Claim: A video on X shows the District Municipal Corporation (DMC) administrator and his team falling into Karachi’s Gujjar Nullah while cleaning the area. Fact: The claim is false as the video is not from Karachi but from India and shows the then Mayor of Panaji Surendra Furtado, along with others, as their boat capsized […]
Claim: Venus Williams forfeited a tennis match against a transgender woman. Fact: No credible reports confirm this allegation. The claim originated on social media platforms in late 2023 and resurfaced in April 2024. However, our investigation reveals it to be entirely false and based on a parody article published by the satire website Conservative Tears. […]
Claim: New technology allows hackers to extract fingerprints from photographs posted online where a person’s fingertips are visible, when making a peace sign, for example. These biometric details can then be used to hack into someone’s phone or commit a range of cybercrimes, including bypassing authentication processes and hacking into banking accounts. A good way […]
Claim: Salman Rushdie said Muslims’ “only goal is to destroy the whole nation by terrorism, bomb blasts, population explosion, riots and jihad in the name of Islam”. Fact: Rushdie has not made such a comment; in fact, he has denied ever having said this multiple times. On 15 April 2024, Facebook user ‘Eddie Hinman’ posted […]
Claim: A video on social media shows a 9-year-old Hindu girl, Reshma, who was forcibly abducted and taken to a Sufi shrine, where she was converted to Islam and married to a 45-year-old Muslim man from Jacobabad named Wazir Hussain. Fact: The claim is false as the video is from 2019 and shows a girl […]
Claim: A foreigner and five Pakistanis were held hostage and robbed on their way to Taxila. Fact: A group of eight people, not six, were robbed on their way back from a hiking trail in Shah Allah Ditta; they were not en route to Taxila. On 8 April 2024, Dawn and Express Tribune published articles […]
Claim: A video from the Pamir mountain range in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan shows a child playing with a white tiger she raised from birth. Fact: The video in question is AI-generated and does not depict a real scenario. A video allegedly showing an Afghan child playing with a tiger cub has been […]
Claim: The government has announced Eid ul Fitr holidays from 9 April to 13 April 2024. Fact: The Ministry of Interior officially refuted these notifications on 31 March, declaring them fake. Moreover, an official notification published on the Cabinet Secretariat division’s website on 4 April states that Eid holidays are from 10 to 13 April […]
Claim: Olympic athlete, javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem is raising funds through X (formerly Twitter) for a new javelin Fact: Nadeem has not asked anyone to raise funds for a new javelin On 3 March 2024, social media user Muneeb Farrukh shared a post on X with a photograph of javelin-thrower Arshad Nadeem and a caption […]
Claim: An image of a news report by Urdu News claims that face masks of Imran Khan’s face are manufactured with the same frame as the Pharaoh asks sold by the same company. Fact: The claim is false as the image is doctored. In the original article, the media outlet mentions that the Imran Khan […]
Claim: A picture shows a young woman at the Aurat March sporting a poster that, when translated from Urdu to English, says, “I am not honour, I am a sex worker.” Fact: The text on the poster is doctored. The original picture is from Aurat March 2020, and the actual text, when translated to English, […]
Claim: YouTube, X, and all other social media apps and accounts are inaccessible in Pakistan, while they are still accessible in other parts of the world, such as Europe and other Western countries. Fact: Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Threads faced a worldwide outage, becoming inaccessible for tens of thousands of people across the globe. […]