Monday night, Tecate, a Mexican beer label owned by Heineken, features a view of the Mexican border and a that declares, “The time has come for a wall — a tremendous wall. †The wall is revealed as a resting place for Tecate beers, “a wall that brings us together. †The ad, airing on networks including Fox News and Univision, is “absolutely not†about a political point of view or affiliation, said Felix Palau, a vice president at Tecate. “Tecate, being a Mexican beer, is a perfect protagonist of a story where a wall brings people together in a very fun way,†Mr. Palau said. The debate’s biggest televised competition on Monday is likely to be another program featuring intricate strategies and crushing blows: “Monday Night Football†on ESPN. And one famous political junkie says he may flip the channel — for a few minutes, at least — to the action on the gridiron. “The president’s fired up about ‘Monday Night Football,’†Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, playfully told reporters who asked if President Obama planned to watch the debate. “There will be millions of people across the country who are quite interested to see the two candidates onstage together for the first time,†Mr. Earnest added. “I imagine the president will be one of them. †| 1 | [
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FMD20 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: In response to the establishment media s contrived fake news crisis designed to marginalise independent and alternative media sources of news and analysis, 21WIRE is running its own #FakeNewsWeek awareness campaign, where each day our editorial team at 21st Century Wire will feature media critiques and analysis of mainstream corporate media coverage of current events exposing the government and the mainstream media as the real purveyors of fake news throughout modern history SARTRE 21st Century WireUnderstanding the complex relationships that make up human endeavors permeates every aspect of society and politics. The ability to be informed about events is a basic motivation to search out news about what is exactly happening in the world we all live in. Journalism purports to report the first draft of history. In practice, the press and media coverage is systemically bereft of relevant facts and completely void of objectivity. The currency of the realm is trust for all journalists. Their collective credibility is bankrupt for a very simple reason; their newscasts are based upon lies, newspeak and intentional deception.Carlin Romano in We Need Philosophy of Journalism , asks an essential question that is not at all addressed by the Fourth Estate: How can it be that journalism and philosophy, the two humanistic intellectual activities that most boldly (and some think obnoxiously) vaunt their primary devotion to truth, are barely on speaking terms? Essentially, every component of the mainstream media multiplex is foremost a business. The business model is to operate under the aegis of monopolies. Even a casual observation of the interlocking ownership of big media must acknowledge that the concentration of likeminded Oligopolists are in unison to construct a consortium of predisposed narratives that has nothing to do with seeking the truth.When the term Pressitude is used to characterize the profession, the uninformed or limited literate news consumers often find comfort in turning on their network disinformation program. Those who take pride in obtaining their news from papers of record like the New York Times and the Washington Post rely upon a different motivation. Their aversion to any source that contradicts the establishment worldview is so painful to consider that they adopt a feeble rationalization for self-preservation, which demands rejection of any argument, verifiable facts or documented evidence that challenges their scripted storyline of reality.The example of Sharyl Attkisson, and Judith Miller, have been treated differently by their own employers. The first demonstrating courageous investigative reporting; whereas the second produced a fabricated account that deceived the public about nonexistent WMDs in Iraq. Attkisson was ostracized, while Miller is now a FOX News contributor.Miller s Pulitzer Prize, awarded while employed by the NYT is no badge of honor. The term Yellow Journalism is most closely associated with Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Their sensational duelling newspapers and extra editions shared the Fake News prototype during the late 19th century and early 20th century. What once was conveyed by a cartoon image is now a 24/7 cable news cycle. Granted, the 21st century is different, but the spin and outright lies follow the same pattern of misinformation. Deception, falsification and distortion are absorbed as nonchalantly as a My Pillow advertisement that inundates the propaganda that masquerades as news.The orthodox version of American media journalism was crafted under the guidance of William S. Paley of CBS, setting the highest standard for news reporting at that time. Names like Edward R. Murrow, Elmer Davis, William L. Shirer, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith and Eric Sevareid are icons in the industry. For those who contend that this era invented The most trusted man in America Walter Cronkite, one must not forget that the broadcast news division ran budget deficits, while the parent network was most profitable. Yet for all the celebrated accolades that CBS News coveted, the underlying message behind the script was Edward Bernays propaganda. Fast forward to the internet age and you find that these one-time news bureaus no longer control their monopoly over the news cycle.Immediacy in information dissemination no longer guarantees accuracy in the report anymore than corporatist editing ensures the believability of the popularly accepted viewpoint. Nevertheless, the predominant originator of Fake News comes from a far more sinister source; government brainwashing. Indeed, at the very core of vast news media apparatus are state-sponsored operatives and embeds. Any pretense that there is any independence within establishment media outlets is a symptom of the chronic idiocy within the popular culture. Inserting the government fake news version, using unreliable sources to shape an echo chamber of official fiction is the paradigm for mass indoctrination. Controlling gatekeepers to filter out any conflicting accounts uses both covert and overt censorship. The flagship news purveyors devote their resources to discredit genuine freelance reporting from any ideological perspectives. Mainstream Media (MSM) has the mission to smear any alternative news source and label them as disrepute journalists.The American Press Institute states that Journalism s first obligation is to the truth. Then refines this criterion by adding conditionality to the standard: Journalism does not pursue truth in an absolute or philosophical sense, but in a capacity that is more down to earth. By inserting a subjective value element, any reasonable expectation that the work product is trustworthy is suspect. It becomes the task of the reader or viewer to critically analyze the underlying bias and intention to inculcate the culture. When Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, The medium is the message, he was foreseeing the extent of the newspeak affixed within the medium was not fully appreciated.Corporations select journalists for their adherence to nihilism in reporting. The MSM s denial of objective facts and practicing deception by generating actual fake news has produced generations of na ve, ill-informed and confused souls placing a purdah veil over the heads of trendy clones, fostering the shearing of the sheeple society.Escaping this planet of press corps apes requires a withdrawal from the sophism. The coordinated accusations of Fake News attacks by the dinosaur media upon autonomous internet reporting is a sure sign that suppressing truth to power is the only storyline that matters to these secular relativists and muckraking crusaders to maintain their stranglehold on headline sound bites.The selection agenda which determines what constitutes news is an editorial function that bears witness to the parameters for public conditioning. All other reporting is declared as conspiracy theory. Even a casual assessment of the foreign press provides a contrast to the perception spin machine from K Street or Madison Avenue. As the monopoly media manipulation resorts to their faux news narrative, astute observers understand that their broadcast lies are the real Fake News.*** Author SARTRE is a special contributor to 21st Century Wire. Learn more about his writing and join-in on more forum discussions at BATR.READ MORE ABOUT MSM FAKE NEWS AT: FAKE NEWS WEEKSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 0 | [
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FMD21 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Email
It is especially painful for me, as an economist, to see that two small cities in northern California — San Mateo and Burlingame — have rent control proposals on the ballot this election year.
There are various other campaigns, in other places around the country, for and against minimum wage laws, which likewise make me wonder if the economics profession has failed to educate the public in the most elementary economic lessons.
Neither rent control nor minimum wage laws — nor price control laws in general — are new. Price control laws go back as far as ancient Egypt and Babylon, and they have been imposed at one time or other on every inhabited continent.
History alone should be able to tell us what the actual consequences of such laws have been, since they have been around for thousands of years. Anyone who has taken a course in Economics 1 should understand why those consequences have been so different from what their advocates expected. It is not rocket science.
Nevertheless, advocates of a rent control law are saying things like "this will prevent some landlords from gouging tenants and making a ton of money off the housing crisis."
The reason there is a housing crisis in the first place is that existing laws in much of California prevent enough housing from being built to supply the apartments and homes that people want. If landlords were all sweethearts, and never raised rents, that would still not get one new building built.
Rising rents are a symptom of the problem. The actual cause of the problem is a refusal of many California officials to allow enough housing to be built for all the people who want to rent an apartment.
Supply and demand is one of the first things taught in introductory economics textbooks. Why it should be a mystery to people living in an upscale community — people who have probably graduated from an expensive college — is the real puzzle. Supply and demand is not a breakthrough on the frontiers of knowledge.
A century ago, virtually any economist could have explained why preventing housing from being built would lead to higher rents, and why rent control would further widen the gap between the amount of housing supplied and the amount demanded. Not to mention such other consequences as a faster deterioration of existing housing, since upkeep gets neglected when there is a housing shortage.
Today's economists have advanced to far more complicated problems. It is as if we had the world's greatest mathematicians but most college graduates couldn't do arithmetic.
Part of the problem is that even our most prestigious colleges seldom have any real curriculum requirements that would ensure that their graduates had at least a basic understanding of economics, history, mathematics, science or other fundamental subjects.
Many students and their parents spend great amounts of money, and go into debt, for an education that too often leaves them illiterate in economics and ignorant of many other subjects.
Part of the problem is that many college graduates do not take a single course in economics. Another part of the problem is that many economics departments leave the teaching of introductory economics in the hands of some junior or transient faculty member, or even graduate students who get stuck with the job.
One of the things that made me proud of the economics department at UCLA when I taught there, decades ago, was that teaching the introductory economics course was the job of a full professor, even if not the same professor every year.
In all too many subjects today, the introductory course is taught by junior faculty, transient faculty or graduate students, while the full professors teach only upper level courses or postgraduate courses.
That may save a department the expense of staffing the introductory course with their more highly paid members. But, it is extravagantly expensive from the standpoint of society as a whole, when it means sending graduates out into the world unable to see through the wasteful economic hokum spread by politicians.
That is how you get ill-informed voters who support price controls of many kinds, without understanding that prices convey economic realities that do not change just because the government changes the prices. It is as if someone's fever was treated by putting the thermometer in cold water to bring the temperature reading down. You don't get more housing with rent control.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com .
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FMD22 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Is it not possible to stop recurring donations to the Trump Campaign? Claim summaries: A CNN reporter tweeted out a former Donald Trump supporter's claim that it was impossible to cancel recurring donations to the campaign once initiated, but it wasn't clear that was always the case.
contextual information: On 3 August 2016, CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond shared a screenshot via Twitter of an e-mail sent by a frustrated former Trump supporter, claiming that it was impossible for backers to cancel recurring donations to the Trump campaign: Jeremy Diamond INBOX: Help, I set up a recurring contribution to Trump's campaign & want to cancel it: (cc: @realDonaldTrump) pic.twitter.com/TFOHhdZDlJ @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/TFOHhdZDlJ Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016 Diamond's tweet sparked a number of articles and blog posts stating it was "impossible" to cancel recurring Trump campaign donations, based solely or primarily on the anecdotal, secondhand claim made in that tweet. Among the comments prompted by original tweet sent by Diamond were those left by other purported donors asserting that the claim wasn't exactly accurate: @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Spreading bogus info. When you contribute, you get receipt with an email + tel number to call if you need help. @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump M G (@MadaGasp) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016 @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump now please stop spreading false information, its all in the email you receive when you contribute @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Brian (@Brian_with_a_B) August 6, 2016 August 6, 2016 A large number of commenters expressed skepticism about the report, given that the claim was anonymously sourced from a single individual: @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Cheap shot: we all know you can contact your bank or other form of payment you use, to cancel right away. @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Viktor Staudt (@ViktorStaudt) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016 @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump so exactly who was this unknown mystery person that went straight to a journalist? pic.twitter.com/R4h78829CP @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/R4h78829CP Patti Hannah (@b6sangel) August 7, 2016 August 7, 2016 We were unable to turn up any reports about the issue that antedated Diamond's tweet. If any Trump donors had previously encountered difficulties canceling their recurring donations, they didn't seem to chatter very much about it on social media prior to 3 August 2016 (and ceasing to support Trump as a candidate is only one reason someone might seek to cancel a recurring payment). Diamond appeared to pass the baton on the story overall, updating followers later with a link to an article published by Mic: The folks at @mic took this ball and ran with it. Here's what they found: https://t.co/eTODFa4f3O https://t.co/cktSrf88Z2 @mic https://t.co/eTODFa4f3O https://t.co/cktSrf88Z2 Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 5, 2016 August 5, 2016 Diamond did not provide any further information about the claim, the claimant, or how he verified it before sharing it to Twitter. But Mic attempted to reproduce the problem on 4 August 2016 and gathered more information on the difficulty level of canceling recurring Trump donations. In a series of screenshots the site illustrated their findings, stating it was not possible to delete a stored credit card without replacing it with a separate valid credit card: After investigating, Mic can confirm that there is no easy option to stop recurring donations on Trump's donation site: We set up a recurring donation of $1 and found no button or other obvious way to cancel payments or remove a credit card from the system either on the homepage, the "update card" page, or in your contribution confirmation email. Once you're registered, if you try to change your payment information on Trump's site, you will see no option to remove your credit card only "update" it. Then, when you click on "update card," you see a page that allows you to alter your payment information but you cannot completely delete your credit card. You are forced to replace it with another valid card: Invalid numbers are rejected. One responder to the original tweet then objected to that claim, stating it was impossible to set up a recurring $1 donation: .@JDiamond1 You can't set up a $1.00 recurring amt.What else about this story is BS?@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/kB4TalWOSE @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/kB4TalWOSE ValerieNoFux (@OPFergVal) August 7, 2016 August 7, 2016 However, it appears that it is possible to enter any amount as a recurring donation: enter Mic confirmed that if a putative donor set up an account, then it would be possible for that person to cancel a recurring donation made via Trump's web site: It turns out that there is a way to delete your card from the Trump campaign's system, but it seems you must have first registered an account and created a password: If you did not do so, there is no clear way to cancel your payment. Assuming you did create an account and have logged in, to stop your payment you must click the small gray question mark icon in the upper right corner of the donations page. Then you will see [a separate] screen. In order to delete your card, you must click "manage." Then will you be redirected to the website of the Trump campaign's vendor. There you must click "recurring plans," and only then can you cancel your monthly payment; notably, even after you cancel, there is still no obvious way to delete your card number without replacing it with another valid number. Per Mic's screenshots, that vendor was Revv, and we sent an e-mail inquiry to them to clarify whether it was possible to cancel the recurring payments some other way. Revv However, even if the web site interface didn't allow for such a cancellation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) notes that the the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA) provides for consumers to cancel unwanted recurring payments: notes If you have regular, automatic deductions from your checking account (to pay for expenses such as insurance premiums or utility bills), the EFTA allows you to stop those payments. First, notify the vendor. Next, tell your bank about your request at least three business days before the money is scheduled to be transferred. Your notice to the bank may be oral, but the institution may require you to provide a written follow-up within 14 days to ensure that no additional payments are made. If you fail to provide a written follow-up, the bank is no longer responsible for stopping future payments. Stopping an automatic, recurring payment on a credit card is different. Start by putting in your request with the vendor. But if the vendor continues to charge your credit card, contact your card issuer. You'll have 60 days to dispute the charge, starting when the card issuer sends you the statement with the charges. While it appears to be atypically difficult to cancel a recurring donation to the Trump campaign, it is certainly not impossible, as individuals who create an account can do so via the web interface. Overall, it seemed the problem related more to the interface of a third-party vendor (Revv) to whom the Trump campaign had outsourced donations and not to the campaign itself. Dennin, James. "Donald Trump's Campaign Website Won't Let Some Cancel Recurring Donations."
Mic. 4 August 2016. | 2 | [
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FMD23 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday said it will push to lock in fuel efficiency standards central to outgoing President Barack Obama’s climate policy before the Trump administration takes over in January. Automakers had appealed to President-elect Donald Trump, who has been critical of Obama’s climate policies, to review the rules requiring them to nearly double fleet-wide fuel efficiency by 2025, saying they impose significant costs and are out of step with consumer preferences. The EPA under law had to decide by April 2018 whether to modify the 2022-2025 model year vehicle emission rules requiring average fleet-wide efficiency of more than 50 miles per gallon. Instead, the agency said it will end the public comment period by Dec. 30, and could move to lock in the rules after then and before the Obama administration leaves office on Jan. 20. The EPA in a statement said it concluded after a lengthy review that automakers can meet the 2025 standards. Janet McCabe, EPA acting assistant administrator, told reporters the technical record could “arguably support strengthening the 2022 through 2025 standards,†but the EPA believes it “is not the time to introduce uncertainty by changing the standard.†She denied the impending administration change prompted the decision, but the EPA website previously showed a timeline that suggested a decision on mid-term review was not expected until mid-2017. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp, Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) and others, blasted the decision, saying “this extraordinary and premature rush to judgment circumvents the serious analysis necessary to make sure the (vehicle) standards appropriately balance fuel efficiency, carbon reduction, affordability and employment.†The group said it looked forward to working with the Trump administration on revisions and that “the evidence is abundantly clear that with low gas prices, consumers are not choosing the cars necessary to comply with increasingly unrealistic standards.†It had previously asked Trump to review the automotive greenhouse gas rules, and other Obama administration actions that enable California and certain other states to mandate sales of electric vehicles. Environmental groups applauded the administration move and said they expect the EPA to finalize the rules by Jan. 20. “What’s not to like about a plan, agreed to by the automakers, that cuts oil use, saves money at the pump and reduces pollution?†said Daniel Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, a Washington-based group that supports strong climate action. The Republican U.S. Congress or the Trump administration could seek to reverse or modify the rules. However, if the current EPA rules are locked in, it could make doing so more difficult and time consuming. Auto lobbyists said the next administration will have a variety of ways of reversing the EPA action, including reopening the technical assessment report. They also said the Obama administration’s move could backfire by bringing more attention to the issue early in the Trump administration. Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In 2011, Obama announced agreement with major automakers to raise fuel efficiency standards to 54.5 mpg, which the administration said would save motorists $1.7 trillion in fuel costs over the life of the vehicles but cost the auto industry about $200 billion over 13 years. In July, EPA said because Americans are buying fewer cars and more SUVs and trucks that they now estimate the fleet will average 50.8 mpg to 52.6 mpg in 2025. The agreement included a mid-term review to decide whether the 2022-2025 model year requirements were feasible. The California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols said the EPA decision “provides solid support for continuation of the single national program to produce a new generation of clean vehicles.†| 1 | [
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FMD24 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The United States on Thursday presented for the first time pieces of what it said were Iranian weapons supplied to the Iran-aligned Houthi militia in Yemen, describing it as conclusive evidence that Tehran was violating U.N. resolutions. The arms included charred remnants of what the Pentagon said was an Iranian-made short-range ballistic missile fired from Yemen on Nov. 4 at King Khaled International Airport outside Saudi Arabia s capital Riyadh, as well as a drone and an anti-tank weapon recovered in Yemen by the Saudis. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with such weaponry and on Thursday described the arms displayed as fabricated. The United States acknowledged it could not say precisely when the weapons were transferred to the Houthis, and, in some cases, could not say when they were used. There was no immediate way to independently verify where the weapons were made or employed. But U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley expressed confidence the transfers could be blamed on Tehran. These are Iranian made, these are Iranian sent, and these were Iranian given, Haley told a news conference at a military hangar at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, just outside Washington. All of the recovered weapons were provided to the United States by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the Pentagon said. Saudi-led forces, which back the Yemeni government, have been fighting the Houthis in Yemen s more than two-year-long civil war. The unprecedented presentation | 1 | [
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FMD25 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: In 1997, he followed a 15-year-old home from school. He grabbed her, held her at gunpoint and sexually assaulted her -- then shot her in the head and threw her in Colorado's Platte River, according to court records.
She survived. Despite her injuries, she walked a half-mile -- 1,000 steps -- to a highway, and flagged down a car for help.
Nearly two decades after she was left for dead, justice was at last delivered when officials were able to check the DNA from a previously untested rape kit against a federal database. Ojeda was sentenced Monday to 144 years in prison.
This case is the exception.
An untold number of rape cases -- by some estimates, in the hundreds of thousands -- remain unsolved because the rape kits used to collect critical evidence sit untested and gathering dust in police departments across America, despite $1 billion in taxpayer money approved to clear the massive backlog.
Critics blame the Justice Department, claiming it simply is not sending the money where it needs to go.
"It's a tragedy that evidence from perhaps hundreds of thousands of unsolved rape cases has never been tested for DNA," Scott Berkowitz, president and founder of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, told FoxNews.com.
A comprehensive investigation by USA Today and its media partners uncovered at least 70,000 neglected kits in more than 1,000 police agencies. A state-by-state review suggests those numbers are on the conservative side, with 34 states reportedly admitting they have no idea of the number of untested kits.
Federal officials pushed back against USA Today's report, saying it "greatly mischaracterizes what has been, and continues to be achieved by the Department of Justice to address un-submitted sexual assault kits."
Rape kits contain forensic DNA evidence collected from victims during an often invasive process that can take up to six hours to complete. Testing DNA evidence in a timely manner helps identify suspects, leads to more prosecutions and in some cases exonerates those wrongly accused.
But none of that can take place if the kits aren't tested -- the $1,000 price tag for each test, though, can stress the budget of a local police department.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, recently sent Attorney General Loretta Lynch a letter demanding the Department of Justice address the issue. "Victims of sexual assault should not have to wait unnecessarily for justice," he wrote in the June 29 letter.
Cornyn and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., were behind landmark federal legislation that led to the passage of the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Reporting (SAFER) Act. Signed on March 7, 2013, SAFER requires at least 75 percent of the $1 billion appropriated in the law to be directed toward reducing the massive rape-kit backlog, and increasing the capacity of labs processing sexual assault kits through 2018.
The problem, victims' advocates and lawmakers argue, is that the DOJ is spending the money on other programs.
"Congress has provided the funds to fix this problem, but over the past 10 years a large part of that money has been used for other criminal justice or administrative purposes," Berkowitz said. He said the law passed by Congress set "very specific spending guidelines to ensure that the vast majority of the money goes to casework," adding: "We'd like to see the Justice Department follow that formula and solve this problem once and for all."
But an official with the DOJ's National Institute of Justice told The Washington Examiner the department "has not received appropriations specifically to implement" the DNA backlog grant program.
Instead of waiting for the Justice Department, some states have taken matters into their own hands.
Colorado, for instance, passed a law in 2013 requiring law enforcement agencies to analyze within one year all of their 3,542 untested rape kits -- a deadline that was met, Colorado Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Susan Medina told FoxNews.com.
"It was a way for us to really collaborate with our law enforcement partners," Medina said.
While larger metropolitan cities are starting to step up and cut down their backlogs, stark inconsistencies still exist in how rural communities handle rape kits.
Decisions on which kits are tested -- and when and how -- are often left to the discretion of police departments, leaving justice at the discretion of dollars and local policy. | 1 | [
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FMD26 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Be cautious of fraudulent schemes promising a '$3,600 Stimulus for Homeowners'. Claim summaries: It might not be a good sign when the bottom of a brand new website displays a list of "disclaimers" in small print addressed to "Facebook reviewers and 3rd party fact checkers."
contextual information: We advise all readers, as well as their friends and family, to beware of Facebook ads that promise a "stimulus" or "savings" for homeowners in amounts such as $3,600, $3,700, $3,712, $3,800, or other similar figures. The posts featured pictures of U.S. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and members of Congress, among others. Some ads also mentioned the term "mortgage refinance stimulus." The ads gave the impression that Biden and the U.S. government had approved a plan to provide $3,600, $3,700, $3,712, $3,800, or similar amounts as "stimulus" or "savings" in the form of check payments to help homeowners. The pictures and text resembled the previous COVID-19 economic impact payments and child tax credit payments that Americans became familiar with in 2020 and 2021. Those genuine payments came directly from the Internal Revenue Service. However, there is no federal plan to distribute $3,600, $3,700, $3,712, or $3,800 "stimulus" or "savings" checks to homeowners. Facebook users who clicked on the ads were directed to websites that were not operated by the government. From there, they all appeared to lead to a central page: GovHomePrograms.com. This website included a brief survey that asked questions about finances, home value, and mortgage status. The forms also requested a name, email address, phone number, and mailing address. We filled out the forms and were then led to one or more lenders that could assist future homeowners in buying a house or current homeowners in refinancing a mortgage. There was no evidence that the Facebook ads led to a way for homeowners to obtain a $3,600, $3,700, $3,712, or $3,800 "stimulus" or "savings" payment from the government. According to GovHomePrograms.com's terms of service and privacy policy pages, its parent company was RateMarketplace.com. Plateau Data Services, LLC was also mentioned in the documentation. One page led to EnhancedRefiNow.com instead of GovHomePrograms.com. Its parent company appeared to be LMB Mortgage Services, Inc., also known as LowerMyBills.com. As of December 2021, at least eight Facebook pages named American Savings Tips, Wise American Solution, Clever American Choices, New American Community, US Relief, StraightFix, Homeowners of America, and Our Best American Life had spent around $200,000 on advertising since late October to promote the ads. One of the biggest spenders was Wise American Solution, which had spent nearly $60,000 alone in early December, as of Dec. 13. In other words, millions of Facebook users had been served the ads from these pages on Facebook or Instagram. The American Savings Tips Facebook page spent nearly $60,000 on ads between Oct. 27 and Dec. 7. It also misleadingly displayed a picture of a U.S. Treasury check for $3,600. The Facebook pages and their corresponding websites were all brand new and were created in either October or November 2021. Another page named Helpers Today also pushed similar ads about a "stimulus" or "savings" for homeowners. Several hours after we started investigating Clever American Choices, its Facebook page became unavailable. It's unclear why this happened within those few hours and not at any time in previous weeks. According to its advertising information, Clever American Choices was "deleted" after violating Facebook's advertising policies. It had spent at least $45,209 on Facebook ads between Nov. 21 and Dec. 7. The other pages also showed advertising violations. After we clicked on one of the Facebook ads and landed on a website, we noticed this message at the bottom: "THIS IS AN ADVERTORIAL AND NOT AN ACTUAL NEWS ARTICLE, BLOG, OR CONSUMER PROTECTION UPDATE." We also found a list of "disclaimers" in small print spaced far below the end of most of the body of the page that was meant "for Facebook reviewers and 3rd party fact checkers." One of the lines attempted to clarify why words like "government" and "Biden" were used in the copy: "Government," "Biden," "New Administration," "Relief" - assume multiple citations below from the following article: "Biden's $10 billion in financial assistance is expected to be available in 2022." It's true that the Biden administration previously created a Homeowners Assistance Fund meant to "provide states with $10 billion to help struggling homeowners catch up on their mortgage payments and utility costs." It's also true that the assistance was still being distributed by various states as of November 2021. But nowhere in this plan did we find anything about a $3,600, $3,700, $3,712, or $3,800 "stimulus" or "savings" plan for homeowners in the same way that past stimulus checks worked, as the Facebook ads appeared to suggest. One of the posts on Clever American Choices originally read: "This was featured on FoxNews [sic] last night. All I did was enter my zip and now I'm getting $3,600 back in savings. It was free to check, Just Enter Zip!" A seemingly endless number of Facebook users then submitted their ZIP codes in the comments under the ads instead of on the resulting website, perhaps believing this would lead to them being contacted to receive a $3,600 check. Not only did this ad show a fake "Homeowner Relief Card," but members of former U.S. President Donald Trump's Cabinet can be seen sitting in the photograph captured in Congress. Aside from the ZIP code comments, the remarks with the most likes caught our eye. For example, a user named Jackie said: "This was featured in CNN yesterday so I guess I could try it since my neighbors already got theirs." Other ads mentioned C-SPAN. We found no record of CNN, Fox News, or C-SPAN recently broadcasting news of a specific $3,600, $3,700, $3,712, or $3,800 "stimulus" or "savings" for homeowners. Also, no one's "neighbors already got" a $3,600 stimulus check payment, because they don't exist. These comments likely convinced quite a few people to give away their personal information. Ben commented: "Wow! I've never seen anything like this before! Thank god that I saw it today so I can signup." Matt remarked: "Heard about this program form [sic] my neighbor. They got the check yesterday so I tried it and received a notification that my check will be here this week!" We also saw the same names making the same comments in multiple ads. It's unclear if these people worked for the websites or companies that were affiliated with the posts. We reached out to the Better Business Bureau and AARP for comment on these ads and websites. The BBB responded and told us that this is what they would refer to as a classic "government imposter scam." A BBB spokesperson told us: "Without further research, it's hard to tell if this is just a way to get homeowners to apply for refinancing, or if the motive is fraud. Consumers are being asked to share personally identifiable information (PII), and that's a huge red flag because it is everything needed for identity theft. The fact that the domains are new is another red flag. BBB advises consumers never to share personal information with someone who has solicited them, whether through email, social media ad, text, etc., but to carefully vet any new company that needs PII." In a study, the BBB found that these sorts of scams increased in 2020 and 2021 with the COVID-19 pandemic. They also sent over a page about government grant scams and a scam alert about stimulus checks. We also heard from Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention for the AARP Fraud Watch Network. In an email, Stokes told us: "It is safe to say that ads that pitch free money from the government are government grant scams and the internet, particularly Facebook, is teeming with them. Sometimes you'll see your Facebook friends share the information, claim they got money from a grant, and encourage you to get your free money, too. Often that means the friend's Facebook account has been hacked. Whether it is a scammer or an actual company, you should report the ads to the FTC. These sites often ask for you to share your personal information, which can be dangerous for the person entering it." In sum, the Facebook ads that promised a "stimulus" or "savings" for homeowners simply appeared to be a way to route future homeowners to lenders or to show current homeowners where they could refinance their mortgages. With guidance from the BBB and AARP on identifying this as a "government imposter scam" or "government grant scam," we have rated this story accordingly with the "Scam" rating. The rating for this fact check was changed from "False" to "Scam" after we received guidance in a response from the Better Business Bureau and AARP. We also added several more Facebook pages and updated the advertising dollar figure to be around $200,000. | 0 | [
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FMD27 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: 21st Century Wire says IMPORTANT: We are particularly worried about John Bolton and Rudolph Giuliani holding major diplomatic positions they are both damaged goods and relics of a failed Neoconservative past which some Republicans are acting nostalgic about. Both Bolton and Giuliani have pressed for a pre-emptive strike on Iran in the past, and with continued pressure and finance from the Israeli Lobby it s a near certainty that they will continue this foreign policy line. Trump won the GOP primaries by rejecting the Bush docrine and the Neocon model of foreign intervention. If Trump reverses that postion he is only creating a new and more powerful anti-war oppostion in America. A hawkish Trump policy would only galvanize the left in America, and globally.Let s see if he s smart enough to realize this prospective reality and appoint his cabinet accordingly TRANSITION: Media currently carried away with speculation over what a President Trump administration will look like in Janruary. Daily CallerDonald Trump is contemplating naming a number of recognizable players from the 2016 campaign to serve in senior White House roles, according to an internal transition document obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller.The list was provided by a member of the transition team on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press. Described as a working document, it is being used to help the president-elect envision a White House staff structure, the source said. Some people are listed more than once.It includes names like Trump campaign chairman Stephen K. Bannon, RNC chairman Reince Priebus, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn.Bannon who was executive chairman of Breitbart News before joining the Trump campaign is under consideration for chief of staff, as is Priebus. The choice here could be telling about Trump s strategy for working with Congress: Bannon, who is proudly anti-establishment, detests House Speaker Paul Ryan while Priebus and Ryan are close allies.Like chief of staff, a number of the roles listed seem to include both insider and outsider options. For example, Kellyanne Conway, a longtime Republican pollster, is in contention with Corey Lewandowski, who worked with the New Hampshire state police until 2010, for the position of senior adviser.Lewandowski is also in consideration for the role of deputy chief of staff for planning, as is Katie Walsh, the RNC s chief of staff. As for White House counsel, the list includes both Alan Garten, the general counsel at the Trump Organization, and Donald McGahn, his campaign attorney, as options.Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller an immigration hawk and former communications aide to Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions is under consideration for a variety roles, including deputy chief of staff for policy, director of speechwriting, director of the domestic policy council and director of communications. Miller often warmed up for Trump during rallies in the Republican primary and embodies Trump s message of limited immigration, free trade skepticism and distaste for the donor class.Miller isn t the only former Sessions aide being considered for a Trump administration. Rick Dearborn, Sen. Sessions chief of staff, is listed as the sole option for leading the office of legislative affairs.Like Sessions, former GOP Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, formerly the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, appears likely to have influence in the Trump administration. He is being considered for both national security advisor and assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. His former chief of staff, Andy Keiser, is also being considered for the position of deputy national security advisor.Two other people listed for national security advisor are retired Army Lt. Gen. Micheal Flynn, who served as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama, and Stephen Hadley, who served in the same role under former President George W. Bush. Flynn, Rogers, and Hadley are all hawkish. Flynn has called for the destruction of the Syrian city of Raqqa, Hadley served as deputy national security adviser during the invasion of Iraq and Rogers said in 2014 that ground troops should be deployed to fight the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.As for White House press secretary, the list includes some memorable faces from the campaign: former Ted Cruz aide and eventual Trump spokesman Jason Miller, top RNC aide Sean Spicer and Conway.Here is the list obtained by TheDC:Assistant to the President and Chief of StaffStephen K. Bannon, Reince PriebusAssistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.Keith Kellogg, Mike RogersAssistant to the President and Press Secretary.Jason Miller, Sean Spicer, Kellyanne ConwayAssistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning. Corey Lewandowski, Katie WalshAssistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. Stephen Miller, Sam ClovisAssistant to the President and National Security Advisor. Michael T. Flynn, Mike Rogers, Stephen HadleyAssistant to the President and Director of Speechwriting. Stephen Miller, Cliff SimsSenior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement.None listedAssistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations.David Bossie, Katie WalshAssistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor.Clare Lopez, Walid Phares, Andy KeiserAssistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council.Stephen MillerAssistant to the President and Director, Office of Legislative Affairs.Rick DearbornAssistant to the President and Director of Communications.Jason Miller, Stephen Miller, Cliff SimsAssistant to the President and Senior AdvisorKellyanne Conway, Corey LewandowskiAssistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council. Dan Dimicco, David MalpassWhite House CounselDon McGahn, Alan Garten**** READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 0 | [
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FMD28 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has told MPs that leaving the European Union (EU) is not the biggest threat to financial stability in Britain, and that Brexit actually poses a bigger risk to the continent than it does to the UK. [He said “I am not saying there are not financial stability risks in the UK … but there are greater short term risks on the continent in the transition than there are in the UK†reports the Daily Telegraph. This constitutes a substantial for the Goldman Sachs alumnus, who argued during that referendum that voting to leave the EU could hit growth and tip the country into a technical recession. Following the vote, however, the UK economy has performed strongly. Growth in the construction, services, and manufacturing sectors are at and highs, respectively, according to the purchasing managers indices (PMIs) for each sector. PMIs are among the leading indicators for the economic health of a country. Ewen Stewart, a director at the Global Britain think tank and leading Scottish economist, welcomed Carney’s apparent change of heart, telling Breitbart London he was “baffled†by the central bank’s gloomy forecasts. “The risks of Brexit do indeed lie with the EU and not the UK … because of the inherent contradictions within the Eurozone,†he confirmed. “The EU have far more to lose than the UK, especially as it becomes ever more apparent that the UK is well positioned to strike free trade deals with the US, Australia, and other regions. †Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, has described the Bank’s inaccurate forecasts as a “Michael Fish†moment, recalling the BBC weatherman’s infamous dismissal of a hurricane prediction hours before the Great Storm of 1987 struck Britain. Richard Tice, of the Leave Means Leave campaign, told Breitbart London that Carney was simply “catching up with what we Brexiteers knew all alongâ€. “The UK will thrive, we have the upper hand and nothing to fear. He should offer to resign given his woeful forecasting track record. †| 1 | [
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FMD29 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Thailand s Royal Household Bureau has dismissed a top palace official for extremely evil behavior , a note on Wednesday said, in what appears to be the latest shake-up under new King Maha Vajiralongkorn. The removal of Grand Chamberlain Distorn Vajarodaya, whose role is to manage the royal household, was announced by the palace in a document dated Nov. 6, media reported. The document lists things that Distorn allegedly did including falsifying a 25 million baht ($754,830) charity receipt for royal honors and tax evasion in the name of the crown. The Bureau of the Royal Household deemed Distorn s ... acts as disciplinary misconducts considered as extremely evil behavior deserving of dismissal from the civil service, the royal household bureau said. A palace official told Reuters on Wednesday that she was unable to comment on the matter. Reuters was unable to reach Distorn for comment. Distorn s dismissal is the latest sign of the new king s assertiveness and part of an ongoing purge of officials who the palace says did not perform or behave according to their rank. King Vajiralongkorn, 65, who inherited the throne last year following the death of his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, has set about reordering the palace, including the way its finances are managed. In February, a top palace official was also fired for extremely evil misconduct. Late King Bhumibol died in Oct. 2016 aged 88 after ruling for seven decades. During his reign, he helped revive the prestige of the monarchy with the help of a powerful palace public relations machine. He was cremated on Oct. 26 after a year of mourning. The funeral was attended by hundreds of thousands of people who thronged Bangkok s historic area to watch a series of spectacular processions and ancient Buddhist and Hindu rites and say goodbye. | 1 | [
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FMD30 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Ahhhh .social justice rears its ugly head in the transgender department. Degendered facilities are the new thing for campuses women who don t want to pee with guys are just out of luck How about social justice for women who do not want to share a public bathroom with men? Now that s justice!A New York City college has responded to transgender students who vandalized bathrooms by rewarding them with campus-wide degendered facilities.Bill Mea, acting president of Cooper Union, sent an email March 18 informing the campus community of the new restrooms, which will only be identified as Restroom with Urinals and Stalls, Restroom with Only Stalls, and Restroom Single Occupancy. We have always been ahead of our time and we must continue being leaders on issues of social justice, Mea said. We, who are in positions of power, have the obligation to not only stand with those without power, but to stand in front of them, clearing a path for them to walk. I cannot change the outside world and how it treats transgender and gender non-conforming people, but I can change the Cooper Union environment to help everyone feel safe when they are inside our buildings. The school president then appeared to make a veiled threat of disciplinary action for individuals who publicly protest his decision. I also ask that none of us practice gender policing, where we attempt to restrict someone from using the same restroom we are using or make them feel uncomfortable for doing so, Mea said. If you feel uncomfortable sharing a restroom, then the single-occupancy restrooms will now be available to you. The website Insider Higher Ed reported Thursday that Cooper Union may be the first college to completely eliminate gender distinctions in bathrooms. The process began two years ago when students removed bathroom signs and replaced them with banners reading Bathroom or Degendered. Mea, who left the signs down in order to observe how students reacted, told the website that resistance was relegated to a handful of alumni. I think you ll begin seeing this more and more, Mea said. We here in New York City, we have the support of our mayor and the support of our city. That allows us that opportunity to be more expansive, but obviously there may be less of an opportunity where other colleges are located. Doulos Christou, a reader at the education watchdog The College Fix, said Mea s decision has much more to do with control than supporting those without power. Here s what the [LGBT] agenda is really about, said Christou on Friday. Demanding tolerance gave way to demanding recognition, which gave way to demanding equality, which is now giving way to demanding superiority. We ve written numerous things about this controversy and feel strongly about keeping the bathrooms segregated. One of the best arguments for this:WHAT S SO WRONG WITH TRANSGENDER BATHROOMS? This Guy Has The Awesome Answer!Read more: wnd | 0 | [
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FMD31 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: During the Reagan era, the richest Americans had their top income tax rate cut in half.
contextual information: In his latest film,Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore takes more than a few swipes at President Ronald Reagan, essentially asserting that under Reagan's watch, the rich got richer at the expense of everyone else. During the Reagan era, he said, the richest Americans had their top income tax rate cut in half. Moore is correct that the top marginal tax rate the rate of income tax charged to an individual on their last dollar of earnings decreased from 70 percent in 1980 to 28 percent in 1989. That's not the same as saying the richest had their taxes cut in half. In 1980, the top marginal tax rate was 70 percent on earnings over $161,300. The rate was substantially lower for the income earned below that. For example, that year, there were no taxes on the first $2,300 of income; 14 percent on income between $2,300 and $4,400; and on up via a graduated scale. So if you made $162,000 in 1980, for example, you paid far less on average than 70 percent of your income in federal taxes. The marginal tax rate also doesn't take into account various available deductions and tax credits, said Bob Williams of the Tax Policy Center. When Reagan revamped the tax code and dropped the top marginal tax rates to 50 percent in 1982, and then down to 28 percent by 1988, he also closed some of the tax loopholes available to people at the top. It's much fairer, we think, to look at effective individual income tax rates. That's the actual percentage of income that people paid in income taxes, factoring in not only the graduated percentages along the marginal tax rate scale, but also the deductions and tax credits that people were entitled to. In 1980,the effective individual income tax ratefor the top 1 percent of earners was 22.3 percent. In 1989, that rate dropped to 19.9 percent. That's a decrease of 2.4 percentage points, which works out to an 11 percent drop. That's sizable, but nowhere near 50 percent. If you widen the field and consider the top 10 percent of earners, instead of just the top 1 percent,the drop in effective individual income tax rate was about the same, just over 10 percent. For middle incomes, the effective individual income tax rate also dropped, from 8 percent to 6 percent. That's a 25 percent decrease. In other words, it wasn't just the rich who saw their income tax rates drop under Reagan. One more thing. When the top marginal tax rate dropped between 1980 and 1989, it went from 70 percent on earnings over $161,300 in 1980 to 28 percent on earnings over $128,810 in 1989. Obviously, that's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Did the rich get richer during the Reagan years? Yes. And Moore is technically correct when he says that the richest Americans had their top income tax rate cut in half. But we suspect some may mistake that for the richest having their taxes cut in half. In fact, we first began to look at this claim from a fact sheet provided on Moore's Web site before the movie was publicly released. And in the fact sheet, it states that the richest had their taxes cut in half. We were prepared to give that a False, as the effective tax rate for the richest was cut by about 10 or 11 percent. But in the movie, Moore describes it as the top income tax rate, apparently referring to the highest marginal rate. As we said, some may misinterpret that, but we think Moore has been careful enough with his words to get a Mostly True. | 1 | [
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FMD32 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Looks like that slippery little scut Marco Rubio dodged a bullet! Well done, DSCC!
Corruption
“Clinton Foundation: Inurement” [ Amy Sterling Cassill ]. Word of the day: “The concept of “inurement” is one that most nonprofit organization board members should be familiar with. In common language, “inurement” is a concept that means a board member, donor, or employee can’t benefit excessively from the organization’s funds.”
“Donald Trump’s Companies Destroyed Emails in Defiance of Court Orders” [Kurt Eichenwald, Newsweek ]. Oppo garbage truck unloads….
War Drums
“Harry Reid’s incendiary claim about ‘coordination’ between Donald Trump and Russia” [ WaPo ].
But there is no public evidence to support Reid’s claim of actual “coordination” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. And were that to be the case, it would be a scandal of epic proportions. Asked what evidence exists of such a connection, Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson cited classified briefings. “There have been classified briefings on this topic,” Jentleson said. “That is all I can say.”
Nudge nudge wink wink. Say no more! Say no more!
The Voters
“Signs Grow of Another Third-Party Fizzle” [ Wall Street Journal ]. “But it appears increasingly likely that no outside candidate will take a meaningful chunk of the national vote, as seemed plausible in the early summer. The combined clout of Mr. Johnson and Ms. Stein fell from 17% of registered voters in July to 9% in the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. The running RealClearPolitics polling average of all four candidates is even less generous, showing Mr. Johnson and Ms. Stein dropping from around 12% at various times this summer to just 7% now.”
Realignment
“Would Trump “Make a Deal” With The Left?” [ Michael Tracey ]. I doubt it. And would the Left make a deal with Trump? Still, if the deal were to prevent a war…
The Trail
“FT endorsement: For all her weaknesses, Clinton is the best hope” [ Financial Times ].
“Donald Trump has a path to victory again thanks to Florida” [ WaPo ]. “Remember that winning Florida isn’t a luxury for Trump — it’s a necessity. If Clinton wins the 18 states (plus D.C.) that every Democratic presidential nominee has carried between 1992 and 2012, she has 242 electoral votes. Add Florida’s 29 to that total and Clinton is at 271 and the election is over.”
Democrat Email Hairball
“How Clinton plans to deal with Comey’s October surprise” [ Politico ]. “Projecting confidence” and “galvanizing supporters.” Those are the talking points? Really? Seems a little meta.
Stats Watch
Personal Income and Outlays, September 2016: “Personal income rose a solid but slightly lower-than-expected 0.3 percent” [ Econoday ]. “Inflation data are mixed to soft. … Yet the core rate, which excludes food & energy, failed to show much lift…. The consumer wasn’t putting September’s increase in income into savings as the savings rate edged 1 tenth lower to what is a still respectable 5.7 percent.” But: “Personal consumption has been the major driver of GDP since the end of the Great Recession. Last Friday’s 3Q2016 GDP showed this was no longer true – and this month’s consumption (last month of 3Q2016) does show some life in consumption – but the 3 month rolling average did decline – and year-over-year growth was unchanged from last month” [ Econintersect ].
Chicago Purchasing Managers Index, October 2016: “The Chicago PMI has been bumpy all year and is once again for the October report, down 3.6 points at 50.6 to indicate abrupt month-to-month slowing in composite activity” [ Econoday ]. “New orders are part of the slowing as is production. Signs of strength come from employment, which is back into the expansion column, and from prices paid.”
Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey, October 2016: “The month’s advance indications on factory conditions have shown isolated strength as does the October report from the Dallas Fed where production, though slowing, expanded for a fourth straight month” [ Econoday ]. “The general activity index did improve but still remains negative… [C]apital expenditures, at plus 8.7, are at a two-year high. Hours worked, however, are negative.” And: “This survey remained in positive territory but new orders and unfilled orders remain in contraction. This really is not that positive of a report” [ Econintersect ].
The Bezzle: “EINHORN SLAMS TESLA: ‘Years of over-promising and under-delivering from a promotional CEO'” [ Business Insider ].
The Bezzle: “U.S. authorities are investigating whether middlemen in the $5 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market posted fake bids, rigged auctions and gave confidential information to others who then profited from it, according to people familiar with the situation” [ Bloomberg ].
Honey for the Bears: “We are forecasting marginal slowing of the economy – with the economy frozen in a condition of snails pace growth. The majority of sectors are not changing their rate of economic expansion” [ Econintersect ]. “One of our litmus test recession indicators is trucking employment – which is continuing in recession territory. Consider that rail movements, industrial production, and wholesale trade are all in contraction. Prior to the Great Recession, this would have been a 100% guarantee that a recession is underway.”
Honey for the Bears: “Where the Next Crisis Will Come From” [ Bloomberg ]. “Next year ends in a 7. If you’re superstitious or a little loose with statistics, that makes us due for another financial crisis. The biggest one-day stock drop in Wall Street history happened in 1987. The Asian crisis was in 1997. And the worst global meltdown since the Great Depression got rolling in 2007 with the failure of mortgage lenders Northern Rock in the U.K. and New Century Financial in the U.S…. Keep an eye on depressed lenders, shadow banks, and China.”
Political Risk: “A Little-Noticed Fact About Trade: It’s No Longer Rising” [ New York Times ]. “[The Hanjin bankruptcy] was a moment that made literal the stagnation of globalization…. The United States is no exception to the broader trend. The total value of American imports and exports fell by more than $200 billion last year. Through the first nine months of 2016, trade fell by an additional $470 billion. It is the first time since World War II that trade with other nations has declined during a period of economic growth…. But there are also signs that the slowdown is becoming structural. Developed nations appear to be backing away from globalization.”
Political Risk: “How do I protect myself if Trump is elected?” [ Calculated Risk ]. “Quite a few readers have asked me this question. My usual answer is that I expect Ms. Clinton to be elected President, and that the expansion will continue…. The general rule is don’t invest based on your political views. However policy does matter for investing and the economy. As an example, it was obvious to invest in oil when George W. Bush became President. And insurance companies like United Healthcare and Aetna seemed like good bets with a President Obama.” So, Halliburton with Clinton? Raytheon? General Dynamics? Lockheed Martin does a lot of IT, so I guess that would be a two-fer…
Rapture Index: Unchanged [ Rapture Ready ]. Close: 189. Record High: 189.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 31 Neutral (previous close: 34, Fear) [ CNN ]. One week ago: 53 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 31 at 1:09pm. Nice work, Huma.
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“Facebook advertisers can exclude racial groups in housing ads” [ USA Today ]. Well, that’s appalling. And another Silicon Valley company above the law!
“The KKK was originally a giant, lucrative pyramid scheme” [ Quartz ]. The KKK made its members pay for their own sheets from a monopoly supplier! (The Nazi Party made its members pay for their uniforms, too.)
Corruption
“A $72-million apartment project. Top politicians. Unlikely donors.” [ Los Angeles Times ]. “No one is registered to vote at the run-down house on 223rd Street. The living room window has been broken for months. A grit-covered pickup sits in the dirt front yard with a flat tire. Yet dozens of donations to local politicians — totaling more than $40,000 — have come from four of the people who have lived there over the last eight years.” That’s so dumb. If you want to launder money, you set up a family foundation. What’s wrong with these people?
“When CIA and NSA Workers Blow the Whistle, Congress Plays Deaf” [ The Intercept ].
News of the Wired
Oh dear: Leave it to @twitter to demonstrate in its own survey that it has no idea why people use Twitter. pic.twitter.com/AFc8njltNf
— Thomorrow Wong (@7homwon6) December 11, 2015
Personally, I use Twitter to curate a network of news sources and personal contacts, a task for which Facebook is miserably unsuited. It’s really unfortunate that Twitter is controlled by stupid money, and that Twitter’s management hates its users. Where’s the damn edit button?
“Facebook’s Free Basics Is an African Dictator’s Dream” [ Foreign Policy ]. “But there’s a dark side to Free Basics that has the potential to do more harm than good — a side that suggests that Zuckerberg doesn’t get Africa after all. The app is essentially a cheap version of the internet, a fact that by itself implies that some people aren’t good enough to merit the whole thing. Even worse, it’s a version of the internet that gives Facebook — and by extension the corporations and governments that partner with Facebook — total control over what its users can access.”
* * *
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here . And here’s today’s plant (AM):
AM writes: “From Rehoboth, MA courtesy of my mother in law.” I have these flowers too. Since I want them, they aren’t weeds!
Readers, Water Cooler is a standalone entity, not supported by the very successful Naked Capitalism fundraiser just past. Now, I understand you may feel tapped out, but when and if you are able, please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your continued help. Donate 0 0 0 0 0 0 This entry was posted in Water Cooler on by Lambert Strether . About Lambert Strether
Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration 24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume “Lambert Strether” comes from Henry James’s The Ambassadors: “Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to.” You can follow him on Twitter at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com | 0 | [
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FMD33 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: To hell with the common sense voter, Hillary believes she only needs Americans who are okay with living in a lawless nation to lock down the Presidency. It seems to have worked pretty well for her predecessor why not?Hillary Clinton wrote an op/ed piece for the Arizona Republic and boy is it insane. It s sort of an anti-Trump/pro-illegal alien manifesto that lays out her immigration policy if she becomes president. Two noteworthy things are that she intends to open our borders completely and establish a government agency that will spend taxpayer money to help illegal aliens become citizens.Hillary starts out with a folksy story about an illegal alien who would be deported if Donald Trump was in charge and then lashed out at the Supreme Court for ruling against Obama s amnesty executive order, calling it, heartbreaking and unacceptable. And while our system fails to provide certainty to immigrant families, political figures like Donald Trump turn them into scapegoats for many of the challenges facing American families today. His bigotry and fear-mongering may be an attempt to divide our country and distract from his lack of real solutions to raise incomes and create good paying jobs but it s not going to work.Let s be clear: When Trump talks about forming a deportation force to round up and expel 11 million immigrants he s talking about ripping apart families Isn t that cute? Hillary wants you to think there is no difference between legal immigrants and illegal aliens. Trump has never once said he plans to round up and deport legal immigrants, just that he wants to enforce existing immigration laws.When he praises local figures like Gov. Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, he s endorsing their heartless and divisive policies.How is enforcing the law a heartless policy as Hillary says? The only way our immigration laws are divisive is because illegal aliens don t like them.Instead of building walls, we ought to be breaking down barriers. Our country has always been stronger when we lift each other up, not tear each other down. We re stronger together.Here Hillary is obviously saying that she wants open borders, which essentially would nullify our status as an autonomous country, but there s even more garbage contained within that last statement. Illegal aliens are not Americans and therefore not part of us. They are citizens of another country, which makes them not us. They don t stand with us, they don t lift us up, and they sure as shit don t make us stronger.After proving that Hillary plans to be the leader of the third world rather than the President of the United States, she outlined ways she will make that happen.First up, amnesty beyond Obama s bullshit:That s why, as president, I ll fight for comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to full and equal citizenship, starting in my first 100 days in office. We should do everything we can to keep families together, better integrate immigrants into their communities, and help those eligible for naturalization take the last step to citizenship.Then another bloated bureaucracy and massive waste of funds:Second, we need to increase our focus on integration and make sure that immigrants are able to thrive in American society. Let s provide more federal resources to help immigrants learn the English language skills they need to be successful. And because this issue cuts across all levels of government local, state and federal I ll create the first-ever Office of Immigrant Affairs at the White House to help coordinate these policies across the nation.And finally, some more government handouts designed to make instant democrats:Third, let s help the 9 million people in our country who are currently eligible for naturalization become full citizens. They work and pay taxes yet they cannot vote or serve on juries. Let s expand fee waivers so that those seeking naturalization can get a break on the costs. And let s step up our outreach and education, because no one should miss out on the chance to be a citizen.Hillary claims that her plans will strengthen our economy by flooding the country with unskilled uneducated people who will drive down wages. I m not sure how that works and Hillary certainly didn t try to explain it.No matter what Donald Trump says, we have always been a nation of immigrants And it is long past time we helped millions of hard-working people step out of the shadows and onto a path to a brighter future.When has Trump ever denied that America was formed by immigrants? All he wants is the fairness that comes with upholding the law.If Hillary Clinton becomes president, we can pretty much kiss our country goodbye. With no border security and zero immigration enforcement, America as we know it will cease to exist. Downtrend | 0 | [
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FMD34 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Tucker Carlson and Jesse Waters both went to Trinity College Who knew! Carlson discussed the downfall of his college from a good college to a leftist indoctrination center Unreal! Please see our latest report on the professor who said let them f*cking die THE PROFESSOR WHO S BEEN A TRINITY FOR 20 YEARS SPEWING HATE SPEECH A Connecticut college professor has created a firestorm for calling white people inhuman a-holes who need to die following last week s shooting attack on congressional Republicans. Professor Johnny Eric Williams is a sociology professor! Who wants to send their child to Trinity College at $61,000 a year to have this jackwagon teach them? This is exactly how college kids are indoctrinated into hating their own race. This is sick and twisted!Trinity College s Johnny Eric Williams social media feed (his twitter feed is now set on private) after the June 14 shooting of Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise included racial tirades and commentary calling on minorities to confront white people and end this now, a reference to an alleged system of white supremacy. It is past time for the racially oppressed to do what people who believe themselves to be white will not do, put end to the vectors of their destructive mythology of whiteness and their white supremacy system. #LetThemF ingDie, the associate professor of sociology said June 18 in a series of Facebook posts. The time is now to confront these inhuman assholes and end this now. The educational watchdog Campus Reform and The Blaze both reached out to the professor for comment Tuesday to no avail. Trinity College offered no statement regarding the professor s action. Instead, the Hartford institution reiterated its right on Facebook to remove comments that are deemed inappropriate, profane, defamatory, or disrespectful to users of the page and/or members of the greater Trinity College community. Mr. Williams Facebook page also featured an anonymous article on Medium accusing Mr. Scalise of being a racist and one of the most anti-LGBTQ politicians in Washington. If you see [white people] drowning. If you see them in a burning building. If they are bleeding out in an emergency room. If the ground is crumbling beneath them. If they are in a park and they turn their weapons on each other: do nothing, a June 16 article by Son of Baldwin says. Let. Them. F-ing. Die. And smile a bit when you do. We included the link to Mr. Willians Facebook page but it appears as though he s set his page on private. He is in groups like Black Lives Matter on Facebook we re not surprised by that!Read more: Campus Reform | 0 | [
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FMD35 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: A photo shows a $123,199 turkey for sale at Target this year. Claim summaries: The viral photo of a frozen turkey priced at over $123,000 at Target is outdated, and the price was listed in error.
contextual information: Assupply chain issuesmount, some Facebook users are sharing an image that purports to show a turkey for sale at Target for an eye-popping price: $123,199, and $9,999.99 per pound. No Turkey for Thanksgiving this year, said one suchFacebook postuploaded Oct. 12. The post was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about ourpartnership with Facebook.) Some Facebook users who reacted to the post blamed President Joe Biden for the crazy cost the viral image showed, leaving comments such as inflation is killing us and thanks Joe. An Oct. 12 Facebook post falsely claimed this old photo was this year. But while supply chain backlogscould affectthe cost and availability of Thanksgiving turkeys, the photo of a $123,000 bird at Target is several years old and its nowhere near reflective of the true cost of a frozen turkey at the retail and grocery giant, which is many times lower. PolitiFact found the same photo posted in November 2015 onRedditand the image sharing serviceImgur. The price tag in the photo also includes an expiration date of April 15, 2016. The price tag lists a Target store at the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis as the location of the photo, and PolitiFact confirmed that the pricing was an error at a single store in 2015. The Reddit user who appears to have first uploaded the image in November of that year wrote on the forum that he brought the turkey to a cashier, but the ticket didnt have a barcode to scan. The $123,000 price is exponentially higher than the cost of a frozen turkey at Target or at other U.S. grocery stores, according torecent datafrom theU.S. Department of Agriculture. Targets websitecurrently showsthat similarly sized frozen turkeys are going for a max price of about $23 at the same location in Minneapolis, and $1.39 per pound. We rate this Facebook post False. | 0 | [
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FMD36 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Patriot Spring is coming This excellent piece by Geert Wilders predicts an awakening of national pride in Europe and in America A revolution, Wikipedia says, is a fundamental change in political power or organizational structures that take place in a relatively short period of time when the population rises up in revolt against the current authorities. In Europe and America, revolutions are brewing. They are peaceful and democratic, but they are going to send the elites home that are running our nations into the ground.I have just reread Ronald Reagan s 1982 Westminster speech, in which he predicted that freedom and democracy would soon send the communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe and Russia to the ash heap of history. Reagan spoke of Poland s struggle to be Poland. And today, three decades later, history is about to repeat itself in the United States and in several West European countries. Of course, I am not comparing our current political elite with the Communist dictatorships with their prison cells for dissidents, but the fight of a nation to be itself, remain itself and defend its identity, that fight is also being waged today.We are witnessing America s struggle to be America, and the struggle of several European nations, among them the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany and many others to preserve their identity and liberty, to remain the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany. Everywhere, patriots are on the march. We are living the Patriot Spring.Everywhere, democratic revolutions are underway. They will drive the elites from power. People are sick and tired of seeing their nations lose. They are fed up with how the political and media elites are weakening their country. They want to regain their national sovereignty from supranational organizations such as the European Union. They want to get rid of the fake parliaments that sell out the national interests because they no longer stand for what the majority of the people want. They want brave and patriot politicians in the legislatures. They also want more direct democracy, so that the people can correct those who misrepresent them.For decades, Westerners have been told by their elites that multiculturalism was a virtue and patriotism a thing of the past. The values of the middle classes with their common sense, rooted in the traditions and morals passed down by their parents, were undermined and ridiculed by the mindless political correctness of the educational system, the government apparatus, and the mainstream media. The economic prosperity of the people was squandered by high taxes, foolish monetary experiments, and bailouts for foreign countries. Our nation first became our nation last. The elites applaud politicians such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. President Obama praised her for her leadership. Time dubbed her Chancellor of the Free World, for one single reason. Because she has foolishly sold out the safety and wellbeing of her own people to hordes of largely male fortune seekers who rather than fight for their own country, have come to live on German taxpayers money.Frau Merkel is not the only Western politician conducting policies that harm the interests of her own people. In fact, most of our Western leaders, including my own Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, are politically correct adherents of detrimental open door policies. Before the year in which Angela Merkel became Person of the Year was over, Germany experienced its own sexual 9/11. On New Year s Eve in Cologne alone, over 1,000 women were assaulted, groped, raped. So far, 30 suspects have been caught. All of them North-Africans, and half of those asylum seekers. Also in other West European countries we see a rise of sexual assaults.Unlike the ruling elites in politics, media, and academia, ordinary people recognize an existential threat when they see one. Years ago already, they have begun to realize that the democratic institutions in their national capitals no longer represent the will of the people. They realize that time is running out for the West, and that the moment has come for a democratic revolution to halt the folly of the elites, otherwise our superior Western civilization will perish, our nation will change beyond recognition, and our children s future will be endangered. It is clear what millions of Europeans and Americans want. They want to protect national sovereignty, stop the tsunami of asylum seekers, close the borders to mass immigration, stop spending their taxes on foreigners, they want leaders who truly represent them and defend the national interest. They do not want their countries to be Islamized.And that is why we should add a new chapter to the long list of historical examples of people standing up for democracy and freedom. Let us add the Patriot Spring of 2016 to the list. And let us all be part of it.Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament, is the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) and the author of Marked for Death: Islam s War Against the West and Me, published by Regnery.Via: Breitbart | 0 | [
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FMD37 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Leave a reply The 7 Maoi facing the equinox sunset at Ahu Akivi on Easter Island (photo copyright Ian Sewell)
Paul Rosenberg – Civilization has to be transmitted from one generation to another. If it isn’t, processes break down and life becomes difficult. Soon there must be a painful reform, or else the civilization will be lost.
This is fundamentally the job of families (especially parents), but at the moment that’s not really possible: How many families can survive on one income? And if one of the parents can’t stay home and teach the fundamental lessons of civilization, who will pass them to the next generation?
Certainly the better daycare facilities try, but to think that someone watching a couple dozen kids is going to transmit civilization to them as effectively as a parent who’s with the child day and night is simply ridiculous. The blame for this rests almost solely at the feet of the state of course, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
I’ll begin by quoting the redoubtable Fred Reed on the current situation:
We live in a dying culture and, soon, a diminished country. It cannot be saved.
Not true? Add up the bits and pieces. We laugh in horror, some of us, primarily the older, at the decline of schooling, the courses like Batman and the Struggle for Gender Equity. Comic, yes. Yet in aggregate, these constitute an academic and civilizational collapse both profound and irreversible. Enstupidation does not happen in a healthy country. Who even wants to reverse this onrushing night? Not the universities, nor the teacher’s unions, nor a professoriat gone as daft as the “students,” nor the banks battening on student loans [sic].
I’m more optimistic than Fred in that I think our civilization can be saved. But what he writes is true, and the West’s big institutions are simply vampires sucking the blood of a declining civilization.
I think we can all admit that every major institution of the West, including the mega-corps, is engaged in stripping the Western populace of everything they possibly can. There is no virtue involved, no principle, no honor… there’s not even much consideration for the future. These outfits, under whatever excuses they’re trotting out this year, are strip-mining Western civilization, not building it.
That said, let’s look at some particular villains. The Political Correctness Barbarians
When I first saw these people rising to power, decades ago now, I thought they were so ridiculous that they’d come and go quickly. Unfortunately I was wrong, and they subverted millions of children. The current insanity over “safe spaces” and such condemns them openly, and especially that it’s becoming acceptable to say “I hate white people.” Anti-Religionists
It’s one thing to be a simple agnostic. It’s quite another to go out and try to dismember religion… which in nearly every case means Christianity. And to be honest about it, most people who do this are acting out their personal traumas: either in permanent rebellion to their parents or in anger at one church or another.
Slashing and burning things simply bears bad fruit, but here’s the core issue with attacking Christianity:
The people who pushed Christianity out of Western culture were arrogant and destructive – not that they pushed it away, but that they never bothered to replace it .
If you want to remove the moral core of a civilization, you have to replace it with something better. And the religion-haters did not. They sawed off the limb that held them and were too arrogant to consider the consequences. Academia and the Education Vampires
The Enlightenment sits before us as a twisted wreckage. Its destruction followed the usual path: first setting up institutions, then monopolies and fiefdoms, and finally lording it over others as far and as long as they could.
Education has whored itself out to the state and treats its students as income-generating tools. Are there a few exceptions? I’m sure there are, but they are few. Academia, including most of scientific academia, has disgraced itself. Could any serious Enlightenment thinker have respected “scientific consensus”? Please! Science places experimentation above all and never ever sells itself to a page full of names and initials!
The scientific process has been subjugated by institutions that thrive on restricting access. Cronyism is massive, peer review is corrupted, and the uncredentialed are treated like lepers. These institutions sit atop the corpse of the Enlightenment. Corporatized Art
The arts – music, film, painting, sculpture – are not widgets. They are immensely more important than that, forming minds and cultures in deep ways.
How to pay the artist (singer, writer, whatever) has long been a problem and remains one. Hopefully a good answer arises at some point. Until then, seeking profit by dumbing down every art form is simply degrading.
The corporations that now control music and film have bastardized art for money. I’m not ready to jail them and I certainly don’t think the state could do a better job, but I am willing to say that they have disgraced art. Have you ever wondered why elegance is gone? Why loudness and drunkenness are treated as virtues? The State
Being that it forcibly skims half of the West’s production every year, given that it punishes all who do not obey it, and given that its laws are for sale to the highest bidders, the number one destroyer of Western civilization is the state. Hands down. Think of what people could do for their children and grandchildren with twice as much money.
And don’t get me started on enforced charity, the victim culture, “you didn’t build that,” and “it takes a village.” I don’t like to swear in print. A Final Point
I could go on, but this is a column, not a treatise. My final point is this:
None of the above are transmitting civilization, even if some of them once did. They are tools for reaping the masses, and we need to leave them behind. But far more importantly, we need to build methods and systems that will transmit Western civilization.
The authentic Western virtues – cooperation, initiative, creativity, curiosity, co-dominance, and real justice (not merely a form thereof) – are necessary for a prosperous humanity, and the institutions of our time have flamboyantly failed.
It’s time to start building afresh. SF Source Freeman’s Perspective Nov. 2016 Share this: | 0 | [
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FMD38 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Lockheed Martin Layoffs Claim summaries: Is Lockheed Martin going to lay off 123,000 workers due to military downsizing?
contextual information: Lockheed Martin is going to lay off 123,000 defense workers due to military downsizing. This information was reported on the Drudge Report yesterday, and we are livid. The law requires Lockheed to give a 60-day notice to all employees who are to be laid off. That deadline would be November 1st. Since this would be detrimental to the election, it has been suggested that the government would cover all Lockheed severance packages for laid-off employees if the company refrained from releasing the names and locations of those losing their jobs until after the election.
In August 2011, Congress passed, and President Obama signed, the Budget Control Act of 2011 to resolve the U.S. debt-ceiling crisis and prevent the federal government from defaulting on its debt. This legislation identified $1.2 trillion in budget cuts to be made over ten years and called upon Congress, through the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (also known as the "super-committee"), to devise a plan to cut the budget deficit by another $1.5 trillion (through revenue increases and/or spending reductions) by November 23, 2011. If that committee failed to produce a viable deficit reduction plan by the deadline, or if Congress failed to approve the committee's plan, the legislation mandated automatic, across-the-board cuts (known as "sequestration") to take effect.
The super-committee did not reach an agreement on a deficit reduction plan, stating, "After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have concluded that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee's deadline." Unless lawmakers can agree on a solution to the budget impasse, the sequestration budget cuts are set to take effect with the 2013 budget. Since those cuts may include significant reductions in Pentagon spending, some defense contractors anticipate having to engage in substantial layoffs in the upcoming year. Under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, enacted in 1989, most employers with 100 or more employees are required to issue a 60-day advance notification of mass layoffs.
When Lockheed Martin announced on October 1, 2012, that it would follow White House guidance not to issue WARN Act-mandated layoff notices to thousands of employees just before the November presidential election, Republican critics contended that President Obama was engaging in a partisan political maneuver to protect votes in a key battleground state (Lockheed Martin has a significant business presence in Virginia) at the expense of workers who might soon find themselves without jobs. U.S. Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte released a statement regarding the Obama Administration's guidance instructing defense companies and other government contractors not to issue mass layoff notices to their employees, as required under the WARN Act, in anticipation of the $109 billion in across-the-board budget cuts scheduled to occur under sequestration on January 2, 2013.
They stated, "Today, President Obama put his own reelection ahead of the interests of working Americans and our national security by promising government contractors that their salary and liability costs will be covered at taxpayer expense if they do not follow the law that requires advance warning to employees of jobs that may be lost due to sequestration." The WARN Act exists to protect workers by providing at least 60 days' notice of layoffs from government contracting work. However, the Office of Management and Budget published guidance for the defense industry and other government contractors indicating that they do not have to provide that notice now, even though, under current law, the $109 billion in across-the-board budget cuts scheduled to occur on January 2 are estimated to result in as many as 1 million lost defense jobs.
It appears that President Obama prioritizes politics over American workers by denying them adequate time to plan their finances and care for their families. Those who work in the defense industry and other government contracting companies deserve as much notice as possible that they are at risk of losing their jobs. The issue stems from a Training and Employment Guidance letter issued by the Department of Labor (DOL) on July 30, 2012, and reiterated in a September 28, 2012 memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), advising employers that the issuance of WARN Act notifications in anticipation of sequestration was not required by law and would be a waste of resources because it is currently unknown which contracts might be affected by potential budget cuts and when those effects might occur.
The DOL's letter also informed employers that if they followed the DOL's advice and refrained from issuing WARN Act notifications in anticipation of sequestration, and later had to engage in mass layoffs due to sequestration, the government would cover any legal costs incurred as a result. Although it is known that sequestration may occur, efforts are being made to avoid it. Thus, even the occurrence of sequestration is not necessarily foreseeable. Additionally, the sequester's impact on specific accounts will depend, at least in part, on Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 funding that Congress has not yet enacted.
Federal agencies also have some discretion in how to implement the required reductions if sequestration were to occur. Given that federal agencies, including the Department of Defense (DOD), have not announced which contracts will be affected by sequestration, and that many contracts may remain completely unaffected, the actual contract terminations or cutbacks that will occur in the event of sequestration are unknown. Therefore, in the absence of any additional information, potential plant closings or layoffs resulting from such contract terminations or cutbacks are speculative and unforeseeable.
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification generally requires employers with at least 100 employees to provide written notice to affected employees 60 days before ordering certain plant closings or mass layoffs if they are reasonably foreseeable. The DOL concluded that it is neither necessary nor appropriate for federal contractors to provide WARN Act notice to employees 60 days in advance of potential sequestration due to uncertainty about whether sequestration will occur and, if it does, what effect it would have on specific contracts, among other factors. In reaching this conclusion, the DOL explained that giving notice in these circumstances would waste state resources in undertaking employment assistance activities where none are needed and create unnecessary anxiety and uncertainty for workers.
Despite the DOL's guidance, some contractors have indicated they are still considering issuing WARN Act notices, and some have inquired about whether federal contracting agencies would cover WARN Act-related costs in connection with the potential sequestration. To further minimize the potential for waste and disruption associated with the issuance of unwarranted layoff notices, this memorandum provides guidance regarding the allowability of certain liability and litigation costs associated with WARN Act compliance. Specifically, if (1) sequestration occurs and an agency terminates or modifies a contract that necessitates that the contractor order a plant closing or mass layoff of a type subject to WARN Act requirements, and (2) that contractor has followed a course of action consistent with DOL guidance, then any resulting employee compensation costs for WARN Act liability as determined by a court, as well as attorneys' fees and other litigation costs (irrespective of litigation outcome), would qualify as allowable costs and be covered by the contracting agency, if otherwise reasonable and allocable.
GOP critics maintain that the legality of the DOL's advice is questionable and amounts to "giving contractors a free pass" in exchange for a "multi-billion dollar campaign contribution." As a result of the OMB guidance, the Department of Defense will have to allow companies to claim repayment for the salaries of workers who are laid off but did not receive the required WARN notices—a cost to the taxpayer that could be as much as $4 billion. Additionally, the DOD will have to reimburse companies for any legal damages paid to workers who are laid off but did not receive the required WARN notices—a cost that is inestimable. Facing intense lobbying by defense companies and other government contractors for financial protection if they agreed not to issue WARN notices, the Obama Administration is giving contractors a free pass and potentially burdening taxpayers with a multi-billion dollar campaign contribution.
We also have questions regarding the legal authority of the OMB to interpret the WARN Act as it has and to obligate the federal government to pay billions of dollars in potential claims from private contractors arising from this interpretation. The Obama Administration is attempting to circumvent the WARN Act to keep the American people unaware of this looming national security and fiscal crisis. The president should insist that companies act in accordance with the clearly stated law and proceed with the layoff notices. Republicans and Democrats in Congress, as recently as three days ago, called on the president to work with them to avert the looming threat of sequestration to our national security.
Other labor officials contended that the DOL's advice to employers about implementing the WARN Act was consistent with the law. William Gould, a Stanford Law School professor emeritus specializing in labor law and a former chair of the National Labor Relations Board appointed by President Bill Clinton, stated that the Labor Department was correct when it said the possibility of sequestration-induced layoffs did not warrant WARN notices. "The courts have been very clear that mere conjecture does not trigger the obligation," he said. Rick McHugh, an attorney with the National Employment Law Project, agreed, stating, "The obligation to give notice arises once the employer believes or should have known that a mass layoff or plant closing is going to happen at a particular worksite. At this point, no one knows with any certainty whether layoffs will be taking place or not at a particular worksite."
Lockheed Martin never announced that it was planning to lay off 123,000 workers (a number that represents the entirety of the company's workforce). In June 2012, a Lockheed Martin official expressed frustration with the uncertainty surrounding the sequestration issue and stated that if it were not resolved soon, the company would have to send WARN Act notices to the "vast majority" of their workers because they had received no guidance on the issue from the government and thus had no idea who might be affected. Right before Election Day, the company was likely to notify the "vast majority" of its 123,000 workers that they were at risk of being laid off, said Greg Walters, the company's vice president of legislative affairs. Walters's comments were among the most specific threats yet from an industry trying to avert the $500 billion in automatic cuts in defense spending set to begin taking effect on January 2.
Called sequestration, the cuts are being phased in over ten years, with about $55 billion slated for 2013. Unless Congress reaches a deal to stave off the cuts, "we will find it necessary to issue these [layoff] notices probably to the vast majority of our employee base," Walters said. The company has little choice, he explained, because federal law requires large employers to provide two months' notice to workers facing layoffs. "We would see a requirement, an obligation, to issue [layoff] notices 60 days prior to sequestration taking effect," he said. The layoffs, of course, will not all happen on January 2, as it would likely take months for sequestration to begin affecting contractors' bottom lines. However, the timing of the cuts, along with the requirement of a 60-day notice, provides an opportunity for the defense industry to increase pressure on President Barack Obama and congressional leaders to address the issue before November.
Only a fraction of Lockheed's workers would ultimately be let go as a result of the cuts. However, the company plans to send out mass notifications because it is unsure exactly which employees would be affected. The White House Office of Management and Budget has not yet provided guidance on how sequestration would be carried out. "We've wanted a dialogue about what sequestration could look like," Walters said. "But as of right now, no, we have no answers from OMB." In a July 2012 memo, Lockheed Martin projected a much lower figure of potential layoffs, stating that "Our very rough estimate of the number of employees who could be affected [by sequestration], based on the limited information available to us from the government, is about 10,000."
Ultimately, Lockheed Martin announced on October 1, 2012, that after "careful review of the additional guidance" provided by the government, they would not be issuing sequestration-related WARN notices this year. For much of this year, we and others in the industry and government have worked to raise awareness in Congress about the devastating effects of sequestration—the federal law passed last year through the Budget Control Act that forces automatic across-the-board cuts in government spending. In July, we informed you that, without clear direction from the government about how these cuts would be implemented, the corporation could issue conditional Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices to a substantial number of employees.
We have been working closely with the government to understand our obligations under the WARN Act and to ensure our employees are provided fair treatment and appropriate notice if their jobs are impacted by sequestration. On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Department of Defense (DOD) released guidance clarifying responsibilities under the WARN Act and outlining their timeline for making sequestration-related program decisions. After careful review of the additional guidance provided by the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Defense, we will not issue sequestration-related WARN notices this year. The additional guidance offered important new information about the potential timing of DOD actions under sequestration, indicating that DOD anticipates no contract actions on or about January 2, 2013, and that any action to adjust funding levels on contracts as a result of sequestration would likely not occur for several months after January 2.
The additional guidance further ensures that, if contract actions due to sequestration were to occur, our employees would be provided the protection of the WARN Act and that the costs of this protection would be allowable and recoverable. We remain firm in our conviction that the automatic and across-the-board budget reductions under sequestration are ineffective and inefficient public policy that will weaken our civil government operations, damage our national security, and adversely impact our industry. We will continue to work with leaders in our government to stop sequestration and find more thoughtful, balanced, and effective solutions to our nation's challenges. If sequestration were to happen, we are compelled to comply with the law and will do so as respectfully and as ably as we can. While we work to stop sequestration, we will also continue to petition the government to outline exactly how sequestration will be implemented so that we can responsibly prepare for the impact on our employees and our business.
Finally, as political reporter Bob Woodward noted, the sequester in the Budget Control Act that could result in automatic defense spending cuts in 2013 was not part of an Obama administration policy to "downsize the military," but rather a means of prodding Congress into developing a concrete plan for addressing the deficit issue. "No one thought [sequestration] would happen. The idea was to design something ... that was so onerous that no one would ever let it happen. Of course, it did, because [Congress] couldn't reach an agreement. They all believed that the supercommittee was going to come up with a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction plan, so there would be no sequestration. Of course, the supercommittee failed, and so the trigger went off, which has all of these very Draconian [budget] cuts." | 0 | [
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FMD39 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: How in the heck does the RNC keep getting themselves into this mess? They always have awful liberal political hacks as moderators of the debates! Anyone remember Candy Crowley and her effort to prop up Obama in a 2012 debate? She basically saved his ass! Does the Republican Party not think that Lauer will do the same for his friend Hillary? How dumb can you get!NBC s Matt Lauer, who NBC Universal recently announced would moderate the upcoming Commander-in-Chief Forum with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, was once listed as a notable member of the Clinton Global Initiative, the leadership arm of the Clinton Foundation.The page on the Clinton Foundation website that listed several other prominent journalists as members as well has since been deleted. But Mediaite screencapped the page when it was first reported on back in 2015.Read more: Mediaite | 0 | [
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FMD40 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: At 7 a. m. on Monday, the line for the soup kitchen snaked through a hallway of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Midtown Manhattan as men and a few women, bundled in layers of worn jackets and sweatshirts, waited for a breakfast of mixed greens and egg noodles with beef donated by the nearby Waldorf Astoria. On Tuesday, a handful of soup kitchen regulars will stand in lines at polling places around New York City to cast their votes in a presidential contest where the struggles of poverty rarely made their way into the national debate. But with the help of the League of Women Voters, volunteers with Crossroads Community Services, a nonprofit founded by the church, held voter registration drives in August and September. Homeless people are guaranteed the right to register to vote in New York despite not having fixed addresses as a result of a lawsuit argued by the Coalition for the Homeless in 1984. Wendy Range, 51, signed up, registering for the first time since the 1990s. “It was too important to not have a voice,†she said. Ms. Range said she left an abusive home in Dansville, N. Y. where she was discriminated against as a teenager for being gay. Now, she chuckles at the memory of her first vote at 18 when she supported Ronald Reagan. But she grew serious when discussing how her failure to vote over two decades began with apathy and was reinforced by poverty. Ms. Range, who had attended college and had worked on lighting crews for Off Broadway shows, said her finances grew tenuous in 2008 and she lost her job to budget cuts in 2010. She said she could no longer afford her $ studio in Chelsea and became homeless. She also had no time to think about elections. “Think about being on the street,†she said during an interview at St. Bartholomew’s, where she is a volunteer and a client. “It’s difficult to find somewhere to use the bathroom. It’s difficult to find something to eat. Imagine that, and how do I get to the polls?†But Ms. Range, who recently found a little work, said she had noticed changes in the soup line and was moved to register to vote. “A lot of people out here are working,†she said. “Security guards. Men in suits. What the hell are they doing here? They’re working, but they are not making enough. †As of Wednesday, there were 36, 520 adults in city shelters overseen by the Department of Homeless Services. As a voting bloc, homeless adults could be powerful, but many are uninterested and overwhelmed. “They are living in crisis and dealing with a lot of immediate needs, and that may prohibit them from voting,†Giselle Routhier, policy director at the Coalition for the Homeless, said. The organization distributed around 1, 500 fliers in shelters for single adults last week, Ms. Routhier said. The flier says voting could influence local and federal housing policies. “At all levels of government, these people have the power to impact your lives,†she said. Vance R. Hinton, who registered two years ago, agreed that voting is an important civic duty, but at the same time he questioned what impact homeless people could have. Born and raised in Harlem within earshot of “the organ and cheers†of Yankee Stadium, Mr. Hinton, 62, went to college with the help of basketball scholarships but fell on hard times after a longtime relationship ended in 2003. He said he once called a sleeping bag in Central Park home but lived these days on the E train. After his meal, Mr. Hinton sipped coffee and opined. He wondered which of the candidates really cared about the issues that affect him. “We have folks living in boxes and living on trains,†said Mr. Hinton, a registered Democrat who was once a member of the Green Party. “None of the folks dealt with that issue. †| 1 | [
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FMD41 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Research funded by Komen and the salary of the CEO Claim summaries: Online criticism claims the Susan G. Komen breast cancer organization only gives 20% of their donations to cancer research and pays their CEO $684,000 per year.
contextual information: When Susan Goodman Komen died of breast cancer at the age of 33 in 1980, her younger sister, Nancy Goodman Brinker promised she would do whatever she could to help end that disease. Brinker fulfilled that promise by founding The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation (later known as Susan G. Komen for the Cure, then just Susan G. Komen) in 1982, a group that has since become the largest and most well known breast cancer organization in the United States: breast cancer Brinker fulfilled a promise to her sister that she would do everything she could to help eradicate the disease a disease that Brinker also was diagnosed with and successfully fought. "At that time, there was a stigma and shame around breast cancer," Brinker said. "You didn't talk about it. There were no 800-numbers, no Internet. Our government didn't spend much on breast cancer research. There were few major cancer centers with expertise about breast cancer. That's the world we faced when Suzy was diagnosed. It's a world I watched her suffer in, and it's a world she wanted us to change." In 2012, Komen founder and CEO Nancy Brinker became the focus of controversy when she announced Komen would be pulling the grants the organization had been providing to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings, then quickly reversed that decision. Several months later Brinker announced she would be stepping down as Komen's CEO, but the following year she was again the focus of controversy when news outlets reported that not only did she still hold her CEO position, but she had received a hefty raise to boot that brought her annual compensation up to $684,000 per year: In early 2012, Komen announced it was pulling its grants for breast-cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood, drawing an immediate backlash from Komen supporters and abortion rights advocates. Within days, Nancy Brinker, the groups founder and CEO, reversed the decision to defund the organization. Then, in August, Brinker announced that she would be stepping down. But 10 months later, Brinker still holds her position and tax documents reveal that she received a 64 percent raise and now makes $684,000 a year, according to the charitys latest available tax filing. Komen says the raise came in November 2010, prior to last year's controversy. Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator, which evaluates and rates charities, called Brinker's salary "extremely high." "This pay package is way outside the norm," he said. "It's about a quarter of a million dollars more than what we see for charities of this size. This is more than the head of the Red Cross is making, for an organization that is one-tenth the size of the Red Cross." The American Red Cross had revenue of about $3.4 billion, while Komens was about $340 million last year. Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern makes $500,000, according to the most recent financial documents available for the charity. Charity Navigator's last compensation figure for Nancy Brinker was $560,896 per year, which at the time put her below Komen president Elizabeth Thompson's reported annual compensation of $606,461. In June 2013, Komen finally announced that Brinker would be stepping down as president and CEO of that organization and named Judith A. Salerno, M.D. as her successor. In June 2015, Brinker reportedly resigned from her paid position to assume an unpaid role role as a top volunteer with Komen. Dr. Salerno's most recently reported compensation (in August 2017) was $479,858, while Nancy Brinker was still listed as a "founder" receiving a salary of $397,093. compensation announced unpaid In September 2017, Paula Schneider took over as president and CEO of Komen, with compensation of $137,155 reported as of the end of the fiscal year in March 2018. Paula Schneider The reference to Komen's applying only 20% of donated money to breast cancer research likely comes from a pie chart displayed in the "Use of Funds" section of Wikipedia's article about Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which showed Komen's 2009-2010 Expenses: Use of Funds While it may have been true that breast cancer research comprised only a 21% share of Komen's program expenses (Charity Navigator puts the figure at 28.8% as of March 2018), citing that figure as a criticism of the organization reflects a common misbelief that groups dedicated to addressing particular diseases (e.g., the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the ALS Association) exist solely or primarily to fund and direct research into curing and/or preventing those diseases. This perception is inaccurate: Komen and other groups like it have goals that include delivering a wide array of services to the communities they support beyond the funding of research, such as funding educational awareness and outreach programs, providing screening and diagnostic procedures, and arranging medical treatment and home care for persons currently living with those diseases. A more relevant metric for assessing a charity's overall financial effectiveness is the percentage of the organization's budget that is actually spent on all the programs and services the charity delivers, and in this area the Charity Navigator charity evaluation site gives Komen an 80.3 rating (as well as a 96.0 rating for Accountability & Transparency). Charity Navigator does rank many other breast cancer charities higher than Susan G. Komen for the Cure, however. Komen breast cancer Regarding the seemingly excessively high level of CEO salaries at some charities, Charity Navigator advises that: advises While there are certainly some charities that overpay their leaders, Charity Navigator's data shows that those organizations are the minority. Among the charities we've evaluated (those being mid to large-sized charities), the typical CEO's annual compensation is in the low to mid six figures. Before you make any judgments about salaries higher or lower than that range, we encourage you to keep in mind that these charities are complex organizations, with multi-million dollar budgets, hundreds of employees, and thousands of constituents. These leaders could inevitably make much more running similarly sized for-profit firms. Furthermore, when making your decision it is important to consider that it takes a certain level of professionalism to effectively run a charity and charities must offer a competitive salary if they want to attract and retain that level of leadership. | 2 | [
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FMD42 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Militants attacked a Bahraini police bus near the Jidhafs area outside the capital Manama, killing one policeman and wounding eight others, the interior ministry said on Friday. The attack targeted the bus on the Khalifa bin Salman highway, the ministry said, adding that the militant group used a handmade bomb. Investigations are underway to determine the circumstances of this premeditated terrorist attack and arrest the group involved, the ministry said in a statement on its website. The incident was the latest in a series of attacks targeting policemen in the country where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based. The government blames the attacks on Shi ite militants it says are backed by Iran to destabilize the country, a charge Tehran denies. This month, a blast wounded five policemen on Budaiya road, near Manama, while they were guarding a procession by Shi ite Muslims marking the annual Ashura festival, which commemorates the death of Prophet Mohammad s grandson Imam Hussein some 1400 years ago. | 1 | [
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FMD43 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did Kurt Russell Share A Poem Opposing the Defunding of Police? Claim summaries: A poem titled "The Badge" circulated on social media in June 2020 following nationwide protests calling for the defunding of police.
contextual information: Rumors surged in the wake of George Floyd's death and the resulting protests against police violence and racial injustice in the United States. Stay informed. Read our special coverage, contribute to support our mission, and submit any tips or claims you see here. A widely circulated poem dedicated to the work of law enforcement was shared more than 125,000 times in late summer 2020 after the original user insinuated that actor Kurt Russell had shared it, along with his alleged opposition to defunding the police. "The Badge" went viral in the months following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, while in police custody. Protesters in the wake of Floyd's death called for the defunding of police in an effort to redirect funds to make law enforcement training more robust and to increase social services for communities that face a greater risk of police brutality and incarceration. We looked into the poem and found no evidence that Russell is connected to it in any way or that he had made political statements opposing the defunding of police. Russell is known for his distaste for social media and, despite dozens of fake profiles pretending to be the veteran actor, does not have verified accounts on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. In general, Russell is not active on social media and had not recently appeared in public making such declarations. In fact, since the poem's original posting in June 2020, the language and imagery shared alongside it underwent several changes that demonstrate the kind of manipulation a social media post may experience in a short amount of time. "The Badge," a poem that recognizes police officers and their efforts to help society, was originally credited to an anonymous source and was first posted to social media on June 7. It begins: This badge ran towards certain death as the Towers collapsed on 9-11. This badge ran into the line of fire to save the people in the Pulse Night Club. This badge sheltered thousands as bullets rained down from the Mandalay Hotel in Las Vegas. This badge protected a BLM rally that left five officers dead in Dallas. This badge ran into the Sandy Hook School to stop a school shooter. The poem goes on to highlight other roles and responsibilities of law enforcement officers, including escorting the elderly across the street and helping to return crying children to their mothers. However, since it was originally shared on Facebook, the 22-line composition underwent several iterations. A second version of the poem surfaced in a post shared to the Victor Valley News Facebook page, a media outlet in Victorville, California, with an additional introduction that read: Yes ... let's all join in the hatred of all police for the sins of a few. Let's defund one of the most important public institutions in our country's history. Let's have all badges removed and allow people to tend to their own safety and security. This wording appears to have originated in a blog post titled, "In Honor of Uncle Bob Roberts Killed in the Line of Duty," posted on June 14 by a self-described entrepreneur. The post in question that Snopes readers asked us about added the above introduction and, in its most recent iteration, social media users included a headshot of Russell accompanied by the following: Amazing Post!! Kurt Russell. The additional wording insinuated that the actor had an affiliation with the Aug. 6, 2020 post. In less than a week, the post had been shared over 125,000 times on Facebook. The libertarian actor has been at the heart of several viral claims falsely linking him to supporting U.S. President Donald Trump, including a 2016 image that showed him and partner Goldie Hawn wearing photoshopped pro-Trump shirts. In 2018, a fake Twitter account using Russell's face as a profile picture incorrectly quoted the actor as having called Trump relentless, dedicated, and determined. The following year, a right-leaning Facebook page posted a meme that falsely insinuated Russell referred to Democrats as enemies of the state. | 0 | [
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FMD44 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Everyone knows Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has absolutely no backbone, but what he did yesterday was an entirely new low for the Republican Party.Yesterday was a disaster for the GOP to begin with. Donald Trump pathetically failed to gain enough votes for the disastrous American Health Care Act, and the GOP suffered a major humiliation as the glorious plan they ve been promising to implement and do away with Obamacare with for the past seven years deteriorates before their eyes. After such a horrible, embarrassing day, it was clear that Ryan didn t have it in him to face the press and answer the many critical questions that Americans have about Trumpcare.Ryan emerged from the failed discussions over Trumpcare, visibly frustrated and not in the mood to make nice with reporters. He gave a short statement in which he was clearly angry and uncomfortable: For seven and a half years, we have been promising the American people that we will repeal and replace this broken law because it s collapsing and it s failing families, and tomorrow we re proceeding. He ended his address abruptly, literally running off and away from reporters demanding answers. You can watch this disgusting behavior below, courtesy of the Rachel Maddow Show: This is clearly a sign that the GOP knows how badly they ve just failed, and they re aware of how pathetic the party looks right now. This could not be a more painful time for the GOP their disastrous reality television star of a candidate won the election and even though he s only been in the White House a little more than two months, he s f*cked things up more than anyone thought he would. With Trump s help, the Republican Party has done irreversible damage to its reputation and they only have themselves to thank. Ryan s cowardly behavior only solidifies the fact that the GOP is crumbling before our very eyes.Featured image via screenshot | 0 | [
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FMD45 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did Teen Activist Greta Thunberg Tell China to Stop Using Chopsticks? Claim summaries: Some activists have noted the adverse impact disposable chopsticks have on the environment.
contextual information: Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has been the subject of a number of baseless rumors ever since the then-15-year-old stepped into the spotlight in 2018. We've previously examined false accusations that Thunberg was the "highest paid activist," that she was actually an actress, and that she was once filmed firing a machine gun. highest paid activist actually an actress firing a machine gun In May 2020, after Thunberg was invited to participate in a CNN Town Hall, an old rumor concerning a quote ostensibly uttered by the activist about how China should stop using chopsticks was recirculated on social media: participate Thunberg did not ask China to "give up" chopsticks. This rumor has been circulating since at least January 2020. Although it has taken several forms, we've yet to encounter any social media posts pointing to when or where Thunberg allegedly made this request. One of the earliest postings of this rumor, which was shared by the unverified Twitter account @Geoloong on Jan. 14, included a GIF of Thunberg speaking at the Climate Action Summit in 2019, but Thunberg made no mention of "chopsticks" during this speech. We searched other articles, interviews, and speeches delivered by Thunberg around this time and found no record of her asking China to ban chopsticks. Geoloong no mention Other red flags in this post indicate the rumor is little more than an invented anecdote to mock the teenager. For starters, we found that this story was being shared almost exclusively by people expressing a negative view of Thunberg. If this was a genuine quote, you'd expect this story would have been shared (at least initially) by Thunberg's supporters. Furthermore, the anecdote described in this post is simply ludicrous. Although it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for Thunberg, a teenager who became Time magazine's youngest Person of the Year for her work addressing climate change, to note the adverse environmental impact of disposable chopsticks, it would be quite extraordinary for the government of the most populous country in the world to issue a juvenile response telling someone not to "wipe their butt" because toilet paper is made from trees. Time magazine's youngest Person of the Year adverse environmental impact If China did issue such a statement, it would have surely been international news. Yet, just as we were unable to find a source for Thunberg's alleged comment, we were unable to find a credible source for China's alleged insult. In fact, the text on the above-displayed meme is a near-verbatim copy of the text published to the humor website Joe.ks.com. Joe.ks.com. Although Thunberg did not urge China to ban the use of chopsticks, China truly uses millions of trees every year to produce billions of pairs of disposable chopsticks. When concerns about the adverse impact disposable chopsticks had on the environment were raised in 2006, the Chinese government implemented a 5% tax on the utensil in an attempt to slow deforestation. implemented a 5% tax BBC News reported: reported The Chinese government is introducing a 5% tax on disposable wooden chopsticks in a bid to preserve its forests. It produces about 45 billion pairs of chopsticks a year, consuming millions of trees and bamboo plants. The move came as China said it would raise some consumption taxes next month in a bid to help the environment and narrow the gap between rich and poor. Although this tax may have slowed deforestation, it certainly hasn't stopped it. In 2013, Bo Guangxin, the head of the China Jilin Forest Industry Group, estimated that China was using 20 million trees a year to produce nearly 80 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks. estimated NPR. "Transcript: Greta Thunberg's Speech At The U.N. Climate Action Summit."
23 September 2019. BBC. "China Introduces Chopsticks Tax."
22 March 2006. Lee, Don. "Chinas Chopstick Tax Seems Dim to Some."
Los Angeles Times. 24 March 2006. Nuwer, Rachel. "Disposable Chopsticks Strip Asian Forests."
The New York Times. 24 October 2011. | 0 | [
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] | 0 |
FMD46 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Was 'Coronavirus' Replaced with 'Chinese Virus' in Trump's Notes? Claim summaries: U.S. President Donald Trump has faced criticism for his insistence in referring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus."
contextual information: Snopes is still fighting an infodemic of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and advice you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. fighting Find out Read Submit Become a Founding Member CDC WHO In March 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump faced widespread scrutiny for various aspects of his administration's response to the economic and public health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Among other points of criticism was his repeated insistence on referring to the disease as the "Chinese virus," despite widely-accepted public health authority guidelines that warn against naming disease outbreaks after nations or regions of the world, due to the unfounded stigmatization such names can cause. scrutiny Chinese virus guidelines The president used that name again during a White House briefing on March 19. Afterwards, social media users shared a photograph purportedly taken at the event, which appeared to show that Trump was even ignoring the guidance of his aides in insisting on referring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus." Washington Post photographer Jabin Botsford tweeted the following: briefing tweeted Those images were authentic. The original, official photograph was taken by Botsford himself and published by the Getty Images agency on March 19. The website described the image as follows: published "A close up of President Donald J. Trump's notes shows where Corona was crossed out 'Corona' and replaced with 'Chinese' Virus as he speaks with his coronavirus task force in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic during a briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Thursday, March 19, 2020 in Washington, DC." Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images Trump did call COVID-19 the "Chinese virus" in his March 19 remarks, although perhaps ironically, he referred to it simply as "the virus" in the place where "Corona" had been scratched out and replaced in handwriting by "Chinese" in his notes. As shown in the video below, he actually said at that point: "As you know, my administration is working every day to protect the American people and the American economy from the virus [...]": It's not clear who made the handwritten edit in black marker on March 19, but the handwriting style certainly appeared consistent with that seen in notes which Trump famously held in his hand as he spoke to reporters in November 2019 at the height of Congressional hearings held in advance of his own impeachment trial: held Left: Mark Wilson/Getty Images. Right: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images Lucey, Catherine. "Trump's Message on Virus Draws Scrutiny."
The Wall Street Journal. 5 March 2020. Rogers, Katie; Jakes, Lara. "Trump Defends Calling the Coronavirus the 'Chinese Virus.'"
The New York Times. 18 March 2020. World Health Organization. "WHO Issues Best Practices for Naming New Human Infectious Diseases."
8 May 2015. Palma, Bethania. "Did Trump Use Notes to Self in Sharpie Pen That Said 'I Want Nothing.'"
Snopes. 22 November 2019. | 1 | [
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FMD47 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Was a keto diet pill promoted on 'Shark Tank'? Claim summaries: Nobody would ever lie in an ad for a diet product, right?
contextual information: In November 2019, several readers began inquiring about the existence of a keto pill that had allegedly been funded through the popular NBC TV show "Shark Tank" a program in which affluent judges decide for or against investing their personal funds in various entrepreneurial ventures pitched to them in front of the camera. Keto, in this context, is a form of dieting that proponents claim forces your body to metabolize body fat in the absence of other carbs like glucose. This post is not about the science behind such claims, but instead about the business of selling supplements with fake celebrity endorsements. For the record, no keto-based product has ever been pitched or funded on "Shark Tank." form of dieting In at least one notable instance, a product named PureFit KETO was marketed as if it had been successfully pitched on "Shark Tank." However, on June 22, 2019, the Better Business Bureau investigated the company, finding that the images appearing on PureFit KETO's website were taken from a separate 'Shark Tank' episode that does not mention PureFit KETO. Despite this, Amazon, among others, includes the "Shark Tank" claim in its product listing at the time of this reporting in late 2019. marketed finding Shark Tank" claim Claims of a "Shark Tank" approved keto pill are just one of a series of iterations of a broader scam. Among the many ways some people seek passive income from online marketing is to sell supplements via dropshipping a practice in which the person advertising and selling a given product never actually has physical possession of the product in question. The role of the dropshipper is to move the product by directing potential customers to order directly from a supplier and thereby earning a fraction of the profits from a sale in the process. Myriad individuals in this space evidently use a variety of dubious practices to juice those sales. dropshipping One such method is to lie about who has endorsed the product, as evidenced in claims that PureFit Keto had been funded on "Shark Tank." Similar products have also been advertised as if famous celebrities use them. For example, marketers of a product named Keto Fit claimed the supplement was endorsed by model Chrissy Teigen, providing made-up quotes from her to sell the product. Teigen publicly repudiated the practice when it was brought to her attention in January 2019: Claims of Keto Fits celebrity endorsements dont end with Teigen. False claims about Keto Fits endorsements include alleged support from celebrities such as Demi Lovato and Jameela Jamil. In some cases, claims of support come from websites designed to look like existing media properties the Teigen claims were made on a website pretending to be the popular site Bored Panda. In other cases, a common marketing method is the creation of fake diet pill reviews on blogs that exist solely to review that one keto product while highlighting impossible-to-miss links to order the product. Demi Lovato reviews on blogs Though these various keto products often change names the products are frequently rebranded into similar-sounding names over time the product generally remains the same. These products, with names like KetoFit, KetoBurn, KetoPlus, or KetoMelt, are all if you trust these companies to accurately report their contents made up of the same chemical: Beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB). rebranded BHB is a ketone that the body is able under certain circumstances to burn for energy instead of glucose. Suggesting this widely available nutritional supplement is uniquely worthy to be an invention worthy of "Shark Tank," or a secret product used by the Hollywood elite is, on its face, absurd. More to the point, however, no keto diet pill has ever been discussed on the show "Shark Tank." a ketone Masood, Wajeed and Kalyan R. Uppaluri. Ketogenic Diet.
StatPearls. As updated on 21 March 2019. BBB.com. PureFit KETO.
Accessed 19 November 2019. Amazon.com. Purefit Keto Weight Loss Pills for Men and Women - Ketogenic Diet Supplement - Burn Fat for Energy - BHB Formula (1 Month).
Accessed 19 November 2019. Shopify. The Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping.
Accessed 19 November 2019. Brar, Faith. BHB: The Miracle Molecule of the Keto Diet?
StatPearls. 28 September 2017. | 0 | [
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FMD48 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The world watched in shock on Wednesday as French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo became the site of a grisly terror attack. Gunmen opened fire on a second-floor editorial meeting, killing 12 people in total. Among them were eight journalists and two police officers.
Journalists felt their profession under fire, and several newspapers are taking to their front pages to react. Editorial cartoons, somber black covers and powerful photos from the attack are seen on pages around the world.
The Independent covers their paper with a fictional cover of Charlie Hebdo.
Libération in Paris said "We are all Charlie."
The Times of London's calls it "attack on freedom." | 1 | [
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FMD49 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: French cement group Lafarge paid close to 13 million euros ($15.2 million) to armed groups including Islamic State militants to keep operating in Syria from 2011-2015, human rights lawyers said on Tuesday. They were speaking at a news conference on the course of French prosecutors preliminary inquiry into Lafarge s operations launched in June on suspicion of financing of a terrorist enterprise . The lawyers for rights group Sherpa said a large part of the money went directly or indirectly into the pockets of Islamic State and that payments lasted until well after the closure of Lafarge s Jalabiya plant in September 2014. They were citing a figure pinpointed by prosecutors examining Lafarge s activities in Syria, in the throes of civil war since 2011, and drawn from an internal report by U.S. law firm Baker and McKenzie for Lafarge. As part of the inquiry, the precise figure retained is 12,946,000 euros paid by Lafarge between 2011 and 2015 to terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State, Sherpa lawyer Marie Dose said. Lafarge became LafargeHolcim, the world s largest cement maker, in 2015 after a takeover by Swiss Holcim. Former LafargeHolcim CEO Eric Olsen resigned in April after the company admitted it had paid armed groups to keep a factory operating in Syria. His lawyer has said Olsen will appeal against being put under investigation. Sherpa and other human rights groups in France as well as the French Finance Ministry have filed suit against Lafarge. Sherpa wants the company to be placed under formal criminal investigation, like Olsen, and also accuses Lafarge of not cooperating with authorities and trying to hide important elements from the investigation. A LafargeHolcim spokeswoman on Tuesday rejected these accusations but would not comment on the 13-million-euro figure. LafargeHolcim fully cooperates with the justice (authorities). Thousands of documents have been given by the group to magistrates or seized during a search, she said. We strongly contest that the company is trying in any way to limit the right of its employees or former employees to defend themselves...or (limit) their capacity to cooperate in a judicial inquiry, she added. Being placed under formal investigation in France means that prosecutors believe they have serious or consistent evidence that could result in prosecution. It is a step toward a possible trial, though the investigation can still be dropped. Last Friday the Paris prosecutor also placed Olsen s predecessor as CEO, Bruno Lafont, and his ex-deputy for operations under formal investigation as part of the inquiry into Lafarge activities in Syria, the two men s lawyers said. | 1 | [
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FMD50 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Paul Craig Roberts: Trump faces assasination 09.11.2016 | Source: AP Photo
Donald Trump will be the new President of the United States of America. The Republican won 276 electoral votes with the necessary minimum of 270 votes and he has made himself to the post of the head of the United States.
Pravda.Ru has turned for a comment to Paul Craig Roberts who is an American economist, journalist, blogger and former civil servant.
The US presidential election is historic, because the American people were able to defeat the oligarchs. Hillary Clinton, an agent for the oligarchy, was defeated despite the vicious media campaign against Donald Trump. This shows that both the political establishment of both political parties and the media no longer have credibility with the American people.It remains to be seen whether Trump can select and appoint a government that will serve him and his goals to restore American jobs and to establish friendly and respectful relations with Russia, China, Syria, and Iran.It also remains to be seen how the oligarchy will respond to Trump's victory. Wall Street and its agent, the Federal Reserve, can cause an economic crisis in order to put Trump on the defensive. Rogue agents in the CIA and Pentagon can cause a false flag attack that would disrupt friendly relations with Russia. Trump could make a mistake and retain neoconservatives in his government.With Trump there is at least hope. Unless Trump is obstructed by bad judgment and obstacles put in his way, we should expect an end to Washington's orchestrated conflict with Russia, the removal of the US missiles on Russia's border with Poland and Romania, the end of the conflict in Ukraine, and the end ofWashington's effort to overthrow the Syrian government. However, achievements such as these implythe total defeat of the oligarchy. Although Trump defeated Hillary, the oligarchy still exists and is stillpowerful.Trump said that he no longer sees the point of NATO 25 years after the Soviet collapse. If he sticks tohis view, it means a big political change in Washington's EU vassals. The hostility toward Russia ofthe current EU and NATO officials would have to cease.We do not know who Trump will select to serve in his government. It is likely that Trump is unfamiliarwith the various possibilities and their positions on issues. It really depends on who is advising Trump and what advice they give him. Once we see his government, we will know whether we can be hopefulfor the changes that now have a chance. If Trump is actually successful in curbing the power and budget of the military/security complex and in holding Wall Street politically accountable, he could be assassinated.
Pravda.Ru Trump’s success shocks global markets | 0 | [
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FMD51 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Nestle seeks more groundwater to expand Michigan plant They're putting profits over people - and the environment - yet again By Julie Fidler - November 9, 2016
The state of Michigan has given a preliminary go-ahead for food and beverage maker Nestle to nearly triple the amount of groundwater it will pump from beneath the state, to be bottled and sold at its Ice Mountain plant, approximately 120 miles from Flint.
Nestle Waters North America asked the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to allow the company to increase pumping from 150 to 400 gallons-per-minute at 1 of its production wells north of Evart.
The company already increased the well’s pumping rate last year and earlier this year, but needs the DEQ’s approval to max out the withdrawal capacity under the Section 17 of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
The DEQ already issued a draft proposal for the request in January, and ended a public comment period on the subject on November 3. Carrie Monosmith, environmental health chief in the drinking water office, said the DEQ hadn’t received any comments.
Many Michigan residents feel Nestle has a lot of nerve asking for the increase, in light of Flint’s years-long nightmare over lead contamination in their drinking water. Many people in Flint still rely on bottled water for cooking, cleaning, and bathing as the government continues to drag its feet in replacing the corroded pipes.
Nestle representatives defended the company’s efforts to pump more groundwater, saying the “U.S. market for bottled water in general is driving the bid for more Michigan groundwater.”
That’s right, America. Nestle says it’s your fault.
If that’s not infuriating enough, Nestle gets to pump that water for free. Under state law, private property owners may withdraw from the aquifer under their property for free. The only cost is $200 in annual paperwork.
The interstate Great Lakes compact prohibits water diversions outside of the Great Lakes basin, but a loophole in the law allows water to be sold outside the region, so long as it is shipped in bottles smaller than 5.7 gallons.
Jeff Ostahowski, vice president of the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (MCWC), asks:
“The issue is the privatization of a critical resource. How much is too much?”
For years, MCWC has battled against Nestle to prevent it from expanding in the state.
According to Nestle and the DEQ, an environmental review shows the aquifer can withstand the proposed increase in pumping, and that it won’t hurt its flow, levels, or temperature of nearby surface waters. | 0 | [
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FMD52 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Austria s electoral system makes it difficult for any one party to obtain a majority, and the winner of Sunday s parliamentary election will probably need to form a coalition to govern. Support for the frontrunner, the conservative People s Party led by Sebastian Kurz, running at about 33 percent. A coalition between two of the three largest parties is the most likely outcome. Several smaller parties are polling at around 6 percent or lower. The 31-year-old foreign minister expects to lead his party to victory and has avoided committing himself to anything other than holding talks with all sides after the election. He has campaigned on a platform of ending the old compromises of centrist coalitions with the Social Democrats, suggesting he might lean toward the Freedom Party. But he has also said there could be leadership changes within the losing parties after the election, which could be a hint at a tie-up with the Social Democrats under a new chief. He has repeatedly praised SPO Defence Minister Hans-Peter Doskozil. The former head of the national rail company has been chancellor for less than 18 months and already cuts an embattled figure, his party having been involved in a smear scandal it blames on an adviser he hired. A poor showing on Sunday could put his position at risk. He and Kurz can barely hide their contempt for each other, making it unlikely they would work together. He and Heinz-Christian Strache of the Freedom Party have had some cordial head-to-head debates, though Kern says their parties are still worlds apart . HEINZ-CHRISTIAN STRACHE, FREEDOM PARTY (FPO) The trained dental technician who has headed the far-right Freedom Party for more than a decade has cut an unusually relaxed figure this election, perhaps because he and his party have a good chance of being kingmaker. He has praised Kern for a more open approach to dealing with him and he has led a campaign that has kept his options open, railing against immigration but also calling for social fairness , a core issue for the center left. Kurz has accused the FPO and the Social Democrats of holding early talks on forming a coalition, but Strache is a political veteran who is eager to become vice chancellor and is likely to seek real concessions before forming an alliance. Doskozil shot to fame in 2015 as a provincial police chief who oversaw Austria s biggest influx of people during Europe s migration crisis. He was soon appointed defense minister and made his party s pointman on immigration. Doskozil has taken a tougher stance on securing the country s borders, prompting a diplomatic spat with Italy but earning praise from both Strache and Kurz. He is also from the eastern province of Burgenland, where his party and the FPO share power. He would be a strong contender to take over the party leadership if Kern were weakened, though he would most likely be opposed by the party s left wing, based in the SPO stronghold of Red Vienna . The former Greens leader won a close-fought election against an opponent from the Freedom Party and has said he would seek to prevent Strache from becoming chancellor. He has since rowed back, saying he would merely want any government to be pro-European. What that means for Strache is unclear. His party calls for Brussels to transfer power to member states and says a currency union only makes sense between countries with similar economies. As head of state Van der Bellen has the power to appoint and dismiss governments, and presidents have previously played a crucial role in forming coalitions. (For a graphic on Austrian parliamentary election, click tmsnrt.rs/2hKIi65) | 1 | [
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FMD53 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: AMATRICE, Italy — A strong earthquake struck a mountainous stretch of central Italy early Wednesday, killing at least 241 people, trapping scores under debris and setting off tremors that awakened residents in Rome, nearly 100 miles to the southwest. The earthquake, which had a preliminary magnitude of 6. 2, struck at 3:36 a. m. about 6. 5 miles southeast of the town of Norcia in the Umbria region, followed by about 200 aftershocks over the next several hours, including a 5. tremor at 4:33 a. m. The authorities said the quake was comparable in intensity to one in 2009 in the Abruzzo region of central Italy that killed more than 300 people. Towns in three regions — Umbria, Lazio and Marche — were devastated by the quake, which could be felt as far away as Bologna in the north and Naples in the south. As of Wednesday, the deaths appeared to be concentrated in four communities: at least 86 in the towns of Amatrice and Accumoli, in Lazio, and at least 32 in Marche, in the village of Arquata del Tronto and the hamlet of Pescara del Tronto. On Thursday, the Italian Civil Protection Department said 241 people were confirmed dead, and hundreds more injured. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, speaking Wednesday from Rieti, a city in Lazio near the epicenter, likened the affected communities to “a family that has been hit but won’t stop. †He vowed that the government would quickly start to rebuild, noting widespread anger over the long delays in rebuilding after the 2009 quake. “Reconstruction is what will allow this community to live and to restart,†he said. Immacolata Postiglione, the head of the emergency unit for the Civil Protection Department, said on Wednesday that more than 1, 000 people were expected to spend the night in four camps being set up in the area. She added that an unknown number of tourists had not been fully accounted for. “The number of missing people is undefined at the moment,†she said. The mayor of Amatrice, Sergio Pirozzi, said that “half the town no longer exists,†adding that rescue teams were digging through the rubble, “hoping that most people were alive. †The historic center of the town, with buildings dating from the Middle Ages, was destroyed. “The problem is removing people from under the rubble,†he said. Asked how many people he thought were still trapped or dead underneath debris, he said, “Many, many. †Mr. Pirozzi added that Amatrice had been cut off because of damage to roads and a bridge, and in a live television broadcast, he appealed for assistance. The town’s missing reportedly included two refugees from Afghanistan and three nuns and four older guests at a local boardinghouse. The town’s hospital had to be evacuated, but its patients were not injured, the news agency ANSA reported. The hamlet of Pescara del Tronto was all but destroyed. “When I arrived at the break of day, I saw a destroyed village, screams, death,†Bishop Giovanni D’Ercole of Ascoli Piceno, who visited the hamlet, told Vatican Radio. He said he had blessed “the bodies of two children buried under the rubble. †Mr. Renzi, in brief remarks before he left Rome, thanked rescue workers and volunteers who had dug through debris, some with their bare hands, to reach trapped people, and said the nation had rallied to help. “No family, no city, no hamlet will be left alone,†he said. Expressions of solidarity and offers of help poured in from France, Germany, Israel and other countries, as well as from the European Commission. Ambulances raced back and forth on one of the main roads to Amatrice, where a courtyard in a palazzo had been turned into an impromptu morgue. CNN showed footage of construction equipment’s being used to try to comb through giant pieces of debris in Amatrice and of rescuers standing on huge piles of rubble where homes once stood, evidence of the enormous scale of the rescue effort. “We need chain saws, shears to cut iron bars and jacks to remove beams,†a civil protection worker, Andrea Gentili, told The Associated Press. “Everything, we need everything. †A video posted to YouTube by the State Forestry Corps showed a woman trapped under debris in the rural town of Capodacqua, as a man encouraged her to remain calm. Nonprofit agencies put out calls for blood donations. Massimo Cialente, the mayor of L’Aquila, the town near the epicenter of the 2009 Abruzzo earthquake, said that 250 temporary homes built after that disaster would be available for newly displaced people. Pope Francis skipped the catechism lesson during his Wednesday general audience and led pilgrims at St. Peter’s Square in praying for the victims, holding a rosary in his right hand. “I cannot fail to express my heartfelt sorrow and spiritual closeness to all those present in the zones afflicted,†he said in remarks released by the Vatican. “I also express my condolences to those who have lost loved ones, and my spiritual support to those who are anxious and afraid. Hearing the mayor of Amatrice say that the town no longer exists, and learning that there are children among the dead, I am deeply saddened. †The earthquake was felt across a broad area pockmarked with dozens of small towns. Italian officials said it was difficult to gauge the number of casualties or the damage as the ground kept trembling through the night. Fabrizio Curcio, the director of the Civil Protection Department, said that the earthquake had been severe and that national emergency procedures had been activated. Mr. Curcio said mayors in the affected areas were monitoring the destruction. “They know the territory best,†he said. By early morning, rescue operations had been able to reach the most damaged towns, he said, adding, “We have to carry out an analysis of the territory and see if there are other places that have to be reached. †On social media, there were many reports of friends or relatives’ being buried or trapped, and local residents said that the rescue effort was hindered by the fact that teams were having difficulty getting to the mountainous area, where most towns are reachable only along winding country roads. Facebook activated its safety check feature for the region, which allows users to mark themselves as safe and quickly alert friends and family after a crisis or a natural disaster. In Norcia, dozens of residents wrapped in blankets greeted the dawn in the town’s main square. “Much of our patrimony is damaged, but there are no victims,†Mayor Nicola Alemanno told RaiNews24. “That is the good news. †The United States Geological Survey said the people in the region lived in structures that were a “mix of vulnerable and construction. †| 1 | [
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FMD54 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Was the GM bailout REALLY about American jobs? The taxpayers were sold a bill of goods on the GM bailout and still haven t seen anything but jobs going overseas. The American worker and American taxpayer deserve better!In 2016, General Motors will roll out for the first time in the United States a new model of Buick built exclusively in China: the Buick Envision.It s the first time the iconic American auto manufacturer will sell cars built in China in the United States since receiving a sizable taxpayer-funded bailout at the end of the George W. Bush administration and beginning of the Barack Obama administration.The Buick Envision which was available in China for purchase as far back as 2014 will make its official debut in the United States in the summer of 2016.The Buick Envision bills itself a luxury crossover designed to turn heads and welcome you in. A quick search of Buick Envision leads to the Buick Envision s website where one can explore all the features and design of the vehicle. The website doesn t appear to make any reference to the fact that the Envision is manufactured in China.The issue of U.S. auto manufacturers moving production facilities overseas has taken a center stage this presidential election, with the rise of both billionaire Donald Trump in the Republican Party and of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)16% of Vermont in the Democratic Party.Trump has drawn attention to GM competitor Ford for the company s decision to move manufacturing to Mexico, but Ford wasn t the recipient of a taxpayer-funded bailout. Sanders, meanwhile, has used his opposition to the bailouts to show that he isn t influenced by crony capitalism all while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has tried to take credit for saving the auto industry with her support of the bailout.Breitbart News reached out to American Jobs Alliance to get its reaction to GM s decision to import Chinese-produced cars. When the taxpayers bailed out General Motors, we were told it was all about saving jobs in America. Now GM turns around and throws Americans under the wheels of Buicks made in China. Where does it stop? Will General Motors build Cadillacs, Chevys and GMC trucks in China next? Curtis Ellis executive director American Jobs Alliance told Breitbart News.General Motors has also announced plans to sell a Chinese manufactured hybrid Cadillac, the CT6 in American markets. Flint was known for decades as Buick City. It s now jobless, bankrupt and destitute, Ellis continued.Read more: Breitbart | 0 | [
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FMD55 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: As Democratic presidential candidates begin to include a debt-free college system as part of their respective campaigns, New Jersey Gov. and Republican contender Chris Christie thinks the push is a “typical liberal approach.â€
Christie stopped at Iowa State University Thursday to deliver his fourth most recent policy address. Among his talking points were dealing with teachers’ unions and how to handle the increasing costs of college.
“That is a typical liberal approach. It is wrong,†he said. “If college graduates are going to reap the greater economic rewards and opportunities of earning a degree, then it seems fair for them to support the cost of the education they’re receiving.â€
Christie spoke about his father joining the army in order to pay for college, because his father, at the time, couldn’t afford to pay for his own education. He went to Rutgers University after his service through the G.I. Bill.
“We all need to take personal responsibility to grasp the opportunities in higher education, but also one where we can get a leg up when we need it,†Christie said.
Rather than make higher education free for students, Christie instead proposed that Congress support low-income students by continuing to fund aid programs. He noted that while Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants and Perkins Loans have declined, the availability of Pell grants has expanded. But that may not be the case according to a March 2015 study by The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which found Pell grant funding is actually being cut.
Christie also said there should be tax breaks for donors to higher education grant organizations and income-share agreements. This would allow a student to repay the private financing he or she received for college with a percentage of his or her future income.
What do you think? Is a debt-free college realistic? How can students combat increasing costs of higher education? | 1 | [
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FMD56 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Call it pink and blue America. To the many divides this ugly presidential campaign has exposed, add the chasm over the treatment of women, the plight of men and the proper roles of each. This was an election that showed how much we still talk past one another when we talk about gender. It made plain profound gaps in how men and women perceive one another’s lives and prerogatives. This was an election in which the grievances of white men — their economic upheaval, their cultural displacement — exploded. The fallout included toxic paroxysms of racism, Islamophobia, and sexism. Misogyny, it appears, thrives in corners of the United States. Donald J. Trump’s — the sexual swagger, the belittling of his opponents, his need to dominate — appealed to some men who believed he could restore them to their rightful place. Yet men at Trump rallies also spoke of their faith that Mr. Trump, whose business acumen they revered, would bring an outsider’s willingness to take on the elites who put them down. The campaign became a battle of two caricatures: male chauvinist pig against scheming, dishonest woman. It exposed parallel universes. In one, women flooded social media with their memories of sexual assault after Mr. Trump was caught on tape boasting about forcing himself on women. In another, men dismissed the tape as locker room talk or were surprised at how many women told them such harassment was commonplace. This is an intimate divide. The boundaries of pink and blue America are fluid, and they come up within households and communities. The gender chasm is bound up with class and confounds easy categorization. There are men who embrace violent misogyny and men who deplore it, women who shrugged off the “Access Hollywood†tape and hate Hillary Clinton with as much fervor as any man. A majority of white women voted for Mr. Trump, exit polls by Edison Research suggest. While polling does not reach into individual marriages, the results suggest a marital gap — 58 percent of married men voted for Mr. Trump compared with 47 percent of married women, according to exit polls. A YouGov poll published on Oct. 9 offered a glimpse into what the veteran pollster Celinda Lake calls the “Sure, Honey†factor: percent of married women said they planned to vote for Mrs. Clinton 33 percent of married men said they thought their spouse would vote for her. As in politics, so in the workplace. At work, women have made substantial inroads and dominate the (and lower paid) segments of the economy, the “pink collar†industries such as health and education. More than a fifth of American men between 20 and 65 had no paid work last year. But men consistently underestimate the barriers that women confront. In a study of more than 34, 000 employees at 132 companies, 54 percent of men thought that the best opportunities would go to the most deserving employees regardless of gender just 44 percent of women believed that. The survey, conducted by Lean In and McKinsey and Company and released in late September, found that a third of women thought their gender was a disadvantage in getting a raise or promotion. On campus, young men and women are facing off over what is assault and what is a sexual pass gone awry. Young men frequently protest that they are denied due process in campus hearings of sexual assault young women charge that their attackers too often go unpunished. Even reading habits diverge: Women read mysteries and true crime men read science fiction and history, according to Peter the president of Codex Group, which surveys reading patterns. There has been much talk of healing in this fervid season. The racism that President Obama’s election forced to the surface emboldened the but also forced many white Americans to acknowledge lasting inequities. That may well be the case during the tenure of President Trump: an eruption of sexism and an inability to deny its virulence. “Some men have this feeling that women are coming — in education, on polls, on social media, they have a voice,†said Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research. “This upends a long history of women knowing their place. †Katy Cockrell, 25, backed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, but found herself weeping as she cast a vote for Mrs. Clinton and thought of her grandmothers. “They lived in this ‘Mad Men’ era, and I thought about how much I admired them as they fought the sexism they’d experienced,†she said. Now, she added of Mr. Trump, “the tough part for me and women of all ages is that we are going to look at him every day and be reminded of every time we’ve faced sexism in our own lives. †Ron Ritz, who attended a Trump rally in Ambridge, Pa. last month, saw in Mrs. Clinton a symbol of all that’s gone wrong in his world. Steel and energy companies once dotted the area now they are gone. “We had industries that shut down,†Mr. Ritz, 69, said. “People have no jobs, things are bad. And she turns around and tells them they’re deplorable. That’s like kicking a dog that’s tied. †Some research has found a backlash when men feel they are losing their status. Iris Bohnet, the director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, is a behavioral economist who believes in the principle of “nudging†people toward social norms. That typically means telling people, for example, that their friends have voted in order to prompt them to vote, too. To test if she could induce diversity in hiring, Ms. Bohnet told research volunteers that the group before them had hired a predominantly female team. Men balked and chose to hire more men than women, she found. So what comes next, now that Mr. Trump has defied political convention and political correctness? Some of the men who feel pushed aside are looking to him to rebalance the scales they feel have tipped against them. Many women are wondering whether words and deeds that a of feminism tried to put off limits will now be acceptable. The pink and blue divide may prove as deep, fractious and mutually incomprehensible as the red and blue. | 1 | [
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FMD57 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: What do you think about the school s response to this police officer s request?The painting Officer Dave Hamblin found offensive (Facebook)A police officer father in the United States has taken to social media to complain about a piece of artwork displayed at his daughter s school.Kentucky cop Dave Hamblin is outraged by the painting which depicts two black people with a gun pointed at their head.On one half of the painting, under the title 1930 , a Ku Klux Klan member is pointing the gun.On the other half, titled 2015 , a white police officer is shown pointing the gun at what looks like a African American child.The painting was from a school project inspired by racial violence depicted in Harper Lee s book, To Kill A Mockingbird.Police officer Dave Hamblin, who goes by the name Dave Kingmen on Facebook, says the picture is upsetting and creates future cop haters . We speak of tolerance, we speak of changing hostile environments, we speak of prejudice, and we speak of racial relations, yet, when it comes to hostility toward police, their families, and profiling them through bigotry we are expected to tolerate it, Kingmen wrote.. I will not, nor will my child. The cop has asked for the picture to be removed but the school has seemingly turned down his request. When discussing social injustice, people will likely be offended by some topic, said Tracy Green, a school spokesperson. The drawing is a student s artistic representation based on the lens through which the student viewed that issue and the student has a First Amendment right to share that opinion. Via: Yahoo | 0 | [
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FMD58 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: President-elect Donald Trump’s team could move the White House press briefing room from the West Wing to another location that accommodates more media from around the country and the world, senior officials in the incoming administration said on Sunday. Esquire magazine reported on Saturday that the Trump administration planned to relocate White House reporters from the press room to the White House Conference Center or the Old Executive Office Building next door. Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,†incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said on Sunday that Trump’s team discussed moving news conferences out of the small West Wing briefing room to the Old Executive Office Building, which is part of the White House complex. Such a move would mark a potential change in access for reporters as the current briefing room is only steps from the Oval Office. Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Priebus both said no decision had been made. Trump has had a contentious relationship with some prominent U.S. news organization that he refers to derisively as the “mainstream media,†banning some news outlets during the presidential campaign and publicly criticizing individual reporters. On CBS’ “Face the Nation,†Pence did not respond directly when asked whether potentially moving reporters was a logistical move or a punitive one. “The interest of the team is to make sure that we accommodate the broadest number of people who are interested and media from around the country and around the world,†Pence said. Tensions with Trump escalated last week after some news organizations reported unsubstantiated allegations that suggested the president-elect could be blackmailed by Russia. At a raucous news conference last week in New York, Trump pointedly refused to take a question from a CNN reporter and called the news outlet “fake news.†The White House Correspondents’ Association objected in a statement to “any move that would shield the president and his advisers from the scrutiny of an on-site White House press corps,†and said it would fight to keep the briefing room and access to senior administration officials open. Jeff Mason, a Reuters White House correspondent who is president of the association, said in a statement on Sunday he met for nearly two hours with incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer. Mason said he made it clear the association “would view it as unacceptable if the incoming administration sought to move White House reporters out of the press work space behind the press briefing room†as Trump’s team considers a larger briefing room. “Access in the West Wing to senior administration officials, including the press secretary, is critical to transparency and to journalists’ ability to do their jobs,†Mason said. Mason said Spicer “expressed concern that journalists adhere to a high level of decorum at press briefings and press conferences. I made clear that the WHCA would object, always, to a reporter being thrown out of a briefing or press conference.†Priebus said: “I know that some of the folks in the press are uptight about this, and I understand.†He said the only thing that had been discussed was whether or not the initial press conferences would be held in the existing press room that he said was “very, very tiny.†The current press room has about 49 seats. “So no one is moving out of the White House,†Priebus said. The White House Conference Center had been used as a temporary press room during the George W. Bush administration The briefing room was built in 1970 by Richard Nixon over an old swimming pool installed by Franklin Roosevelt that was used regularly by John F. Kennedy but underutilized by later administrations. But the presence of reporters at the White House dates back even farther. In addition to theater-style seats where the White House press secretary conducts daily briefings, the press area of the White House includes workspace for television, radio, print and online news organizations that cover the administration on a daily basis. | 1 | [
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FMD59 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Scam involving fake Home Depot coupons on Facebook. Claim summaries: Rumor: Home Depot is giving out coupons to Facebook users.
contextual information: In May 2015, a fraudulent offer for $200 Home Depot coupons began circulating on Facebook. The message contained a link that redirected bargain hunters to a website adorned with Home Depot's logo, which had nothing to do with the real Home Depot. The $200 Home Depot coupon scam is very similar to other schemes that targeted Costco, Amazon, and Kroger shoppers. While each scam has slight variations, they all feature three main components. First, they require people to like or share the message on Facebook in an attempt to spread the scam across the Internet. Second, they direct people to complete a survey that extracts personal information such as email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, and credit card numbers. Lastly, these scams never end with "free" rewards, because users must first agree to sign up for several costly, difficult-to-cancel "Reward Offers" hidden in the fine print to claim their coupons. In April 2017, another Facebook coupon scam targeted Home Depot. In that iteration, the chain was purportedly doling out $50 coupons "to celebrate Mother's Day," and links directed users to www.homedepot.com-grabitnow.us (a URL clearly unaffiliated with the legitimate Home Depot website). Home Depot did not address the 2017 Facebook coupon scam on their social media channels as of April 24, 2017, but it was nevertheless clearly not a legitimate promotion affiliated with the chain. The Better Business Bureau provided these three tips to identify scams on Facebook: Don't believe what you see. It's easy to steal the colors, logos, and headers of an established organization. Scammers can also make links look like they lead to legitimate websites and emails appear to come from a different sender. Legitimate businesses do not ask for credit card numbers or banking information on customer surveys. If they do ask for personal information, like an address or email, be sure there's a link to their privacy policy. Watch out for rewards that are too good to be true. If the survey is real, you may be entered in a drawing to win a gift card or receive a small discount off your next purchase. Few businesses can afford to give away $50 gift cards for completing a few questions. | 0 | [
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FMD60 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: November 7, 2016 Influential Journalist Nails It: Trump Will Be In Jail Soon, But A Clinton Win Means Stalemate Term
In an interview with The National , New Yorker journalist and New York Times best-selling author, Malcolm Gladwell, was asked by Wendy Mesley to predict what the next four years will look like after tomorrow’s votes are in.
With understandable trepidation, the show’s host inquired what would happen if Trump wins, to which the English-born Canadian writer’s answer was simple:
“I think he’ll be in jail within a year. We’ve got the Trump University fraud case, we probably have criminal charges coming out of his charitable donation. We’ve got all of the Russian ties we don’t know much about. He’s got so many legal problems, I suspect he’ll spend the next few years huddled with his lawyers.”
So, what does Gladwell think will happen when Hillary is elected?
“Republicans in Congress will start an investigation of her on day one, which will only end when she leaves office four years later. The forecast for the next four years is just stalemate. Their hatred will not be satiated by a Hillary Clinton victory, it will be enhanced. For twenty years they have been coming after this woman and they’re gonna keep coming after her.” Adding, “It will result in some kind of political paralysis for sure.”
Gladwell does not paint a very inspiring picture of a Clinton win, for sure, but it is better than the alternative. We all know Trump belongs in jail, but he can’t be allowed to bring the entire nation down with him. In short, get your ass out and vote!
Also, watch the full CBC interview where Gladwell discusses sexism, elitism, racism and the baffling media obsession with Hillary’s emails:
Featured image via video screengrab Share this Article! | 0 | [
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FMD61 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and (Virtual) Spore along side Daniel Spaulding from Soul of the East, Andy Nowicki (the Alt Right Novelist) and FunkSoul & Randy J (21WIRE & ACR contributors), for the hundred and twenty first episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.This week on the show the ACR Brain-Trust is back with another meeting of the Social Reject Club in the No Friends Left Zone and the gang is discussing a future dystopia full of sex robots that come complete with shy mode artificial intelligence aspects, Daniel Spaulding joins for an update on American swamp politics and to scoff away the North Korea is a nuclear threat propaganda. FunkSoul and Andy Nowicki bring their brands of analysis to the James Damore story and more.Direct Download Episode #121Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research: | 0 | [
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FMD62 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Is the Kroll Settlement Administration LLC Text Message a Scam or Legit? Claim summaries: The genuine text message mentioned a T-Mobile data breach from 2021 and said recipients were "eligible for benefits from a class action settlement."
contextual information: In late October 2022, we received inquiries from readers who asked if a text message from Kroll Settlement Administration LLC about a 2021 T-Mobile data breach was a scam or legit. We can confirm that a message directing recipients to the URL t-mobilesettlement.com was a legitimate notification. t-mobilesettlement.com The message appeared like this: This text was sent out beginning around Oct. 20 and read as follows: From Kroll Settlement Administration LLC. If your information was compromised in the 2021 T-MOBILE DATA BREACH, you are eligible for benefits from a Class Action Settlement, Case No. 4:21-md-03019 (BCW). A federal court has authorized this Notice. This is not a solicitation from a lawyer. Visit https://t-mobilesettlement.com to file a claim using your Unique Class Member ID: (ID here). A Twitter user asked the official and verified T-Mobile account @TMobileHelp about the text message: asked In response, T-Mobile answered, "Yes, this is the proposed, agreed upon settlement for the consumer class action filing related to the criminal attack of our systems we experienced in August 2021." answered Readers may be wondering what this "criminal attack" was all about. According to The New York Times, it was announced on July 22 that T-Mobile had reached a $500 million settlement for a data breach that hit the company in August 2021: The New York Times In a court filing late Friday, the mobile phone giant said it would pay $350 million to settle the customers claims and spend $150 million over the next few years bolstering its cybersecurity protection and technologies. The breach affected 76.6 million people in the United States, according to the company. It exposed highly sensitive data, including customers first and last names, Social Security numbers and drivers license information. It was not clear how much individual T-Mobile customers would receive from the settlement, though the proposed agreement, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, stipulates that individual payments cannot exceed $2,500. As the Times said, the amount of money individuals would receive in the settlement was unclear. This appeared to depend upon the number of people who would file to receive a check. Just as an example, if 50 percent of the 76.6 million people who were affected received a payment from the $350 million fund, that would mean each person would only receive around $9. The Times published that lawyers for the wireless carrier said the settlement "did not mean the company was acknowledging any wrongdoing," but rather that these sorts of data breaches had frequently occurred for a number of companies "in the tech, banking and retail industries in recent years." Note: T-Mobile also released a statement following the July court filing, explaining that the company had, in its words, "doubled down" on its cybersecurity following the data breach. T-Mobile statement Corkery, Michael. T-Mobile Reaches $500 Million Settlement in Huge 2021 Data Breach. The New York Times, 23 July 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/business/t-mobile-hacking-settlement.html. Statement on Proposed Settlement. T-Mobile Newsroom, 22 July 2022, https://www.t-mobile.com/news/business/statement-on-proposed-settlement/. @TMobileHelp. Twitter, https://twitter.com/tmobilehelp/. | 1 | [
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FMD63 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Once Fired from Hot Dog on a Stick? Claim summaries: Many opponents of congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have decided to focus on fictitious criticisms.
contextual information: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been the subject of numerous false rumors and misleading memes ever since she won a seat as the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. One of the many disparaging attacks on the freshman lawmaker came in the form of a photograph that supposedly showed her working at a "Hot Dog on a Stick" stand (a staple of shopping mall food services) along with a piece of text claiming that she had been fired from that job for incompetence. The text of the meme stated, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was fired from a Hot Dog on a Stick job in 2008 for incompetence. And the Democrats elected her to Congress." This meme did not convey a credible story about Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. In fact, it didn't even feature a photograph of her. The picture used in the meme was taken by Flickr user Michael Zampeli and showed a young woman named Stephanie preparing a batch of lemonade at a Hot Dog on a Stick outlet. While the image used in the meme has been degraded to the point where the name tag on the food worker's hat is illegible, the original photograph on Flickr clearly showed that the tag bore the name "Stephanie." It should also be noted that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was elected to Congress at the age of 29. If this meme were true (which it is not), the alleged firing would have occurred when she was just 18 years old. This baseless meme is just the latest attack on the congresswoman. We've previously debunked rumors claiming that Ocasio-Cortez had a credit score of 430 and a history of evictions, and that her Green New Deal legislation included a provision requiring that men recycle their urine. | 0 | [
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FMD64 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Twitter is presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump s favorite platform for his many offensive rants. However, like most social media platforms, there are rules against certain kinds of language. That includes hate speech against marginalized groups of people. To that end, the Twitter account of singer Azealia Banks was recently shut down because of racist and homophobic hate speech. That is a good thing, but, none other than Bette Midler pointed out something that should be obvious to all: if they are applying this rule against bigotry on their social networking platform, why the hell wasn t Donald Trump banned from Twitter a long ass time ago?Midler tweeted:Twitter deactivated Azealia Banks account for homophobia & racism?So why is Donald Trump still here? Bette Midler (@BetteMidler) May 15, 2016Now, the thing is, nobody should be tweeting out hateful speech of any kind, but isn t it a little suspicious that Trump can troll women, be an open racist and misogynist on a regular basis via his Twitter account, and nothing happens to him? Instead, the social media giant chose to use a black woman as a way to make the point that they are cracking down on the cesspool of an atmosphere on that site.The thing is, the very nature Twitter means that it s going to be a pretty rough and tumble place to hang out. The platform lends itself to deliberately off the cuff, say what you think when you re thinking it remarks. That in and of itself is a recipe for disaster and perfect haven for trolling. The thing is, though, if you re going to try to clean the place up, Twitter powers that be, maybe you should start with the real problem, which is the likes of Donald Trump.That would send a REAL message. Nobody is saying that Azealia Banks didn t deserve to be suspended while she cools off for a bit, but the only message you sent with this suspension is a double standard when it comes to how you treat white men vs. how you treat black women. After all, Trump is running for president and has been as hateful as they come via your platform on a grand scale for eons now, and you ve done absolutely nothing. Is that really the message you want to send?Featured image via Bette Midler Twitter | 0 | [
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FMD65 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The billionaire class is getting very scared of two things: the fight for 15 movement and Bernie Sanders.The grassroots movement to elect Bernie Sanders and the movement to elect Bernie Sanders are very much fueled by the same thing. A drive to make the United States a nation, that once again, allows for all people to live a dignified life.Here is the ad:Of course, the billionaire class is not having any of that nonsense. That s why the Future 45 Super PAC is running an ad that tries to take out two progressive birds at the same time. The Intercept reports that future 45 is being run by Brian O. Walsh. He is a major player in the conservative dark money network, that works to bash left-wing candidates and issues.Future 45 appears to be primarily funded by two hedge fund managers that are supporting the Republican candidate, Marco Rubio.While this may seem troubling to those who support raising the minimum wage, or those who support Bernie Sanders, or both, this could be taken as a good sign. As Hillary Clinton likes to point out, she has faced a major brunt of negative attack ads from Republican SuperPACs. They fact that they are now attacking Sanders means that they are taking him seriously.I m not exactly sure who the ad for is for, though. The claims in the ad are the usual raising the minimum wage will kill jobs nonsense that comes from the right. They attack Sanders, saying that he will raise taxes. They fail to mention who would be paying the vast majority of those taxes billionaires like the ones who created the ad. Is Future 45 trying to sway voters to vote for Clinton because she will be much softer on Wall St. than Sanders? Or are they just trying to fill conservatives heads with talking points for the general election?Either way, both the Fight for 15 movement and Robin Hood Tax movement, which inspired Sanders plan to put a micro-tax on Wall St. speculation, are two pragmatic progressive ideas whose time has come.Featured image from video screenshot via YouTube | 0 | [
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FMD66 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Does NASA Data Show That Global Warming Isn't Causing a Sea Level Rise? Claim summaries: Dubious web sites generously provided the Internet with textbook examples of both cherry-picked data and the shameless conflation of weather with climate.
contextual information: On 26 July 2017, supplement and paranoia peddling website NaturalNews.com made a sweeping conclusion about climate change based on a portion of a single chart they found. The post, by Mike "Health Ranger" Adams, uses a time series of satellite sea level data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to argue that climate change is no big deal and that the mainstream media is ignoring data that proves him right: post NASAs own data reveal that world-wide ocean levels have been falling for nearly two years, dropping from a variation of roughly 87.5mm to below 85mm. These data, of course, clearly contradict the false narrative of rapid, never-ending rising ocean levels that flood continents and drown cities a key element of the climate change boogeyman fiction thats used to scare gullible youth into making Al Gore rich. To "prove" this, Adams points to NASAs satellite altimetry data used by scientists to precisely measure global average sea level change since 1993 which he says busts the whole global warming thing wide open, despite its fairly unambiguous long-term upward trend: The NASA chart allegedly showing that sea level is not rising. Credit: NASA. The region of the chart around the last two years of the record that allegedly proves global warming is a lie is highlighted above. It shows a period of generally flat sea level rise. Astute chart readers, however, may note that there have been a number of times throughout the record in which sea level rise has been flat, or even briefly reversed, before continuing the more dominant rising trend. According to University of New South Wales climatologist and sea level expert John Church, this is the reason the "media" is "silent" on the issue; in fact, it is in no way newsworthy: The short term fall over the last year or so reported on the Natural News website is nothing out of the ordinary and in fact the fall seems less than several previous examples of sea level fall, such as [the drop documented in 2010-2011]. It does not seem to be a particularly noteworthy event. To understand why the event is not noteworthy, one needs to understand both the short- and long-term drivers of sea level change. From a long-term global perspective, there are two primary drivers of sea level rise: the first is the balance between water trapped in ice and water contained within the ocean itself. Simply put, when ice that is trapped on land melts, it increases the volume of water in the ocean, causing sea level to rise. primary drivers The second major driver is known as thermal expansion when water gets warmer it expands, increasing its volume. Research suggests that these two contributors alone explain 75 percent of the observed sea level rise since 1971. suggests These larger trends, however, can be dampened (or enhanced) by shorter term weather patterns. The most important factors to consider on this time-scale are the El Nio-La Nia cycle (which affects both water temperature, as well as evaporation and precipitation of moisture) and the hydrological issues associated with where rainwater falls on land. The best illustration of these factors combining to alter the overall trend of sea level rise is the 2010-2011 drop in sea level mentioned above. factors In this instance, the confluence of La Nia and a number of other atmospheric circulation patterns forced an anomalously large amount of rain to fall over the uniquely bowl-shaped continent of Australia, as described by Scientific American: described In most cases, though, water that falls on land eventually drains into the ocean. Even if a whole lot of rain fell in South America's Amazon, for example, it could slow sea-level rise for only about a couple of months, as it slowly made its way to the sea. So in order to make sea levels fall, the water had to be stored in a place where it didn't reach the ocean for a long while. That place, it turns out, was Australia. [...] Lake Eyre is the lowest point in Australia. It's usually a dry, salty flat. But when it rains heavily, the basin fills, and the lake teems with new life, as long-dormant seeds spring to life and birds flock to the lake. From 2010 to 2011, enough rain fell on Australia to fill the lower part of the lake almost completely, and the upper portion at least 75 percent. Australia got about a foot of rain more than normal over that period, said [National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist John] Fasullo. The continent stored that excess water for long enough to change global sea levels. That the world's smallest continent can affect global sea levels this way is pretty extraordinary, said Fasullo. It's also rare. [...] In addition to La Nia, other climate variations also played a role. Together, they forced the extraordinary rainfall and water storage in the Australian continent. Eventually, of course, this water evaporates and returns to the ocean, where it joins the expanding and increasing global ocean reservoir. We spoke to Fasullo the lead author on the study that documented the cause of the 2010-2011 drop in sea level about this current hiatus, and he told us it in no way conflicts with our understanding of the connection between global warming and sea level rise: Of course, this leveling does not conflict with our understanding of sea level rise and its main drivers. It is well known for example that sea level falls (in an anomalous sense) at the end of an El Nio due to drought subsiding over many tropical land areas such as the Amazon (water moves from the ocean to land surface) and heat being released from the ocean (as the tropical upper Pacific Ocean releases heat to the atmosphere, causing contraction). [The] recent leveling of sea level rise comes on the heels of an unprecedented rate of rise during the four years that preceded it (2011-14). In addition to global warming, this rise was also strongly influenced by the El Nio-La Nia cycle and so it too should not be oversold. Ultimately, the story published by Adams attempts to disguise a weather as a climatological trend, University of California, Santa Cruz Climatologist Gary Griggs told us: One or two or three years of weather means very little in the long-term record of sea-level rise just as it would have very little meaning for global temperature records. Due to a variety of atmospheric circulation patterns and variations, temperatures vary from year to year as does rainfall, etc., the recent 4 year drought in the west is a good example. Using two years of data to make sweeping claims about trends in the global climate system, especially when such fluctuations are known and understood by science, is misleading and inaccurate, and as such we rank this claim as false. Adams, Mike. "NASA Confirms: Sea Levels Have Been Falling Across the Planet for Two Years Media Silent."
Natural News. 26 July 2017. NASA. "Understanding Sea Level"
Accessed 1 August 2017. IPCC. "Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]"
2014 (Chapter 13). Boening, Carmen, et al. "The 2011 La Nia: So Strong, the Oceans Fell."
Geophysical Research Letters. 4 October 2012.
Ogburn, Stephanie Page. "A Scientist Explains the Mystery of Recent Sea-Level Drop."
Scientific American. 20 August 2013. | 0 | [
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FMD67 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Fighters from Yemen s armed Houthi movement blew up house the house of ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the center of the capital Sanaa on Monday, residents reported, as his whereabouts remain unknown. His loyalists have lost ground on the sixth day of heavy urban combat with the Iran-aligned Houthis, his former allies in nearly three years of war with a Saudi-led military coalition. | 1 | [
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FMD68 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Email Print After writing a lengthy suicide note exposing terrifying plans the government has for American citizens, a US Customs Agent walked onto a pier in NYC and blew his brains out. Sources inside the New York City Police Department have revealed to SuperStation95, the contents of a suicide note found on the body and they are utterly frightening. The note, which says it was written over the course of a full week in advance, outlines why the officer chose to shoot himself: “The America I grew up in, and cherished, has been murdered by its own federal government. Our Constitution has become meaningless and our laws politicized so badly, they are no longer enforced except for political purposes” the note said. “Our elected officials are, to a person, utterly corrupt and completely devoid of any love or respect for the country which pays them. To them, everything is about getting and keeping power, and making illicit money from backroom deals.” The 42-year-old U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer shot himself with a 40 caliber service pistol inside Pier 40 in Hudson River Park at around 11 am. (1) A source at the scene described how the officer calmly walked into the park, took out his pistol and shot himself in the head. A ICE federal agent fatally shot himself in the head at waterfront Chelsea park (pictured) in New York Friday The 42-year-old worked as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer and his offices were nearby to the scene of the shooting. He was rushed to Lenox Hill Hospital but doctors were unable to save him. (2) ICE released a statement Friday afternoon: ‘Tragically, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation officer from the New York field office suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound and has passed away.’ It added: ‘The agency is not releasing further details pending notification of the officer’s next of kin. According to the suicide note, the Officer said: “I was hired to enforce the law; to capture and deport people who come to this country against our laws. But now, if I dare to do that, I face being suspended or fired because our President refuses to faithfully execute the duties of his office. Instead, I come to work each day, and collect a paycheck twice a month, for intentionally doing little to nothing. I cannot and will not be party to this fraud; to this usurpation of the law, or to the despicable politicians betraying our nation” the note continued. ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility is reviewing the matter and coordinating with the New York Police Department on the investigation. The agent worked at a field office in lower Manhattan, just blocks away from the scene of the shooting. MENTIONS “FEMA CAMPS” FOR AMERICANS (3) In the suicide note, the officer revealed what he claimed are terrifying plans the feds have been finalizing: “If the American people knew what this government is planning, they would rise-up and overthrow it. If I or anyone else in the federal government revealed what is coming, we would be killed anyway, so now I will reveal what I know. We in federal law enforcement have been drilling for several years to control riots and uprisings from a coming financial collapse and widespread bank failures. The drills involve life-sized images of American men, even women and children, whom we are told to shoot for “practice” and to “get used to it.” We have been told that the economy is terminally ill and will fail in 2016. We are also told the banks are all insolvent and the FDIC doesn’t have nearly enough funds to bail out depositors. We are told these events are unavoidable and it is imperative that the government survive when people rise-up over this. When the collapse takes place, detention camps created under the FEMA REX-84 program in the 1980’s to house illegal aliens whom we were going to deport, will instead be used to imprison American Citizens whom the government feels constitute a “threat.” American citizens will be rounded-up without warrants and imprisoned without trial for God knows how long. These camps have been equipped to carry out Hitler-scale killings! An actual “purge” of Americans citizens by the very government which they, themselves, created and pay for! I cannot be party to this.” The Note goes on to say talk about state-level national guard being disarmed by the feds (4) and over 1 Billion rounds of ammunition purchased by the feds (5) and the Military over-deployed and being shrunk (6) : “The government knows the military will rise-up to stop this, so our military is being deployed overseas, intentionally involved in foreign fights, and deliberately shrunk in size so they cannot be here or help Americans! This is why certain ammunition and weaponry has been removed from state-level National Guard Armories and over a Billion rounds of hollow point ammunition has been bought by the federal government. The states themselves have been disarmed of military-grade firepower so they cannot defend themselves from the federal activities. This is also why local police departments have been militarized and provided with armored vehicles and weapons of war” the note says. “When the inevitable collapse begins to take place, electric power to the entire country will be shut off, as will all forms of communication. All banks will be immediately closed; no one will be able to get any money because all ATM’s will be offline. Credit, Debit and EBT cards will not function. Anyone without cash will have no way to get any. The Emergency Alert System will be used to takeover all broadcast stations and tell the public this is a result of a cyber attack. But while the American people patiently await things to get back to normal, the government will unleash round-ups of citizens they deem militants or dangerous . With all civilian communications out, and all TV and radio stations taken over by the Emergency Alert System, by the time word spreads of what is taking place, the government will already have the upper hand. Federal Prisoners to be GASSED TO DEATH The note goes into a wide array of very specific plans and does so in extremely specific detail about what the feds are allegedly planning. For instance, it talks about federal prisons: “Every federal prison has been outfitted with lethal gas systems. When things go bad, all prisoners in all prisons will be placed in their cells on lock-down. Prison staff will depart the facility, and a certain designated person will trigger a lethal gas system. All federal prisoners, regardless of their crime or their sentence, will be gassed to death in their cells. Once the gas clears, the dead will be removed and the prisons will then be used to house citizens who fight against the federal onslaught.” PRIESTS RECRUITED TO QUELL OPPOSITION (7) The note makes mention about Priests, Rabbis and Clerics from various religious denominations having been recruited and trained to quell resistance: “So intent is the government to succeed they have recruited priests, rabbis and clerics from various religions to quote appropriate Scriptures about “obeying government.” They are being trained to tell people not to fight back and that their best hope is to pray.” EXECUTIVE ORDER 13603 (8) The suicide note goes to great lengths about Executive Order #13603 signed by President Obama on March 16, 2012. The note details:
Executive order 13603 about “National Defense Resources Preparedness.”
This 10-page document is a blueprint for a federal takeover of the economy. Specifically, Obama’s plan involves seizing control of:
* “All commodities and products that are capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals”
* “All forms of energy”
* “All forms of civil transportation”
* “All usable water from all sources”
* “Health resources – drugs, biological products, medical devices, materials, facilities, health supplies, services and equipment”
* Forced labor ( or “induction” as the executive order delicately refers to military conscription)
Moreover, federal officials would “issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources.” SuperStation95 took a look at this Executive Order from the Government Printing Office (GPO) web site and, sure enough, everything contained in the Officer’s suicide note about this Executive Order is true! To be sure, much of this language has appeared in national security executive orders that previous presidents have issued periodically since the beginning of the Cold War. But more than previous national security executive orders, Obama’s 13603 seems to describe a potentially totalitarian regime obsessed with control over everything. Obama’s executive order makes no effort to justify the destruction of liberty, no effort to explain how amassing totalitarian control would enable government to deal effectively with cyber sabotage, suicide bombings, chemical warfare, nuclear missiles or other possible threats. There’s nothing in executive order 13603 about upholding the Constitution or protecting civil liberties. In what circumstances, one might ask, would a president try to carry out this audacious plan? Executive order 13603 says with ominous ambiguity: during “ the full spectrum of emergencies .” DATABASE OF PREPPERS The suicide note touches on the subject of “Preppers:” “We in federal law enforcement have also been told that the government has a full database of all so-called “Preppers.” Those people will be dealt with first — by armed federal agents coming to take their guns, then their food stocks, so food can be re-distributed as the government sees fit.” If the dead Officer’s claims about an unavoidable economic and banking collapse are true, would it then follow that the Executive Order put in place by Obama, might be activated? Would all of us find ourselves in forced labor, while the government takes OUR food and re-distrubutes it under the Executive Order’s paragraph about “allocating resources?” This is terrifying stuff! There is much more to the suicide note and SuperStation95 is considering how much more to publish. As such, this is a developing story and readers should check back for further updates. THESE COULD SIMPLY BE INSANE RAMBLINGS It is not our intent to cause panic or alarm and while we expect readers to be intelligent enough to discern this on their own, we feel compelled to point out that these could simply be paranoid ramblings of an insane person who killed himself. On the other hand, these could also be revelations by a person who was so distraught over the ugly truth, that he killed himself. We at SuperStation95 just don’t know. We urge everyone to stay calm, think rationally, and decide whether or not to take any action to prepare, in case this person’s suicide note is telling the truth. SOURCING / CORROBORATION
(1) ICE Agent Suicide in NYC: NY Daily News
(2) Taken to Lenox Hill Hospital NY Post
(3) REX-84 FEMA CAMPS Wikipedia
(4) National Guard being stripped of Crew-Serviceable Weapons and communications gear – Republic Broadcasting, John Stadmiller
(5) Dept. of Homeland Security Orders 1.6 BILLION rounds of ammunition Forbes Magazine
(6) US Army over-deployed and intentionally shrunk ARMY TIMES
(7) Clergy Recruited by Gov’t to quell opposition KSLA-TV Channel 12
(8) Executive Order 13603 White House US Government Printing Office UPDATE – MAY 10, 2016 10:00 PM EDT– The web site SNOPES.com has issued a declaration that our story is some sort of hoax, that we are somehow NOT a radio station and attributed the story – and this web site – to a former FBI National Security Intelligence Asset named Hal Turner, whom she smears as a “White Supremacist.” This is not the first time SNOPES.com has made accusations against us simply because we have been the exclusive source of politically-incorrect news. And while we stand-by our stories in every regard, this barrage of attacks by SNOPES.com is becoming libelous.
We address the SNOPES.com accusations one at a time: 1) No aspect of our story above is a hoax. What Snopes.com seems to take issue with is the existence and content of a suicide note which was revealed to us by the NYPD. The person from NYPD who gave us this information did so after trying to get two other New York Media outlets, (one TV, the other a newspaper) to publish the story and was rebuked within minutes by media contacts who said “we won’t touch this with a ten foot pole.” The fact that the NYPD now claims “no note was found” does not surprise us at all; NYPD has very close ties with the feds and the feds have an intense interest in concealing or discrediting the information it contained. 2) According to the FCC Licensing Bureau, 95.1 FM in New York City is the HD-4 frequency for WNSH 94.7 FM as licensed by the FCC as shown HERE 3) Our story was written by our News Room staff, not anyone named Hal Turner. 4) Mr. Turner was formerly a paying customer of this radio station from October 7, 2015 thru March 30, 2016. He bought air time from us to air his personal radio show “The Hal Turner Show.” Finances caused Mr. Turner to cancel his programming on our radio station and continue his show on WBCQ International Shortwave , where he is on the air live from 9-11 PM every Wednesday evening. Mr. Turner’s web site is: HalTurnerShow.com . He is welcome to return to our airwaves if his finances improve. 5) SNOPES.com claims Mr. Turner is a “white supremacist.” In reality Mr. Turner worked for the FBI from 1993 – 2008, with his TOD as the Joint Terrorism Task Force from 2003-2008. His job was to infiltrate white supremacist groups to thwart violent criminal acts by such persons. This information came out when the Obama Administration betrayed Mr. Turner in 2009 and arrested him for writing in 2009, what the government PAID HIM $3,000 TO SAY on DATELINE NBC and FOX NEWS CHANNEL just four years earlier in 2005! After three trials (two hung juries) Mr. Turner was Bankrupted by legal fees, was appointed a public defender, who threw the case, resulting in Mr. Turner’s conviction. For SNOPES.com to smear Mr. Turner as a “White Supremacist” when federal court records show the exact opposite, is a prime example of the utterly shoddy research and reporting provided by SNOPES.com
The criticism and SNOPES.com outright falsehoods about this story, and others, have been written mostly by:
Ms. Kim A Lacapria, Age 37 (born Mar 20, 1979 )
39 Cockonoe AVE
Babylon, NY 11702-1901 Those of you who are offended by this type of journalistic misconduct, may wish to contact Ms. LaCapria in a peaceful, lawful, non-threatening and non-violent manner to complain about her shoddy journalism. PLEASE DO NOT HARASS THIS IGNORANT PERSON and PLEASE,PLEASE,PLEASE do not make any threats or commit any intimidation. None of us need that and it will only result in serious legal trouble.
Ms. La Capria can be reached at: Tel. (516) 422-7943
(516) 422-7494 | 0 | [
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FMD69 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A top Republican took to the Senate floor Thursday to blame fired FBI Director James B. Comey for fanning conspiracy theories about the U.S. election that played right into Russia s hands. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has oversight of the FBI, also accused Mr. Comey of working to shade the truth by agreeing to the Obama administration s attempt to soft-pedal the criminal probe of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.Despite rampant public speculation, Mr. Comey kept hidden the fact that the president wasn t under investigation allowing conspiracy theories and speculation to run wild, Mr. Grassley said.But Mr. Comey refused, saying later that he had feared saying something he d later have to correct. None of this fiasco had to happen if Mr. Comey had just been transparent with the public, as I urged him to, Mr. Grassley said. They played right into Russia s hands, he added.The senator s remarks were striking. A fiercely independent lawmaker, Mr. Grassley has used his office to probe both Democrats and Republicans.He s now in charge of one of the probes on Capitol Hill looking into Mr. Comey s firing and other aspects of the 2016 election brouhaha. We re going to go where the facts take us, Mr. Grassley said.He said Democrats ended up fostering the very Russian meddling in American democracy that they decried and he specifically fingered Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, saying the New York Democrat knew from Mr. Comey that Mr. Trump wasn t under investigation but told the public differently.Mr. Grassley said that as a member of the Gang of Eight the four high-ranking lawmakers in each party who get the most thorough intelligence briefing Mr. Schumer knew Mr. Trump wasn t being probed. But Mr. Schumer told the media that the president was under investigation. And, of course, that further helped feed media hysteria, Mr. Grassley said. The minority leader even tried to say the Senate shouldn t vote on the Supreme Court nomination because the president was under investigation. And the whole time he knew it wasn t true, Mr. Grassley said.He said Mr. Comey told him and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on his committee, about Mr. Trump being in the clear in March.Watch Grassley expose Democrat lawmakers and their lies to the American public:That s the same time Mr. Schumer was demanding a vote on Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch be delayed, saying the president was under investigation. Washington Times | 0 | [
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FMD70 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Over half of the black workers in this country earn less than $15 an hour.
contextual information: During an all-candidates Democratic forum in Rock Hill, S.C., on Nov. 6, 2015, host Rachel Maddow of MSNBC asked Bernie Sanders how he could win the support of African-American voters, a crucial Democratic voting group in the early primary state of South Carolina. Maddow noted that Sanders was polling at 8 percent in a recent poll in South Carolina and asked if he would be able to convince African-American voters that he could advocate for their issues. Sanders responded in part by citing his economic platform, which he said would positively impact African-Americans. "I have the economic and social justice agenda now that, once we get the word out, will, in fact, resonate with the African-American community," Sanders said. "We're talking about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Over half of the black workers in this country earn less." We wondered whether Sanders was correct that over half of the black workers in this country earn less than $15 an hour, so we took a closer look. We turned to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which, among other things, tracks the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by race. The Bureau's data for the third quarter of 2015 shows that the median weekly earnings for African-American workers was $624. If you divide that by the standard 40 hours in a workweek, it works out to $15.60 per hour. That means that half of African-American workers earned less than $15.60. So Sanders was close on this but exaggerated slightly; his claim is off by a little more than 4 percent. When we asked Sanders' campaign for their source, they pointed us to a report issued earlier this month from the National Employment Law Project that found that 54.1 percent of African-American workers earned less than $15.00 an hour. The group calculated that figure using data from 2012 through 2014. That's a reasonable measurement, but while our figure covers a briefer period of time, it's also more current, reflecting the continued economic growth since the end of 2014. Our ruling: Sanders said that over half of the black workers in this country earn less than $15 an hour. Depending on the time frame used, the data shows that roughly half of black workers earn less than $15. The most recent data shows that half earn less than $15.60, which is a little higher than what Sanders said, but his number is not far off. We rate his claim Mostly True. | 1 | [
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FMD71 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A Republican-led committee in the U.S. House of Representatives approved a sweeping rewrite of U.S. tax law on Thursday, setting the stage for the House to vote on it, although momentum for overhauling the tax code was fast shifting to the Senate. The House Ways and Means Committee approved a bill, voting along party lines, that could go to the House floor as soon as next week. It would cut the U.S. corporate income tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent and make other tax changes adding substantially to the federal deficit over the next decade. | 1 | [
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FMD72 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: The Minnesota Vikings have opened their stadium to provide shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness. Claim summaries: Several news outlets filed reports incorrectly stating that the Minnesota Vikings had opened their stadium to shelter the homeless on a cold winter night.
contextual information: On 18 December 2016, Twitter user David Dellanave posted a message claiming that the Minnesota Vikings football team had opened up U.S. Bank Stadium to shelter the homeless on a particularly cold winter night: posted Although Dellanave is not a reporter or a spokesperson for the Minnesota Vikings, his message was picked up and reported as fact by several news outlets, including Yahoo News and CBS Sports: Yahoo News CBS Sports The Minnesota Vikings are embracing the Christmas spirit early and helping out the community on Sunday night. According to David Dellanave, U.S. Bank Stadium will be open to the local homeless population during a night with crazy cold temperatures. The Minnesota Vikings, however, did not open U.S. Bank Stadium on 18 December 2016 to shelter the homeless. Dellanave eventually deleted his original tweet and posted follow-up messages claiming that he had posted the false information as an attempt to draw attention to a social issue: Tweet deleted. Point was to highlight a social issue and waste of taxpayer money that could help people instead of make private profits 1/3 David Dellanave (@ddn) December 19, 2016 December 19, 2016 Zero interest in retweets or followers, have never cared and never will. 2/3 David Dellanave (@ddn) December 19, 2016 December 19, 2016 But most importantly if I thought for a second someone in need would take it seriously, wouldn't be worth the potential good. 3/3 David Dellanave (@ddn) December 19, 2016 December 19, 2016 I'm sorry if this obviously misguided attempt at highlighting a social issue hurt anyone. Didn't think a tweet would go so far & I regret it David Dellanave (@ddn) December 19, 2016 December 19, 2016 | 0 | [
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FMD73 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: CHARLESTON, S.C. — Emanuel AME Church swung open its doors for services Sunday, four days after a 21-year-old white man who told police he wanted “to start a race war†allegedly killed the pastor and eight congregants attending a Bible study in the church basement.
Hundreds lined up in the hot Charleston sun to climb the stairs to the sanctuary of “Mother Emanuel,†one of the country’s oldest African American churches and one with a rich history of resilience. The organist played and church bells chimed as the choir sang “Blessed Assurance.â€
Worshipers from Charleston and across the country filled the pews and balcony of the church. Some watched the sermon from seats in the fellowship-hall basement — where the shooting occurred Wednesday.
“This is our house of worship,†said the Rev. Norvell Goff, presiding elder of the Edisto District of the State Conference of the AME Church, addressing the congregants. “The doors of the church are open, praise be to God.â€
“No evildoer, no demon in hell or on Earth can close the doors of God’s church.â€
Many in the pews fanned themselves furiously, beating back a thick heat and their fragile emotions. People fought tears, rocking back and forth. Some comforted each other in long embraces. Ushers passed out bottles of cold water. And above them all loomed the pastor’s usual seat, empty, covered by a black cloth.
In Emanuel AME’s nearly 200-year-old history, the congregation has withstood slavery, segregation, racially motivated laws to keep worshipers from meeting and fires set by angry, white mobs. But the massacre Wednesday of state Sen. Clementa C. Pinckney, who was the church’s pastor, and eight church members left many wondering how such a horrible tragedy could occur in a place they consider a safe haven.
[For Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, shooting is another painful chapter in rich history]
“It has been tough, it’s been rough, and some of us have been downright angry. But through it all, God has sustained us and encouraged us,†Goff said. “When times of trouble come into our lives, how do we respond? Do we respond by being afraid? Or do we respond in faith?â€
Goff encouraged the congregation to continue to pray and look to God for healing.
“The blood of the Emanuel Nine requires us to work for not only justice in this case, but for those living on the margins of life,†he said. “We must stay on the battlefield until there is no more fight to be fought.â€
Reporters, he said, had asked him how some grieving family members who attended the bond hearing of suspect Dylann Roof could say they would forgive him. Roof, who was arrested Thursday in Shelby, N.C., about four hours away from the church, was charged with nine counts of murder and possessing a firearm in the commission of a violent crime.
The families, Goff said, were holding on to a strong faith that teaches them to love their neighbors. “God is our refuge and our strength,†Goff said. “We ought to put our hope and trust in God.â€
Daniel E. Martin Jr., 52, who said his family has been on the membership rolls of Emanuel for more than 100 years, said the church would heal and grow stronger. “It’s painful and difficult, but if you know anything about the people of faith, Charlestonians, members of the church, you will understand when we come to church we receive the word of God.â€
His wife, Reba Martin, 54, a steward in the church, said when she walked in the church Sunday, she thought she saw Pinckney. “Pastor was so tall,†she said. “I can almost see him standing there with all the people who sat next to him in the pulpit.â€
Reba Martin said the congregation full of people who had come to share in the service was an answer to Pinckney’s dream of getting more people to come to church: “When pastor first came, our congregation was so small, he would say, ‘One day you will see the church full to the rafters.’ That happened today.â€
On Saturday, Charleston police gave church leaders permission to open the church. Church leaders met in the basement, which police had cleaned, covering bullet holes.
“I was pleased when authorities made a phone call and said you can go back in Mother Emanuel,†Goff said. “The open doors of Emanuel on this Sunday sends a message to every demon in hell that no weapon formed against me shall prosper.â€
Many members said they looked forward to the church opening its doors. Others were still hesitant.
“How do you bring yourself to a place where tragedy struck?†said Brandon Robinson, 26, minister of music of “Little Emanuel,†a sister church. “There is an opened wound. Someone lost a brother, a husband, a father, a sister and auntie.â€
Before sunrise Sunday, sextons — keepers of the church — began clearing a path amid hundreds of flower bouquets left on the church steps by mourners. Some lit white votive candles and prayed. Others threaded long-stemmed red and pink roses through the bars of the church’s gate.
Police officers swept the church early in the morning and screened worshipers as they filed in. No backpacks were allowed in the building. At least half a dozen officers stood watch, sometimes passing out water and butterscotch candies to churchgoers.
People, shaken by the tragedy, stood looking up at the church’s white steeple and prayed.
“You have individuals across the country asking, ‘How could God allow something like this to happen?’ †said the Rev. Branden Sweeper, 30, who was close friends with Pinckney. “Church is still the best place to be.â€
“Mother Emanuel,†as members call the church founded in 1816, is one of the oldest and largest AME churches in the South. The white stucco church with towering steeples, wooden rafters and arched stained-glass windows sits in downtown Charleston on Calhoun Street. The church was the site where in 1822, Denmark Vesey, a freed slave, planned one of the biggest slave insurrections in U.S. history.
“When authorities were made aware of his plot, Vesey and a number of his followers were executed,†according to the book “African Methodism in South Carolina,†a collection of histories compiled by the AME Church.
The church was burned down by white crowds. “And even more strict regulations were imposed on Charleston’s Black Churches,†the book said. By 1834, all black churches were closed by state law. Some members of the church joined white churches, and “others continued the tradition of the African church by worshiping underground.†In 1865, Emanuel AME resurfaced with 3,000 members.
With the latest tragedy still looming large in the church Sunday, some members doubled over in grief, weeping for the victims.
“There they were in the house of the Lord studying your word, praying with one another, but the Devil also entered,†an elder said in a prayer Sunday. “And the devil was trying to take charge. But thanks be to God — hallelujah — that the devil cannot take control over your people, and the devil cannot take control of the church.â€
Eartha Ugude drove eight hours Saturday from Port St. Lucie, Fla., compelled to be in the service. “I felt such a tremendous loss,†she said from her seat, 10 rows from the pulpit. “I felt helpless and tired — one more tragedy against our people.â€
The shooting, she said, was cowardly. The gunman “sat amongst them.â€
[Night of S.C. killings started with prayers and a plot against humanity]
Goff preached that the members should not respond to the tragedy with fear. “Do we respond by being afraid? Or do we respond in faith?†Goff asked. “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord, because it is by faith we are standing here this morning.â€
Acknowledging the congregation has difficult days ahead, Goff said: “The only way evil can triumph is for good people to sit down and do nothing. We are children of God. We will march on to victory.â€
The service ended with a prayer, “May the people of God say Amen.†Members who filed out of the church said they were encouraged by the sermon.
Marlene Coakley-Jenkins, whose sister Myra was killed in the church basement, said she was inspired.
“I think the message was powerful, positive and compassionate,†Coakley-Jenkins said on the church steps. “Everything the family needed at this particular time. It gave us strength and faith. It allowed us to have all the emotions that an experience like this might conjure and more.â€
Someone asked her whether she was thinking of the shooter. “I pray at some point he finds God’s mercy,†she said. “God’s mercy is even there for him. We can’t afford to lose one soul on Earth. I am ready to forgive him. I have to because that would block so many blessings. Nothing grows positive out of hate.â€
[This post has been updated.] | 1 | [
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FMD74 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did a Church Close Its Food Bank 'Because It Attracts Poor People'? Claim summaries: One would think poor people are most at risk around food insecurity.
contextual information: For many years, internet users have been sharing an image that purportedly reproduces an article from the Ottawa Citizen newspaper headlined, "Church closes food bank because it attracts poor people": The text of the article, as seen in that image, reads as follows: A busy church food bank, known for offering warm drinks and snacks to its regulars, has announced its closing because it is attracting too many poor people. Its attracting a lot of street people that made it uncomfortable, said Charlotte Prossen, Unity Truth Centre minister, Its creating social unrest in the church. A food bank is a social service and that is not who we are. Ms. Prossen said the program is being cancelled to focus on more church-specific activities. The churchs board of trustees made the decision to cancel the bimonthly food bank after receiving an e-mail from a sister church in Victoria. Most clients of food banks have not yet come to a sense of personal responsibility in life. They are still in denial, blame or seeing the world as owing them, wrote Rev. David Durksen of the Unity Church of Victoria. Ms. Prossen praised the work done by food banks, and said the church will still collect food for baskets but focus more on peoples spiritual hunger. This image did in fact reflect an article genuinely published in the Ottawa Citizen (and several other Canadian newspapers) back in 2000, about the closure of a Winnipeg church's food bank program, although some of those involved might dispute whether the issue was as simple as the headline implied. A follow-up article from CBC News cited the Unity Truth Centre's minister, Charlotte Prossen, as stating that the food bank project was shut down for "several reasons" and denying "news reports that suggest the food bank was really shut down because some church members were uncomfortable with the street people who came to their building." However, that article did not quote the minister as repudiating any of the statements attributed to her in the earlier Ottawa Citizen piece: article Prossen says people in the congregation meant well when they first decided to get involved in the food bank. But she says the group had been without a minister or leadership for years, and now, it needs to return to more spiritual pursuits. "I don't know why it would be hard to understand that we are a church and we must identify ourselves as that in our community. We need to use our space, to introduce our programs to the community." Prossen says there were several reasons she closed the project, including concerns about whether it was covered by the church's insurance. She denies news reports that suggest the food bank was really shut down because some church members were uncomfortable with the street people who came to their building Instead, Prossen makes references to "unpleasant" and "unfortunate" situations that led to the decision. She says she's not at liberty to say what those situations are, although a prepared statement issued by the church does mention safety and protection concerns. CBC News. "Church Reaffirms Food Bank Decision."
21 February 2000. The Ottawa Citizen. "Church Closes Food Bank Because It Attracts Poor People."
19 February 2000. | 1 | [
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FMD75 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Are all Toys R Us stores shutting down and refusing to honor gift cards? Claim summaries: Ongoing business troubles for the toy chain led to rumors that gift cards could soon be (or already are) of no value.
contextual information: In mid-March 2018, readers began to ask whether it was true that Toys R Us locations had stopped accepting gift cards as a form of payment as of 11 March 2018. Many linked to a 10 March 2018 Scotsman.com article about a similar situation, but it focused on Toys R Us locations specifically in the United Kingdom. The article stated that Toys R Us had said on their website: "Gift cards and vouchers will be honored until Sunday, 11 March [2018]. There are no refunds for cash value on any gift cards." However, customers were encouraged to redeem such vouchers as soon as possible, as stores might be subject to closure without notice. News about UK-based locations proved confusing to some readers, and the gift card announcement coincided with matters related to Toys R Us's fiscal solvency in the United States. A post shared on the shopping site SlickDeals in March 2018 suggested that those in possession of Toys R Us gift cards should use them sooner rather than later, stating, "Multiple reports are out there that TRU is going into liquidation bankruptcy next week. If you have gift cards, they'll be worthless the moment they announce it, most likely. Use those cards this weekend if you don't want them to be worthless. Hold onto receipts; if they manage to avoid liquidation, you can return the items if you don't have anything much you want right now. If not, at least you got something for your paper. Also, remember to check your rewards total and use those points/certificates as well!" The post referenced a 9 March 2018 CNNMoney article about the closure of UK-based Toys R Us locations and the state of the retailer's finances in the United States. On 13 March 2018, CNBC cited reports of a liquidation plan in progress, stating that Toys R Us, the iconic U.S. retailer, was in the process of drafting the court motion for its liquidation plan, according to a source familiar with the situation. The retailer could file as soon as the end of 14 March 2018, making the motion official. It would then begin to wind down the storied toy retailer after more than half a century in business. A liquidation would most likely result in the closing of all of Toys R Us's 800 stores in the U.S. As of midday on 14 March 2018, the website ToysRUs.com still accepted gift cards as payment and offered customers the option of purchasing physical or virtual versions at checkout. Although articles speculated that Toys R Us gift cards might soon become worthless in the United States and that UK outlets had stopped accepting them, no definitive information about their future was yet available. In response to an inquiry, a representative for Toys R Us replied, "Thanks for asking! Please know that we are not going out of business, but we are making changes to the number of stores we have. In the meantime, our stores are operating as usual, and you can also continue to shop online at https://www.toysrus.com and https://www.babiesrus.com. Additionally, our customer registry, credit, warranty, and loyalty programs will continue as normal. We will also continue to sell and accept gift cards as always." On 15 March 2018, a representative for Toys R Us stated that the chain planned to honor gift cards for a 30-day period. However, the Better Business Bureau advised consumers to use the cards "sooner rather than later." | 1 | [
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FMD76 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Does the NAACP Want to Sandblast Confederate Figures Off Stone Mountain? Claim summaries: One of many rumors that arose during a national debate on the appropriateness of Confederate monuments and memorials.
contextual information: In mid-2015, the historic Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Carving was the subject of controversy. In June 2015, rumors circulated that a petition aimed at permanently removing the Stone Mountain carving was being circulated, but these rumors referred to a long-inactive petition that predated the Charleston massacre. Then, a "like and share" image began to circulate online alongside claims that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had issued a formal statement demanding the memorial be "sand-blasted off" Stone Mountain. This rumor was particularly upsetting to those opposing the removal of Confederate symbols, who feared that the carving, along with parts of Southern history, would be permanently destroyed. News articles and social media posts referencing the NAACP claim overwhelmingly linked back to a single article published by Atlanta television station WSB-TV on July 13, 2015, titled "NAACP Wants Removal of Confederate Generals from Stone Mountain." The article quoted Atlanta NAACP chapter president Richard Rose, who opined that the Stone Mountain carving ought to be removed and used the term "sand-blasted." The organization issued a statement calling for the removal of all symbols of the Confederacy from the park. "My tax dollars should not be used to commemorate slavery," Rose said. He stated that his group wants Confederate symbols removed from all state-owned buildings, parks, and lands, starting with Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. "Those guys need to go. They can be sand-blasted off, or somebody could carefully remove a slab of that and auction it off to the highest bidder," Rose said. The following day, July 14, 2015, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article titled "Sandblasting the Confederate Faces Off Stone Mountain? Yeah, Right." Curiously, what appeared to be a link to the purported NAACP statement merely led to an image of the carving and a photograph of a document that was undated and nearly impossible to read. Although subsequent references to an NAACP statement calling for the destruction of the Stone Mountain carving were rife in articles across the web, we were unable to locate an actual copy of the purported statement to review its content or substantiate its existence. No mention of it appeared on the Atlanta NAACP's website, nor was it mentioned on their Facebook page. No information was provided in any reference to it about the date on which it was issued, what its content may have been, or what formal action was supposedly being sought by the Atlanta NAACP chapter. It is true that Atlanta NAACP chapter president Richard Rose said that the Stone Mountain carving should be "sand-blasted off" the mountain in a June 2015 interview and that the following day the Journal-Constitution referenced a "statement" from the local NAACP chapter. However, we were unable to locate a purported statement released by that chapter or the larger national NAACP organization demanding such an action. Moreover, whether such an action is even possible or plausible (not to mention under consideration to any meaningful degree) is doubtful. | 2 | [
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] | 2 |
FMD77 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: GLEN ELDER, Kan. — Doug Palen, a grain farmer on Kansas’ plains, is in the business of understanding the climate. Since 2012, he has choked through the harshest drought to hit the Great Plains in a century, punctuated by freakish snowstorms and suffocating gales of dust. His planting season starts earlier in the spring and pushes deeper into winter. To adapt, he has embraced an environmentally conscious way of farming that guards against soil erosion and conserves precious water. He can talk for hours about carbon sequestration — the trapping of gases in plant life and in the soil — or the science of the beneficial microbes that enrich his land. In short, he is a climate change realist. Just don’t expect him to utter the words “climate change. †“If politicians want to exhaust themselves debating the climate, that’s their choice,†Mr. Palen said, walking through fields of freshly planted winter wheat. “I have a farm to run. †Here in Kansas, America’s breadbasket and conservative heartland, the economic realities of agriculture make climate change a critical business issue. At the same time, politics and social pressure make frank discussion complicated. This is wheat country, and Donald J. Trump country, and though the weather is acting up, the conservative orthodoxy maintains that the science isn’t settled. So while climate change is part of daily conversation, it gets disguised as something else. “People are all talking about it, without talking about it,†said Miriam Horn, the author of a recent book on conservative Americans and the environment, “Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman. †“It’s become such a charged topic that there’s a navigation people do. †Mr. Palen — he plays his politics close to his vest but allows that he didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton — and others here in Glen Elder and across the state illustrate the delicate dance. Farmers like him focus on practical issues like erosion or dwindling aquifers. “When you don’t get the rainfall, it’s tough times,†he said. Regional politicians and business leaders speak of pursuing jobs that clean energy may create, rather than pressing the need to rein in carbon emissions. A science teacher at a community college — whose deeply religious students sometimes express doubts about the trustworthiness of science that contradicts biblical teachings — speaks to his class about the positives of scientific discovery (electricity) in order to ease into more contentious subjects (global warming). And an editor for a closely followed agriculture magazine, Successful Farming, recently made a controversial move, drawing a flurry of angry letters: He broke with longstanding policy to address climate change . “Some readers thanked us,†the editor Gil Gullickson said. “But some wondered whether we’d been hijacked by avid environmentalists. †The climate has not always been such a partisan issue. Richard Nixon, a Republican president, set up the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Clean Air Act. Ronald Reagan ushered in the Montreal Protocol, the first global treaty to protect the global atmosphere. Much of that consensus has broken down, in no small part because of a push by interests, together with influential Republican allies, to attack research on topics like global warming and push back on environmental regulation. That push began in earnest during the George W. Bush administration as attempts to undercut the Clean Air Act, and since then, the divide has widened. President Trump has famously said he believes that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, and his administration has purged nearly all mention of programs from the White House and State Department websites. It has also ordered a freeze on federal grant spending at the E. P. A. and other government agencies. The fact that the discourse has also become dominated by liberals has alienated some conservatives, including Mr. Palen. Many people here in particular resent how, in the polarized political landscape of recent years, conservative Americans have been painted as hostile to the environment. The Trump campaign successfully seized on that schism, painting Democrats as overzealous environmentalists with little sympathy for the economic realities or social mores of rural America. “Many of our federal environmental laws are being used to oppress farmers instead of actually helping the environment,†Mr. Trump quipped in a widely circulated Q. and A. on FarmFutures. com. “Farmers care more for the environment than the radical environmentalists. †Still, “it would be a huge mistake to think people voting for Trump were voting against the environment,†Ms. Horn said. If Trump follows an aggressive agenda, she said, “there will be a big backlash in the heartland. †In many ways, Mr. Palen sees himself as the ultimate conservationist. His the son of an immigrant from Luxembourg, was the first to farm in this stretch of Kansas. Mr. Palen grew up on the farm, took it over in his 20s, and looked to make his mark. In college, he learned of a farming technique called “no till,†which is intended to more closely mimic the natural prairie ecosystem, and was intrigued by its promise to protect his family fields from Kansas’ relentless winds and sudden downpours. The idea behind farming, he now explains to anyone who will listen, is that plowing the soil destroys its natural structure, causing it to lose its precious moisture and nutrients. That makes it vulnerable to erosion. Mr. Palen’s fields aren’t tilled. There are no neat furrows. The residue of plants from previous plantings still carpets the earth, offering a layer of protection, and his fields are never bare even after harvest. He alternates wheat and other crops with what he describes as a cocktail of grasses and leafy plants, like grain sorghum, sunflowers and alfalfa, a gesture toward the diversity of the wild prairie. “They say there’s more organisms in a handful of soil than people on the planet,†Mr. Palen said, making his way through a field between plantings. He stooped his tall frame down, dug up a clump of earth, and rolled it between his fingers. He is yet when he talks of the earth, his excitement is obvious. “See how it’s firm and holds together?†he said. “See how it doesn’t break down into goo?†farming addresses a dire problem facing American farmers: Almost 1. 7 billion tons of topsoil are blown or washed off croplands a year, according to the Department of Agriculture, resulting in billions of dollars in losses for farmers. Keeping the soil healthy and covered also reduces evaporation by 80 percent, helping farmers conserve water, the department estimates. Farmers like Mr. Palen also happen to be protecting a vast and valuable carbon sink, making him an ally to campaigners. The soil traps far more carbon in its depths than all plant and animal life on the earth’s surface, scientists estimate. A 2013 study estimated that and other restorative farming methods could achieve up to 15 percent of the total carbon reduction needed to stabilize the climate. Despite his conservationist streak, Mr. Palen has no affinity for environmentalists. He feels vilified, he says, for his continued use of chemical herbicides and pesticides. (Some organic farmers control weeds by tilling the soil, which Mr. Palen argues causes more ecological harm.) And he remains suspicious of any expansion of government regulations that ignore realities of rural America. “We want to be left alone,†Mr. Palen said. He singled out the Clean Water Rule, an E. P. A. regulation designed to protect streams and other waterways, as regulatory overreach. Washington types wanted to dictate what he could do with every creek, every puddle, on his farm, he said, putting impossible burdens on farmers. And most of them had probably never spent any time on a farm, he said. “We’re the ones working to protect the environment. We’re the ones whose lives are tied to the earth. †Carl Priesendorf, a science teacher at Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City, Mo. has learned strategies to talk about climate change without completely alienating climate skeptics. He teaches geology and meteorology. Those subjects would usually be innocuous, but not here. “I’d show the CO2 data — how we’d had the hottest year on record,†Mr. Priesendorf said. “But I get students who basically say what I’m teaching is nonsense. My car’s been keyed. I get notes from students saying they’re praying for my soul. †One such note that he shared reads, “Know that God’s love surpasses knowledge. †Since a particularly contentious debate in class — a student threw a book bag at him, he said — Mr. Priesendorf has taken a step back to focus on the everyday positives of science. “I ask: ‘Do you like the light bulb? Do you like electricity?’ That’s science,†he said. “Then I ease into more contentious topics, like climate change. †That is an uphill battle. A 2013 survey found that just 8 percent of farmers in the Midwest believed that “climate change is occurring, and it is caused mostly by human activities. †An earlier Pew Research Center poll found that only 48 percent of people in the Midwest agree with the statement that there is “solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer,†a number below other regions in the country. And conservatives have been pushing back against classroom standards adopted by the state of Kansas that treat evolution and climate change as scientific concepts. Last year, the United States Supreme Court declined to review a nonprofit group’s lawsuit that claimed that those standards promote atheism. But now, under a Trump administration, Mr. Priesendorf felt science itself was under fire. “If even your government starts telling your country that scientists are lying to you, it’ll be even tougher for science teachers,†he said. “I’m going to focus on keeping my students’ minds open to the possibility that the science is correct. †Annie Kuether, a Democrat and advocate in the Statehouse and a member of the State Utilities Committee, has for years pushed for more renewable energy. One obstacle, though, is that the committee’s chairman does not believe in climate change. A St. Louis native who landed in Topeka as a young bride four decades ago, Ms. Kuether is used to working alongside adversaries. Her county voted for Mr. Trump, along with all but two counties in the state. She has sat through committee meetings where climate skeptics, including the discredited scientist Soon, blasted the science behind global warming. “Carbon Dioxide, CO2, is merely a bit player in climate change,†reads one slide Mr. Soon presented in 2013. “Rising CO2 is largely beneficial to plant and human life. †“I remember being horrified,†Ms. Kuether said. Still, over the years, she has forged powerful business alliances by focusing, in her arguments, on jobs and the economy. She has also found increasing support from farmers and landowners who count on wind turbines and solar panels they host on their property for income. “Gradually, from a political standpoint, you can build a constituency that benefits from this industry,†said Mark Lawlor, one ally and an executive at Clean Line Energy Partners, which is building a transmission line to deliver 4, 000 megawatts of wind power from western Kansas to Missouri, Illinois and other neighboring states. “Just like grain, cattle, airplanes, wind’s another valuable resource Kansas can export,†he said, referring to Kansas’ sizable agricultural industry, as well as the Cessna Aircraft Company, which is based in Wichita, Kan. “Kansas has a lot of pragmatic folks here, and we recognize benefits. †Kansas’ dwindling water sources have been another issue that Ms. Kuether has found strikes a nerve among voters here, whatever their beliefs on climate change. That has helped to build some support for measures to save the state’s shrinking aquifers, a lifeline for communities in western Kansas, though not yet any decisive action. In fact, her focus on the practical is a big part of what has kept getting her elected, she said, in a State Legislature where she is outnumbered by Republican lawmakers, two to one. “I’ve always felt that families have always been concerned about water — whether they’re Democratic, Republican or independent,†she said. Mr. Gullickson of Successful Farming, who usually writes about topics like pigweed, gypsum and runoff, has started to push the envelope on debates over climate change. An veteran of the magazine, where he is the crops technology editor, Mr. Gullickson said he had long been on the fence about climate change. But that began changing five years ago, when he attended a workshop where a University of Kentucky professor gave a convincing argument, backed by data. “I started looking at the evidence, at the data and what farmers were doing,†he said. “And it’s clear: The weather has become more extreme these days. And I thought, ‘I’ve never heard of any successful business publication that stayed in business by withholding information. ’†So for the first time in the storied magazine’s history, a cover story squarely addressed the science of climate change. The October 2014 piece was published under the headline, “@#$*% Weather!†“I know what you’re thinking: Climate change is just some figment of Al Gore’s imagination adopted by liberal who want to tank the U. S. economy,†Mr. Gullickson wrote. “Still, think back over some rough weather you’ve endured in recent years and ask yourself these questions,†he continued. “Are springs getting wetter? Are droughts increasing in severity? Are rainstorms increasing in intensity?†The clear answer, he said: “Yes. †Mr. Gullickson said that he and his editor had held lengthy discussions leading up to the article’s publication. His editor in chief, Dave Kurns, was supportive, he said, but also warned that the piece could generate backlash. Mr. Kurns spoke candidly over concerns of a backlash in an editor’s note that led the issue. When he became the magazine’s editor two years earlier, he said, he had been warned, “Never use the words ‘climate change. ’†“I was told: ‘Readers hate that phrase. Just talk about the weather,’†he wrote. The industry publication, which has a circulation of 390, 000, was influenced by some of the biggest names in agriculture taking a stand on the issue, Mr. Gullickson said. The agricultural giant Cargill has started to lobby members of Congress and urged farmers to take climate change seriously, saying inaction would be detrimental to the United States economy. The response to the magazine’s take on the issues has been split. “When you start quoting ‘climate scientists’ and the United Nations,†wrote in one reader, Bill Clinger, a farmer based in Harpster, Ohio, “you are as nutty as Al Gore. †Measures to control emissions, he said, “are just seductive names for socialist programs intended to micromanage people and businesses. †Mr. Gullickson said some readers thanked him. “Finally, a farming magazine comes to terms with what is going on with the weather,†wrote Paul Jereczek of Dodge, Wis. Reached by phone, Mr. Jereczek, who runs a dairy farm, expressed exasperation at people’s inability to speak openly. “The phrase has become so politicized, it’s just hard to talk about,†he said. “But we talk about everything else. Even round here, protecting soil is such a hot topic right now. But we talk about the soil, saving fertilizer, that sort of thing. †Mark Salvo, vice president at the wildlife conservation group Defenders of Wildlife, might be a walking, talking stereotype of the kind of environmentalist who so frustrates Mr. Palen. An Oregonian now based in Washington, he spent 15 years in the American West fighting to conserve fish and wildlife on public lands. But Mr. Salvo thinks he knows an unlikely — and highly sympathetic — character to bring Kansans and others together around climate change: the lesser . Known for its shock of yellow hair and bright orange cheeks, the lesser once roamed the Great Plains. Today, though, the grouse is under threat — its populations reduced to isolated pockets in western Kansas, Colorado and the Mexico border as its habitat succumbs to drought, farming, drilling and other human activity. The group has been petitioning the Fish and Wildlife Service to relist the lesser as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The bird found itself taken off the list after a lawsuit in 2014 backed by the oil and gas industry, which argues that any protective measures would mean added costs for energy developers. Mr. Salvo has found that to gain allies it doesn’t always help to start with the role climate change plays in harming the bird’s habitat. Instead, his movement has tried to find common ground, highlighting the historical heritage of the lesser . In the “Little House on the Prairie†novels, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about eating mush. Mr. Salvo also stresses how practices can be good for farming, too, backing a federal program that provides financial aid to private landowners who adopt those practices. Leaving corn stubble standing after harvest gives the birds food and places to hide, for example, while also helping farmers protect the soil. “Sometimes, to gain allies, it helps to focus on issues of common concern, to support local economic development as well as species conservation,†he said. “It helps everybody come to the table. †Last week, Mr. Palen, the farmer, was again talking weather — if not climate change — at a conference of farmers in Salina, Kan. Sessions included “Using Your Water Efficiently,†“Making Weather Work for You in 2017†and “Building Healthy Soil With Mob Grazing,†a practice that helps to fertilize the land. And yes, Mr. Palen says, he is on board with saving the lesser . “I often think of ways I can protect their habitat,†he said. “I enjoy wildlife. †| 1 | [
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FMD78 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: President Barack Obama is set on Tuesday to unveil his budget proposal for fiscal year 2017, his final year in office. But since the Republican-controlled Congress controls the purse strings, much of Obama’s plan likely will be shelved. The following are some of the proposals that will be included: The Pentagon will ask for more than $7 billion for the fight against Islamic State, up about 35 percent from the previous year’s budget request to Congress, and wants a fourfold increase for military training and exercises in Europe to support NATO allies. In a long-shot bid to raise $20 billion to expand transit systems and research self-driving cars, Obama will propose a $10-a-barrel tax on crude oil. The budget will propose boosting spending on cybersecurity by 35 percent to $19 billion and creating a $3.1 billion fund to modernize the government’s creaky information technology systems. Obama will seek a 20 percent boost for renewable energy research funding to a total of $7.7 billion. Obama will propose a $2.5 billion tax credit over five years for businesses that invest in community college programs and 05:00:then hire their graduates. The White House will ask for $1.8 billion in emergency funding to prepare for the Zika virus, work on tests and vaccines, and assist Puerto Rico and countries grappling with the outbreak. Obama will seek an 11 percent hike in funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission to $1.8 billion and 32 percent increase for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to $330 million. The budget will propose a 1.6 percent pay increase for military and civilian federal personnel. Obama will ask for $1.1 billion in new funding to expand treatment for people addicted to heroin and prescription painkillers, a growing epidemic. Obama pledged more than $450 million in aid to Colombia to help with security and integrating rebel combatants into society under a pending peace deal to end Latin America’s longest war. Obama will propose $12 billion over 10 years to supplement food stamps for poor families when school meal programs are closed in the summer, $2 billion in emergency aid for families in crisis, a combined $328 million in education and housing grants to poor neighborhoods, and a $15 million pilot program to help poor families move to better neighborhoods. The budget will include three years of federal funding to 19 state governments that passed up an earlier offer to expand Medicaid coverage for more than 4 million low-income people. Obama will ask for tweaks to a tax on certain health insurance plans that is unpopular with labor unions. The White House will ask for $5.5 billion in incentives for businesses that hire young people and $200 million for apprenticeship programs. Obama will propose $4 billion for states and $100 million for school districts to expand computer science in schools. The budget will include $1 billion over five years to help coal-mining regions with economic development. The White House will ask for $755 million for Vice President Joe Biden’s “moonshot†effort to find new cancer treatments. The budget will include $700 million in agricultural research grants, double the spending level in 2016. Obama has proposed $500 million to boost access to mental healthcare as part of his push to address gun violence. Obama will propose $95 million for a new office responsible for background checks for federal employees. As part of reforms to the criminal justice system, Obama will ask for $24 million for better housing for inmates with serious mental illnesses. Obama will propose tax credits for small businesses offering 401(k) plans or expanding access to retirement savings programs. Obama will seek to expand unemployment insurance to more types of workers, provide wage insurance for workers moving to lower-paid positions, and provide incentives to states for retraining or relocating workers. Obama will ask for funding to hire 200 new ATF staff to enforce gun laws. | 1 | [
"0",
"1",
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] | 1 |
FMD79 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Is the 'Purse-in-the-Grocery-Cart' Scam Real? Claim summaries: Some forms of crime aren't as easy to pull off as they used to be.
contextual information: Evaluations of crime and fraud warnings always generate several related questions. Is this form of scam possible? Is it plausible? Is it common? Has it ever occurred at all? Those are the questions we applied to the following social media meme, which posits a "scam" involving the theft of wallets from purses sitting in grocery carts and related residential burglaries: The meme contains no detail that would allow tracking its narrative to a particular crime, and we've turned up no verified reports of a similar occurrence. What we can say is that although the theft of purses effected while their owners' attention is focused elsewhere is not uncommon, the burglary aspect of this warning seems to be based on long-outmoded premises about how Americans live and work that would render it extremely unlikely today. purses For starters, you're a prospective burglar. You've lifted a woman's wallet from her purse. Now you need to call her to lure her out of her house, but ... what phone number do you call? This "scam" seemingly hearkens back to the days of landlines, when one could often tie information gleaned from a driver's license (i.e., full name and address) to a phone number through the use of a phone directory or directory assistance. But no similar mechanism exists for now-ubiquitous cellphones. (Possibly one could use the internet to quickly match up a name and address with a phone number, but the odds aren't good.) Moreover, this scheme relies on the out-of-date notion that if a woman is away from home in the middle of the day, her residence will then necessarily be unoccupied (because, of course, the man of the house will be out working somewhere, and the kids will be in school). But a variety of different domestic scenarios are common these days that would place other people at home in the middle of the day: a woman might be living with roommates or parents or adult children; some 40 per cent of Americans work mostly during nonstandard times and are therefore home during the daytime; working at home is becoming increasingly common, etc. 40 per cent at home As well, just because a residence is unoccupied by human beings doesn't preclude the possibility that a security system, barking dog, attentive neighbors, or some other impediment to a broad-daylight burglary isn't present. And in fact, as police routinely point out, most residential burglaries are crimes of opportunity and involve very little planning on the part of the thief (like the type posited here). police All in all, a crook who has successfully lifted a woman's wallet is much more likely going to be content with the bounty found within (e.g., cash, debit cards, credit cards) than with trying to parlay that score into a risky residential burglary. And your residence is far more likely to be the target of an opportunistic, spur-of-the-moment burglary than of one involving an elaborate scheme to lure you away from home. The best advice to be gleaned from this warning is to be sure not to leave purses (or other valuable items) unwatched even for the briefest of moments in shopping carts, in restrooms, and in automobiles. And engage in some simple security precautions to make your home less of an inviting target for theft. shopping carts restrooms automobiles precautions Consumer Reports. "14 Ways to Make Your Home More Secure."
21 June 2014. Population Reference Bureau. "A Demographic Profile of U.S. Workers Around the Clock."
18 September 2008. Kopf, Dan. "Slowly But Surely, Working at Home Is Becoming More Common."
Quartz. 17 September 2018. | 0 | [
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] | 0 |
FMD80 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Right after Ted Cruz suspended his presidential campaign, evangelical Christians went nuts, pouring sadness and fear all over social media about their own fate now that their personal government crusader was not going to make it to the White House. Now, it seems they ve gone into complete, total and utter despair, crying that there s nobody left to represent them and their dominionist ideals.According to the Washington Post, Nebraska Pastor Gary Fuller had a Sunday service planned around Ted Cruz remaining in the race. Instead, he had to tell his congregation to vote according to their convictions because he didn t know what else to say. He also said: In a sense, we feel abandoned by our party. There s nobody left. Honestly, B-O-O H-O-O. Religion needs to be left out of government, and if they have to learn that lesson the hard way, tough bananas.The Post notes that evangelicals tend to vote according to social and moral issues, and Ted Cruz ran his campaign on those issues. Candidates that run on social issues tend not to do well, though, because there are far more pressing issues on which to vote than who s screwing whom, who s marrying whom, and what women are having done in their doctors offices.These people have a problem with Trump s being married three times to three different women, and the fact that he doesn t have much interest in fighting for their ideals on social issues. He s a hardliner on immigration, and his main focus has been on that, plus jobs and the economy, however crazy and unworkable his ideas actually are. Social issues are non-issues to Trump right now, which, if the GOP unifies behind him, makes them non-issues for the entire party.Russell Moore, of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, whined to the Post: This year the Republican Party has not just surrendered on the culture wars, they ve joined the other side. And that s a unique situation. Many evangelical Christians don t seem to believe in the 1st Amendment some, like disgraced Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, even think religious protection only applies to Christianity. Anything else is infringement on their beliefs, even if it doesn t directly affect them.Ted Cruz was their savior, and now he s out.To this, we say our hearts bleed pink carbonated peanut butter for them and their dashed hopes for turning us into a Christian nation this year.Featured image by Richardlwelsh. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons | 0 | [
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"1",
"2"
] | 0 |
FMD81 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did GOP Vote To Raise Debt Ceiling 3 Times with No Preconditions During Trump Era? Claim summaries: Democrats cried foul when House Republicans passed a bill in 2023 mandating trillions of dollars in spending cuts along with raising the debt ceiling.
contextual information: On April 26, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives, led by Republicans, narrowly passed budget legislation raising the federal government's legal debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion on the condition that deep spending cuts would also be undertaken. Democrats balked at the spending-cuts requirement, demanding instead the passage of what they called a "clean bill" without preconditions to raise the debt ceiling before the deadline of June 1, when the government would default on its debts. Some Democrats, notably U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., argued that by demanding budget cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, Republicans were "creating an economic crisis" and "threatening default" for partisan gain. No such demands were made during the administration of former President Donald Trump, Omar noted in a May tweet: "Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling 3 times when Donald Trump was President, with no preconditions."
What exactly is the debt ceiling? This is how the U.S. Department of the Treasury defines it (emphasis added): The debt ceiling, or debt limit, is a restriction imposed by Congress on the amount of outstanding national debt that the federal government can have. The debt ceiling is the amount that the Treasury can borrow to pay the bills that have become due and to fund future investments. Once the debt ceiling is reached, the federal government cannot increase the amount of outstanding debt, losing the ability to pay bills and fund programs and services. Since 1960, Congress has acted 78 separate times to permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit—49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents.
It is true that during the Trump administration, legislation to raise the debt ceiling and avoid default was passed three times with varying degrees of bipartisan support, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. In 2017, 2018, and 2019, the debt limit was reset at $20.5 trillion, $22 trillion, and $28.4 trillion, respectively. None of these bills, when signed into law, contained a precondition to cut spending, despite the wishes of some Republicans.
It should be noted, though, that the 2019 legislation, which included hefty spending increases for defense and domestic programs, did mandate $77 billion in "offsets" for those spending increases. According to Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., the $77 billion in offsets would be achieved in two ways: 1) "$15.5 billion from extending the expiration date of customs user fees" from May 26, 2027, to Sept. 30, 2029, and 2) $61.7 billion from "extending mandatory spending sequester" (described by the Congressional Budget Office as "automatic spending cuts that occur through the withdrawal of funding for certain but not all government programs") from Sept. 30, 2027, to Sept. 30, 2029. These administrative offsets were described by some as "cosmetic."
By contrast, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's "Limit, Save, Grow Act" of 2023, as passed by the House, would require broad-based spending cuts totaling $4.5 trillion, according to CBS News. As of this writing, Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden had said he would refuse to sign the act into law, and it was said to be "dead on arrival" in the Democratic-controlled Senate. | 1 | [
"0",
"1",
"2"
] | 1 |
FMD82 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did Clarence Thomas Say 'God Only Knows Where I Would Be' Without Affirmative Action? Claim summaries: A quote from a January 1983 speech by the then-chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been stripped of context for decades.
contextual information: On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court "severely limited, if not effectively ended, the use of affirmative action in college admissions," as described by Amy Howe at SCOTUS Blog: described By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the admissions programs used by the University of North Carolina and Harvard College violate the Constitution's equal protection clause, which bars racial discrimination by government entities. [...] Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that college admissions programs can consider race merely to allow an applicant to explain how their race influenced their character in a way that would have a concrete effect on the university. But a student "must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual not on the basis of race," Roberts wrote. [...] Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined the Roberts opinion. Clarence Thomas' concurrence with the majority opinion led several media outlets to rehash an assertion that, at least for a period of time in the 1980s when he was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Thomas's views on affirmative action programs were ambivalent if not opportunist. This claim has been in recirculation since the Supreme Court announced that they had added cases challenging affirmative action to their docket: media outlets This claim recirculation (@tonywolfness/Twitter) That claim appears to have first been raised following Thomas' nomination to the Supreme Court in a July 14, 1991 New York Times article titled "On Thomas's Climb, Ambivalence About Issue of Affirmative Action." That article cited a line from a January 1983 speech given by Thomas to employees of the EEOC: article In a 1983 speech to staff members at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which he then headed, he said that affirmative action laws were of "paramount importance" to him. "But for them, God only knows where I would be today," he said. "These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second 17 years." Though repeated in this way by several media outlets both during Thomas' Supreme Court nomination process in the 1990s and again in 2023, this is an incorrect paraphrase of Thomas's statements. Thomas's full remarks were published as a law article in the Journal of Labor Law in April 1983. repeated published When read with the full context of this speech, it is clear that the "them" used in the phrase "but for them" referred not to affirmative action laws in particular, but to equal employment opportunity laws as articulated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 more generally. The speech, broadly, was a defense of the EEOC's work during the Reagan administration, which faced criticism over a massive reduction in discrimination claims pursued under its leadership. faced criticism Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act a landmark bill signed during the Lyndon Johnson Administration prohibits discrimination by employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The EEOC, which first began operations in 1965, was created as part of the 1964 Act as the agency tasked with investigating and enforcing Title VII violations. Title VII in 1965 Over the years, the EEOC has expanded to investigate and enforce violations of other Federal anti-discrimination laws including those against discrimination against pregnant women, age discrimination, and disability discrimination. By the end of the Carter administration, the EEOC had expanded considerably under chairwoman Eleanor Norton's tenure, as described in a March 1981 report: report Thanks in part to Ms Norton's streamlined methods, which enabled EEOC to process 50,000 cases per year during her tenure, she views the equal-employment field as "very stable now. We have had 10 years of extraordinary and deep court cases to build the law." "Even if they disbanded EEOC tomorrow," she said, "and there is no way they could, there would still be thousands of court cases presented each year based on precedent." Norton, here, was referencing an unpublished report commissioned by the Reagan transition team that was extremely critical of the EEOC, as reported by The Washington Post in January 1981: reported A Reagan administration advisory panel has urged that equal employment opportunity law and procedures to be changed so that much more evidence would be required to find a business guilty of discrimination and no business could be forced to adopt an "affirmative action" plan against its will. The advisory unit attacked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for having created a new racism in America in which every individual is judged by race." The group was led by J.A. Parker, a black and head of the Lincoln Institute, a conservative think tank that deals with black issues. Its unpublished report was sent to the then-president-elect last month. Following Reagan's inauguration, the chairmanship of the EEOC office was vacant until early 1982, when Thomas was tapped to lead the EEOC. Democrats, at the time, were skeptical of Thomas' commitment to alleviating discrimination. These concerns were not helped by a massive decline in cases pursued under Thomas, or by the massive reduction in the EEOC budget under Reagan, as reported in a 1983 article: was tapped skeptical 1983 article In Fiscal Year 1982, there was upwards of 70 percent fewer cases filed in court than in 1981 on behalf of grieved workers. EEOC employees report that, because of a lack of staff and resources, cases often receive perfunctory investigation and in many instances, charges have been dismissed or "no caused" because they would prove too difficult or time-consuming to process. The speech in question, delivered to employees of the EEOC, was a response to these criticisms and an attempt to clarify to his staff what Thomas felt the role of the EEOC should and should not be. In his remarks, Thomas cited "the changing nature of discrimination," and heralded inroads his EEOC had made in fighting age and gender discrimination: speech It should not be surprising that many of our most prominent cases involve allegations of age and sex discrimination, many resulting from reductions in force and forced retirement. This does not mean that charges of race, national origin, or religious discrimination are not filed with the EEOC and that the EEOC does not bring suit in such cases. It only means that there is now a special public and judicial sensitivity to cases involving age and women. Importantly, the speech is explicitly critical of the discourse surrounding affirmative action, and the policies Thomas advocated represented, at best, a muted skepticism toward the concepts' then-present use: represented No one in his right mind seriously questions the legal and moral bankruptcy of discrimination. The same unanimity of opinion does not exist for affirmative action. Affirmative action has been and will continue to be a subject of hot debate because mere mention of the term divides interest groups into two warring camps: one hotly in favor and one hotly opposed. [...] In their haste to condemn each other, the camps lose sight of the nature and purpose of equal employment opportunity laws. [...] This divisive debate results in general confusion and misunderstanding about affirmative action which, in turn, tends to undermine the effectiveness and legitimacy of the enforcement of civil rights laws. As the lead agency in the enforcement of federal equal employment opportunity laws, the EEOC cannot stand by and allow confusion about affirmative action to undermine our enforcement efforts. We must attempt to bring out and clarify the issues obscured by this debate. [...] Much of the heated debate and public confusion over affirmative action, in fact, stems from the confusion between flexible goals and inflexible quotas, and the use of these two distinct terms interchangeably. Thomas, in his speech, expressed the view that "too much posturing" had taken place over the debate about affirmative action, but he also affirmed that affirmative action programs had been "critical to minorities and women in this society." The section of the speech paraphrased to claim that Thomas was once amenable to affirmative action followed the above remarks: followed It is my view that too much posturing has taken place on issues such as affirmative action, which are critical to minorities and women in this society. The problems which we face in the area of equal employment opportunity must be solved. For the most part, they must be solved by applying legal principles of paramount importance to me. But for them, God only knows where I would be today. [...] These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second. The reference to the "first 17 years" of his life is an allusion to statements Thomas made in the opening of this speech, when Thomas referenced "the fact that the Chairman of the EEOC spent 17 years of his life (one-half) under strict segregation." This connection, along with the broader context of the speech, makes it clear that "these laws" are those contained in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. opening The 1964 Civil Rights Act ended segregation when Thomas was a few months shy of 17. It also created the "equal employment opportunity laws" at issue under Title VII that provide the EEOC the audience of his speech with its legal authority. At the end of his speech, during this second allusion to the end of segregation, Thomas warned against the improper use of those laws, even when used with good intention: shy of 17 I abhor any effort to twist, bend, or distort them [legal principles] for any reasons, whether such distortions are said to help or hurt minorities or women. No one should be permitted to turn these laws on their heads just because they have good intentions. These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second. In sum, Thomas did not present anything more than a muted acknowledgement of the EEOC's role in some forms of affirmative action, and the laws or principles he was referring to in remarks that have since gone viral did not concern affirmative action specifically, but the principles contained within the 1964 Civil Rights Act more broadly. 1964 Civil Rights Act That Thomas, who recently ruled against the use of racial quotas in college admissions, would have described affirmative action as "critical to minorities and women in this society" has been painted as an example of Thomas' hypocrisy on affirmative action. The portion of the speech often cited to make this point is mischaracterized, even if that point has validity. Specifically, the 1991 reporting in The New York Times reported, as its primary scoop, that Yale Law School had a 10 percent minority goal the year in which Thomas applied to and was accepted into the program: 1991 reporting Judge Clarence Thomas, who came to prominence as a fierce black critic of racial preference programs, was admitted to Yale Law School under an explicit affirmative action plan with the goal of having blacks and other minority members make up about 10 percent of the entering class, university officials said. Under the program, which was adopted in 1971, the year Judge Thomas applied, blacks and some Hispanic applicants were evaluated differently from whites, the officials said. Nonetheless, they were not admitted unless they met standards devised to predict they could succeed at the highly competitive school. [...] "We did adopt an affirmative action program and it was pretty clearly stated," said Prof. Abraham S. Goldstein, who was dean of the Law School from 1970 to 1975. Thomas has also acknowledged this part of his history, as reported in 1980 by The Washington Post. "The worst experience of his life," he reportedly explained at the time, "was attending college and law school with whites who believed he was there only because of racial quotas for the admission of blacks." as reported Frank Washington, a Yale friend interviewed by Newsweek in 1991, said that Thomas had, in private, "recognized that affirmative action helped to get him into law school, but on the basis of economic deprivation rather than race." interviewed While there are separate arguments to be made of the notion that Thomas' views on affirmative action are hypocritical due to his personal benefit from such programs, removing context from a speech to make it sound like that alleged hypocrisy was more overtly stated is misleading. Because the laws and principles Thomas was referring to were those contained in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and not any specific affirmative action legislation, the claim is False. Bella, Timothy. "The Time Clarence Thomas Said Affirmative Action Was 'Critical' for Society." Washington Post, 1 July 2023. www.washingtonpost.com, https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/06/30/clarence-thomas-affirmative-action/. "Black Conservatives, Center Stage." Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/12/16/black-conservatives-center-stage/c5b44552-ad84-4a40-9b3c-3e88fdfa3589/. Accessed 5 July 2023. Clarence Thomas in 1983: "God Only Knows Where" I Would Be If Not for Affirmative Action - Alternet.Org. https://www.alternet.org/clarence-thomas-1983-affirmative-action/. Accessed 5 July 2023. Current Litigation Trends and Goals at the EEOC - ProQuest. https://www.proquest.com/openview/1a991116c071ffe6a6547f7505c13f63/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1816463. Accessed 5 July 2023. "Eagleton Backs EEOC Nominee With Reluctance." Newspapers.Com, 1 Apr. 1982, https://www.newspapers.com/article/st-louis-post-dispatch-eagleton-backs-e/127670235/. "Federal Agency Reformer Leaves with No Misgivings." Newspapers.Com, 10 Mar. 1981, https://www.newspapers.com/article/arizona-republic-federal-agency-reformer/127564899/. "New EEOC Nomination." Newspapers.Com, 1 Mar. 1982, https://www.newspapers.com/article/athol-daily-news-new-eeoc-nomination/127670013/. "Regan Undermines EEOC Enforcement." Newspapers.Com, 5 Feb. 1983, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-atlanta-voice-regan-undermines-eeoc/127667015/. Rich, Spencer. "Reagan Panel, Citing 'New Racism,' Urges Easing of EEOC Rules." Washington Post, 30 Jan. 1981. www.washingtonpost.com, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/01/30/reagan-panel-citing-new-racism-urges-easing-of-eeoc-rules/dfd79721-7bbc-4ef0-91a3-ee5425904abe/. "Supreme Court Strikes down Affirmative Action Programs in College Admissions." SCOTUSblog, 29 June 2023, https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-affirmative-action-programs-in-college-admissions/. "Timeline of Important EEOC Events." US EEOC, https://www.eeoc.gov/youth/timeline-important-eeoc-events. Accessed 5 July 2023. "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." US EEOC, https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-1964. Accessed 5 July 2023. | 0 | [
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] | 0 |
FMD83 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Cancer Baby Facebook Hoax Claim summaries: Long-running hoax falsely claims Facebook will donate money to help a child with cancer every time an appeal for help is liked or shared.
contextual information: This appeal to help a child with cancer is merely another reiteration of a long-running class of hoaxes, often built around like farming. These hoaxes lure the gullible into spreading such messages by promising that some entity, such as Facebook, will donate money toward the medical treatment of a child with cancer (or some other disease) every time the message is forwarded, posted, liked, or shared. Multiple charities and companies have been unfairly dragged into such hoaxes over the years by being named in messages like these, causing them to spend considerable time and effort disclaiming them. The child whose photograph was appropriated for this hoax is not displaying visible symptoms of cancer. He is identified on multiple other online sites as a boy experiencing a reaction to the MMR vaccine and/or a case of rubella. Other versions of this hoax, positing that Facebook will donate money every time such an item is liked or shared, have circulated using a variety of different (unrelated) pictures: "This child has cancer. Facebook is ready to pay 3 cents for every share. We don't know if it is true or not, but let's everybody share. Maybe it's true and then... >SHARE< for this baby PLEASE SHARE, THANKS! By: 999,999,999 people. She's suffering from cancer! Facebook has promised to give $1.20 for each share! Please, share and make it happen. On the account of: Imran Khan. He is terribly sick :( What if this was your baby? Would you care at all? Facebook will donate $1 for every share. This child has lost his four limbs in a school bus accident. Facebook will pay $1 for every share..." Cook, Morgan. "Mother Works to Stop Exploitation of Child for Online Hoax." North County Times. 9 February 2012. | 0 | [
"0",
"1",
"2"
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FMD84 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Is it possible to stop recurring donations to the Trump Campaign? Claim summaries: A CNN reporter tweeted out a former Donald Trump supporter's claim that it was impossible to cancel recurring donations to the campaign once initiated, but it wasn't clear that was always the case.
contextual information: On 3 August 2016, CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond shared a screenshot via Twitter of an e-mail sent by a frustrated former Trump supporter, claiming that it was impossible for backers to cancel recurring donations to the Trump campaign: Jeremy Diamond INBOX: Help, I set up a recurring contribution to Trump's campaign & want to cancel it: (cc: @realDonaldTrump) pic.twitter.com/TFOHhdZDlJ @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/TFOHhdZDlJ Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016 Diamond's tweet sparked a number of articles and blog posts stating it was "impossible" to cancel recurring Trump campaign donations, based solely or primarily on the anecdotal, secondhand claim made in that tweet. Among the comments prompted by original tweet sent by Diamond were those left by other purported donors asserting that the claim wasn't exactly accurate: @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Spreading bogus info. When you contribute, you get receipt with an email + tel number to call if you need help. @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump M G (@MadaGasp) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016 @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump now please stop spreading false information, its all in the email you receive when you contribute @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Brian (@Brian_with_a_B) August 6, 2016 August 6, 2016 A large number of commenters expressed skepticism about the report, given that the claim was anonymously sourced from a single individual: @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Cheap shot: we all know you can contact your bank or other form of payment you use, to cancel right away. @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Viktor Staudt (@ViktorStaudt) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016 @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump so exactly who was this unknown mystery person that went straight to a journalist? pic.twitter.com/R4h78829CP @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/R4h78829CP Patti Hannah (@b6sangel) August 7, 2016 August 7, 2016 We were unable to turn up any reports about the issue that antedated Diamond's tweet. If any Trump donors had previously encountered difficulties canceling their recurring donations, they didn't seem to chatter very much about it on social media prior to 3 August 2016 (and ceasing to support Trump as a candidate is only one reason someone might seek to cancel a recurring payment). Diamond appeared to pass the baton on the story overall, updating followers later with a link to an article published by Mic: The folks at @mic took this ball and ran with it. Here's what they found: https://t.co/eTODFa4f3O https://t.co/cktSrf88Z2 @mic https://t.co/eTODFa4f3O https://t.co/cktSrf88Z2 Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 5, 2016 August 5, 2016 Diamond did not provide any further information about the claim, the claimant, or how he verified it before sharing it to Twitter. But Mic attempted to reproduce the problem on 4 August 2016 and gathered more information on the difficulty level of canceling recurring Trump donations. In a series of screenshots the site illustrated their findings, stating it was not possible to delete a stored credit card without replacing it with a separate valid credit card: After investigating, Mic can confirm that there is no easy option to stop recurring donations on Trump's donation site: We set up a recurring donation of $1 and found no button or other obvious way to cancel payments or remove a credit card from the system either on the homepage, the "update card" page, or in your contribution confirmation email. Once you're registered, if you try to change your payment information on Trump's site, you will see no option to remove your credit card only "update" it. Then, when you click on "update card," you see a page that allows you to alter your payment information but you cannot completely delete your credit card. You are forced to replace it with another valid card: Invalid numbers are rejected. One responder to the original tweet then objected to that claim, stating it was impossible to set up a recurring $1 donation: .@JDiamond1 You can't set up a $1.00 recurring amt.What else about this story is BS?@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/kB4TalWOSE @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/kB4TalWOSE ValerieNoFux (@OPFergVal) August 7, 2016 August 7, 2016 However, it appears that it is possible to enter any amount as a recurring donation: enter Mic confirmed that if a putative donor set up an account, then it would be possible for that person to cancel a recurring donation made via Trump's web site: It turns out that there is a way to delete your card from the Trump campaign's system, but it seems you must have first registered an account and created a password: If you did not do so, there is no clear way to cancel your payment. Assuming you did create an account and have logged in, to stop your payment you must click the small gray question mark icon in the upper right corner of the donations page. Then you will see [a separate] screen. In order to delete your card, you must click "manage." Then will you be redirected to the website of the Trump campaign's vendor. There you must click "recurring plans," and only then can you cancel your monthly payment; notably, even after you cancel, there is still no obvious way to delete your card number without replacing it with another valid number. Per Mic's screenshots, that vendor was Revv, and we sent an e-mail inquiry to them to clarify whether it was possible to cancel the recurring payments some other way. Revv However, even if the web site interface didn't allow for such a cancellation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) notes that the the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA) provides for consumers to cancel unwanted recurring payments: notes If you have regular, automatic deductions from your checking account (to pay for expenses such as insurance premiums or utility bills), the EFTA allows you to stop those payments. First, notify the vendor. Next, tell your bank about your request at least three business days before the money is scheduled to be transferred. Your notice to the bank may be oral, but the institution may require you to provide a written follow-up within 14 days to ensure that no additional payments are made. If you fail to provide a written follow-up, the bank is no longer responsible for stopping future payments. Stopping an automatic, recurring payment on a credit card is different. Start by putting in your request with the vendor. But if the vendor continues to charge your credit card, contact your card issuer. You'll have 60 days to dispute the charge, starting when the card issuer sends you the statement with the charges. While it appears to be atypically difficult to cancel a recurring donation to the Trump campaign, it is certainly not impossible, as individuals who create an account can do so via the web interface. Overall, it seemed the problem related more to the interface of a third-party vendor (Revv) to whom the Trump campaign had outsourced donations and not to the campaign itself. Dennin, James. "Donald Trump's Campaign Website Won't Let Some Cancel Recurring Donations."
Mic. 4 August 2016. | 2 | [
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FMD85 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: An NYPD officer was assassinated early Wednesday by an ex-con who marched up to her NYPD vehicle and pumped a bullet into the helpless cop s head, authorities said.Officer Miosotis Familia, 48, was mortally wounded by the 12:30 a.m. gunshot on a Bronx street as she neared the end of her Fourth of July shift, cops said.Cop-killer Alexander Bonds, dressed in black from head to toe, was then shot to death in a gunfight with two cops responding to a desperate call for help from Familia s partner. Shots fired! the officer screamed moments after the gunshot. I need a f ing bus! 10-85 10-85! My partner s shot! My partner s shot! My partner s shot! Hurry up central! Police Commissioner James O Neill said there was no doubt the paroled gunman targeted the 12-year NYPD veteran for execution at E. 183rd St. and Creston Ave. NY Daily NewsSo why is the same media who blames President Trump for violence committed against Republicans not asking if cop-killer Alexander Bonds was inspired by Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, Black Lives Matter and Hillary Clinton?Only two years ago, Black Lives Matter supporters were filmed chanting Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon! at the MN State Fair. President Barack Obama and his radical AG were silent."Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon" #BlackFair #BlackLivesMatter #FTP #ACAB pic.twitter.com/NaQNehnd5g EMP THY (@MrNikoG) August 29, 2015President Barack Obama actually lectured mourners on bigotry, slavery and oppression at the memorial service for slain police officers who were killed by a Black Lives Matter supporter. Instead of using the opportunity to condemn the growing, violent movement, he actually appeared to be condoning it. While paying tribute to the fallen officers for sacrificing their lives to protect others from a sniper, Mr. Obama also called on law enforcement agencies to root out bigotry. We have all seen this bigotry in our lives at some point, Mr. Obama told an audience of several hundred at a concert hall in Dallas. None of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. We know this. The officers Michael Smith, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Brent Thompson and Patrick Zamarripa were killed by a black sniper who told police he targeted white officers during a Black Lives Matter protest.The day after the memorial service for the Dallas cops who were murdered by a Black Lives Matter supporter, President Barack Obama invited BLM leaders to the White House for a private meeting:It should come as no surprise to anyone that the most recent assassination of an innocent cop was at the hands of Hillary Clinton supporter Alexander Bonds, given her outreach to the Black Lives Matter terror group during her campaign. Wikileaks even released an email showing how radical group Center For American Progress was advising her on how to fake empathy for parents of kids killed by cops. Wikileaks released an email from Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden, coaching Hillary on how to best gain the trust of the Black community by going directly to the victims being held up by Black Lives Matter movement as heroes, and faking empathy with the parents. She also mentions it would be a good idea to use the idea that their grief should be magnified because it happened at the hands of law enforcement officers (the state).Given all that has happened over the last few days with the Black Lives Matter movement, I thought it would be a good idea for Hillary to pen an op ed, discussing the pain people feel as parents at the loss of their children to these incidents of police brutality, how as a parent, she knows that pain is magnified because it happens at the hands of the state, and her commitment to solve the problem as President.Given her strong words on Charlotte, it could serve as a reminder that she gets it that racism isn t like everything else. She wouldn t have to mention Bernie s name, but I think it could really respond to the sense of continual injured dignity .I think, but others will know better, that it will move around the social media networks. > > Anyway, just thought I d share with you guys . >> Thanks! > > Neera >While Barack Obama was in office, radical activist, hate-monger and racial division expert Al Sharpton was a regular visitor. Obama s former AG Eric Holder was caught using taxpayer funds to pay protesters to march against George Zimmerman during the Trayvon Martin case in Sanford, FL. Upon the unbelievable discovery, the media was predictably silent.The culprit behind a shocking unprovoked attack on a female police officer had spouted anti-cop rhetoric in the past and urged people to vote for Hillary Clinton.Bonds, who the source said boasts up to six different aliases, recently spoke critically of law enforcement on Facebook. He said police in Oakland, Calif., were wrong to stop a child riding a bicycle.Authorities are trying to piece together a motive after NYPD officer and mother of three Miosotis Familia was brutally gunned down in cold blood by Alexander Bonds early Monday morning while she sat in a temporary headquarters vehicle at East 183rd Street and Morris Avenue in Fordham Heights.Bonds was subsequently killed by two other officers called to the scene while Familia died in hospital. This is absolutely an unprovoked attack, said NYPD Commissioner James P. O Neill. Police say surveillance footage shows Bonds pulling up his hoodie before purposefully walking up to the vehicle and shooting through the passenger side. Speculation as to why 34-year-old Bonds, who had previously served seven years in prison for a Syracuse robbery, gunned down Familia has begun to center on his political beliefs.Bonds Facebook page reveals that days before the presidential election, he posted a video of a woman alleging that voting machines were switching Hillary Clinton votes to Donald Trump.Watch video Bonds made below, where he tells his Facebook followers about his hate for cops. He calls police faggots and accuses them of raping children. He also says he s up and ready for the cops, using his time in jail as an example of how he got ready for them. He posted the words Mad as hill above the video.On the same day he urged people to get mad about the election and vote. When asked who he was voting for, Bonds responded that he couldn t vote (due to his felony conviction), but said people should vote for Hillary Clinton.Bonds also posted Malcolm X memes as well as videos of confrontations between black people and police officers. Previous ambush-style murders of police officers have been motivated by extremist anti-cop Black Lives Matter -style rhetoric, as well as mass shootings of police officers like the Dallas massacre, which was celebrated by BLM sympathizers. Infowars | 0 | [
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FMD86 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Wedding Dress Guy Claim summaries: Did a man lists his ex-wife's wedding dress on eBay with a hilarious offer of sale?
contextual information: Claim: A man listed a wedding gown on eBay via a hilarious offer of sale that included photos of him posing in the dress. Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2004] For Sale: One Slightly Used Size 12 Wedding Gown. Only worn twice: Once at the wedding and once for these pictures. Make: Victoria Style: 611 Size: 12 Divorce forces sale I found my ex-wife's wedding dress in the attic when I moved. She took the $4000 engagement ring but left the dress. I was actually going to have a dress burning party when the divorce became final, but my sister talked me out of it. She said, "Thats such a gorgeous dress. Some lucky girl would be glad to have it. You should sell it on EBay. At least get something back for it." So, this is what Im doing. Im selling it hoping to get enough money for maybe a couple of Mariners tickets and some beer. This dress cost me $1200 that my drunken sot of an ex-father-in-law swore up and down he would pay for but didnt so I got stuck with the bill. Luckily I only got stuck with his daughter for 5 years. Thank the Lord we didn't have kids. If they would have turned out like her or her family I would have slit my wrists. Anyway, its a really nice dress as you can see in the pictures. Personally, I think it looks like a $1200 shower curtain, but what do I know about this. We tried taking pictures of this lovely white garment but it didnt look right on the hanger as you can see, so my sister says, "You need a model." Well, quite frankly my sister isnt exactly small, (like a size 12 is?) so she wouldnt pose for the picture. Seeing as I have sworn off women for the time being and I aint friends with any, it left me holding the bag. I took the liberty of blacking out my face - not to protect the ex-wife but to protect me from my bar buddies and co-workers finding out about it. I would never live it down. Actually I didnt think my head would fit in the neck hole, but then I figured she got her Texas cheerleader hair through there I could get my head in it. Though, after looking at the pictures, I thought it made me look fat. How do you women wear this crap? I only had to walk 3 feet and I tripped twice. Dont worry ladies - I am wearing clothes on underneath it. I gotta say it did make me feel very pretty. So if it can make me feel pretty, it can make you feel pretty, especially on the most important day of your life, right? Anyway, I was told to say it has a train and a veil and all kinds of shiny beady things. I think it's funny that one picture makes it look like the chest plate off an Imperial Storm Trooper. Did I mention that all I want is a ball game and beer? Cheap at twice the price. Ladies, you wont regret this. You may regret the dude you marry but not the dress. Just a little side note - As I was putting this ad in EBay, it asked me for a color. Is a wedding dress any other freaking color than white or ivory??!! If it is it wouldn't be a wedding dress, now would it?? I suppose black would work... On Apr-26-04 at 10:38:31 PDT, seller added the following information: Well, the auction is a little over half over and I am just amazed. This thing has taken more hits than that pothead that lives in the next building. Man, oh man, if hits were bucks Id be getting a suite at Safeco. I also have received TONS of email. I dont have the time to reply to all of them but I just want to let everyone know that I appreciate the well wishes. Of the email I received: Five or so were invitations to ball games in other states. Two of those were for little league games. Do they have those cushy executive boxes with the free chicken wings at those? One email was from Scotland. Its a good thing he wrote it because I wouldnt be able to understand a word he said. Never did get through Braveheart. Most were thanking me for the laugh. Youre entirely welcome. Five years of misery was well worth the hearty guffaw that was my pleasure to give you. Oh, yeah. I also got three marriage proposals. Yes, you read it right - three marriage proposals. I feel like one of those mass murderers on death row. I never understood how the hell they got more chicks than I did. Now I know. They sold crap on eBay. On Apr-26-04 at 23:45:56 PDT, seller added the following information: Holy Moly! The hit counter is starting to look like the odometer in my truck! Not the new shiny black full-size 4-wheel-drive American pick-up that I had to part with, but the somewhat older, multicolored, lumpy, tiny, 2-wheel-drive foreign pick-up that belches smoke. A little something about that vehicle, though: its absolutely amazing! When I get inside it to go to the store, I am all depressed. But when I arrive at the store, Im so freaking loopy from inhaling the fumes, I forget why I went there in the first place. Im saving buckets of money. Of course, I will probably have to spend it all on the tuberculosis I will acquire, but hey, you cant have everything. I felt compelled to update this ad once more due to all of your emails. The first thing I have to say is thank you all for your support in my time of need. It was a truly harrowing experience. Some of you men know exactly what I mean. Seeing as this has turned into my little public forum, I just want to address a few of the emails that kind of left me scratching my head. I now have five marriage proposals. You would think my speaking of the ones I already got yesterday would have put a damper on it, but you women sure are persistent. One woman actually said she doesnt want to marry me, but wouldnt mind being my ex-wife. Hmmm. Let me think about that. Nope. No thanks, already got one. (Pssst. Didnt I mention I had one? Who wants an ex-wife that cant read? Now, I know what you guys are thinking - "If she cant read, then the divorce would be smooth sailing." Well, that would be all well and good but I didnt say her ATTORNEY couldnt read. You following me on this?) Other emails are serious buyers asking about the dress. "How long is the train?" and "Does the gown come with the headdress and veil?" Yes, headdress and veil are included, but the do-rag stays with me. And if the train was long enough for my exs caboose, its long enough for yours. You will have to supply your own baggage, though. I gave mine to Goodwill. There was this one woman who wrote, "You should have covered your tattoos. People will be able to recognize you, like on Americas Most Wanted." HELLO!!! Im a guy selling a dress. Im not wanted for war crimes. Some of your emails made me laugh. Like the bitter woman that wished she had her exs testicles to sell on eBay. Im not too sure theres a market for that, though. Then there was the guy that gave his wifes wedding dress to the Salvation Army by mistake, thinking it was a Christmas tree. Guess he didnt have any Christmas balls that year. This has also been a learning experience for me. I got a lot of messages correcting me about the color of wedding dresses. For Russian Orthodox, they are blue. For Chinese they are red. Mexico has multi-colored ones. All I know is, for my next wedding I will be wearing a hairy, flesh-toned ensemble because I will be buck naked with a toe tag lying on a slab in the morgue because I would have killed myself. A lot of folks were asking me if I wear womens dresses a lot. I can honestly say that this is the first time I have ever donned female attire. Its also the first time Ive been inside something feminine that didnt nag me to take out the garbage. It seems a few people have taken offense to my inferring a size 12 is big. One male even pointed out that Marilyn Monroe was a size 14. Now, I would agree with you that size 12/14 is small if I lived elsewhere. But I live right here in the good old 48 Contiguous, where binging and purging is a way of life. American women do not want to be double digits in size. Just ask any woman what size they want to be. Invariably they will say five or seven. Wealthy will be the person that opens a store for Lane Bryant-sized women but sews size 7 tags on all the clothes. On the flip side of that, I have taken offense to some of the people that told me Im ugly and a loser. All I have to say is youd be ugly too if you had a huge white blotch on your face. And as far as being a loser, I think you have it all wrong. I am such the winner. It isnt every day an average guy can make 50,000 people laugh. Thanks to each and every one of you from the heart of my bottom. Origins: The online auction powerhouse eBay has been the setting of many strange come-ons, some seriously meant and some far less so. In addition to a throng of earnest sellers and determined bargain hunters that frequent this popular online bazaar, it is also populated by its share of crazies intent upon sneaking their hoax listings into the marketplace. Consequently, one can't always tell fish from fowl at first glance. Over the years, our readers have queried us about various eBay auctions because they harbored suspicions about particular listings, either due to the nature of the goods being tendered or because something about the pitch struck them as not quite right (e.g.; an offer of a tea kettle, which displayed additional wares of the seller). Yet few of the auctions so doubted have been asked about as often as the April 2004 proffering of a size 12 Victoria wedding gown, an item that isn't in and of itself all that unusual. But it wasn't the dress that set people to wondering; it was the seller's comments, which appeared to afford a hilarious look into one man's private hell. The seller wasn't so much advertising a dress as he was proclaiming from a public soapbox how awful his wife had been. The auction listing was just as much about getting even as it was about unloading an item he had no particular use for. tea kettle Or was it? Had a gal with "Texas cheerleader hair" really so turned a man against marriage that he swore that "for my next wedding I will be wearing a hairy, flesh-toned ensemble because I will be buck naked with a toe tag lying on a slab in the morgue because I would have killed myself"? Herein rested the listing's appeal: The story was entertaining, but was it real? The solicitation was on the up and up, at least in regard to the nature of the merchandise being vended there was such a dress, and the offer of sale was genuine. However, some (if not all) of the gown's backstory was the stuff of fairy tales. The original eBay listing posted by 42-year-old Larry Star wasn't provoking much interest among those shopping for a wedding dress, so he rewrote it to make it amusing resulting in the posting that has served to make him famous. The tale of marital woe posted by this Brooklyn native both contained invented details and omitted key bits of information. Though he has a sister, she didn't talk him out of the dress burning party he had his heart set upon by suggesting he list the gown on eBay and so get something out of it. He also had an ex-wife prior to the one whose dress he supposedly was selling. (Star and his first missus were married in 1994, separated in 1996, and were divorced in 1998.) And contrary to his statement, "Thank the Lord we didn't have kids. If they would have turned out like her or her family I would have slit my wrists," he and his second wife did indeed have a son together during their short-lived marriage. The unhappy couple wed in 2000, separated in 2001 after a domestic kafuffle (which reportedly resulted in Star's being charged with domestic violence assault in the fourth degree and interfering with the reporting of domestic violence), and divorced in 2003. Though "five years of misery" might well have been worth the hearty guffaw he says was his pleasure to give the online community, those years weren't spent "stuck" with the "drunken sot's" daughter; his time cohabitating with Wife #2 amounted to just a bit more than a year. It's not known if the gown in question even belonged to his ex-wife, as she hasn't surfaced to speak publicly about the matter. Also, according to the Houston Chronicle, when asked if the dress had really been hers, Mr. Star sidestepped the question, instead replying, "I got the wedding dress, I wanted to get rid of it. I was going to burn it and had the idea of selling it on eBay. I needed to sell it on eBay with all the other dresses on there, and I needed to make it stand out." And stand out it did. The auction of the fabled wedding gown ended 28 April 2004 with a buyer using the online handle of "absolutsth" placing the winning bid of $3,850. Yet all is not coming up roses for the intrepid seller who one would assume to be realizing a profit of $2,650 on the gown he says cost originally $1,200, as the sale has fallen through. According to Star, the buyer has backed out, claiming "I left my computer on and somebody made the bid for me." The folks at eBay have told Star he can either accept the second-highest bid or re-list the dress and hold the sale again. As of 7 May 2004, he had not decided whether he would accept the next highest legitimate bid (if there even was a legitimate bid). By the time the auction ended, Star's listing on eBay had been viewed more than 5.8 million times. Some of those visitors, possibly caught up in the frenzy of it all, placed bids they did not intend to honor. (Officials at eBay had to weed out many phonies at one point the bidding reached $99 million.) How many of the remaining bids were legitimate is not known. And, even if all those bids were meant seriously at the time they were placed, some of those prospective buyers may now be having second thoughts, particularly those who offered more than $1,000 for a used, stained dress that was only worth $1,200 when it first came off the hanger. The ultimate fate of the frock may take it in a far different direction than down the aisle on the back of a budget-conscious bride. Its listing (which has now been viewed 11 million times) has brought recognition to its owner and has possibly opened the way to a new career for this software test designer and part-time musician. Thanks to the dress, Larry Star has twice been a guest on both MSNBC's Countdown and NBC's Today Show, each time wearing the unsold gown. Also thanks to the dress, he has made his debut as a stand-up comedian at the Punchline Comedy Club in Atlanta. He has said he would like to pursue a comedy writing career, and all this attention might well work to get that going. Though there are many stand-up comedians on the circuit, we know of none that perform their schtick outfitted in wedding regalia. Could this gown do for Star what a sledgehammer and a watermelon did for Gallagher? Barbara "smash hit" Mikkelson Additional Information: Weddingdressguy.com (Larry Star) Last updated: 3 July 2007 Sources: Brodeur, Nicole. "Fact Is, There's Some Fiction to Man's Pitch to Sell His Ex-wife's Wedding Dress on eBay." The Seattle Times. 29 April 2004 (p. B1). Curry, Ann, Matt Lauer and Katie, Couric. "Today." NBC. 30 April 2004. Eldredge, Richard. "Wedding Dress Guy Jilted by eBay Bidder." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 7 May 2004 (p. E2). Kelso, John. "Best of eBay: A Wedding Dress Tale." Cox News Service. 2 May 2004. Olbermann, Keith. "Countdown." MSNBC. 30 April 2004. Olbermann, Keith. "Countdown." MSNBC. 28 April 2004. Parks, Louis. "On eBay, Wedding Dress for Success." The Houston Chronicle. 30 April 2004 (Houston; p. 1). Weiss, Tara. "A Star is Born, Selling Wedding Dress on eBay." Hartford Courant. 30 April 2004 (p. D2). Associated Press. "Man Who Sold Ex's Wedding Dress on eBay Earns Instant Fame." 30 April 2004. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "15 Minutes Still Ticking for Wedding Dress Guy." 4 May 2004 (p. E2). | 1 | [
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FMD87 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: IMPLOSION: Trump Campaign Insiders Report–‘Think Of The Bunker Before Hitler Killed Himself’ By Andrew Bradford on October 30, 2016 Subscribe
For months, Donald Trump has assuring his supporters that he is going to win on November 8. This is despite nearly every poll showing him behind by as much as 12 points. And now we have an inside look at the Trump campaign which would seem to indicate that the entire campaign apparatus is on the verge of collapsing on itself.
New York magazine has just published an article by Gabriel Sherman in which one Trump staffer commented: “Think of the bunker right before Hitler killed himself. Donald’s in denial. They’re all in denial.”
Overall, the mood of the staff working out of Trump Tower goes from gloom, denial, rage, and glee on Friday when the FBI reported it would review new materials in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was still Secretary of State.
While the Trump camp should be able to make hay of the announcement from FBI Director James Comey, one problem remains: The candidate is so undisciplined that any progress made is quickly undone by Trump himself. As a top donor told Sherman : “Trump has the following personality: NIH-NFW, meaning ‘If it’s not invented here, not invented behind these eyes, then it’s no fucking way.'”
Sherman’s report echoes another article from the New York Times in which an advisor to the GOP nominee commented: “In Trumpworld as Hitler’s Bunker terms (it’s) like when Goebbels thought FDR’s death would save the Nazi regime.”
And plans for what comes after the election–rumors of a new Trump TV network–also seem unlikely some inside the inner circle reveal. One prominent member of the GOP told Sherman: “It’s too expensive. Trump won’t put his own money in.”
Disgraced former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes has parted ways with Trump, reportedly because the candidate refused to stay on message and follow direction from campaign staff. Others are also positioning themselves for what happens after the election is over with. One former Mitt Romney staffer says the lifeboats are out early: “It’s a window into a campaign in a downward spiral when the positioning begins, but I’ve never seen it begin this early.”
So was the entire Trump campaign nothing more than ego fulfillment and an attempt to gain endless media attention for the Donald? With nine days left, that explanation seems to be the most likely reason Trump embarked on this suicide mission in the first place.
Featured Image Via Gage Skidmore for Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License About Andrew Bradford
Andrew Bradford is a single father who lives in Atlanta. A member of the Christian Left, he has worked in the fields of academia, journalism, and political consulting. His passions are art, music, food, and literature. He believes in equal rights and justice for all. To see what else he likes to write about, check out his blog at Deepleftfield.info. Connect | 0 | [
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FMD88 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has underscored Washington’s intent to strengthen ties with Australia, Japan and South Korea, the State Department said on Tuesday, a move aimed at reassuring allies unnerved by the campaign rhetoric of new President Donald Trump. In separate calls with counterparts from the three long-time allies, they agreed to work closely to tackle threats from North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and increased tensions in the East and South China seas, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, “Secretary Tillerson reiterated the Administration’s intent to strengthen our military alliances, our economic partnerships, and our diplomatic cooperation,†he said in a statement. Tillerson expressed interest in early meetings with his counterparts “and expressed his deep respect for their nations’ contributions to regional security, global prosperity, democratic institutions, and the rule of law,†it said. The calls come at a time of raised concerns in the Asia-Pacific about Trump’s attitude to the region. During his election campaign, Trump appeared to question U.S. alliances with Tokyo and Seoul and complained that they were not sharing enough of the cost of the U.S. security umbrella. Trump has also criticized Japan’s trade policies as damaging to U.S. jobs. More recently ties with Australia were strained after details of an acrimonious phone call between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull emerged and the former described a deal between the two nations on refugee resettlement as “dumb.†Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is due to visit Washington for a two-day summit with Trump from Friday that is expected to focus on security ties in the face of a rising China and trade. Earlier on Tuesday, Japan’s Kyodo news agency quoted Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida as saying that Tillerson had confirmed that a long-standing commitment by Washington to defend Japanese territory applies to the Senkakus, a group of small islands that China claims and calls the Diaoyus. The State Department declined to comment on the Kyodo report but U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reaffirmed America’s commitment to its mutual defense treaty with Japan on Friday when he met Abe in Tokyo and in a call with Abe in late January. Trump said the U.S. security commitment was “ironclad. Turnbull’s leadership was questioned after he was berated by Trump and an opinion poll published on Monday showed support for his coalition had slipped to its lowest level since he took power 17 months ago and that his Liberal-National coalition would easily fall if an election were held now. | 1 | [
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FMD89 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Punishment Is Violent And Counterproductive By Robert J Burrowes
Punishment is a popular pastime for humans. Parents punish children. Teachers punish students. Employers punish workers. Courts punish lawbreakers. People punish each other. Governments punish enemies. And, according to some, God punishes evildoers.
What is punishment? Punishment is the infliction of violence as revenge on a person who is judged to have behaved inappropriately. It is a key word we use when we want to obscure from ourselves that we are being violent.
The violence inflicted as punishment can take many forms, depending on the context. It might involve inflicting physical injury and/or pain, withdrawal of approval or love, confinement/imprisonment, a financial penalty, dismissal, withdrawal of rights/privileges, denial of promised rewards, an order to perform a service, banishment, torture or death, among others.
Given the human preoccupation with punishment, it is perhaps surprising that this behaviour is not subjected to more widespread scrutiny. Mind you, I can think of many human behaviours that get less scrutiny than would be useful.
Anyway, because I am committed to facilitating functional human behaviour, I want to explain why using violence to punish people is highly dysfunctional and virtually guarantees an outcome opposite to that intended.
Punishment is usually inflicted by someone who makes a judgment that another person has behaved badly or wrongly. At its most basic, disobedience (that is, failure to comply with elite imposed norms) is often judged in this way, whether by parents, teachers, religious figures, lawmakers or national governments.
But is obedience functional or even appropriate?
Consider this. In order to behave optimally, the human organism requires that all mental functions feelings, thoughts, memory, conscience, sensory perception (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste), truth register, intuition must be developed and readily involved, without interference, in our life. If this happens, then all of these individual functions will play an integrated role in determining our behaviour in any given circumstance. This is a very sophisticated mental apparatus that has evolved over billions of years and if it was allowed to function without interference in each individual, human beings would indeed be highly functional.
So where does obedience fit into all of this? It doesnt. A child is genetically programmed to seek to meet their own needs, not obey the will of another. And they will behave functionally in endeavouring to meet these needs unless terrorized out of doing so. Moreover, they will learn to meet their own needs, by acting individually in some circumstances and by cooperating with others when appropriate, if their social environment models this.
However, if a child is terrorized into being obedient including by being punished when they are not then the child will have no choice but to suppress their awareness of the innate mental capacities that evolved over billions of years to guide their behaviour until they have learned what they must do to avoid being punished. For a fuller explanation of this, see Why Violence? http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice. http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/
Unfortunately, as you can probably readily perceive, this process of terrorizing a child into suppressing their awareness of what they want to do so that they do what someone else directs is highly problematical. And it leads to a virtually infinite variety of dysfunctional behaviours, even for those who appear to have been successfully socialized into performing effectively in their society. This is readily illustrated.
Perhaps the central problem of terrorizing individuals into obedience of conventions, commands, rules and the law is that once the individual has been so terrorized, it is virtually impossible for them to change their behaviour because they are now terrified of doing so. If the obedient behaviours were functional in the circumstances then, apart from the obviously enormous damage suffered by the individual, there would be no other adverse social or environmental consequences.
Unfortunately, when all humans have been terrorized into behaving dysfunctionally on a routine basis (in the Western context, for example, by engaging in over-consumption) then changing their behaviour, even in the direction of functionality, is now unconsciously associated with the fear of violence (in the form of punishment) and so desirable behavioural change (in the direction of reduced consumption, for example) is much more difficult. It is not just that many Western humans are reluctant to reduce their consumption in line with environmental (including climatic) imperatives, they are unconsciously terrified of doing so.
By now you might be able to see the wider ramifications of using violence and threats of violence to force children into being obedient. Apart from terrorizing each child into suppressing their awareness of their innate mental capacities, we create individuals whose entire (unconscious) understanding of human existence is limited to the notion that violence, mislabeled punishment, drives socialization and society.
As just one result, for example, most people consider punishment to be appropriate in the context of the legal system: they expect courts to inflict legally-sanctioned violence on those guilty of disobeying the law. As in the case of the punishment of children, how many people ask Does violence restore functional behaviour? Or does it simply inflict violence as revenge? What do we really want to achieve? And how will we achieve that?
Fundamentally, the flaw with violence as punishment is that violence terrifies people. And you cannot terrorize someone into behaving functionally. At very best, you can terrorize someone into changing their behaviour in an extremely limited context and/or for an extremely limited period of time. But if you want functional and lasting change in an individuals behaviour, then considerable emotional healing will be necessary. This will allow the suppressed fear, anger, sadness and other feelings resulting from childhood terrorization to safely resurface and be expressed so that the individual can perceive their own needs and identify ways of fulfilling them (which does not mean that they will be obedient). For an explanation of what is required, see Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening which is referenced in My Promise to Children. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/constructive-program/my-promise-to-children/
So next time you hear a political leader or corporate executive advocating or using violence (such as war, the curtailment of civil liberties, an economically exploitative and/or ecologically destructive initiative), remember that you are observing a highly dysfunctionalized individual. Moreover, this dysfunctional individual is a logical product of our societys unrelenting use of violence, much of it in the form of what is euphemistically called punishment, against our children in the delusional belief that it will give us obedience and hence social control.
Or next time you hear a public official, judge, terrorist or police officer promising justice (that is, retribution), remember that you are listening to an emotionally damaged individual who suffered enormous violence as a child and internalized the delusional message that punishment works.
You might also ponder how bad it could be if we didnt require obedience and use punishment to get it, but loved and nurtured children, by listening to them deeply, to become the unique, enormously loving and powerful individuals for which evolution genetically programmed them.
I am well aware that what I am suggesting will take an enormous amount of societal rethinking and a profound reallocation of resources away from violent and highly profitable police, legal, prison and military systems. But, as I wrote above, I am committed to facilitating functional human behaviour. I can also think of some useful ways that we could allocate the resources if we didnt waste them on violence.
If you share this commitment and working towards this world appeals to you too, then you are welcome to consider participating in the fifteen-year strategy outlined in The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth http://tinyurl.com/flametree and to consider signing the online pledge of The Peoples Charter to Create a Nonviolent World. http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com
Punishment can sometimes appear to get you the outcome you want in the short term. The cost is that it always moves you further away from any desirable outcome in the long run.
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of Why Violence? http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is [email protected] and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com | 0 | [
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FMD90 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did Melania Trump Plagiarize a Pamphlet for the 'Be Best' Campaign? Claim summaries: The White House quickly corrected a statement on its web site claiming that a document written by the Federal Trade Commission in 2014 had been co-authored by First Lady Melania Trump.
contextual information: Ever since Melania Trump delivered an oddly familiar speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, the First Lady has been dogged by accusations of plagiarism, many of which were nothing more than fake news. A new batch of allegations surfaced in May 2018, as keen-eyed readers noticed that a pamphlet linked to Trump's new "Be Best" campaign was nearly identical to a document released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2014. It is true that the "Be Best" campaign was linked to a pamphlet that closely resembled material published by the FTC in 2014. You can see the FTC's pamphlet, "Net Cetera: Chatting with Kids About Being Online," here, and the "Talking with Kids About Being Online" from the White House here. These two documents are nearly identical, with the exception of an introduction from the First Lady, but it's disingenuous to say that Melania Trump "plagiarized" this material. The main piece of evidence supporting the "plagiarism" charge is that the pamphlet was originally presented on the White House website as a booklet "by First Lady Melania Trump and the Federal Trade Commission," in reference to the First Lady's contribution of an introduction to the "Talking with Kids About Being Online" pamphlet. That wording was soon updated to describe "Talking with Kids About Being Online" as "a Federal Trade Commission booklet, promoted by First Lady Melania Trump." At no point did Melania Trump take credit for or claim she had written the entire pamphlet. Nearly every page of the "Talking with Kids About Being Online" pamphlet contains a link to the FTC's website about Internet safety, and the final page lists websites for both the Be Best campaign and the FTC's internet safety page. The White House released a contentious statement on May 8, 2018, regarding the plagiarism accusations: Mrs. Trump | 0 | [
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FMD91 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Is Ecosia, the search engine, using its profits to plant trees? Claim summaries: The search engine claims it has funded the planting of more than 60 million trees.
contextual information: If you browse Snopes.com, you'll likely come across the advice, "If it seems too good to be true, it it probably is" on pages about social media scams. While this platitude is certainly worth considering when browsing the internet, a few exceptions exist. social media scams The Germany-based search engine Ecosia claims to use its profits to plant trees around the world. Its home page even carries a tally of the number of trees that have reportedly been planted by Ecosia users: For many people, this business model may seem "too good to be true" and has led to some skepticism about the legitimacy of this company. A search on Google, for instance, results in several articles and blog posts questioning the legitimacy of the search engine and asking whether Ecosia is a scam. As far as we can tell, Ecosia is a legitimate search engine that truly uses a portion of its profits to help plant trees around the world. Ecosia was launched in 2009 by Christian Kroll. At the time, the search engine was partnered with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and promised to donate "at least 80 percent of its income from sponsored links to WWFs rainforest protection programme in Brazils Juruena-Apui region." WWF announced the partnership in a blog post: blog Those people unable to make it to the Copenhagen Climate Conference this month can still contribute to stopping climate change by using a new search engine from their own computers. The same day the conference begins on Dec. 7, web users can start using a new green search engine called Ecosia. The new application, powered by Yahoo! and Microsofts Bing search engines, will allow internet surfers to protect about 2 square meters of Amazon rainforest just by clicking on sponsored links. Although users do not donate any money themselves, the company behind Ecosia will donate at least 80 percent of its income from sponsored links to WWFs rainforest protection programme in Brazils Juruena-Apui region. The green search engine is a very modern and inventive method of saving the world climate without a huge effort, says WWF Germanys director Eberhard Brandes. Every year billions of dollars are being earned in the internet only from advertising revenue, says Christian Kroll, founder of Ecosia. There is a more eco-friendly way of using these huge profits: the money should better be used to fight global warming. Since 2009, Ecosia has partnered with a number of other environmental organizations. The company reports it uses a portion of its profits to fund these organizations, who in turn work to plant trees around the world. Ecosia makes money the way most other search engines and websites do: through advertising revenue. While this money covers various business expenses, such as advertising and operational costs, Ecosia claims that the majority of its revenue goes toward funding tree-planting projects. Ecosia releases monthly financial reports so users can see exactly how the company is spending its money. The most recent full report comes from July 2019. The following report shows that 52% of its total income (approximately 80% of its surplus revenue) was invested in tree-planting projects; 5% was spent on advertising; 30% was spent on operational costs; and 12% went into company "reserves," which are used to fund larger environmental investments: financial reports We have been unable to independently verify these numbers. However, we checked the websites of several of Ecosia's reported benefactors and found that many of these organizations list Ecosia as one of their partners. Dr. Simon Pfister, managing director of Green Ethiopia, an organization working to grow forests in Ethiopia that received approximately $150,000 from Ecosia in June 2019, told us that Ecosia accurately reported its donation in the company's financial report. Ecosia is also a Certified B Corporation. This means that Ecosia underwent a third-party evaluation that determined the company had an overall positive impact on its workers, community, and environment. According to the company: Ecosia Certified B Corporation. B Corp Certification doesnt just evaluate a product or service; it assesses the overall positive impact of the company that stands behind it. And increasingly thats what people care most about. Certified B Corporations achieve a minimum verified score on the B Impact Assessment a rigorous assessment of a companys impact on its workers, customers, community, and environment and make their B Impact Report transparent on bcorporation.net. Certified B Corporations also amend their legal governing documents to require their board of directors to balance profit and purpose. The combination of third-party validation, public transparency, and legal accountability help Certified B Corps build trust and value. B Corp Certification is administered by the non-profit B Lab. Ecosia lets users plant trees by searching the web. In donating 80 percent of its surplus ad revenue, the search engine has raised almost $3 million for reforestation projects since its founding in December 2009. Ecosia's mission to cultivate a world where the environment doesnt need protecting has it working to plant one billion new trees by the year 2020. By supporting high-impact reforestation efforts as well as neutralising all CO2 emissions related to its search Ecosia aims to achieve the highest positive environmental impact per dollar possible. By publishing its monthly donation receipts online, Ecosia aims to live up to its users demands for transparency. And by working to improve its charitable web service day after day, Ecosia aims to show the world that small changes can make a big difference. In its mission to plant one billion trees by 2020, Ecosia is working with experts and communities to reforest areas of the world that need it most. Sustainable, high-impact planting strategies mean improvements to the environment, local economies and social stability. Ecosia truly uses a large portion of its profits to fund tree planting projects. Of course, for anyone searching for an environmentally friendly search engine, planting trees isn't the only factor to consider. Ecosia is largely powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine. While Microsoft's global operations have been carbon neutral since 2012, the data centers powering Bing don't run entirely on renewable energy. Microsoft is working toward this goal, however, and expects to be driven by 100 percent renewable energy by 2023: Bing 2012 100 percent renewable energy In our data centers, we will continue to focus on R&D for efficiency and renewable energy. In 2016, we announced that we would power our data centers with more renewable energy, setting a 50 percent target by the end of 2018 and topping 60 percent early in the next decade while continuing to improve from there. We hit the first target nearly a year ahead of schedule, and today we are sharing the news that we will reach the 60 percent milestone before the end of this year. Were therefore setting our next milestone on the path to 100 percent renewable energy, aiming to surpass the 70 percent target by 2023. Well also launch a new data-driven circular cloud initiative using the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor performance and streamline our reuse, resale and recycling of data center assets, including servers. For comparison's sake, Google announced in 2017 that its search engine was being powered by 100% renewable energy. announced While Microsoft may not be at quite at 100% renewable energy yet, Ecosia claims that its own servers run on clean power thanks to its new solar plant. Additionally, Ecosia's carbon footprint is lessened due to its involvement with various tree-planting projects around the world. The company says: carbon footprint Renewable energy: Did you know that the CO2 footprint of an average search is estimated at 0.2 grams? Not so with Ecosia. We recently built our own solar plant, so that we can run our servers on clean power. This is even better than buying renewable energy from existing plants, as the plant can deliver clean energy to the grid and replace electricity derived from fossil fuels. Carbon-negative: By planting trees and offsetting its energy use with renewables, each search with Ecosia actually removes 1 kg of CO2 from the air, which makes Ecosia a carbon-negative search engine. Heres the math: an average search generates around 0.005 of revenue. It costs roughly 0.25 to plant a tree, which means that Ecosia can plant one tree every 50 searches. On average, these trees will each remove 50 kg of CO2 during an expected 15 year lifetime. To sum up: Ecosia makes money through advertisements on its search engine. While a portion of that money is used to fund the operational costs of the business, about 80% of its surplus revenue is donated to environmental organizations and tree-planting projects around the world. Smith, Brad. "We're Increasing Our CarbonFee as We Double Down on Sustainability." Microsoft. 15 April 2019. Google. "100% Renewable is Just the Beginning."
Retrieved 27 August 2019. Ecosia. "Financial Reports and Tree-Planting Receipts."
15 May 2019. World Wildlife Fund. "Clicks to Help Save Amazon." 3 December 2009. | 1 | [
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FMD92 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The head of Kenya s election commission said on Wednesday he could not guarantee next week s presidential election will be free and fair, citing interference from politicians and threats of violence against his colleagues. Wafula Chebukati s statement came hours after another commission member resigned and left the country, saying she and her staff had been repeatedly threatened. Ironically, the very people, political leaders, who are supposed to build the nation have become the greatest threat to the peace and stability of the nation, Chebukati told journalists. The Oct. 26 poll is the re-run of an election that took place in August, where incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta s victory was nullified on procedural grounds. But the run-up to the new poll has been fraught, particularly since Kenyatta s main challenger, opposition leader Raila Odinga, pulled out, alleging a failure to improve the oversight of the election. Odinga has called nearly daily protests against the poll and the election commission, pushing East Africa s largest economy | 1 | [
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FMD93 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: OSU will receive more than $212 million in federal funding in 2016, they ll receive and additional $68 million in state funds.This winter, students at Oregon State University will have the opportunity to take a new class that promises to teach them about how African Americans have historically resisted the white supremacy. The class, titled African American Resistance in the Era of Donald Trump, will be taught by Dr. Dwaine Plaza, a professor of sociology and current Chair of the Sociology Program in the School of Public Policy.Plaza announced the new class last week in an email sent to some Oregon State students and obtained by Campus Reform, explaining that The goal of the course is to give students an understanding for how racism is deeply embedded in social media, movies, television shows, music, art, literature, and sports. In a statement to Campus Reform, Plaza asserted that the class emerged after the November 8 election, because In my opinion we are about to step back into the 1960s when whiteness was currency and people of color needed to be in the shadows struggling for whatever trickles down to us. According to a copy of the syllabus obtained by Campus Reform, the course will teach students about the evolution of modern racism from the post-emancipation period up to the election of Donald Trump.Students will also learn about topics such as The Black Panther Party, The Harlem Renaissance, and Racism in Oregon.The class will be held from January 9 through March 17, according to the Oregon State course catalogue, and up to 20 students will be able to take the course, 17 of whom are already enrolled. Two other professors, Larry Rodgers and Marilyn Stewart, will also help teach the course. Campus ReformOregon is a hot-bed for radical Trump haters. It was one of only a handful of states Hillary won with only 50% of the vote to Trump s 39.3%. On April 9, 2016 anti-Trump terrorists took over a Portland State University pro-Trump student meeting. There is so much irony in people who behave like common thugs and terrorists carrying signs saying, Love Trumps hate, while screaming down and threatening anyone with opposing views. | 0 | [
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FMD94 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Cuba s foreign minister and his North Korean counterpart rejected the United States unilateral and arbitrary demands on Wednesday while expressing concern about escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, the ministry said. North Korea is searching for support amid unprecedented pressure from the United States and the international community to cease its nuclear weapons and missile programs, which it carries out in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The country, which has made no secret of its plans to develop a missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, has maintained warm political relations with Cuba since 1960, despite the island s opposition to nuclear weapons. Some diplomats said Cuba was also one of the few countries that might be able to convince North Korea to move away from the current showdown with the United States that threatens war. The ministers, meeting in Havana, called for respect for peoples sovereignty and the peaceful settlement of disputes, according to a statement released by the Cuban foreign ministry. They strongly rejected the unilateral and arbitrary lists and designations established by the U.S. government which serve as a basis for the implementation of coercive measures which are contrary to international law, the statement said. U.S. President Donald Trump has also increased pressure on Cuba since taking office, rolling back a fragile detente begun by predecessor Barack Obama and returning to the hostile rhetoric of the Cold War. A U.S. State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the United States had made clear it wanted a peaceful resolution to the North Korean nuclear issue. The DPRK s belligerent and provocative behavior demonstrates it has no interest in working toward a peaceful solution, the official said. DPRK stands for North Korea s official name, the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. Cuba said in the statement the Cuban and North Korean foreign ministers had expressed concern about the escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula. The ministers discussed the respective efforts carried out in the construction of socialism according to the realities inherent to their respective countries. Cuba and North Korea are the last in the world to maintain Soviet-style command economies, though under President Raul Castro, the Caribbean nation has taken some small steps toward the more market-oriented communism of China and Vietnam. Cuba maintains an embassy in North Korea, but publicly trades almost exclusively with the South. Last year, trade with the latter was $67 million and with the North just $9 million, according to the Cuban government. North Korea defends its weapons programs as a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intentions. | 1 | [
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FMD95 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Sink Used as Toilet Claim summaries: A young woman on a date who is too timid to ask where the toilet is meets with disastrous results.
contextual information: Legend: A young woman on a date who is too timid to ask where the toilet is meets with disastrous results. LEGEND Examples: [Collected on the Internet, 1999] This girl had been dating a rich guy in New York City. After a few months he took her to dinner at his parents mansion. During dinner she needed to use the toilet. Not wanting to be indiscreet she asked where the "powder room" was. The parents had the butler assist her to the powder room. When she went inside it had only a vanity and sink. She did not want to embarass herself by asking for the toilet, instead she decided to pee in the sink. However when she sat on the sink, it pulled out of the wall, and she fell off hitting her head on the towel rack and knocking herself unconscious. On hearing a loud thump from above the family rushed upstairs to find the sink broken and girl passed out with her pants down. [Collected on the Internet, 1999] There was this teenager. She was the daughter of a rich (if stuffy) couple and went to an exclusive private girls-only school. She was also head over heels in love with a particularly nice boy from one of the local boys-only private schools. She would do anything to meet him, and was continually making up excuses or 'coincidences' so that she would run into him. Being a boy, he finally got the message after she almost threw herself at him. He invited her out. However, being himself from a stuffy family, their first 'date' was to dinner at his house with his parents. The girl was ecstatic, if nervous, and immediately set out to make sure that the night would be a success. She didn't eat for a week. She spent a huge amount on a new haircut and a makeover. She bought a new dress. Finally, the night came. She went to the house and was introduced to the parents at the door. They made small talk. Things were going fine. Then, in the middle of the main course, the girl needed to go to the toilet. Being on her best behaviour, she asked for the bathroom. She was given directions, but when she got there, she only found a bath and a sink. Not wanting to appear foolish and go back to ask directions to the toilet, she decided to use the sink. Unfortunately, it was a little high and awkward to sit on, and half way though she slipped, broke the sink, and knocked herself unconscious. After half an hour, concerned about what had happened to her, that's where the entire family found her - unconscious, her knickers around her ankles, lying in a mess of water, urine and broken sink. Of course, when she came to, she was humiliated. The boy, however, thought it was the funniest thing in the world. He visited her in hospital and asked her to come around again. At first she wouldn't but, when convinced that the family had forgiven her and that it would never be mentioned, she agreed. As with the first time, she spent a week preparing for the night. As with the first time, she was greeted by the parents at the door. Feeling slightly more nervous than the first time, the sat down on the nearest sofa - only to hear a hideous cracking sound. She quickly stood up, and discovered that she had just broken the back of the family's beloved chihuahua. She never saw the boy again. Origins: The legend of the social-climbing young lady and her fall from both grace and a bathroom sink dates to at least 1991. It's usually set in Britain, where one could possibly still find older homes in which the bathroom (or washroom) contained only a washstand and where one would therefore need to ask for the "water closet" if one expected to be directed to the toilet, or (as in the first example above) in a "rich person's home" where one might find a "vanity room" with only a sink. (Neither explanation really applies to the second example above, in which the girl is clearly from the same area and social class as the boy she's dating.) This related version was told by novelist and biographer Andrew Sinclair: A friend of mine from Australia was asked to an elegant party in Eaton Square. Caviar was to be served after the champagne. Having drunk too much of that, my friend found his way to the bathroom. He groped around for a light switch, but did not discover it. He then groped around for a lavatory, but did not discover one. Finally, he found the edge of the bath and settled for that. He relieved himself slowly and fully, then turned on the taps to swill away the evidence. Going back to the party, he asked his hostess where the caviar might be. 'Packed on ice,' she said, 'in the bath. I am just going to get it.' He went instead, walking quickly back to Australia. As a legend, the "sink tinkle" shares a number of elements with the more common crushed dog tale in which an over-anxious guest manages to kill the family pooch by sitting on it. It's therefore no surprise to see the two combined into one story as they appear in the second example above. Crushed dog tales often include a lead-in of the guest having committed a prior faux pas, necessitating his return to the scene of the crime to tender an apology: crushed dog A young man, new in town, is invited to a party at an expensive home. He falls asleep after drinking heavily and awakens in a dark room. While fumbling for the light switch, he accidentally sticks his finger into an open ink well and leaves stains and fingerprints all over the room. Embarrassed by the damage he has done, the young man slips away unnoticed. The next day he decides to return and apologize. He was admitted by a servant, who led him to a dim library to await his host or hostess. He entered the library, and sank into the nearest comfortable chair, only to hear and feel a mind-boggling CRUNCH! The young man leapt to his feet to discover that he had crushed a delicate Chihuahua to death. He fled again, and never returned. A 1996 British version of the crushed dog tale also includes a lead-in involving a boorish guest and bathroom functions gone awry. In that telling, a lad staying over at a country home awakens in the middle of the night, overcome by the urgent need to defecate. He locates a chamber pot in his room, does his business in it, and returns to bed, resolving to empty the pot first thing in the morning before anyone else is about. In the morning, after topping up the pot with the contents of a full bladder, he sets out to look for a toilet to dump this steaming stew into. Alas, none is to be found. Still a bit tipsy from the night before, our hero decides to empty the pot out a window and onto the flower beds below. Unfortunately, as he holds the pot out the window, the weight of everything in it causes its handle to snap off. The pot plummets down the side of the house, crashes through the glass conservatory roof below, smashing and splashing its contents over the main table where the other guests are seated for breakfast. Be it spilled ink, a broken sink, or a crushed dog, at the heart of each of these tales lies an overriding commonality the unforgivable social error committed by someone clearly out of his element. Stories such as these are our way of venting such fears, getting them out in the open where we can laugh at them, but at the same time confirming to ourselves how very much we dread some day becoming the one to break the sink or squash the dog. Only because the following story fits well enough with the theme of social embarrassment to permit me an excuse to slip it in here, I present the following letter to Miss Manners: Dear Miss Manners: This may sound silly, but I'm serious. When someone suffers a particularly embarrassing accident in front of you and many others, what is the socially appropriate response? My husband and I got into an argument about this. We recently visited Boston, and while we were there, we attended a large party where everyone was elegantly dressed. At the party, a lady in a low-cut gown tripped, stumbled, lurched across a table, falling face first into a bowl of guacamole dip, and in the process "popped out" of her top. After an initial stunned silence, practically everyone in the room burst out laughing, even though it was obvious that the lady was terribly embarrassed. Then the hostess rushed over to help her and ushered her upstairs. After we left the party, I criticized my husband for laughing and told him I thought it was very bad manners. But he said that it was not impolite for people to laugh at something like that as long as they meant no harm and didn't "overdo" it. I said it was inconsiderate of the person's feelings to laugh at all. He said it's the social custom. Could you settle the argument? Gentle Reader: What do you mean "something like that"? Miss Manners doubts that there is anything in the world like an elegantly dressed Bostonian lurching across the room and diving face first into a bowl of guacamole dip while simultaneously disengaging her bodice from her bosom. Therefore, Miss Manners has a wee bit of trouble preparing a general rule for dealing with this eventuality. Nor, if she were your husband, would she attempt to justify a reaction on grounds other than direct cause and effect. One might try to ignore a less spectacular accident. If, say, it were avocado dip, rather than guacamole, and the lady had merely trailed her sleeve in it, one could pretend not to have noticed. To pretend not to notice a performance such as you have described even if it were humanly possible would be to suggest that the lady did it all the time and her friends have gotten used to it. It is far better to comfort her later by telling stories of your own about hilariously embarrassing accidents you have survived. Doesn't a broken sink or a squashed dog now almost sound picayune in comparison? Barbara "social quirker" Mikkelson Sightings: The "crushed dog" part of the legend shows up in Tom Robbin's 1980 novel Still Life with Woodpecker. Those looking for the "broken sink" part of the story will find that in an episode of television's The Single Guy (a short-lived sitcom aired in the U.S. from 1995-97). Last updated: 29 July 2013 Martin, Judith. Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. New York: Warner Books, 1983 ISBN 0-446-37763-5 (pp. 468-469). Morley, Robert. Robert Morley's Second Book of Bricks. UK: Coronet Books, 1982 (p. 75). Samon, Katherine Ann. Dates from Hell. New York: Plume, 1992 (pp. ix-xiii). Scott, Bill. Pelicans & Chihuahuas and Other Urban Legends. St. Lucia, Queensland: Univ. of Queensland Press, 1996. ISBN 0-7022-2774-9 (p. 157). | 1 | [
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FMD96 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: “The public’s voice will be heard,†Poland’s president declared, as he vowed a referendum on the European Union’s (EU) migrant quota amidst growing pressure from Brussels. [Describing the question of whether Poland should be forced to accept a quota of migrants from the third world as “of vital importance†for its future security, Andrzej Duda said the referendum could be held during parliamentary elections in 2019. “That would allow the new government to hear the clear voice of the nation on the issue,†said the president. The conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government’s position on the quota system is “clear and unambiguous†Duda said. He said maintaining the party “does not agree with the [plan] and asserted that “Poland does not consent to the forced relocation of refugees on our territoryâ€. Holding a referendum will also enable the public’s voice to be heard over the voices of international organisations, Duda asserted. “If Brussels continues to raise [the issue of migration] attempting to exert pressure and force on the Polish authorities, then public opinion will be extremely important,†Duda promised. Poland’s latest display of opposition to the redistribution plan comes as the Czech Republic announced its withdrawal from the scheme, which has been fiercely contested in Central and Eastern Europe, with Hungary and Slovakia challenging the plans in court. In an interview with Czech tabloid Blesk published Tuesday, EU president Juncker demanded all nations in Europe shoulder “solidarity and responsibility†when it comes to migration. Brussels was left humiliated last year when Hungarians were asked what they thought of EU plans to force on their nation migrants from the third world, as 95 per cent said they rejected the scheme. Earlier this month, Breitbart London reported that senior Polish MEP Ryszard Czarnecki announced the “only proven method†to avoid Islamist terror attacks is not to import Muslim migrants. “When it comes to reducing the chances of Poland being hit by [Islamist] terror attacks, the only proven method is to not allow in Muslim migrants,†the MEP told local radio after the London Bridge terror attack, which killed eight and injured at least 48 others. | 1 | [
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FMD97 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The U.S. Interior Department said on Wednesday that it would form a new committee to review royalty rates collected from oil and gas drilling, coal mining and renewable energy production on federal lands to ensure taxpayers receive their full value. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the committee would advise him on whether the government is getting a fair price from companies that lease public land for energy and natural resource development. The committee will replace the process put in place by former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to review and overhaul the federal coal leasing program. “The programmatic review put in place (by Jewell) was costly and unnecessary,†Zinke told reporters on Wednesday. “I have established a royalty policy committee to provide advice to me about how we value collections across the board,†he said. In January 2016, the administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama began a multiyear review of the federal coal leasing program after government and watchdog reports found Interior’s Bureau of Land Management was not properly accounting for the fair market value of coal. It also ordered a moratorium on new coal leases for at least three years during the review, which Republican President Donald Trump officially rescinded in the executive order on energy he signed Tuesday. Zinke’s committee will instead get recommendations on adjusting royalty rates for coal, as well as oil and gas, from a panel of up to 28 members. Members will include Interior Department officials, representatives of western states and Indian tribes that produce energy, energy stakeholders and academic groups who will serve three-year terms. Federal coal, primarily from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, accounts for more than 40 percent of all of that fuel mined in the United States and produces for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Zinke’s predecessor Jewell said a review of the program was three decades overdue and necessary after reports called for more transparency in the leasing process. Environmental groups raised concerns that replacing the more comprehensive review with a committee approach will mean that other core problems with federal energy leasing will not be addressed, such as transparency and boosting competition in lease sales. “Cancelling the coal program review is a serious mistake that only harms American taxpayers, coal states and communities,†said Dan Bucks, former director of revenue for the state of Montana. | 1 | [
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FMD98 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Debunking Trump Tweets: Biden's 143K Vote 'Dump' in Wisconsin Claim summaries: Voting spikes did occur in Wisconsin and other states as ballots were being counted, but for ordinary and predictable reasons.
contextual information: In the continuous stream of tweets alleging election fraud issued from the Twitter account of President Donald Trump in mid-November 2020, one tweet posted in the evening of Nov. 18 claimed that victorious Democratic presidential candidate had received an "unbelievable" "dump of 143,379 votes at 3:42AM, when they learned he was losing badly": It is true that Biden picked up about 149,000 votes in Wisconsin around 3:30 AM in the early morning hours following the election, thereby erasing a lead Trump had held in the in-progress vote tally up to that point: However, no fraudulent activity of furtive "dump" of ballots was behind this phenomenon. By law, Wisconsin was not allowed to begin tabulating absentee ballots (no matter how early they were sent in) until 7:00 AM on Election Day. Biden's vote count took a big jump (while Trump's increased much more modestly) around the time in question because that was when Milwaukee County finished and reported the tabulation of its approximately 170,000 absentee ballots. That occurrence was doubly favorable for Biden, both because Democrats were far more likely to vote via absentee ballots, and because Milwaukee County is the most populous county in Wisconsin and is an overwhelmingly Democratic area: far more likely The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on the bulge in Biden votes, and the reasons behind it, at the time it took place: reported Biden overtook Trump in the early morning hours when Milwaukee reported its roughly 170,000 absentee votes, which were overwhelmingly Democratic. Then early morning returns from Green Bay and Kenosha on Wednesday added to his slender lead. Trump had nurtured a lead of more than 100,000 votes before those returns came in. By the morning after the election, even Trump had recognized (if not accepted) the phenomenon of mail-in ballots in most states being heavily Democratic, in large part because he discouraged his supporters from using that method of voting: In fact, more than two months before the election, NPR had observed that "President Trump's campaign to discourage the use of mail-in voting this fall is raising concerns among Republicans, particularly in the key swing state of Wisconsin, that his efforts could hinder their party on election night." observed As of this writing, Biden has won Wisconsin (and its 10 electoral votes) by just over 20,000 votes out of more than 3.2M ballots cast: | 0 | [
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FMD99 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Bull Shark Spotted in Kentucky Lake? Claim summaries: A fabricated report concerning a nine-foot-long bull shark allegedly found in Kentucky Lake originated on a do-it-yourself fake news web site.
contextual information: In June 2017, fake news web site React365 posted a captioned photo of a shark fin peeking out of a body of water with the headline "Bull Shark Spotted in Kentucky Lake": fake posted Slight though it was, the page got a lot of play on social media partly, we hope, in recognition of its humorous intent. A nine-foot-long bull shark was not, in fact, found in Kentucky Lake, a man-made reservoir along the western borders of Kentucky and Tennessee. The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Services made that clear in a sternly worded Facebook post dated 27 June 2017: React365 is a web site that provides users with tools to create their own fake news stories, and share them via Facebook and Twitter: React365 A grammatically challenged disclaimer on the site claims its purpose is entertainment: React365 users sometimes copy and repost the same material with minor changes to localize or personalize a joke in hopes of garnering shares on social media. Examples include: Bull Shark in Philpott Lake Virginia, Great White Sharks Spotted in Mississippi River, and Great White Sharks Found in Illinois River. For that matter, ersatz shark sightings are a perennial favorite on fake news web sites and social media generally. For example, we've previously debunked: Bull Shark Caught in the Ohio River, Fisherman Captures 3,000-Pound Great White Shark in Great Lakes, and Photo of a Baby Great White Shark. Bull Shark in Philpott Lake Virginia Great White Sharks Spotted in Mississippi River Great White Sharks Found in Illinois River Bull Shark Caught in the Ohio River Fisherman Captures 3,000-Pound Great White Shark in Great Lakes Photo of a Baby Great White Shark Sticklers for detail will have noticed that the image shared with the React365 post does not depict the fin of a freshwater bull shark, but that of a great white shark instead. The image, normally credited to UC Davis, has been used all over the Internet for the past seven years or more, including in actual news stories. actual ABC7 News. "More than a Ton of Illegal Shark Fins Seized in San Francisco."
14 February 2014. React365. "Bull Shark Spotted in Kentucky Lake."
26 June 2017. | 0 | [
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