NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

A roundup of some of the most popular, but completely untrue, headlines of the week. None of these stories are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked these out; here are the real facts:

NOT REAL: NPR: 25 Million Votes For Clinton ‘Completely Fake’ - She Lost Popular Vote

THE FACTS: The headline falsely describes the gist of a National Public Radio story published four years before the 2016 presidential election. It cited a Pew study, which was released in 2012 and based in part on 2008 results, that found 24 million registrations were invalid or inaccurate. The study found no evidence of fraud and suggested the inaccurate records were the result of antiquated voter registration systems that left dead people on voter rolls or didn’t drop people when they moved. Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, but she won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes, according to an Associated Press count. The headline and story first circulated in January and was shared widely on sites like theteaparty.net and topsecretleaks.com in recent weeks.

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NOT REAL: GET READY! THE BRIGHTEST METEOR SHOWER IN THE RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY IS HAPPENING

THE FACTS: The Perseid meteor shower, peaking the nights of Aug. 11-12, won’t come close to setting any records. The head of NASA’s meteoroid environment office, Bill Cooke, tells the AP that astronomers are projecting a slightly higher than normal shower rate with 150 meteors per hour across the Northern Hemisphere. But the brightness of the moon will wash out the finer Perseids, meaning 30 to 40 meteors an hour will be visible. The shower won’t even break last year’s rate of 200 meteors per hour. The brightest outburst — an estimated 100,000 meteors an hour — occurred during the Leonids of 1833.

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NOT REAL: BREAKING: Seven ships are preparing for Muslims’ massive deportation next week

THE FACTS: Several hoax sites flashed this headline and another talking about 10 airplanes preparing for a massive deportation, with pictures. Clicking on the headline leads to no information. The ships pictured were identified as part of a British cruise line.

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NOT REAL: BREAKING: Trump Removes Muslim Federal Judge For Allowing Sharia In America

A story on conservativefighter.com and similar stories on other sites claim a judge named Hansam al Alallawalahi-Smith made rulings allowing “tenets of Sharia Law” to be practiced in Dearborn, Michigan, and that Trump removed him from office. The story says the judge works on the 22nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which does not exist at the federal level. It is accompanied by a photo of a real judge, but he’s from Florida and has a different name. Finally, the Constitution stipulates impeachment — not presidential executive orders — as the method for removing federal judges.

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NOT REAL: Oprah Winfrey is pregnant with first child at 62

THE FACTS: Sites have falsely claimed the entertainer and lifestyle guru is pregnant going back two years. A spokeswoman confirmed that the widely shared story was once again not true. The false report claimed Winfrey planned to name the child after her best friend Gayle King if she gave birth to a girl and Harpo, the name of her production company, if it was a boy. The headline also has Winfrey’s age wrong: She is 63.

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This weekly fixture is part of The Associated Press’ ongoing efforts to fact-check claims in suspected false news stories.

Source: www.apnews.com 

By The Associated Press