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FMD4400 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: They first arrived in late January, caravans of black Escalades driving along a small street in Jamaica Estates, an upscale neighborhood in Queens, and stopping in front of a modest house that had just been sold at auction: the home where President Trump lived as a boy. Out stepped a stream of people in business suits, according to a neighbor, all speaking Chinese. The visits spiked between the auction and the closing of the sale last week, according to the neighbor, who did not want to be identified because of concerns about her privacy. It was revealed last week that the home had been bought by Trump Birth House, a limited liability company that obscured the identity of the person behind it. But while the buyer’s identity remained unknown, a person with knowledge of the deal said that the new owner, who spent over $2 million for the childhood home of the current president of the United States, is a woman from China. “Why is there an influx of Chinese people interested in this house, of all people?†the neighbor said she recalled wondering. “What do they want?†The house on Wareham Place has become another curiosity in the vast orbit of properties connected to Mr. Trump, even though he last lived in the home, built by his father, Fred C. Trump, when he was 4. The house’s intrigue lies not just in the price it fetched in an auction by Paramount Realty USA — $2. 14 million, more than double the price of comparable houses in the area — but also in the mystery surrounding the buyer. She remains unknown, shrouded behind the limited liability company. A thin trail of documents associated with the sale led first to a office on Main Street in Flushing, Queens, of Michael X. Tang, a lawyer who represents Trump Birth House. In the cramped and bustling office, which, according to its website, specializes in facilitating Chinese purchases of American real estate, a woman at a desk welcomed visitors. “Oh, about the Trump house,†she said. She continued: Mr. Tang declined to comment. Documents show that Mr. Tang was also the lawyer for a seemingly unrelated transaction on a palatial home in Old Westbury, N. Y. which sold for more than $3. 6 million in 2014 to a person named Jiying Wei. The redbrick mansion, tucked at the end of a and abutted by a private tennis court, is a far cry from the modest childhood home of Mr. Trump. But, according to a person with knowledge of the sale, the mansion’s owner is a relative of the woman from China who bought the Trump family home. Standing in the collonaded entryway of her home a few doors down in Old Westbury, a neighbor, who declined to give her name for privacy reasons, deepened the mystery: The only person who lives in the mansion, she said, is the family’s son, a local college student the rest of the family lives in China. The trail at the : The house was empty and the owner could not be reached. “I did have some expectation that the purchaser would be a huge Trump supporter from within America,†Misha Haghani, principal of Paramount Realty USA, said of the Jamaica Estates home. He declined to reveal the identity of the buyer. “But it is entirely possible that the purchaser is a huge Trump supporter from outside of America,†he said. Cathy Han, a real estate agent in New York who specializes in marketing properties to Chinese buyers — including apartments in buildings — said she was not surprised that the home had been purchased by a Chinese buyer. “When I saw it was Trump’s birth house property for sale, I knew immediately it would get a lot of attention from Chinese buyers,†Ms. Han said. “I know he is a controversial figure in the States, but among Chinese people, Trump is a very popular kind of character in China. †She said the image that Mr. Trump liked to promote of himself as a successful businessman resonated in China. “The whole thing about Trump is he has no experience in politics, but now he is the president of the U. S. A. ,†she said. “The story is like a movie: It’s kind of inspiring, in a way, that a person can rise up to that position. And I think most Chinese people kind of respect that journey. †The home had been owned by Isaac Kestenberg, purchased with his wife, Claudia, in 2008 for $782, 500. On Election Day last year, as Mr. Trump’s ascendancy seemed possible, Michael Davis, a real estate investor, made an offer on the house, he said, ultimately purchasing it for about $1. 4 million. Neither Mr. Kestenberg nor Mr. Davis knows who bought it this time, they said. The sale to Trump Birth House closed on March 23. “I hope that the broader economy has as much lift from the president’s policies as the president’s childhood home got,†Mr. Davis said. On Tuesday, rain pelted the crocuses popping up outside the home on Wareham Place. The house appeared to have been emptied. Around 1 p. m. a worker arrived in a National Grid van. The new owner couldn’t be found, he said, so he had come to turn off the power. | 1 | [
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FMD4401 | 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: Rubio admitted he would have accepted the stimulus money.
contextual information: It's a move straight out of the campaign playbook: If your opponent criticizes you for something, accuse him of doing the same thing.That's what Charlie Crist's campaign for U.S. Senate is trying to do to opponent Marco Rubio about supporting the $862 billion economic stimulus package.Rubio has repeatedly criticized Gov. Crist for supporting the plan, which used tax cuts and federal spending to try to jump-start the economy. Rubio has said that Crist breathed air into the sails of the failed Democrat plan, while deflating Republican efforts to rally behind an alternative.To turn the tables, Crist's campaign issued a satirical news release writtenas a speechthat Rubio supposedly would give to the Conservative Political Action Conference. In it, Rubio would acknowledge that he had said in a recent interview that I would have accepted the stimulus money. The news release was satire, but the point was serious -- that Rubio said he would have accepted stimulus money. We were surprised by that because Rubio has been so critical of the stimulus, so we decided to see what he had actually said. The Crist campaign is referring to a Rubio interview by Keith Cate of WFLA-TV in Tampa on Dec. 9, 2009. Asked whether he would not have accepted the stimulus money, Rubio said that ultimately I would have accepted those portions of the money that would not have put Florida in a worse position off in the future than it is right now.That's not exactly a hearty endorsement, but Rubio is definitely saying that he would take at least some of the money.When the statement set off blog frenzy, the Rubio campaign tried to explain. Alex Burgos, Rubio's spokesman, toldPoliticothat Theres a big different (sic) between what Charlie Crist did by accepting the Obama stimulus as the best that Congress could do, actively promoting it, advocating for it among his fellow Republicans ... and what other governors ultimately did governors like Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, Haley Barbor by reluctantly accepting federal funds after the fact.Rubio toldNational Journal's Hotline on Callthat advocating for the stimulus plan and accepting those dollars are not the same. The stimulus was a disaster and I would have fought it in every way possible.As far as we can tell, Rubio has been consistent with his position that there is a distinction between accepting money and actually endorsing the stimulus. Speaking with The Weekly Standard in May 2009, Rubio said that It's one thing to say you'll accept the funds from the federal government ... it's another to actively advocate those policies, which I think are disastrous for America.And indeed, even in the aforementioned interview, when asked whether he would have attended the presidential visit from Barack Obama -- referring to a February 2009 town hall meeting in Fort Myers, which Crist attended -- Rubio said he would have avoided it because that rally was in support of a specific plan.To recap: Crist's campaign claimed that Rubio admitted that he would have accepted the stimulus money. And indeed, in the WFLA interview, Rubio said he would have accepted those portions of the money that would not have put Florida in a worse position off in the future than it is right now.We rate this Mostly True. | 1 | [
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FMD4402 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: in: War Propaganda , World News (image credit: ALEXEY DRUZHININ / RIA NOVOSTI / Kremlin pool / AFP) In September 2015, at the behest of its legitimate government, Russia began aerial operations to combat ISIS and al-Nusra terrorists in Syria. Numerous other likeminded groups are involved, just as cutthroat, just as ruthless, just as extremist, masquerading as “moderate rebels” when none exist – supported by Washington, NATO , Saudi Arabia, Qatar, other Gulf States, Jordan, Israel and Turkey. They’re massacring civilians, killing government soldiers defending them, using chemical and other banned weapons, committing gruesome atrocities. Why does it pretend “moderate” fighters are involved when none exist? Why does it insist on separating nonexistent “moderates” from terrorist groups it’s combating when all anti-government forces are the same? Why isn’t it targeting all armed groups wanting Assad toppled and Syrian sovereign independence destroyed? It’s the only way to free the country from the scourge its facing – supported by Washington and its rogue allies, NATO and regional ones. Why did it halt its aerial operations to liberate eastern Aleppo, declaring a unilateral ceasefire, a so-called humanitarian pause – a major blunder, accomplishing nothing? Ongoing since October 18, it’s letting US-supported terrorists infesting the city replenish their ranks, regroup and mobilize for heavy attacks, largely harming civilians Moscow says it wants protected. Last Saturday evening, Russia ended its humanitarian pause because US-supported terrorists in eastern Aleppo prevent civilians from leaving, holding thousands hostage as human shields, including the sick and wounded. Yet it ceased aerial attacks, yielding the advantage to dark forces it’s sworn to eliminate. What kind of strategy gives them the upper hand? It gets worse. On October 26, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov issued the following statement: “The Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian Air Force have been sticking to a moratorium on air strikes for the past eight days. They are staying out of a 10-km (six-mile) zone around Aleppo.” “Six humanitarian corridors, field kitchens and first aid stations are open for civilians leaving eastern Aleppo 24 hours a day.” “Russia and the Syrian government are ready to resume ‘humanitarian pauses’ in Aleppo if they receive guarantees from international organizations confirming readiness to evacuate the sick and the wounded as well as civilian population from the rebel-held areas.” Fact: Maintaining an airstrike moratorium aids Washington, its rogue allies and terrorists in eastern Aleppo they support. Fact: What good are humanitarian corridors if eastern Aleppo residents are prevented from using them, risking death or serious injury if they try. Fact: International organizations have no control over terrorists in eastern Aleppo – or anywhere else in the country. So what good are their “guarantees” if made? Fact: As long as Russia continues making the same mistakes repeatedly, the struggle to liberate Syria will likely go on interminably without resolution – a forever war, while countless thousands more civilians will die, be seriously injured and endure hardships people in Western societies can’t imagine, victims of US imperial ruthlessness. A handful of eastern Aleppo civilians alone escaped via a humanitarian corridor. According to one now free, their relatives were seized, imprisoned and tortured. The only way to liberate thousands of others is by relentlessly smashing their terrorist captors, eliminating them – not giving them breathing room to mobilize for greater attacks. Washington is delighted with Moscow’s ceasefire and humanitarian pause, serving US imperial interests, State Department spokesman admiral John Kirby saying: “We welcome the stated intention to extend this pause, and we hope that this extension will be more successful…than it has been thus far” – meaning the longer it continues, the greater the benefit to US-led dark forces, the worse off trapped Syrians in eastern Aleppo will be, the longer the struggle to liberate Syria will go on. Submit your review | 0 | [
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FMD4403 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on world powers to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine on Wednesday and said the United States should reverse a decision recognizing the city as Israel s capital. Addressing a summit of Muslim leaders in Istanbul, Erdogan described Washington s decision last week as a reward for Israeli terror acts and said the city was a red line for Muslims. | 1 | [
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FMD4404 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Oct 26, 2016 4:26 PM 0 SHARES
There was a sudden burst of confusion heading into today's Tesla earnings. As Bloomberg reported , a change in the way Tesla Motors Inc. will report quarterly results after today’s market close has created a bit of a last-minute headache for analysts, with earnings estimates varying widely. The electric-car maker is phasing out most of the non-GAAP adjustments it’s traditionally made, including ones for resale value guarantees or vehicles leased through banking partners. Starting today, when the company discusses third-quarter adjusted non-GAAP earnings per share, it plans to exclude only stock-based compensation.
The SEC in recent months has raised concern that public companies may be straying too far too often from Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Though Tesla has telegraphed its plan for weeks, many analysts are only now revising forecast models and some are sitting out the guessing game entirely this time. That means it may be challenging to draw firm conclusions about whether Tesla missed or beat Wall Street expectations - giving added importance to what Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk says on a follow-up conference call about cash or production plans.
So heading into today's earnings, the average estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts stands at an adjusted loss of 54 cents a share, based on seven forecasts that have comparable methodologies that the firms say take the new practice into account. While all seven of those projected a loss, there are others who say the company may post a profit.
Well, those who expected a profit got just that, because momnets ago Tesla not only reported revenue of $2.3 billion, far higher than the $1.9 billion expected, but also reported its first quarterly profit of $74 cents, smashing consensus estimate of a 54 cent loss.
Since there will be much confusion over how these numbers make any sense, here is what the company said:
Starting this quarter, our financial releases no longer include the non-GAAP revenue disclosures that we historically provided. To simplify our financial reporting, we add back non-cash stock-based compensation (SBC) to calculate non-GAAP results. Consistent with previous quarters, non-GAAP automotive gross margin will also exclude ZEV credit sales.
Total Q3 GAAP revenue was $2.30 billion, up 145% from Q3 2015, while total Q3 gross margin was 27.7%, compared to 21.6% in Q2.
Total automotive revenue was $2.15 billion on a GAAP basis, up 152% from Q3 2015. Our final Q3 delivery count was 24,821, over 300 more than the estimated delivery count we shared on October 2nd. Deliveries increased 114% from the third quarter of 2015, and was comprised of 16,047 Model S and 8,774 Model X vehicles. In addition, 5,065 vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the quarter. These vehicles will be delivered in Q4.
Our Q3 GAAP net income was $22 million, or $0.14 per share on 157 million diluted shares, while our non-GAAP net income was $111 million, or $0.71 per share on a diluted basis, after adding back $90 million of SBC. Both figures include an $0.08 per share loss of other expense, net, primarily related to foreign currency transactions and the conversion of most of our 2018 convertible notes.
Confused? So are we, and sadly charting the results does not help:
And here are the company's GAAP revenues:
Alas, even looking at the company's cash flow does not provide much apples to apples color. Here's why:
We hope that Elon Musk can provide some clarity on just what is going on here, because Wall Street has no idea.
* * *
Going back to its core business, said that its final Q3 delivery count was 24,821, over 300 more than the estimated delivery count we shared on October 2nd. " Deliveries increased 114% from the third quarter of 2015, and was comprised of 16,047 Model S and 8,774 Model X vehicles. In addition, 5,065 vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the quarter. These vehicles will be delivered in Q4."
It added the following:
During the quarter, we opened 17 new stores and service centers to increase our customer support network to 250 locations globally. We believe new product variants such as the P100DL, additional Model X seating variants, new product capabilities such as Enhanced Autopilot and hardware for Full Self-Driving Capability, Autopilot 8.0 software, and new store and service center openings should continue to drive strong vehicle order growth.
The company also said that it had "achieved record production levels in Q3, rising to 25,185 vehicles for an increase of 37% from Q2 and an increase of 92% from Q3 last year"
TSLA said 4Q deliveries were “just over” 25k, had 3Q deliveries of 24.5k, forecast 2H deliveries of 50k. The company also said that the Model 3 remains on plan for volume deliveries in second half of 2017. Here is the full outlook:
We maintain our guidance of 50,000 new vehicle deliveries for the second half of 2016, with a Q4 plan of just over 25,000 deliveries, despite the challenges of winter weather and the holiday season. We expect about 30% to 35% of these deliveries to be accounted for as leases for revenue recognition purposes.
As previously provided in our second quarter update, we guided a 2 to 3 percentage points improvement in automotive gross margin on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis by the end of 2016. Automotive gross margin on a non-GAAP basis excludes ZEV credits and SBC. We are on track to meet this guidance.
We also guided in our second quarter update that full year 2016 operating expenses, both on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis, would grow approximately 30% from 2015. We are also on track to meet this guidance.
We now expect our capital expenditures in 2016 will be approximately $1.8 billion as we continue to focus on capital efficiency. Capital expenditures for the past three quarters totaled $759 million.
While an apples-to-apples analysis is clearly missing the report, for now the algos love the headline, and have sent the stock surging after hours. | 0 | [
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FMD4405 | 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 Presidential Hug Claim summaries: A viral photograph shows President George W. Bush hugging the daughter of a 9/11 victim.
contextual information: On 4 May 2004, a campaign swing through the Midwest saw President Bush visiting Lebanon, Ohio, where as he worked the crowd outside the Golden Lamb (the state's oldest inn) he was photographed giving a comforting hug to 15-year-old Ashley Faulkner, whose mother was killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. The moment was captured with a digital camera by Ashley's father, Lynn Faulkner. (Ashley's mother, Wendy Ruth Faulkner, a vice president of a risk management and insurance brokerage company, was working in the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11 and did not survive the collapse of the building.) Wendy Ruth Faulkner Bush Photo with Teen Shows Conviction and Compassion It started out as a fluke. Lynn Faulkner had been offered an extra ticket to a Bush campaign event by his neighbor Linda Prince. Mr. Faulkner decided to offer it to his 15-year old daughter Ashley who he expected would decline, as she would have to miss some school to attend. But his daughter surprised him. Ashley reminded her dad how four years ago they attended a similar event when then Texas Governor George W. Bush visited the same spot on the campaign trail. Ashley remembered attending that event with both her father and her mother Wendy Faulkner. It was raining that day and they all stood in the rain awaiting Governor Bush "eating Triscuit crackers" enjoying the time together and hoping to get a glimpse of the would-be president. Ashley recalled holding her mothers hand as they waited. So she decided to go again this year, but this time her mother could not attend. Wendy Faulkner was murdered on 9/11/01 in the south tower of the World Trade Center. She was there on the 104th floor for a one-day meeting. Ashley decided to miss school in honor and remembrance of her mother and attend the event. [Rest of article here.] here An editorial about the story behind the photograph can be found at the Washington Dispatch web site, which also includes a page of reader-submitted commentary about the story. Washington Dispatch commentary Goetz, Kristina. "Bush Pauses to Comfort Teen."
The Cincinnati Enquirer. 6 May 2004.
Hallett, Joe. "No Apology from Bush Just Yet."
The Columbus Dispatch. 5 May 2004 (p. A1).
Hallett, Joe. "Despite the Post-9/11 Tribulations, the President Remains a Leader."
The Columbus Dispatch. 9 May 2004 (p. B5).
Rairden, C.K. "Bush Photo with Teen Shows Conviction and Compassion."
The Washington Dispatch. 10 May 2004.
Zimkus, Charlie. "Our Artist Records Warm Welcome for President Bush."
The Columbus Dispatch. 6 May 2004 (p. B8). | 1 | [
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FMD4406 | 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 white family is likely to have about six times as much wealth than a black or Hispanic family coming out of the recession.
contextual information: ABCsThis Weekspent much of their show Sunday discussing race issues, from affirmative action to racist comments allegedly made by Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling to economic disparity. During a roundtable segment on the difference between the middle class in the United States and Canada, Fusion reporter Alicia Menendez argued that differences in wealth arent just generational, theyre racial. We also know that there is a racial component to this, that a white family is likely to have about six times as much wealth than a black or Hispanic family coming out of the recession, she said. PunditFact finds her ratio correct. Menendez pointed us to anApril 2013 reportfrom the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan social policy think-tank. The institute measured mean wealth by race. Using 2010 data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, the Urban Institute looked at assets including cash savings, homes, retirement accounts and subtracted any debt. TheUrban Institute concluded that, post-recession, for every $1 an average black or Hispanic person has in wealth, an average white person has $6. Thats up from 1983, the farthest back the study goes, when the ratio was 5-to-1. Thomas Shapiro, a Brandeis University social policy professor who studies the wage gap, said the 6-to-1 ratio is correct, but represents the lower end of the wealth gap range researchers have come up with. At the higher end of the spectrum,Pew Research citeda 20-to-1 ratio in 2011. They took median wealth from the Census Bureaus Survey of Income and Program Participation 2009 data. So the data varies by survey used, year and measure of average (mean vs median). Theres debate among economists and social scientists about which ratio is the most accurate. Darrick Hamilton, an urban policy professor at The New School,said the Census Bureau surveys more low-income families, while the Survey of Consumer Financesoversamples high-income families where minorities arent as well represented. Overall, any ratio from 6-to-1 to 22-to-1 could be considered an accurate measure of the wealth gap, Shapiro told us. Our ruling Menendez said, A white family is likely to have about six times as much wealth than a black or Hispanic family coming out of the recession. A study from the Urban Institute supports her statistic. Other research shows an even wider gap, further proving her point that race is a factor in U.S. wealth. Menendez's statement is accurate, and might even understate the issue. We rate her claim True. | 1 | [
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FMD4407 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Globalization and technology are routinely cited as drivers of inequality over the last four decades. While the relative importance of these causes is disputed, both are often viewed as natural and inevitable products of the working of the economy, rather than as the outcomes of deliberate policy. In fact, both the course of globalization and the distribution of rewards from technological innovation are very much the result of policy. Insofar as they have led to greater inequality, this has been the result of conscious policy choices.
Starting with globalization, there was nothing pre-determined about a pattern of trade liberalization that put U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with their much lower paid counterparts in the developing world. Instead, that competition was the result of trade pacts written to make it as easy as possible for U.S. corporations to invest in the developing world to take advantage of lower labor costs, and then ship their products back to the United States. The predicted and actual result of this pattern of trade has been to lower wages for manufacturing workers and non-college educated workers more generally, as displaced manufacturing workers crowd into other sectors of the economy.
Instead of only putting manufacturing workers into competition with lower-paid workers in other countries, our trade deals could have been crafted to subject doctors, dentists, lawyers and other highly-paid professionals to international competition. As it stands, almost nothing has been done to remove the protectionist barriers that allow highly-educated professionals in the United States to earn far more than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.
This is clearest in the case of doctors. For the most part, it is impossible for foreign-trained physicians to practice in the United States unless they have completed a residency program in the United States. The number of residency slots, in turn, is strictly limited, as is the number of slots open for foreign medical students. While this is a quite blatantly protectionist restriction, it has persisted largely unquestioned through a long process of trade liberalization that has radically reduced or eliminated most of the barriers on trade in goods. The result is that doctors in the United States earn an average of more than $250,000 a year, more than twice as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries. This costs the country roughly $100 billion a year in higher medical bills compared to a situation in which U.S. doctors received the same pay as doctors elsewhere. Economists, including trade economists, have largely chosen to ignore the barriers that sustain high professional pay at enormous economic cost.
In addition to the items subject to trade, the overall trade balance is also very much the result of policy choices. The textbook theory has capital flowing from rich countries to poor countries, which means that rich countries run trade surpluses with poor countries. While this accurately described the pattern of trade in the 1990s up until the East Asian financial crisis (a period in which the countries of the region enjoyed very rapid growth), in the last two decades developing countries taken as a whole have been running large trade surpluses with wealthy countries.
This implies large trade deficits in rich countries, especially the United States, which in turn has meant a further loss of manufacturing jobs with the resulting negative impact on wage inequality. However, there was nothing inevitable about the policy shifts associated with the bailout from the East Asian financial crisis that led the developing world to become a net exporter of capital.
The pattern of gains from technology has been even more directly determined by policy than is the case with gains from trade. There has been a considerable strengthening and lengthening of patent and copyright and related protections over the last four decades. The laws have been changed to extend patents to new areas such as life forms, business methods, and software. Copyright duration has been extended from 55 years to 95 years. Perhaps even more important, the laws have become much more friendly to holders of these property claims to tilt legal proceedings in their favor, with courts becoming more patent-friendly and penalties for violations becoming harsher. And, the United States has placed stronger intellectual property (IP) rules at center of every trade agreement negotiated in the last quarter century.
In this context, it would hardly be surprising if the development of “technology” was causing an upward redistribution of income. The people in a position to profit from stronger IP rules are almost exclusively the highly educated and those at the top end of the income distribution. It is almost definitional that stronger IP rules will result in an upward redistribution of income.
This upward redistribution could be justified if stronger IP rules led to more rapid productivity growth, thereby benefitting the economy as a whole. However, there is very little evidence to support that claim. Michele Boldrin and David Levine have done considerable research on this topic and generally found the opposite. My own work , using cross-country regressions with standard measures of patent strength, generally found a negative and often significant relationship between patent strength and productivity growth.
There is also a substantial amount of money at stake. In the case of prescription drugs alone, the United States is on path to spend more than $430 billion in 2016 for drugs that would likely cost one-tenth of this amount in the absence of patent and related protections. While we do need mechanisms for financing innovation and creative work, it is almost certainly the case that patent and copyright monopolies as currently structured are not the most efficient route, even if their negative consequences for distribution are quite evident.
The structuring of trade and rules on IP are two important ways in which policy has been designed to redistribute income upward over the last four decades. There are many other ways in which the market has been structured to disadvantage those at the middle and bottom of the income distribution, perhaps most notably macroeconomic policies that result in high unemployment. While tax and transfer policies that reduce poverty and inequality may be desirable, we should also be aware of the ways in which policy has been designed to increase inequality. It is much easier to have an economic system that produces more equality rather than one that needlessly generates inequality, which we then try to address with redistributive policies.
This article was originally published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking .
Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. | 0 | [
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FMD4408 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A U.S. Senate Republican tax bill strongly backed by President Donald Trump faced potential opposition on Monday from two Republican lawmakers who could prevent the sweeping legislation from reaching the Senate floor. Senators Ron Johnson and Bob Corker, both members of the Senate Budget Committee, said they could vote against the tax package at a Tuesday hearing that Republican leaders hoped would send the legislation to a full Senate vote as early as Thursday. Each senator is seeking different changes to the legislation. Their opposition could create the first major hurdle for the Republican tax overhaul in the Senate, where political infighting killed the party’s effort to overturn the Obamacare healthcare law earlier this year. Corker, a prominent deficit hawk, said he wants his fellow Republicans to add a backstop measure to prevent tax cuts from ballooning the deficit. Johnson said he wants a bigger tax break for “pass-through†businesses, which include small mom-and-pop enterprises as well as some large, non-corporate businesses. “If we develop a fix prior to committee, I’ll probably support it, but if we don’t, I’ll vote against it,†Johnson’s office quoted him telling reporters in his home state of Wisconsin. Republicans have only a one-vote majority on the 23-member budget committee. The potential “no†votes surfaced after Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated the Republican bill would expand the $20 trillion national debt by $1.4 trillion over a decade. Republicans have said that economic growth spurred by tax cuts would generate enough new tax revenue to eliminate any new deficit. But Corker said JCT is not expected to release a full macroeconomic analysis of the tax bill ahead of a Senate vote, making a safeguard provision necessary. “I’m not threatening anything. I’m just saying it’s very important for me to know that we’ve got this resolved,†Corker told reporters. Asked if he could vote no on the tax bill at the committee hearing, he replied: “Very possible. Yeah. Sure.†Corker and other Republican deficit hawks, including Senator James Lankford, have been holding talks with Senate tax writers and the administration about adding a provision that would raise tax rates if revenues fall short of expectations. “We can’t afford to ignore the debt and deficit issues,†Lankford told reporters. “To me, the big issue is how are we dealing with debt and deficit, do we have realistic numbers and is there a backstop in the process just in case we don’t.†Republicans see the tax bill as their last chance to score a significant legislative achievement in 2017 and save face with voters in next year’s congressional midterm elections. Since Trump took office in January, he and his fellow Republicans have passed no major legislation, despite controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House. The Senate bill would slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay. It would impose a one-time, cut-rate tax on corporations’ foreign profits, while exempting future foreign profits from U.S. taxation. Financial markets have rallied since Trump’s stunning 2016 election victory, partly on hopes of tax cuts for businesses. The Senate bill would deliver these, although its impact on individual Americans and families would be more mixed. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), another nonpartisan research unit of Congress, said the number of Americans with health insurance would fall by 13 million by 2027 under the Republican tax bill, which would repeal an Obamacare federal fine meant to encourage people to buy health insurance. Such a change would shrink the supply of healthy, young people insured and drive up healthcare insurance premiums. The CBO said this would make people with incomes below $30,000 net losers under the bill. Most of those earning more would be net winners, especially those with incomes between $100,000 and $500,000, it said. Democrats, who call the bill a give-away to the rich and corporations, are expected to oppose it in the Senate. The House of Representatives approved a tax bill by a 227-205 vote on Nov. 16. No Democrats voted for it. Thirteen Republicans opposed it. If the Senate Budget Committee approves the tax bill on Tuesday, it will allow Republicans to use a parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation to pass the measure on a simple majority in the 100-seat Senate, which they control by a slim 52-48 margin. Without reconciliation, the legislation would need 60 votes, allowing Democrats to prevent its passage. Senate Republican leaders did not appear on Monday to have enough votes to pass the legislation, with about a half-dozen Republicans viewed as potential “no†votes. But in a positive sign for Trump’s agenda, Republican Senator Rand Paul said on Monday he would support the bill. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has also signaled support. | 1 | [
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FMD4409 | 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: Warning about pedophiles on Facebook Claim summaries: Are child predators using Facebook to source victims by adding unsuspecting parents as friends?
contextual information: Claim: Predators, pedophiles, and child trafficking rings are using Facebook to source new victims by friending trusting parents and mining images posted of their children. Example: [Collected on Facebook, September 2014] A guy sends you a friend request. You don't know him, but he's got a cute profile pic, so you accept. It's baby girl's first day of school! She looks SO cute in her new outfit you just have to take a picture and put it on Facebook so all your friends and family can see. You're so excited dropping her off that you "check in" to her school on Fb saying "I can't believe how big she's gotten. Time sure flies. One proud momma/daddy right here!"... Meanwhile, the mystery guy whose friend request you hurriedly accepted earlier this morning is saving that picture you posted of your daughter in her cute new outfit to his phone and texting it to 60 other grown men across the world with the caption "Caucasian female. Age 5. Brown hair, green eyes. $2,500." Not only did you provide a picture of your little girl to a child trafficker, you've handed him the name and exact location of her school on a silver cyber platter. You go to pick her up at 3:00 this afternoon, but she's nowhere to be found. Little do you know, your precious baby girl was sold to a 43-year-old pedophile before you even stepped foot off campus this morning, and now she's on her way to South Africa with a bag over her head, confused, terrified and crying because a man she's never seen before picked her up from school, and now she doesn't know where her parents are, where she's going, or what's gonna happen to her. STOP ADDING STRANGERS ON FACEBOOK. Origins: In September 2014, the post above (without original attribution) went viral on Facebook. While this iteration is a new one, panic over internet strangers is as old as the internet itself, and warnings such as this have largely morphed from email forwards to Facebook shares. panic over internet strangers In May and June of 2015, the story received a second wave of interest after it was published to the website StylishLisa on 27 May 2015. On 30 May 2015 the message appeared on the Facebook page Lil' Red Warriors, but was later deleted after Facebook commenters correctly identified the photograph's origin on a page about children's hairstyles. The photo and its claim were later published verbatim to the Facebook page of Cyn Malvita, from where it was shared hundreds of thousands of times. A cached version of the iteration involving the hairstyling picture is embedded below: published Lil' Red Warriors deleted children's hairstyles Cyn Malvita The Facebook post currently in circulation bears some resemblance to a well-traveled warning from years back describing a similar danger. While the premise is similar, the stated risk has evolved, incorporating Facebook's open and share-friendly nature as the door through which rampant child predators will enter your life and summarily terrorize you. well-traveled warning This particular warning has some unpleasant undertones in its telling, suggesting that female users are too readily tempted by a "cute" potential predator to consider the safety of their children. It also tacitly condemns parents (mothers, presumably in particular) for even mentioning their children in hawking its highly improbable, sanctimonious premise. Facebook and similar social media sites have ushered in a new level of panic when it comes to internet safety, given that the social network requires users to supply accurate information about their true identities and real names to use the service. While many users flout this aspect of the site's terms and services, many others have been banned temporarily or permanently for using aliases in place of real names. Reading the circulating post above might lead one to believe that the danger is very real and omnipresent, but the scenario presented is one that is exceedingly unlikely. Among other implausibilities, this warning makes it sound as though the bad guys are stymied in their search for victims and don't know where to look for kids to abduct until they see pictures of them on Facebook. But potential abductors' seeing a Facebook photo of a particular child who attends a given school does nothing to facilitate the snatching of random children for sale to pedophiles would-be kidnappers don't need Facebook photos, as they could simply lie in wait outside just about any school and try to grab children as such opportunities presented themselves. Aside from that, first and foremost, most schools nowadays do not release children to parties who have not been explicitly granted permission and had their names recorded on an authorized list, a fact to which any parent who has ever needed a friend to make a last-minute school pickup can attest. Secondly, while the risk of child abduction and trafficking may exist, children are far, far more likely to be endangered by a relative or other "trusted" adult than a random Facebook contact. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the most recent statistics reflect a far different danger than the one described above. Of 800,000 children reported missing, 200,000 were abducted by relatives, 58,000 were kids taken by nonfamily members, and only 115 missing child reports were considered "stereotypical" abductions involving a complete stranger with intent to harm or keep the child. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children A lengthy report on Child Exploitation Prevention presented to Congress by the Justice Department in 2010 [PDF] further delves into the profiles of predators involved in child abuse and trafficking. According to the data presented, the vast majority of children harmed in this manner are either introduced or otherwise victimized by family members or other trusted adults such as babysitters, coaches, or family friends. Only four percent of victims identified were exploited or abused by an adult not previously known to the child or their family. PDF In the cases examined, abuse typically occurred over the course of years and involved "grooming" and other behaviors designed to created compliance. Child victims were not at risk of being immediately whisked to Africa by a strange Facebook user, but rather more likely placed in harm's way by the people meant to ensure their safety and care. On rare occasions child predators may mine publicly posted photos of children for personal use or trade, and posted Facebook pictures and locations might facilitate a kidnapping if the abductors were seeking to grab a specific child (rather than trolling for random victims), but no evidence suggests the posting of kids' photos on Facebook has resulted in a general increase of kidnapping or abuse of children. Last updated: 4 June 2015 | 2 | [
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FMD4410 | 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 This Video Show a Black Friday Fight Over Vegetable Steamers? Claim summaries: Video of a Black Friday fight over vegetable steamers that culminated in a woman's snatching one from a child was possibly staged.
contextual information: On 26 November 2015, YouTube user BlackFriday Fight uploaded a video titled "lady steals from KID! black friday 2015," along with the following comments: "I'm posting anonymously because I don't want to be fired, but I work at this store in Saginaw, and this lady stole a veggie steamer from a KID on Black Friday! Shame." According to the uploader, who wished to remain anonymous, the footage was captured at an unnamed retail location in Saginaw, Michigan, on Black Friday. The video was uploaded on 26 November 2015, one day prior to Black Friday, which fell on 27 November 2015, but it could conceivably have depicted a midnight "doorbuster" sale scenario. The clip shows a crowd of shoppers descending upon a stack of what appear to be vegetable steamers, which, while possibly attractively priced, weren't on par with Cabbage Patch Kids or Furbys in the genre of "Christmas crazes." We searched for major chain store deals on vegetable steamers in 2015 but were unable to locate any incredible deals matching vegetable steaming gadgets in any big box stores. As commenters immediately pointed out, the short clip featured several indicators that it was staged. In addition to plausibility—since even most vegans do not have that much interest in acquiring a vegetable steamer—the "victims" in the clip were first spotted in a frame away from the fracas, walking into the area of the frenzy while carrying identical boxes. The clip opened with a rush of shoppers, all of whom appeared to fall to the ground in a dramatic and entirely unnecessary fashion. The woman whose child was targeted by the box-snatcher did not appear to enter with other customers; instead, she was seen far off in a visible aisle already carrying the boxes. Finally, the purported altercation in which the woman swiped a vegetable steamer box from the hands of a small child occurred while several boxes remained unclaimed nearby. Both shoppers were just inches from the uncontested vegetable steamers, providing no reason for a heartless shopper to target a small child. The circumstances under which the clip was shot have yet to be disclosed, but its early appearance and implausible events suggest that the video was staged for attention or a larger prank. Users across social media commenting on the video widely suspected late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, but no evidence suggested that the clip was his work. | 2 | [
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FMD4411 | 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: Daily Snopes Claim summaries:
contextual information: This page features a daily collection of links to news articles and websites of interest to readers of our website. Due to the ephemeral nature of this type of material, some of the links may expire within a few days of being posted here. Stories are chosen for inclusion based purely on their appeal to our readers; we make no claims about the reliability of the information linked from this page. All of the links included here are viewable at no charge, although some publications may require a free one-time registration to access their articles.
Because They Got High (21 September 2015) FACT CHECK: Did Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina say that half of reported rapes were women regretting something they did while high or drunk?
One Misdirection (26 August 2015) FACT CHECK: Did Joey Fatone pen an open letter to One Direction?
Boston's Nasty Snowpile Still Hasn't Melted (CityLab) We're coming up on July, and New England temperatures are in the 70s, yet Boston's snow doesn't seem to know that. It's still there, sitting in a cold, corpulent mound that occasionally melts just enough to discharge garbage.
Woman, 88, Charged With Assaulting Police Officer (Associated Press) An 88-year-old woman has been charged with assaulting police who responded to her home, which turned out to be the wrong address.
Beekeepers Set Out to Remove a Million Bees from Home (Associated Press) Beekeepers have quite the task ahead of them as they remove an estimated 1 million honey bees that have taken up residence at a home.
Firefighter Accused of Reporting Fake Fire to Earn Paycheck (Associated Press) An auxiliary firefighter reported a fake fire so he could head to the scene and earn a paycheck, but a different department was dispatched instead, and he is now facing charges.
Handsome Gorilla Delights Female Zoo-Goers (UPI) Zoo officials said young women hoping to get into the good graces of the gorilla with the chiseled features and brooding poses might be disappointed to learn he has two wives of his own species, Ai and Nene.
Cow Puts the MOO-ves on Comrade During Live News Broadcast (UPI) A TV reporter delivering a live report from a local farm was interrupted by a pair of frisky bovines copulating in the background.
8-Foot-Wide Vortex Opens Up in Lake (UPI) The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shared video of an 8-foot-wide vortex that officials said could swallow a boat.
Woman Trying to Kiss Llama Gets Face Full of Spit (UPI) A woman leaning in to kiss a llama learned a valuable lesson in the form of a face full of spit.
Queen's Guard Draws Gun on Tourist Who Touched Him (UPI) A video features a tourist making an important discovery: You can mock a Queen's Guard, but don't ever touch one.
Airplane Wheel Crashes Into Apartment Roof (UPI) Aviation authorities are investigating after an airplane wheel fell from a private jet and crashed through the roof of an apartment building.
Trashed Golfer Gets Head Stuck in Garbage Can (UPI) A golfer who stuck his head in a trash bin as an alcohol-fueled joke ended up with his noggin stuck in the garbage.
Subway Long Jump Attempt Fails (UPI) A video going viral online features a man attempting to long jump over the train tracks at a subway station and failing.
Illegally Parked Car Covered in Post-Its (UPI) A video shows the car covered in blue and white sticky notes to draw the International Symbol of Access—a stick figure in a wheelchair—on the back and side of the vehicle after it was illegally parked in an accessible space.
Something's Rotten: Stench from Fridge Sends 11 to Hospital (Associated Press) A smelly refrigerator sent nearly a dozen people to the hospital.
Men Hospitalized, Recovering After Rare Beaver Attack (Reuters) Two hikers who were assaulted by a beaver after they climbed onto its dam have been hospitalized for injuries incurred during the rare attack.
Theater Switches Horror Movie for Disney Film (Associated Press) Parents and children settled into their seats for a new animated Disney film got a quick jolt when a horror movie came on the screen instead.
Break-In Suspect Left Wallet Behind (Associated Press) Sheriff's deputies had little trouble identifying a break-in suspect whose wallet and ID were left at the scene.
16 Police Forces Respond to Wedding Brawl (UPI) More than a dozen different police departments responded to a wedding brawl that grew violently out of control.
Sex Sounds Rile Neighbors (UPI) A note posted at a housing complex blasts loud lovemaking neighbors for "Oh God" exclamations confused by children and seniors for "religion or suicide."
Loose Dog at Motel Leads to Drug Arrest (Associated Press) A loose dog at a motel led to a room with a bathtub containing marijuana and the arrest of the dog's owner.
Robbers Chased Away by Shopkeeper Wielding Vacuum Cleaner (Reuters) A shop assistant in a late-night convenience store chased away two armed robbers demanding money with the hose of a vacuum cleaner she was using to clean her shop.
Police Apologize After Sex Talk Broadcast from Helicopter (Reuters) Police apologized after a lewd conversation about sex was broadcast from the loudspeakers of a police helicopter to a neighborhood below.
Gumbo Seasoning Dispute Gets Spicy (Panama City (FL) News Herald) A man was arrested on charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon after a work squabble over gumbo seasoning quickly escalated into an armed engagement.
Mermaids, Other Creatures Turn Out for Parade (Associated Press) Tens of thousands of revelers turned out for Coney Island's 33rd annual Mermaid Parade despite gray skies and steady drizzle.
Newlyweds Win $15 Million in Lottery (Associated Press) Newlyweds are planning to buy a house, pay off student loans, and buy a truck after winning $15 million on an instant scratch-off ticket.
City Slaps Car Sculpture with a Ticket (CityLab) There must be a traffic officer out there with either no sense of humor or an excellent one, because this weirdly bent truck—an obvious work of public art—just got a parking ticket.
Skinny Jeans Send Woman to Hospital with Nerve Damage (UPI) A doctor has warned against the dangers of so-called "skinny jeans," citing a patient who collapsed after a day of strenuous activity while wearing tight pants.
'Fridgehenge' Welcomes Solstice with Refrigerators (UPI) An appliance store owner celebrated the summer solstice by creating "Fridgehenge," a Stonehenge-inspired monument made from refrigerators.
Brave Kitty Stares Down Mountain Lion (Reuters) A video of an unfazed, fluffy house cat staring down a large mountain lion as the predator paws at a kitchen window has gone viral.
Bleating Beauties: Village Holds Goat Pageant (UPI) A village celebrated the 645th anniversary of its founding by holding a beauty pageant for the most attractive local goats.
Flight Video Catches Cat Stowing Away on Plane Wing (UPI) A pilot shared video from an ultralight plane flight featuring a feline stowaway crawling out from inside a wing after takeoff.
Smuggler Hides Cigarettes in Buddha Statues (Sky News) Officers found five colored fiberglass statues of Buddha, all filled with cigarettes.
Pilots Warned of 70,000 Homing Pigeons (Associated Press) Airplane pilots have been advised to fly with special care after 70,000 homing pigeons were released to participate in a race back to their homes.
Bank Robber Who Stopped for Biscuits Gets Prison (Associated Press) A man who was arrested for robbing a bank when he stopped to eat biscuits at a nearby restaurant will spend two to four years in prison.
Man Drives Himself to Station, Asks for DUI Arrest (Associated Press) A man drove under the influence of alcohol to a small-town police station, where he requested that officers arrest him.
66 Surfers Set Record for Most People Riding a Board at Once (Associated Press) Surf champions and local heroes were among those who hung loose on a custom-built, 42-foot board.
Father Sends Lookalike to Paternity Test (International Business Times) A young father who did not want to pay child support was called highly manipulative in court after he sent a look-alike to his DNA paternity test.
Cabbie Drives Taxi Down Three Flights of Stairs (UPI) A taxi driver who apparently got confused on a college campus became a viral star when he decided to drive his cab down three flights of stairs. | 2 | [
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FMD4412 | 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 Spore along side Andy Nowicki the Nameless One & the gang for the hundred and twenty eighth 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 the outcome of Free Speech Week at Berkeley, #KneeGate, a Jim Carrey follow up and much more.Direct Download Episode #128 Please 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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FMD4413 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: As in-fighting consumes the British government, Europeans have stepped up quiet preparations for a possible collapse of Brexit talks that could see Britain crash out of the EU without a deal 18 months from now. Prime Minister Theresa May s EU counterparts still see the no-deal scenario she threatened them with as most unlikely, as they think it would hurt Britain much more than the continent. But after her faltering party conference this week and ahead of important meetings in Brussels over the next fortnight, diplomats and officials there and in big member states said they have been putting renewed focus on contingency planning for a legal limbo in March 2019 and urging businesses to do the same. German officials say that in recent months they have been spending just as much energy on how to handle that as on preparing for a negotiated solution. The BDI industry federation in the biggest EU economy warned German firms on Thursday that it would be naive not to be ready for a a very hard exit . Like May, who on Friday rejected calls from some lawmakers to resign, Michel Barnier, the European Union negotiator, says his aim is an orderly exit. But he repeatedly cautions that he also has a mandate from EU leaders to help prepare for failure and regularly tells businesses to be sure to plan for the worst. We want to be ready for all eventualities, including no deal , he told business and labor representatives after the negotiations began in July. Deal or no deal is the fundamental question , he said, after talks made little progress in August. This is the growing feeling, absolutely, a senior EU official said of concerns that talks could collapse, not because Britain saw economic advantage in that, as May has warned, but because British politics could end up in domestic stalemate that could mean missing reasonable deadlines for a withdrawal treaty. For many, talk of a breakdown in talks remains part of the bluff and counter-bluff of negotiations. But what May s problems inside her own government indicate to many across the Channel is that the country is so divided it may be unable to reach a deal. You need to factor in that it s not a rational process, the senior EU official said, repeating a common view that voting for Brexit made no economic sense in the first place. So it s not unlikely that they again shy away from what are the economic imperatives and we end up cliff-edging by political default. People close to Barnier s negotiating team draw attention to new legislation last month aimed at protecting the EU carbon market from a disorderly British departure and moves to force euro-denominated securities clearing from London to the continent as examples of Brussels contingency planning. It s the responsible approach. And the more it goes on like this, said one EU official of the lack of clear breakthroughs in the talks, the more we ll see of these steps. Another senior official said: There s every reason to be worried and European industry should take this more seriously. May s Brexit minister, David Davis, is expected back in Brussels on Monday for a fifth round of negotiations with Barnier. But expectations among EU officials are low to nil for a breakthrough on key divorce issues that would allow EU leaders to tell May when they meet her the following week that they are willing to open talks on a future free trade accord. Aside from uncertainty over how a new EU border with Ireland will work and differences over rights for expatriates after Brexit, a standoff over tens of billions of euros that Brussels argues Britain will owe on departure seems far from resolution. Describing as unbelievable arrogance British offers to pay just 20 billion euros ($23 billion) of a Brexit bill which the EU estimates at perhaps 60 billion euros, a senior diplomat from a country Britain generally views as an ally in EU affairs said May would have to face down hardliners who reject such payments. Few of Britain s negotiating partners see any benefit in a change of prime minister now. That would cost more time that neither side has, since the chances of London or Brussels agreeing to extend the Brexit deadline seem limited. With Boris Johnson as prime minister, the negotiations would be easier, one EU diplomat said of the foreign secretary, who has sniped at May s push for a deal that could see Britain stay bound by some EU rules, at least for a transition period. We could save ourselves all this analyzing, the diplomat said, As he d just drive the talks straight off the cliff. For many, ending with a legal void remains far-fetched. But though British ministers talk of a bespoke deal to exit EU rules while retaining market access, EU officials warn that time is running out for London to find any option other than to agree to something like the status of Norway being in the EU market and accepting rules on which is has no vote. Pretty soon, said one, It will be Norway or nothing. | 1 | [
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FMD4414 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: After the crushing electoral losses that swept Donald Trump into the White House and sealed Republican control of the U.S. Congress, the Democrats’ road to recovery winds through the leafy, well-heeled suburbs of north Atlanta. Here, Democrats are threatening a stunning special election upset that could signal how well the party can turn Trump’s low approval ratings into political gains. And they appear to have an ally in the April 18 vote: Trump himself. In the most-watched congressional race so far in the Trump era, a wave of grassroots anti-Trump fervor has positioned Democrat Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old political newcomer, to possibly capture a House of Representatives seat held by Republicans for decades, one of 24 seats Democrats need nationwide to reclaim the House. MORE FROM REUTERS: Russian naval activity in Europe exceeds Cold War levels: U.S. admiralIran chides Gulf ArabsRussian computer programmer arrested in Spain: embassy “The grassroots intensity here is electric, and it’s because folks are concerned that what is happening in Washington doesn’t represent our values,†Ossoff said in an interview. “This is a chance for this community to stand up and make a statement about what we believe.†With Democrats desperate for signs of hope after Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump, Ossoff’s underdog “Make Trump Furious†campaign has endeared him to national anti-Trump activists and pushed him well ahead of 17 rivals in polls. The documentary filmmaker and former congressional aide raised a jaw-dropping $8.3 million in the first quarter, his campaign said. “I’ve never seen the Democrats around here so engaged, and it’s Donald Trump who got us so engaged,†said Carolyn Hadaway, 77, a veteran party activist and retired software engineer from Marietta, a city of about 60,000 people in Georgia’s central Cobb County. Georgia would seem an unlikely venue for a Democratic revival. Trump won it by about 5 percentage points in November. And its voters backed Republican nominees in eight of the last nine presidential contests, including the last six in a row. But demographic changes are brewing. Growing minority communities and transplants from other regions have made Atlanta’s suburbs increasingly competitive for Democrats. Georgia’s sixth congressional district, the location for April’s special election, exemplifies changes common in booming southern cities like Atlanta, Charlotte and Nashville. The district is white collar, educated and doing well economically, with median household incomes of $80,000 versus $50,000 statewide, and nearly 60 percent of adults holding a college or professional degree, more than twice the statewide average. It is also increasingly diverse, and in recent years became a magnet for well-educated immigrants from India and other parts of Asia. The district was about 80 percent white at the turn of the century. But since then, the black share of the population has grown from 10 percent to 13 percent, the Hispanic share has doubled to 12.5 percent and Asian representation doubled to more than 10 percent. About a fifth of the district is now foreign born – twice the statewide average, according to census data. Though newer immigrants may not be eligible to vote, census data indicate more than 40 percent are naturalized citizens, potentially bringing a different set of views on issues like immigration to the table than the voters in this district who sent Trump adviser and former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to Congress for 10 straight terms. April’s special election fills the seat vacated by Tom Price, the new secretary of health and human services. It gives both parties a chance to test their messages for election battles next year in suburban districts where Democrats need to make inroads and where Trump’s populist economic message did not sell well in November. While Price sailed to re-election with 62 percent of the vote, Trump barely beat Clinton in Georgia’s sixth district by one percentage point. In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney beat Democratic President Barack Obama in the district by 23 points. Republican candidates nationwide will closely watch the result as they calculate whether to embrace the president. The 11 Republicans in the race have split between those who portray themselves as Trump supporters and establishment candidates who keep a respectful and sometimes wary distance. “I’m ready to support him,†former state senator Dan Moody, who was endorsed by U.S. Senator David Perdue, said of Trump in an interview. But “I’m not going to jump over a cliff with him.†Grassroots Democratic groups flood the district’s tidy suburban neighborhoods on the weekends, busing in volunteers from as far away as Maryland to go door to door on Ossoff’s behalf. The Ossoff momentum worries Republicans, say party officials, and outside help has arrived. A super PAC aligned with House Republican leaders put more than $2 million into ads painting Ossoff as too young and inexperienced. Ossoff played down the strategic value of a possible upset. “The national implications here will be about how this affects the political calculus for folks in the Republican conference in the House, not about how Democrats are supposed to run in the midterms,†he said. In a low turnout special election, getting supporters to the polls is vital, and Democrats have voted early in greater numbers than Republicans so far. “We aren’t panicking, but there is concern,†said Maggie Holliman, a member of the Republican state executive committee. Ossoff’s best chance is to win the April 18 vote, a “jungle primary†that features all 18 candidates from both parties on the same ballot. If no one reaches 50 percent, the top two vote getters square off on June 20. Republicans are confident they can win a one-on-one race with Ossoff, as the party unites with organizational and financial help pouring into the Republican-majority district. “There is a chance Ossoff can win without a runoff, but that’s his only chance. He’s benefiting from unified Democratic support and Republicans being highly divided,†said Georgia-based Republican strategist Joel McElhannon. Polls show Ossoff hovering in the low 40s, not enough to avoid a runoff. The leading Republican, former Secretary of State Karen Handel, is well behind. Handel has been cautious in talking about Trump. She said in an interview she expected to work with him on issues such as tax reform and border security, but “first and foremost†she would be a conservative advocate for her district. By contrast Republicans Bob Gray, a local business executive, and Bruce LeVell, head of Trump’s national diversity coalition, pledge undivided loyalty to the White House. Gray said he was the Republican in the race who performed the behind-the-scenes political groundwork for Trump in the district. LeVell pulled out his cellphone and showed a reporter text messages from Trump aides Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and even Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to prove his insider status with the White House. “If people are looking for someone to help Trump, I’m their guy,†he said. (This version of the story corrects third paragraph to ‘most-watched congressional race so far’ from ‘first congressional election’) | 1 | [
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] | 1 |
FMD4415 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Thousands of women in Nigeria took the streets of the northern capital Maiduguri this weekend to protest the government’s inability to eradicate the Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram, which has not ceased in committing mass abductions, rapes, and murders since the government claimed victory over them in 2015. [Recent reports indicate that Boko Haram terrorists, mostly sheltered in the dense Sambisa Forest of the nation’s northeast, have continued to force poor underage girls to engage in suicide bombings, paying them as little as 50 cents for their lives. The women who organized in Maiduguri, the capital of northeastern Borno state, did so to attract the attention of representatives of the United Nations Security Council, who were visiting the city to evaluate the condition of the refugee and person (IDP) camp for Boko Haram victims in the area. The protests targeted not only Boko Haram terrorists but the government of President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja, who won the nation’s presidency on a campaign promise to ride the nation of Boko Haram entirely. Protesters complained that the government was not doing enough to ensure the safety of IDPs at the camp in question. “We told the (UN) delegation about our grievances. There’s no food, there is nothing good here for us,†one protester told the Agence . “We were expelled from our homes by Boko Haram and we came to Maiduguri to seek refuge, but unfortunately we haven’t been well treated. †Reports of abuse of Boko Haram victims at the Maiduguri camp have continued to surface for years. In September, an NGO report revealed that Nigerian officials had done such an inadequate job feeding the refugees that many of the women and girls stranded there were forced to have sex with Nigerian soldiers in exchange for food to survive. Many Boko Haram victims are either pregnant or have given birth to children after being repeatedly raped by Boko Haram jihadists, making their need for a stable food source even more desperate. A report published a month later accused Nigerian soldiers of raping Boko Haram victims, sometimes impregnating them or coercing sex out of them by promising them marriage and a stable home. 43 women told Human Rights Watch that they had experienced “sexual abuse, including rape, and exploitation†at the hand of Nigerian soldiers. Buhari vowed to investigate the charges upon the release of the report. The abuse and neglect in Nigeria’s northern refugee camp have led some women to choose to join Boko Haram. The terrorist group, some women have told NGOs, offered “financial empowerment†by ensuring the women are fed and teaching them to read and write in Arabic — in order to study the Quran — so long as they succumb to extreme sexual abuse. In addition to abusing its residents, the Nigerian military conducted an airstrike on the Maiduguri camp in January, killing over 100 displaced Nigerians. The military called the bombing a “regrettable operational mistake. †protests have not solely occurred against Buhari in Nigeria. On Saturday, thousands of protesters took over Niamey, the capital of Niger, demanding President Idriss Deby improve the quality of life in Niger. The protesters demanded an improved economy and the release of political prisoners, holding signs reading “Life is too hard. †The nation’s economy has been hit by, among other factors, a wave of mass abductions and suicide bombings by Boko Haram. Borno state lies on the Niger border, allowing Boko Haram terrorists access to that country as well as neighboring Cameroon. Despite claims from both governments that the Boko Haram threat has been significantly limited, reports this week indicate that Borno residents continue to face the near constant threat of suicide bombings, abductions, and other jihadist activity. Boko Haram terrorists often seek young women and girls to conduct their terrorist attacks, as they can hide bombs under their Islamic clothing. A Sky News report published this week reveals one such exchange, in which a Boko Haram terrorist pays a girl 50 cents to wear a suicide bomb and explode it in a Maiduguri market. The girl surrendered to police before detonating her explosives. In one attempt to disguise a suicide bombing, as police have learned to suspect of young girls, Boko Haram sent two women holding an infant into a village to detonate a bomb in May 2016. The Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD) estimates that women and girls tied to Boko Haram have committed at least 123 suicide bombings in the past three years. These women are among the estimated thousands Boko Haram has abducted and forced into slave marriages and terrorist activity. While Boko Haram jihadists turn their young girls into suicide bombers, the boys are taught at an early age how to properly rape women while limiting the chances of her escape. “They tell us to remember to hold the girl tight on both hands, pinned to the floor,†a boy identified as “Ahmed†explained to reporters last year. “They said we shouldn’t let a woman overpower us. †President Buhari declared that Nigeria had “won the war†against Boko Haram in December 2015 and has not yet retracted that claim. | 1 | [
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FMD4416 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: As James Bond s nemesis Auric Goldfinger famously observed, Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action. On Tuesday evening, three prominent Republicans Senator John McCain, Senator Marco Rubio, and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney endorsed the left-wing media s preferred narrative and embraced the masked thugs of Antifa as heroes.No, not the same. One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes. Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) August 16, 2017Twitter users hit back at Romney, who likely has no idea who Antifa really is and the danger the violent, anti free-speech, Soros-funded poses to Americans:The fact that you view Antifa as moral and acceptable is beyond disgusting. No wonder you lost resoundingly in your presidential run. Alex (@SoCal4Trump) August 16, 2017McCain and Romney used almost identical language, bending their knees to the media narrative that only two factions were present in Charlottesville during the awful events of last weekend: white supremacist Nazis and Americans standing up to defy hate and bigotry. There's no moral equivalency between racists & Americans standing up to defy hate& bigotry. The President of the United States should say so John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) August 16, 2017Senator John McCain got hammered by this Twitter user for not recognizing the violence Antifa has inflicted on innocent Trump supporters as a way to shut down free speech. This collage of photos is a not-so-subtle reminder:Here John, u uninformed piece of shit, are the faces of innocent peaceful rally attendees assaulted by Antifa. Antifa went looking for a war pic.twitter.com/K8fqKkAnH7 TexasStrong.357 (@SonofLiberty357) August 16, 2017As James Bond s nemesis Auric Goldfinger famously observed, Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action. On Tuesday evening, three prominent Republicans Senator John McCain, Senator Marco Rubio, and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney endorsed the left-wing media s preferred narrative and embraced the masked thugs of Antifa as heroes.McCain and Romney used almost identical language, bending their knees to the media narrative that only two factions were present in Charlottesville during the awful events of last weekend: white supremacist Nazis and Americans standing up to defy hate and bigotry. Senator Rubio, who just can t seem to get over his loss to President Trump, took to Twitter to defend the violent Antifa group and condemn President Trump for including them in his condemnation of the violence that took place in Charlottesville:The organizers of events which inspired & led to #charlottesvilleterroristattack are 100% to blame for a number of reasons. 1/6 Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 15, 2017They are adherents of an evil ideology which argues certain people are inferior because of race, ethnicity or nation of origin. 2/6 Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 15, 2017When entire movement built on anger & hatred towards people different than you,it justifies & ultimately leads to violence against them 3/6 Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 15, 2017So, is Marco Rubio condoning the type of violence by Antifa that Trump supporters are met with on a regular basis simply for daring to utter a viewpoint that is in opposition to the #AltLeft?Most people disagree with you, Marco. These people absolutely deserve blame for their violence. ANY violence & hate is contemptible pic.twitter.com/fqtomLASmK Steph (@steph93065) August 16, 2017Senator Rubio probably doesn t visit the Antifa website, but if he did, he might have seen this special credit card sized knife that Antifa was selling on their website for their members to use at Trump rallies to stab people they disagree with:These groups today use SAME symbols & same arguments of #Nazi & #KKK, groups responsible for some of worst crimes against humanity ever 4/6 Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 15, 2017Mr. President,you can't allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame.They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain 5/6 Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 15, 2017Republican Rep Steven Smith shared a video with Senator Rubio, who apparently needs visual aids to see why President Trump was unwilling to call the violence in Charlottesville one-sided :Have you seen the video? No police protection, two violent groups. Clearly two, with one blocking the road. How is it one-sided? pic.twitter.com/0W5CYqPT6M Rep. Steven Smith (@RepStevenSmith) August 16, 2017The #WhiteSupremacy groups will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win.We can not allow this old evil to be resurrected 6/6 Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 15, 2017Rubio s third tweet explicitly endorses violent responses to hate speech, but the last one is the money shot, as Rubio embraces the essence of Whataboutism and agrees with the media that left-wing thuggery is a fact on the Charlottesville ground that must be ignored if we are to properly condemn white nationalism.McCain and Romney are politically irrelevant, but Rubio still has political ambitions. Imagine the priceless look of surprise on his face when he gets branded a Nazi because he favors pro-growth tax cuts, free-market reforms, or balks at allowing illegal aliens to vote. He ll be so astounded at the way hate speech is expanded to cover his policy positions, and how the next wave of Antifa thugs justifies a violent response. Breitbart News | 0 | [
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FMD4417 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Algemeiner reports: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed new US Ambassador David Friedman to the Jewish state on Tuesday at a meeting in Jerusalem. [Friedman had arrived in Israel the previous day, pointedly making the Western Wall in the Israeli capital’s Old City his first stop. “It’s a pleasure to see you and to welcome you to Jerusalem, our eternal capital,†Netanyahu said as he greeted Friedman. “I know you went to the Kotel [Western Wall]. It’s deeply appreciated by all our people. †“There was no other place to go,†Friedman replied. Netanyahu told Friedman he was looking forward to President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to the Jewish state next week, which, in the words of the prime minister, would provide an opportunity to further “strengthen our great alliance. †Read more here. | 1 | [
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FMD4418 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The double standard here is unbelievable! We just reported on a high school student in big trouble for saying Build the Wall in her yearbook quote. That s pretty harmless but the school took back the yearbooks .Fast forward and a high school student wrote out their thoughts on President Trump in the yearbook I would like to behead him. I do not like him. See the huge difference here?MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) Just under a month after a Big Lake trap team s photo was banned from the high school yearbook, another high school yearbook photo is making news.For its 2017 yearbook, Brainerd High School dedicated a page to President Donald Trump. Editors asked students their thoughts on the president, and shared the quotes next to their picture.One sophomore said, I would like to behead him. I do not like him. The photo went viral, sparking controversy on Twitter. Now, that student is telling her side of the story. I was so confused, because at first, I didn t ever remember saying that, 15-year-old Camryn said.Camryn who asked WCCO not to reveal her last name says she had no idea a conversation with a classmate last September would lead to nationwide attention. She says the classmate never said she was working for the yearbook when she asked about then-candidate Donald Trump. I did not say, I want to behead him. I did not say, I am going to behead him. I just said, Well I m sure we all wouldn t mind him being beheaded, something along those lines, Camryn said. But there was never the direct quote, I do not like him. I would like to behead him. That conversation exploded on social media 8 months later, with the help of at least one celebrity. Former Joanie Loves Chachi actor Scott Baio shared the photo, tagging the president, the FBI, Sean Hannity and Kellyanne Conway.Read more: CBS | 0 | [
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FMD4419 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Hundreds of Turkish migrants and dual nationals turned out onto the streets of Rotterdam to riot in support of their home country’s Islamist president last night, forcing Dutch police to take robust action to disperse them.[ People wave Turkish national flags during a demonstration near the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam on March 11, 2017. Photo: MARTEN VAN Images, Turkish residents of the Netherlands gather for a protest in Rotterdam on March 11, 2017. Photo: EMMANUEL Images, Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV) released a message in response to the unrest, telling rioters, “You are no Europeans, and you will never be. †🇳🇱🇹🇷 Geert Wilders’s message to Turks: â€You are not welcome here!†#Turkey #Rotterdam pic. twitter. — Keith Walker (@KeithWalkerNews) March 12, 2017, “An Islamic state like Turkey does not belong to Europe. All the values Europe stands for — freedom, democracy, human rights — are incompatible with Islam,†he said. “Turkey voted for ErdoÄŸan, a dangerous Islamist who raises the flag of Islam. We do not want more, but less Islam. So Turkey, stay away from us. You are not welcome here. †Aggressive crowds have gathered outside the Dutch embassy in Ankara and the consulate in Istanbul in response, calling for retaliation and chanting “Allahu Akbar!†Nu voor Nederlands consulaat in Istanbul pic. twitter. — Lucas Waagmeester (@NOSWaagmeester) March 11, 2017, The riots are in response to the Dutch government’s refusal to allow the Turkish foreign minister to land in the Netherlands to attend a rally supporting the expansion of President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan’s powers. According to Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the refusal was made in response to being threatened with sanctions. “We can never do business under this kind of blackmail,†said Rutte, expressing amazement that family affairs minster Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya attempted to circumvent the Dutch ban on Turkish politicians campaigning in the Netherlands by bringing a fleet of ministerial cars across the German border, which the European Union’s borderless Schengen Area leaves unprotected. “We drew a red line,†he said, explaining why Kaya was escorted back to the German border — a move which prompted ErdoÄŸan to denounce the Dutch as “fascists†and “Nazi remnantsâ€. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim vowed there would be “a stronger reprisal against the unacceptable treatment toward Turkey and ministers who have diplomatic immunity†on Sunday afternoon. “Our European friends who speak of democracy, freedom of expression and human rights have failed their class,†he declared. It is not yet clear what form Turkish reprisals will take, but foreign minister Mevlüt ÇavuÅŸoÄŸlu has hinted the country may open its borders and allow illegal migrants to flood into Europe. [Video] Dutch police with dogs harshly disperse Turkish protesters in Rotterdam pic. twitter. — ANADOLU AGENCY (ENG) (@anadoluagency) March 12, 2017, ErdoÄŸan’s party, Justice and Development (AKP) has, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, been described as “Moderately Islamist†— but it has grown increasingly authoritarian as it unpicks the secular settlement laid down by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. “We are a Muslim country [and] we must have a religious constitution,†demanded parliamentary speaker Ismail Kahraman in 2016. “Secularism cannot feature in the new constitution. †Atatürk introduced sweeping reforms which sought to confine Islam to the private sphere when Turkey was first esablished, abolishing the Ottoman Caliphate, severely curtailing Islam’s role in politics and discouraging religious dress. “My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science,†he said, according to a biography by Andrew Mango. “Superstition must go. †| 1 | [
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FMD4420 | 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: President Obama Signs SNAP Fairness Act of 2014 Into Law Claim summaries: Can food stamps now be used to purchase alcohol and tobacco?
contextual information: Claim: Food stamps can now be used to purchase alcohol and tobacco products. Example: [Collected via e-mail, December 2014] Is the following true? I am pretty sure it isn't, but can't find any other information other than this website. "President Obama signs SNAP Fairness Act of 2014 Into Law: Alcohol & Tobacco Products No Longer Prohibited from Food Stamps." Origins: On 7 December 2014, the Salty Badger website published an article claiming President Obama had signed legislation called "The SNAP Fairness Act of 2014" into law, making it legal to purchase alcohol and tobacco (items that have long been excluded from the food stamps program) with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) electronic benefit (EBT) cards. The article stated that President Obama signed the "SNAP Fairness Act of 2014" into law on 12/7/14, thirty-four days after both houses of Congress narrowly passed the controversial bill, overcoming strong Republican resistance in both the Senate and House. All SNAP-eligible Americans would be enjoying a late Christmas present this year courtesy of Uncle Sam. Wrapped inside with a red, white, and blue bow would be increased food stamp funds and the right to use their EBT card to buy alcohol and tobacco products. Hakeem Jeffries of New York's 8th Congressional District stated, "For too long, American citizens have been discriminated against at the grocery store. There is no reason my constituents should be barred from purchasing a 6-pack of Coors Light with their EBT card to go along with their steak dinner, also purchased with their EBT card. To expect low-income hardworking Americans to go out of pocket for essentials such as cigarettes and beer is not only racist but cruel. I am proud to stand with my president today in this historical signing for food stamp fairness." The article uses the names of real politicians, like President Obama and Hakeem Jeffries, but that's the only factual element of the story. The SNAP Fairness Act of 2014 does not exist, President Obama didn't sign any bills into law on 7 December 2014, and SNAP benefit cards cannot be used to purchase alcohol or tobacco products. The photo used to illustrate this fictitious article shows President Obama sitting at his desk in August 2013 signing the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act, not the SNAP Fairness Act, into law. The Salty Badger may not be as well known as fake news sites such as Huzlers or World News Daily Report, but the website's mission is the same: to spread misinformation. The Salty Badger, which prides itself on being "not always right, but always first," notes in its mission statement that when the Salty Badger was conceived and born from two genius minds, literally minutes prior to writing this statement, they had three major goals in mind: to bring their brand of comedy to the forefront, to have beautiful women throwing themselves at them, and to get Scrooge McDuck rich. They will settle for any one of the three. They will sneak their humor into the minds of the world one individual at a time. Last updated: 10 December 2014. | 0 | [
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FMD4421 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The incoming chair of the congressional panel that oversees labor issues on Monday questioned the need for unions and said she wants to repeal various Obama administration labor policies. Organized labor has “sort of lost its reason for being†because of the many laws in place to protect workers, said Representative Virginia Foxx, a 73-year-old Republican from North Carolina who will become chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce in January, in a telephone interview with Reuters Labor unions have already been wary about how they will fare under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, with Republicans poised to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress. AFL-CIO spokesman Eric Hauser pushed back against Foxx’s comments, saying that a thriving labor movement and strong union presence has never been more important in light of the economic tumult in the United States. Foxx, who was first elected to the House in 2004, said one of her committee’s top priorities will be to roll back a slew of Obama administration labor initiatives. At the top of her agenda is the U.S. Labor Department rule that would extend mandatory overtime pay to more than 4 million workers. A federal judge in Texas blocked the rule last month before it took effect, but the Labor Department has challenged that ruling in a federal appeals court. Among other targets that Foxx cited for repeal are the National Labor Relations Board’s revised standard for “joint employment†that could make it easier for unions and regulators to hold companies accountable for the employment practices of staffing agencies, contractors and franchisees with which they partner. That issue has been most prominently in play in a case involving McDonald’s Corp over whether it, as well as its franchisees, can be held liable in complaints about the violation of employee rights. Foxx said she expects strong opposition from Democrats. “I think that they will bring up their tired arguments about how we are destroying the world by doing the things that we’re doing, but frankly I think this last election shows that the American people aren’t buying those arguments anymore,†Foxx said. Representatives for the Democratic leadership on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce were not immediately available for comment. | 1 | [
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FMD4422 | 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 Koch network (is) spending more money (in a Senate race) in Ohio than anywhere else in the country.
contextual information: Voters in Ohio are enduring a deluge of fundraising emails from political groups ahead of the November election, including one from Friends of Sherrod Brown. The senator, in the middle of his second term, is hoping to garner support for fellow Democrat Ted Strickland. Outside special interests like to spend money in Ohio, Brown's email stated. Back in 2012, they spent $40 million trying to buy my seat in the Senate. Right now, the special interests have spent $30 million against Ted, with the Koch network investing more money in Ohio than anywhere else in the country. Strickland, the former Ohio governor, is running for Senate against incumbent Republican Sen. Rob Portman in one of the tightest races in the country. The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, of Koch Industries, are tied as the sixth-richest people in the world, each worth an estimated $42 billion. As political and policy influencers advancing a free-market agenda, their network includes the nonprofit Americans for Prosperity and the super PAC Freedom Partners Action Fund. The Kochs can usually be counted on to fund conservative causes, but they have recoiled from the 2016 presidential race. Is down-ballot spending in Ohio the Kochs' biggest imprint so far in the 2016 elections? We turned first to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics for its tallies of outside contributions. The Koch brothers, through their political action network, have spent approximately $8 million in the Senate race in Ohio, with almost $2 million from Americans for Prosperity and a little over $6 million from Freedom Partners Action Fund. That is more than the Koch-backed groups have spent in any other race in the country, according to OpenSecrets records. The Koch network's next-largest spending, by comparison, is in North Carolina, where Americans for Prosperity has spent a mere $200,000 against Rep. Renee Ellmers, and in Pennsylvania, where Freedom Partners Action Fund has spent almost $3 million in opposition to Katie McGinty. In opposition spending by Freedom Partners, Strickland has taken the most punishment in 2016 to date, the Center for Responsive Politics reported. So the Koch network is contributing substantially to help Portman keep his seat. But where did Brown get the $30 million spent against Ted? Here are the numbers for outside spending contributions in the Ohio Senate race, according to OpenSecrets.org: If you add the total outside spending for Portman and the spending against Strickland, you get $19,232,784. (We're leaving out the primary race spending for the other Democratic candidate, P.G. Sittenfeld, whom Strickland beat—that's the difference between our total and the $19,990,270 above.) Where does the other $10 million come from? Strickland spokesman David Bergstein told PolitiFact Ohio that, in tracking money spent against the candidate, the campaign monitors announcements of advertising purchases, some of which come from 501(c)(4) organizations that don't have to report to the Federal Election Commission. Those dollars, therefore, don't appear on sites like OpenSecrets.org. Counting announcements of spending from these nonprofits, the conservative estimate is closer to $30 million, the campaign said. Bergstein provided a spreadsheet confirming that figure. Strickland's campaign isn't suffering from a lack of outside spending as much as Brown's email might suggest. Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC dedicated to putting Democrats in Senate seats, has spent $8.4 million against Portman and $1.8 million for Strickland. We shared our analysis with Freedom Partners Action PAC, and the group did not dispute our findings. Our ruling: A fundraising email in support of Strickland stated that the billionaire-backed Koch network has devoted the most money to oppose the Ohio Senate candidate than in any other race in the country. Americans for Prosperity and the Freedom Partners Action Fund have spent about $8 million to oppose Strickland, which is more than they have spent in any other race this election season to date. Strickland's campaign, while hardly immune to special interests, is the Koch network's biggest target in an election year that has seen conservative benefactors steer clear of the main ticket. We rate the claim True. | 1 | [
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FMD4423 | 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: Because of #TaxReform, 4 million American workers have received raises and bonuses, and 90% of Americans are seeing bigger paychecks this month.
contextual information: U.S. Rep. Chris Collins said many Americans are already benefiting from the tax law Republicans in Congress passed in December. Collins used the claim to attack House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ina tweet. Because of #TaxReform, 4 million American workers have received raises and bonuses, and 90% of Americans are seeing bigger paychecks this month, Collins tweeted. Despite what @NancyPelosi may say, this isnt crumbs for hardworking families in #WNY. Pelosi hadpreviouslycalled the tax benefits for middle- and low-income earners crumbs compared to what wealthy earners would receive. Republicans who support the tax plan disagree. They believe the tax bill provides significant relief for those workers. Collins, a Republican from suburban Buffalo, says those benefits have already started. Is he right? 4 million American workers President Donald Trumpclaimed3 million workers in the U.S. had already received a pay increase or bonus thanks to the tax bill at the end of January. PolitiFact rated that claim Mostly True. PolitiFact checked Trumps claim using data from Americans for Tax Reform, a group that advocates for lower taxes. The group supported the Republican tax bill. The group has a running list of companies that have announced bonuses or other benefits based on press releases and media reports since the tax law passed. At the end of January, at least 286 companies had announced benefits for more than 3 million workers. That number has since grown to more than 4 million workers from 408 companies,according tothe group. Those workers have gotten a bonus, pay increase, 401(k) hike, or utility rate cut because of the new tax law, according to reports. Thats not a small number of workers, but it accounts for less than 3 percent of the total employedpopulationin the U.S. Experts also told PolitiFact that some of the bonuses may have already been planned before the tax law to retain workers in a tight labor market. Larger paychecks The second part of Collins claim is based on a prediction from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The agency said in January that 90 percent of working Americans would have less federal tax withheld from their paychecks by the middle of February. Employers had until Feb. 15 to implement the lower federal tax rates. Were estimating that 90 percent of workers are going to see an increase in take-home pay because of the Tax Cuts [and Jobs] Act, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said. We reached out to the agency to see if its prediction panned out for February. We did not hear back. The actual share of workers with more take-home pay may be lower than 90 percent, according to Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. It is true that roughly 90 percent of Americans will get a tax cut this year as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Gleckman said. But many Americans will not see higher take-home pay because of other factors, like higher health insurance premiums. Higher premiums could exceed any increase in take-home pay. Premiums for individual and employer-sponsored health plans are expected toriseagain this year. An argument could be made that without the new tax rates, employees would have less money to pay for the higher premiums. More benefits from the law will be available during next years tax filing period. Thats when other provisions begin, like a higher standard deduction for filers. Our ruling Collins said Because of #TaxReform, 4 million American workers have received raises and bonuses, and 90% of Americans are seeing bigger paychecks this month. The first part of Collins claim is correct based on a compilation of companies from a tax cut advocacy group. PolitiFact used the same list whenfact-checkingTrump on a similar claim. The second part of Collins claim is less clear. The Treasury Department predicted 90 percent of workers would have lower federal taxes in February. We dont know how many had higher take-home pay, Gleckman said. The statement is accurate but needed additional information. We rate it Mostly True. PolitiFact Republican guest columnist and former U.S. Rep. David Jolly said PolitiFacts fact-checking of this statement reveals the challenges confronted by disciplined fact-checkers to confine themselves only to a politicians specific comment, and the challenges equally faced by readers of PolitiFact whose opinions may often be arrived at through a broader analysis of additional facts not addressed in a single fact-checking column. Whether Rep. Collins assertion represents the full policy implications of the new law or whether it intentionally avoids the additional complexities of its impact, the fact is his statement was accurate. Read his critiquehere.Read more about our guest columnistshere. | 1 | [
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FMD4424 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: There is nothing more rewarding than growing your own food. Yet every gardener faces problems in the early stages of starting a garden. Look out for these 5 mistakes during your first few weeks.
Mold
You can spot fungi by first being able to identify it. If you see white, hairlike growths on the soil surface, you are probably seeing fungi. Fungus thrives in dirt that is overly wet, usually combined with humid air or poor ventilation around plants. You can avoid this by using cell flats and planting one seed per cell to allow enough space for air to circulate around seedlings. Place a small fan in the area and position it so that it is not blowing directly on the seedlings. This will keep air moving.
Damping-Off
Stems can turn brown and bend at the soil level due to fungi. If you are using a humidity dome, be sure to remove it right after sprouting. Leaving the dome on will create an environment that pathogens and pests love.
Bugs
If you have houseplants with pest issues, keep your seedling trays far away from them. The most common indoor seed-starting pest is the fungus gnat. It resembles a small but sluggish fruit fly. Gnat larvae can only survive in moist environments, so it is important to cut back on watering once the seeds have sprouted. Allow the top 1/4 inch of soil to dry out between waterings.
Planting Depth
When seeds are planted too deep and kept too moist and cold, they can rot. Be sure to plant according to the directions on the packet.
Seed Quality
If you are doing everything right and your seeds still don’t sprout, they could be too old. Seeds germinate best when they are fresh. Quality seed companies print a “packed for” date on envelopes. Be sure to do your research. Some seeds like beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers can be stored in a sealed bag in a dry, dark place for several years.
Have fun while gardening and learn what techniques work best for you and your crop. Pay attention to detail in order to catch any issues before they spread.
Ariana Marisol is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. She is an avid nature enthusiast, gardener, photographer, writer, hiker, dreamer, and lover of all things sustainable, wild, and free. Ariana strives to bring people closer to their true source, Mother Nature. She is currently finishing her last year at The Evergreen State College getting her undergraduate degree in Sustainable Design and Environmental Science. Follow her adventures on Instagram. | 0 | [
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FMD4425 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Mali s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, head of a group of five countries in Africa s Sahel region, has asked the United States to remove a travel ban on Chadian nationals, saying that a failure to do so could affect Chad s security commitments. Security analysts expressed surprise when Chad, a key U.S. security partner since the Cold War, was named last week alongside North Korea and Venezuela as part of an eight-country the travel ban. Chad s army acts as a bulwark against local and regional armed movements and played a critical role in pushing back troops from jihadist group Boko Haram when they made a bid to expand beyond northeastern Nigeria in 2015. Its troops continue to hold front-line positions in unstable north Mali where jihadists ousted government authorities five years ago. As recently as February, Chad, also a key French ally, hosted a U.S. military training exercise for special forces as part of a broader strategy to empower regional troops such as the G5 Sahel security bloc consisting of Chad, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. The president of the G5 thinks this decision could affect the commitment of Chad, which has until now shown itself to be a key partner in the fight against terrorism in the G5 Sahel and beyond, said Keita in a statement sent to journalists late on Wednesday. The president...calls on the authorities to favorably re-examine the matter by lifting the sanctions against Chad, he added. Chadian officials expressed surprised at the decision earlier this week, calling it incomprehensible . The new U.S. measures, which have no end-date, help fulfill a campaign promise President Donald Trump made to tighten U.S. immigration procedures and align with his America First foreign policy vision. The White House says the restrictions are the consequences for countries not meeting new requirements for vetting immigrants and issuing visas. | 1 | [
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FMD4426 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Friday during a news conference, House Speaker Paul Ryan ( ) offered remarks on his decision not to proceed ahead with a vote on the American Health Care Act, which would have according to Ryan began the process of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, also know as Obamacare. During the question and answer session, Ryan was asked about the prospect of another stab at repealing and replacing Obamacare, to which he said, “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future. †Partial transcript as follows: I don’t know what else to say other than Obamacare’s the law of the land. It’s going to be remain the law of the land until it’s replaced. We did not have quite the votes to replace this law. And so, yeah, we’re gonna be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take us to replace this law. My worry is Obamacare is — is going to be getting even worse. Actually, I think we were probably doing the Democrats a favor. I think we are doing the architects of Obama a favor by passing this law before it gets even worse. Well, I guess that favor’s not going to be given to them and it’s going to get worse. And so, I don’t think the architects of Obamacare — I’m sure they may be pleased right now. But when they see how bad this thing gets, they said all the projections were being told by — by the plans that are participating in Obamacare. I don’t think they’re gonna like that either. Look, five states you got one plan left, one choice. Over a third of the counties in America, one plan left. And the kinds of projections we’re being told from the people providing health insurance to these people in plans, it’s gonna get even worse. And so, I don’t think the architects of Obamacare envisioned this future. It’s certainly not one we want for the American people. And I wish we had the kind of consensus we needed to bring a bill to the floor to pass and replace it but we just don’t have that right now. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 | [
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FMD4427 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Under the cover of night, the family crowded into a wagon used to carry animals to flee the Nazi troops marching toward their hometown, Nalchik, in Russia. It was 1942, and Polina Davydova’s father had returned from war wounded and requiring crutches to walk. He was now orchestrating the family’s escape farther south, to Derbent, a city on the Caspian Sea. Fifteen family members were to leave. But after the journey began, Ms. Davydova’s grandmother counted heads — someone was missing. They called each person by name. When they reached Polina, no one answered. The girl was missing. The danger of turning back was so great that her grandmother suggested continuing without her. But her father refused. Throwing aside his crutches, he jumped from the wagon, hailing Soviet soldiers in trucks and begging them for a ride back to Nalchick. Just beyond the town’s borders, he found his daughter asleep on a suitcase. “I was my father’s favorite,†Ms. Davydova recently recalled, speaking in Russian through a translator. Ms. Davydova, now 77, often retells the family story of banding together. With a happy wistfulness, she speaks as though her father, mother, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandmother and cousins, who are all now gone, are back together, shuttling everyone toward safety. Inside her sparsely decorated apartment on Ocean Avenue near Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, the few items there remind her of her home country. A mezuza hangs by the door, providing a blessing for peace to all who enter, according to family tradition. The walls are lined with a hamesh, which includes a rock from Israel pictures of Jerusalem and needlework from before her eyesight worsened. On a warm September day, sitting at a table in her living room, Ms. Davydova pored over family photographs and Jewish history books, one of which includes the only remaining photograph of her father. Pointing to the picture, she recounts the atrocities that befell her hometown following the family’s escape to Derbent. Relatives who had refused to leave were tortured by fascists in their homes, forced by soldiers to walk over broken glass with their bare feet. “If we hadn’t left, maybe this would have happened to us,†Ms. Davydova said. “My father saved our lives. †In January 1943, the Soviet Army pushed into Nalchik and freed the city, allowing her family to return home. The family’s furniture had been stolen, belongings destroyed. “But it didn’t matter,†Ms. Davydova said. “We had returned to our own roof, our own home. †Still, sentiment persisted. When factory workers began to cut through a cemetery in 1969, Ms. Davydova’s father gathered other members of his synagogue to raise money to build a fence. Angered by the fence, the factory workers beat her father’s chest with a large metal cross, she said, puncturing a lung, which contributed to his death two months later. “There were many years of fear,†she said. “Such fear — you can’t imagine. †For 31 years Ms. Davydova was a preschool teacher in Russia. Afraid of the continued and that her son, Boris, would be deployed to Afghanistan, Ms. Davydova and Boris sneaked out of Russia in 1992. They took only two suitcases, leaving everything else behind to give the illusion that they were only going away for a brief vacation. She arrived in the United States with only $25 and a tourist visa. Arriving as a guest of her brother, who was already in America, she settled in Brooklyn, but Ms. Davydova was unable to legally work while she waited five years to be granted political asylum status, which she received in 1997. She was granted citizenship five years after that, in 2002. Even after she received the status, Ms. Davydova, who does not speak English fluently, struggled to obtain steady work and started making frequent trips to the hospital because of declining health. The medical bills added up, and after several years of heart problems, she underwent heart surgery in 2008 for a blocked artery. She suffers from low blood pressure and frequent fainting spells. She pays $900 a month in rent, and receives $820 in Supplemental Security Income and $194 monthly in food stamps. Her family helps her pay the bills when they are able. Help also came in the form of the Edith and Carl Marks Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, a beneficiary agency of of New York, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Marks JCH, a beneficiary agency of of New York, provided Ms. Davydova with $1, 004 to cover one month’s rent and utilities in February 2016. “I gave my life to that country,†she said of Russia. “And I didn’t do anything in this country, but I want to kiss America because everything I have in this life comes from people in this country helping me. †| 1 | [
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FMD4428 | 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: Trade deals threaten Indias role as the pharmacy of the developing world for new HIV medicines.
contextual information: If there was one success story to emerge from the International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, it was that more people are getting treated for HIV/AIDS than ever before -- about 17 million by the latest United Nations estimate. Falling drug prices played a key role in helping providers reach this point. But the international health group Doctors Without Borders (Mdecins Sans Frontires) warned at a press conference that trade negotiations around the world put future gains at risk. The group saidits latest reportexamines multiple global threats to access to affordable treatment, including trade deals which threaten Indias role as the pharmacy of the developing world. Trade is at the center of the U.S. presidential election for its effect on the American work force. But is there more at play? We wondered if its true that the next round of agreements, both those that involve the United States and those that dont, would undermine some large drug makers in India. Why India India matters because thanks to the countrys patent laws, India and generics go together like toast and jam. The rules there make it easier than other places for companies to churn out generic drugs once the patent on the original version runs out. Generics are cheaper than their brand name cousins and if you want to stretch a dollar, you take the generic option. Doctors Without Borders said97 percent of the drugs it uses to treat people with HIV are generics made in India. That includes medicines for HIV itself, as well as for diseases like pneumonia and tuberculosis that hit people with suppressed immune systems. Doctors Without Borders is worried less about the drugs it uses today and more about the ones its counting on in the future. As the number of people coming in for treatment rises, doctors are finding more who dont respond to the most common, or first-line, medications. Doctors Without Borders is focused on making second-and-third-line drugs more affordable to keep pace with a growing need, and they see India as the place to make that happen. Impact of trade deals Although the Trans-Pacific Partnership gets a lot of attention in the United States, India is not part of it. But it is part of discussions involving the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a mega-regional pact that aims to tie together 16 countries including China, India, Australia, Japan, South Korea and many other Asian nations. The European Union is also seeking a regional trade agreement with India and other Asian countries. Both of those trade negotiations have sought to get India to tighten its patent laws. The United States has too, through a one-on-one process overseen by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The issues that office has raised mirror ones in the big trade deals. The USTRslatest reportcriticizes Indias patent laws, saying the pharmaceutical industry in particular faces a host of challenges related to intellectual property rights. What do U.S. trade negotiators not like in particular? For one, India is reluctant to grant new patents for a drug or blend of drugs built around medications that already enjoy patent protection. These so-called secondary patents extend the time for the drug maker to enjoy exclusive production rights. That translates into a chance to charge higher prices. American officials also dont care for Indias rules on clinical trial information. When someone invents a drug, they have to prove its safe and effective. That proof is in the trial reports. India lets generic drug makers rely on the original clinical trials. One way to extend the exclusive right to make a drug is to bar generic drug makers from using that data for a number of years. Would these sorts of changes make life easier for the makers of new drugs and harder for the generic manufacturers? We found no dispute that they would. We talked with independent experts who think India should stand its ground and those who thought it ought to bend, but either way, they agreed on who wins and who loses. There are good arguments on both sides for protecting the profits of companies that invent new drugs, versus making drugs more affordable. We take no position on the larger question of where the right balance point falls. We're focused only on the claim that large trading partners want to move Indian law in favor of the inventors of new drugs. Lee Branstetter is a professor and trade specialist at Carnegie Mellon University. He thinks Indian law ought to change at the expense of the generic companies. In the short run, this will constrain the profit opportunities for the generic producers, he told us. Srividhya Ragavan, a professor of law at Texas A&M, thinks Indias laws strike the right balance as they are. She told us she sees the U.S. position as an effort to weaken Indias generic drug industry. We found anynumberofarticlesthat reached the same conclusion. But just because Branstetter and Ragavan see eye to eye on how these policy shifts would undermine generic drug makers, that doesn't mean they agree on what this means for the availability of low-cost drugs. Ragavan told us the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and EUs trade negotiations, are all targeting Indias generic drug industry much to the detriment of access to medication to the poor people. Branstetter said thats unlikely and highlights an important feature in the overarching trade rules of the World Trade Organization. The escape hatch Branstetter said based on what hes seen in other countries (he cited Peru as an example) he doubts that would happen. But even if it did, he said, a part of the WTO code -- theDoha Declaration on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement-- gives countries the chance to override a patent that limits a drugs availability. Branstetter calls it an escape hatch. Any member state could declare we have a public health emergency, Branstetter said. Then, they can force the company that holds the patent to licence the manufacture of that drug to a domestic or foreign drug producer, who would provide it at an agreed price. Branstetter notes that the Trans-Pacific Partnershipspecifically requiresany country that signs it to accept that Doha declaration. Countries have taken thisstep before. At the height of the AIDS crisis in the mid 2000s, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ghana, Mozambique and many others issued what are called compulsory licenses to get affordable HIV/AIDS drugs to their citizens. Still, Rohit Malpani, director of policy of the Doctors Without Borders- Access Campaign, told us that in recent years, the number of compulsory licenses has fallen off. Even if countries have the right to use the safeguard and can use them they do not, Malpani said. He suggested several reasons, including a lack of political will and pressure from the United States, the EU and the drug companies. Our ruling Doctors Without Borders said that trade deals threaten the capacity of Indian generic drug makers to produce the next round of HIV drugs. We found that trade negotiations, whether part of large regional trade agreements or unilateral discussions between the United States and India, have language that work against India generic drug makers. They push India to be more ready to grant patents for drugs that are extensions of drugs that already enjoy patent protection. And they want India to bar generic drug makers from relying on the clinical trial data produced by the inventor of the drug. Both measures would make patents last longer and give the drug companies more time to charge higher prices. None of the articles we read or experts we reached doubted this result or that this would undermine the generic drug makers. Our experts disagreed on whether this would reduce access to critical drugs. The trade deals do no favors for Indias generic drug makers. With a caveat about future access to drugs, we rate this claim Mostly True. | 1 | [
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FMD4429 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: SAN FRANCISCO — Apple unveiled new iPhones at an event on Wednesday, as it has done every September for the last few years. The event, held in San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, was the company’s most important outing of the year. Even as the iPhone remains the outsize producer of Apple’s revenue and profit, sales of the smartphone have recently been declining. So more than ever, the onus is on Apple to keep up excitement for the gadget. What was different this time was that people were focused on something that the new iPhones lack, rather than a flashy new feature. The item that disappeared is the traditional headphone jack, with Apple turning people toward wireless headphones instead. Brian X. Chen, Farhad Manjoo and Katie Benner were at the event to provide live analysis of what you need to know about the announcements, not what you don’t. Here’s what Apple announced: ■New iPhones, called the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. ■The new iPhones lack a headphone jack. ■The new iPhones have a revised home button with force sensitivity, which will vibrate to give feedback. ■The iPhones are . ■The Plus model of the new iPhone includes a camera to take photos. ■A new Apple Watch, called Apple Watch Series 2, which includes GPS. ■Pokémon Go is available for Apple Watch. ■An update on how Apple Music is performing. ■Tweaks to its iWork suite of productivity apps. Farhad: This was a tricky event because there wasn’t much new to the products. The iPhone has the same design as last year’s (and the one the year before) and the major new thing is … a missing headphone jack. So what I was watching for was Apple’s reality distortion field: How will Apple’s C. E. O. Tim Cook, and friends convince us that taking away a feature is really an advance for the iPhone? Brian: As Farhad said, the new iPhones — and also the Watches — look largely the same as their predecessors. The takeaway for me was that Apple focused on making the most significant changes to the tiniest components: camera sensors, upgraded chips, a revised home button and the addition of GPS to the watch. I get the impression that they are saving the big changes for the 10th anniversary of the iPhone next year. So if consumers can hold off a year for the next iPhone, I’d encourage them to wait. But for owners of iPhones that are at least two years old, these are going to be major upgrades — if you find a way to cope with the lack of a headphone jack. Katie: Apple didn’t offer a new killer product or a drastic update to any of the products in its lineup. Instead, Apple piled on new features — like stereo speakers, wireless headphones and camera features — to appeal to specific niche buyers. Frank Gillett at Forrester Research called this strategy an accumulation of compelling new features that Apple hopes will “motivate the trend followers to buy new iPhones, and expose other buyers to the benefits they’ve built into iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2. †Perhaps more important, Apple was trying to cobble together a credible story for the future from these incremental moves — that a wireless world is coming and that it will be the leader in that world. Farhad: Apple likes road maps. That’s what you saw today. The company clearly has deep, plans for the iPhone — it wants to improve wireless functioning, it wants to keep pushing on the camera, and it will keep improving performance without sacrificing battery life. The problem for Apple is that the steps along the way to achieving its goals aren’t always that exciting. This is one of those years: There are lots of incremental improvements, but nothing stands out as a . Someday, Apple is telling us, all these increments will add up to something unimaginably amazing. Right now, though, the moves look puzzling — we really did not get a good defense for removing the headphone jack — and we may just have to live with the confusion. Katie: For the past few quarters, Apple has emphasized that services and software will drive growth as iPhone revenue ebbs. At Wednesday’s event, Mr. Cook underlined that. He kicked off the morning with updates on two of the company’s most important software and services divisions — Apple Music and the App Store. “We’ve always had a deep love for music,†Mr. Cook said. “It inspires us, and it’s a key part of our product experience. †Mr. Cook said the company had 17 million subscribers after about a year for Apple Music and added that the music service would be the “premier destination for exclusive music,†nodding to the idea that the company will use its huge war chest to lock up deals with artists. Brian: In another nod to software, Mr. Cook said Super Mario is coming to the App Store. Nintendo, the struggling video game company, long refused to offer its games and franchise characters on mobile devices, but the company recently did a 180, with Pokémon Go as a recent example. The change seems more beneficial to Nintendo than to Apple. Pokémon Go was a huge success, at least initially, proving that app stores are a viable revenue stream for Nintendo beyond its consoles. Apple also announced a new version of iWork, its suite of productivity apps that rival Microsoft Office and Google’s productivity apps. The tweaked version of iWork will include collaboration, meaning multiple people can work on documents and presentation slides at the same time. It’s good that these changes are coming to iWork, but Microsoft and Google have been offering collaboration tools for years already. Farhad: The education market has been important to Apple for decades, and for the last few years it has pushed the iPad as the perfect school computer. It did so again today, with those tweaks to its iWork software aimed at schools. But Apple has lately faced more competition from rivals, especially Google, whose cheap and simple Chromebook has become one of the machines at schools. For both companies — and lately for other tech rivals, including Amazon — the education market functions as a gateway. Get them early, win them for life. Brian: The new Apple Watch is called Apple Watch Series 2. It emphasizes fitness and health, with Apple showing a video of runners, gymnasts and swimmers using the watch. One major criticism of Apple Watch was that it did a bit of everything and did not have any strengths. Apple is trying to beef up the fitness capabilities, similar to Fitbit. The new version is up to 50 meters (164 feet). It also includes GPS for tracking runs. The watch is faster than the previous version. Katie: Whether Apple Watch has been successful or not has largely been a mystery. Apple doesn’t break out Watch revenue in its earnings. But Mr. Cook pulled back the curtain a little when he revealed that Apple is now the No. 2 global watch brand, measured by revenue, behind Rolex. The Apple Watch is also the smartwatch, even though a killer app has yet to emerge for the watch. The company is hoping to change that with the introduction of a Pokémon Go app for the watch. Brian: It’s important to note that Apple Watch sales don’t appear to be growing much. IDC, the research firm, estimates that Apple Watch market share in the wearables market shrank 56. 7 percent last quarter compared to the same period last year. That’s largely because consumers have probably been waiting for a new version to come out before deciding whether to buy a watch. It’s definitely still a nascent device. Farhad: This is the first Apple event in a few years that didn’t feature any redesigned hardware. But there is a new ceramic finish for the Watch that comes closest to some new design. The gleaming white finish is in some ways a return to the past for Apple. (Remember all those white computers from the early 2000s?) But beyond that, it’s always interesting when Apple discovers a new material for use in its devices. You usually notice some new process or material start in one product and then wend its way throughout the company’s lineup over a few years’ time. In other words, three years from now, we may have ceramic phones. A man can dream, anyway. Brian: For now, my advice to consumers: I see no compelling reason for people with Version One of the device to upgrade unless they are fitness buffs. The addition of GPS gives the Apple Watch a slight edge against Fitbit’s Blaze, a comparable smartwatch that lacks GPS. But until we get to try the software, it’s tough to tell how the new Apple Watch’s fitness capabilities will compare to accessories from Fitbit. Fitbit’s products are popular partly because the apps are so well designed for monitoring health statistics, including footsteps, calories and weight. So GPS isn’t necessarily the magic bullet. Katie: Leading up to the event, the most ballyhooed update was Apple’s decision to eliminate the headphone jack. On Wednesday, Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing chief, saved that announcement for last. Removing the port for standard headphones means users now have to connect their headphones to the iPhone through the charging port. “From the start we designed Lightning to be a great digital audio connector,†Mr. Schiller said. The update may have its detractors in the days after the announcement, but Apple has a long history of making hardware changes that the industry eventually follows, including the decision to change floppy disk sizes in the old Mac days and, more recently, the decision to take away laptop ports. Apple will include new Lightning earbuds, and an adapter, in the box. Why remove the headphone jack, a technology that people seem to like? Mr. Schiller summed it up in one word: “Courage. †Farhad: Apple said the most important reason it’s removing the headphone jack is because it believes in a “wireless future†for audio. It’s making that future a reality with a new set of wireless headphones, called AirPods. They look like Apple’s wired earbuds, without the wires they apparently just slip in your ears. Perhaps more important than the earbuds themselves is the wireless technology Apple is using to power them. The company is using Bluetooth, and Apple says its chips improve the technology by connecting faster and using less power. If Apple has perfected a new, proprietary way of doing this, it could prove an important innovation for lots of future wireless products, including home devices, cars and wearables. Brian: Jony Ive, Apple’s design chief, said in a video at the event that we are “just at the beginning of a truly wireless future. †But wireless earphones have been around for years, and Bluetooth wireless technology has become excellent. This is another example of Apple’s being a latecomer to a market and saying it will make a better product than earlier ones. Farhad: The reality distortion was in force in other ways. In true Apple fashion, we got a video into the development process for the iPhone 7, with not even a nod to the fact that the phone looks nearly identical to the one Apple released last year and the one the year before. Because it has a new color and a new Apple logo, Apple insists it’s “a beautiful new design. †I’m sure there are minor differences — the antenna band is different — but it seems too rich to call it a new design. Too rich, except for Apple. One area where I do give Apple points on the iPhone is the focus on the camera. Apple made a strategic decision a few years ago to plow a lot of development resources into the iPhone camera. That has paid off: The iPhone’s camera has long surpassed most other smartphone cameras, and for many people, it’s better than most cameras. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus continue that trend. The Plus model features two cameras, which allows for . Even the smaller phone’s camera includes features to improve your snapshots. If the pictures Apple showed off are any guide, the iPhone’s camera is fast closing in on all but the most of cameras. Look forward to more of those “Shot on iPhone†billboards. | 1 | [
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FMD4430 | 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 Russian ruble is already depreciating.
contextual information: American and European leaders find themselves scrambling to respond to Russias deployment of troops in the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine. With military action on no ones wish-list, diplomacy and economic sanctions are the only moves effectively in play. Secretary of State John Kerry said on CBSFace the Nationthat he had been on the phone with his counterparts among the G-8 nations. Every single one of them are prepared to go to the hilt in order to isolate Russia with respect to this invasion, Kerry said. Theyre prepared to put sanctions in place, theyre prepared to isolate Russia economically, the ruble is already going down. Russia has major economic challenges. This fact-check zeros in on the value of the Russian ruble. It has declined but partly because thats what the Russians wanted. A big drop In the early part of 2013, the ruble was worth 3.3 U.S. cents. Today, its value has tumbled by 15 percent, to 2.8 cents. A little less than half of that fall came in January as the situation in Ukraine deteriorated. Heres the picture over the past year, taken from the currency exchange serviceXE.com: There is no question that the violence and political turmoil in Ukraine took a toll on the ruble. Russian banks have about $28 billion in loans in the country. Before the Russian troops moved in, investors were already worried. Last week,two of the largest banks in Russiasaid they would suspend any new lending in Ukraine. But the rubles decline has deeper roots. In 2010, the Russian Central Bank announced it wanted to get out of the business of setting the rubles value on the international market. It had in mind a gradual glide path for the currencys fall, andin October, it gave the ruble even more leewayto drop further. The countrys economy grew less than 2 percent last year, and it has struggled to keep inflation in check. The ruble got pretty over-valued in the big energy boom from 2001-08, said Mark Adomanis, a management consultant and contributor to Forbes. That hurt Russian manufacturing and letting the ruble fall potentially could help. With a weaker ruble Russian goods become more competitive on international markets, Adomanis said. That said, a free fall is not what the Russian Central Bank has in mind. In January,the bank signaled that it would stepin to prop up the ruble. But the overall policy remains the same. Our ruling Kerry said the ruble is going down, and it is. The Russian currency has lost about 15 percent of its value against the dollar since early 2013. It is not all because of the situation in Ukraine, however, a fact that viewers may not have picked up on by hearing Kerry's statement. The currencys decline is also part of Russian policy to reduce inflation and make domestic manufacturers more competitive. Theres a little more going on here than Kerrys statement would suggest. We rate his claim Mostly True. | 1 | [
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FMD4431 | 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: In the 2014 election, 80 percentofpoor people did not vote.
contextual information: Income inequality is the core issue of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and he said it may also be why hes behind Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Meet the Presshost Chuck Todd asked Sanders why he thought 16 of 17 states with large wealth gaps were won by Clinton. Well, because poor people dont vote. I mean, thats just a fact,Sanders said. Thats a sad reality of American society. And thats why we have to transform one, as you know, one of thelowest voter turnouts of any major society of Earth. We have done a good job of bringing young people. But in America today, the last election in 2014, 80 percent of poor people did not vote. Is turnout among the poor really that low? The data shows that weve done slightly better at getting out the vote among low-income people than what Sanders suggests, but not by much. Sanders policy director Warren Gunnels pointed us to areportby the left-leaning policy and advocacy group Demos, which useddatafrom the Census Bureau. According to Demos, only one in four of those earning less than $10,000 voted in 2014, Gunnels said. Even worse, the turnout was just 12 percent among 18- to 24-year-olds earning less than $30,000. In other words, roughly 75 percent of people in the lowest income bracket didnt vote in the last midterm elections. However, theres one catch to this figure. While an annual income of less than $10,000 is undoubtedly poor, thepoverty threshold in 2014also includes family incomes above $10,000. Sean McElwee, a policy analyst with Demos who authored the report, told us to look at annual incomes under $30,000 instead. The turnout rate for that group was31.5 percent, which means 68.5 percent of poor people didnt vote in 2014, about 10 percentage points less than what Sanders said. Sanders is indeed correct to highlight low turnout among the poor as an important factor that biases policy in favor of the wealthy, McElwee said. As PolitiFact hasreported, census data may overstate the turnout rates, as its based on self-reporting. So its possible that Sanders 80 percent figure is closer to actual rates than what the survey shows, but this is speculative. Sanders is more on target if we look at a definition of poor that is not based on income. A 2015 Pew Centersurveylooked at the politics of financial security, which analysts defined as having a credit card, a savings or checking account, and a retirement or investment plan; not needing to borrow money; not falling behind on bills, rent or mortgage payments; and not receiving food assistance or Medicaid benefits. The survey found that just 20 percent of the least financially secure were likely voters in 2014 compared to 69 percent of the most financially secure. Turnout always drops in midterm elections, when the White House isnt at stake, and overall turnout in 2014 was the worst it had been in72 years. Nonetheless, census data shows turnout is consistently lower among the poor than other income groups: So why are the poor less likely to vote? The reasons are interconnected, if not unsurprising. For one, the political process sets hurdles for the poor. Registration barriers are key, said McElwee of Demos, pointing to census data that shows that low-income people are far less likely to be registered voters. Voter ID laws, for example, impose costs that people struggling to make ends meet cant really afford. The Government Accountability Officereportedin 2014 that a drivers license can cost between $5 to $58.50 in states with voter ID laws. And nearly 500,000 eligible voters dont have convenient access to an ID-issuing office, according to a2012 studyby New York University. The poor also make up 55 percent of people who cant vote (which include felons and immigrants as well as residents of Washington D.C., and U.S. territories), according to a 2013 Harvard Universityworking paper. This means that they can't vote but also they won't be mobilized by parties, who base their mobilization off of voter files, McElwee said. Being poor also means you cannot afford to devote time to the political process. The Pew study found that just 26 percent of the least financially secure knew which party controlled Congress compared to 62 percent of the most affluent. Similarly, compared to affluent non-voters, low-income non-voters were more likely to list disinterest, forgetting to vote, health and issues of access as reasons why they didnt vote, according tocensus data. They often have inflexible jobs, have limited transportation options to get to the polls, and/or insufficient knowledge about democracy and the choices they face, said Zoltan Hajnal, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. The poor also often lack efficacy and dont feel like their votes count as much. Our ruling Sanders said, In 2014, 80 percent of poor people did not vote. The figure is a bit high if we look at turnout by income. In 2014, about 75 percent of people who made under $10,000 and about 69 percent of those who made under $30,000 didnt vote. If we look at financial insecurity, however, Sanders is right on the money. We rate his claim Mostly True. | 1 | [
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FMD4432 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: What would a speech from a modern Democrat be if they didn t include the LGBT crowd and embrace illegal aliens? It s almost as if they were trying to divide our nation in order to gain votes.??The mayor of Kansas City, Kansas, in an address to the radical socialist organization National Council of La Raza, bragged that his city is no longer majority white and the city s schools now have students who speak 62 different languages.According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Kansas City, Kansas, was 52 percent white.But in a speech before the La Raza National Affiliates Luncheon earlier this week in Kansas City, Mayor Mark Holland boasted that only five years later his city s white population has been reduced to 40 percent.He seemed to suggest that La Raza was at least partly responsible for the progress. But he also cited the refugee resettlement work of the United Nations and U.S. State Department for the city s transformation into a gleaming example of multicultural diversity.Kansas City, he said, is very proud of the work of National Council of La Raza. Kansas City, Kansas, is a city with no ethnic majority. Kansas City, Kansas, is 40 percent white, 28 percent Latino, and 26 percent African-American, Holland said. Our school district speaks 62 different languages by the children every single day. And Kansas City, Kansas, has a proud heritage of welcoming all people into the community, people who are not welcome in other places. Latinos started coming with the Santa Fe railroad more than 100 years ago, to build the railroad, he said. Another railroad, the Underground Railroad, brought African-Americans to Kansas. If they could get across the river they were free and settled in a township of Quindero. We continue to have a number of groups of refugees from around the world, he added, mentioning the large Hmong community that came in the 1970s and 80s following the Vietnam War.In recent years, the city has welcomed more refugees from other parts of the world, including Muslim Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, Hindus from Bhutan and Buddhists and Muslims from Burma.LGBTs welcome in KCKansas City has also thrown open its arms to the LGBT community, Holland said, even though most of the state of Kansas leans Republican.He said the city is the home of another persecuted group the Democrats. The Democrats still have a foothold in Kansas City and we re very proud of that, said the Democrat mayor. And because Democrats are in Wyandotte County, we welcome our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and celebrate their life and their love, and always will. Holland, an ordained Methodist minister, then went on the attack against any Christians who don t share his liberal theological views on same-sex marriage.He applauded the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision that redefined marriage for all 50 states. But we cannot let our guard down. This religious freedom component, I believe is the Confederate Flag of religious bigotry, being flown long after the fact, Holland said. As an ordained United Methodist pastor myself, I m offended to note, when they say Christians are offended by the ruling. In fact, many of us Christians celebrate the ruling and the continued welcome and recognition of all people. But I want to close by saying we just couldn t be more proud that La Raza is here in Kansas City and it s an honor to be able to greet you. The U.S. State Department, working with the United Nations, has sent 2,371 international refugees to Kansas City, Kansas, since 2002. The State Department s database does not include U.N. refugees dispersed throughout the U.S. before 2002 but the program has been ongoing in its current form since 1980. The U.N. picks about 95 percent of the refugees sent to the U.S. The State Department, working with nine major contractors such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, distributes about 70,000 refugees annually from mostly Third World nations into 190 U.S. cities and towns.U.N. sends KC 2,371 refugees since 2002The refugees, unlike most other classifications of immigrants, immediately qualify for a smorgasbord of state and federal welfare benefits and are placed on a fast-track toward full citizenship, which is obtainable within five years.Since 2002 Kansas City has received 1,090 refugees from Burma, 577 from Bhutan, 190 from Somalia, 126 from Iraq, 47 from Liberia, 37 from Eritrea, 36 from Russia, 34 from Burundi, 33 from Afghanistan, 26 from Vietnam, 24 from Sudan, 18 from Uzbekistan, and 11 from Iran, according to State Department data.Via: WND | 0 | [
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FMD4433 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Since mid-2016, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has carried around a postcard that he has said shows how easy it will be for Americans to file their taxes once Republicans are finished their tax overhaul. And as recently as Thursday President Donald Trump touted Americans being able to file their taxes on a single, little beautiful sheet of paper. With lawmakers finalizing the biggest tax reform in 30 years and the president ready to sign it into law before the end of the year, the moment should be near when Ryan s postcard stops being a rhetorical prop and becomes a reality. Right? It s kind of crazy to say you can file on a postcard when, first, no one is going to put their Social Security number on a postcard. And second, you already have a giant postcard in the form of the 1040EZ, Mark Mazur, a director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said, citing a 14-line Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax form. Representatives from the $11 billion U.S. tax preparation industry said that the legislation so far seemed unlikely to render their services unnecessary. I don t think you re going to have millions of people filing their taxes on a cell phone, said Mark Steber, chief tax officer at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc [JAKHT.UL]. I think the demise of the tax business is a bit premature. The IRS would not discuss changes that might come from the proposed tax overhaul. However, the IRS estimates that, despite its efforts to make filing taxes easier, 90 percent of Americans use tax preparation services such as Jackson Hewitt, H&R Block Inc and Liberty Tax Inc or tax software such as TurboTax from Intuit Inc. If Congress enacts the Republican plan into law, it would not affect 2017 tax-year returns filed in 2018. But in 2019, millions of middle-class Americans would no longer gain from a wide range of deductions, credits and other tax breaks. A key driver of this, according to independent analyses, would be a proposed doubling of the standard deduction and a curtailment of the deduction for state and local tax payments. In combination, these two changes would mean that about 29 million people would no longer benefit from itemizing. So they would stop writing off their charitable donations, mortgage interest and state and local tax payments, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a think tank. Itemized deductions for medical expenses, investment interest, unreimbursed employee expenses and tax preparation fees could also be dropped by many. Personal exemptions for individual taxpayers, which now take up a lot of space on tax forms, would also be eliminated. Such changes would mean simpler taxes and possibly allow a number of taxpayers to use shorter forms. The IRS expects 24 million people in 2018 to file the longest and most widely used IRS form today, the Form 1040, which is 79 lines long. About 4.6 million people will use the 14-line 1040EZ. Wealthy Americans likely would still itemize under the Republican plan. Owning businesses, homes and other factors could also lead to taxes being more complicated than what filers could describe on a postcard. Even though we re talking about simplification for a large number of taxpayers, there s still many taxpayers who will have complicated tax situations and we ll be there to help them as well, said David Williams, chief tax officer for TurboTax. (Adds first name, title in 4th paragraph) | 1 | [
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FMD4434 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: PORTLAND, Ore. — The 911 caller had reported a man with a samurai sword, lunging at people on the waterfront. It was evening, and when the police arrived, they saw the man pacing the beach and called to him. He responded by throwing a rock at the embankment where they stood. They shouted to him from a sheriff’s boat he threw another rock. They told him to drop the sword he said he would kill them. He started to leave the beach, and after warning him, they shot him in the leg with a beanbag gun. He turned back, still carrying the blade. In another city — or in Portland itself not that long ago — the next step would almost certainly have been a direct confrontation and, had the man not put down the weapon, the use of lethal force. But the Portland Police Bureau, prodded in part by the 2012 findings of a Justice Department investigation, has spent years putting in place an intensive training program and protocols for how officers deal with people with mental illness. At a time when police behavior is under intense scrutiny — a series of fatal shootings by police officers have focused national attention on issues of race and mental illness — Portland’s approach has served as a model for other law enforcement agencies around the country. And on that Sunday last summer, the police here chose a different course. At 2:30 a. m. after spending hours trying to engage the man, the officers decided to “disengage,†and they withdrew, leaving the man on the beach. A search at daylight found no signs of him. People with mental illnesses are overrepresented among civilians involved in police shootings: percent or more of people fatally shot by the police have had a mental disorder, according to various analyses. In Chicago, for example, police officers killed a mentally ill man, Quintonio LeGrier, in December after the police said he had come at them with a baseball bat. In Denver, Paul Castaway, 35, who had a history of mental illness, was fatally shot by the police last year after they said he moved “dangerously close†to them, holding a knife to his own throat. Similar encounters have occurred in Albuquerque, Dallas, Indianapolis and other cities. In response to public outcry, many police departments have, like Portland, turned to more training for their officers, in many cases adopting some version of a model pioneered in Memphis almost three decades ago and known as crisis intervention team training, or C. I. T. Studies have found that the training can alter the way officers view people with mental illness. And the approach, which teaches officers ways to defuse potentially violent encounters before force becomes necessary, is useful for officers facing any volatile situation, even if a mental health crisis is not involved, law enforcement experts say. Whether the training leads to less use of force by officers, however, is still an open question: The findings of studies have been mixed, although one study to be published later this year suggests that Portland’s program, which is based on C. I. T. is having an effect. And training alone is not enough, experts say. For the approach to be effective, it needs the full backing of a police department’s leadership, continual checks on its effectiveness, and collaboration with the mental health community. “The training is great, but it’s not magic,†said Laura Usher, coordinator of crisis intervention team training for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “The thing that actually transforms the way the system works is when everyone gets together. †The decision by the Portland police to leave the man on the beach was controversial within the department. Some officers argued that more should have been done: What if the man had injured or killed someone? Others countered that it was late and that the secluded area was deserted. The man had committed no crime. And a confrontation could easily have ended with him or the officers being harmed. But the discussion itself, some officers said, was a sign of change. “Ten years ago, we would have been more proactive in dealing with him at the start,†said Officer Brad Yakots, a specialist in mental health issues who was called to the scene. “It’s a new way of looking at it. †As in other cities, change in Portland began with a fatal encounter: On Sept. 17, 2006, James Chasse Jr. 42, a singer in a local band who had schizophrenia, died after a confrontation with police officers. Mr. Chasse’s death outraged the public. The Police Bureau, in response, revised policies and required all its officers to complete 40 hours of crisis intervention training. But after more troubling instances involving the mentally ill, a Justice Department investigation concluded in 2012 that the Police Bureau had shown “a pattern or practice of unnecessary or unreasonable force during interactions with people who have or are perceived to have mental illness. †This time, the Police Bureau’s leadership responded far more aggressively. In addition to the mandatory training for the entire force, a group of about 100 patrol officers signed up for 40 extra hours of instruction to handle more complex calls involving mental illness or drug and alcohol addiction. Teams of officers were paired with mental health clinicians to follow up on cases. New protocols were put in place. And the police connected with housing and mental health organizations to help further. “It’s really about a culture shift,†said Lt. Tashia Hager, who heads the unit that coordinates the department’s mental health response. She noted that in cases like that of the man with the sword, “there’s a potential negative outcome regardless of the decision we make. †In the past, she said, officers were taught, “If you do this, I’m going to do that. †Now they are encouraged to question whether “that†is really necessary. Officers need to be educated about mental illness, many criminal justice experts say, because cutbacks in financing for mental health services have put them on the front lines of dealing with many people who have psychiatric disorders. Jails around the country have filled with mentally ill inmates who, unable to obtain treatment in the community, are arrested time and again for minor offenses like disorderly conduct and petty theft. Police officers have been forced to play dual roles as law enforcers and psychiatric social workers. “We are working in the backdrop of a fractured mental health system that has gotten worse and worse,†said Portland’s police chief, Lawrence O’Dea III. Yet many police officers know little about mental disorders, and what they do know is often shaped by stigma. Bizarre behavior is often interpreted as a prelude to violence. And routine police actions aimed at control — placing a hand on a person’s shoulder, for example — can backfire with someone with a severe mental illness. “Instead of being calming, it can trigger them to either pull away or resist,†said Matthew Epperson, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Chicago. The officers, in turn, can misinterpret such responses as resistance or an attempt to flee, he added. In the crisis training, officers learn about psychiatric medications, various scenarios, and have opportunities to interact with people who have a mental illness when they are not in crisis. The officers are told, among other things, to use distance and time to try to defuse potentially violent encounters. About 2, 700 law enforcement agencies around the country use some form of the approach, said Ms. Usher, of the mental illness alliance, and that number is growing as more departments have come under pressure to change police behavior. In January, responding to a series of shootings across the country, a group of leaders urged departments to adopt higher standards for the use of force than those set down by the Supreme Court, and to adopt methods to defuse volatile situations and avoid violence. Some departments require crisis training for all their officers. But Maj. Sam Cochran, who coordinated the first crisis intervention program in Memphis and now consults with other departments, said he believed the training worked best when departments trained a smaller group of volunteers who then took the lead on police calls involving mental health issues. “There’s all kinds of specialization in law enforcement,†Major Cochran said. “We’ve got bomb technicians, narcotics, robbery. I want all the officers present at a scene to understand that this C. I. T. officer is the leader. That represents clarity, and responsibility brings about a level of accountability. †In a draft report released this month, outside monitors concluded that the Police Bureau in Portland still had more to do, including keeping better track of how many police contacts involved mental health issues. But the bureau, the monitors said, had made “substantial progress†in improving the way they dealt with the mentally ill. And the study of the Portland police that is to be published later this year found that the use of force by officers had decreased by 65. 4 percent from 2008 to 2014, as measured in quarterly reports. The researchers attributed the drop in large part to increased training and oversight in recent years, although the study did not specifically look at interactions with the mentally ill. Police shootings, the researchers found, had also dropped, averaging three a year from 2007 to 2014, compared with eight a year from 2002 to 2005. And allegations of excessive force by citizens declined by 74. 2 percent from 2004 to 2014, a decrease that Tim Prenzler, an adjunct professor of criminology at Griffith University in Australia and the lead author of the study, called “a remarkable achievement. †The research will appear in Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice. Officer Yakots, who has been on the force for nine years, said he thought that the department’s efforts to shift course had been largely successful. But he added: “Do things fall through the cracks? Yeah, it’s not perfect. A lot of times we have limited resources. †It was a Monday night in late February when he and his partner, Officer Michael Hastings, were making the rounds of makeshift homeless camps and downtown street corners, listening for radio calls that might require their presence. An adolescent girl was on an overpass, threatening to jump. A college student had called his mother in another city and told her he was going to kill himself. A woman was standing outside a mental health treatment center demanding to be taken to the hospital because, she said, “I am suicidal and homicidal. †Officer Hastings said that before the department changed its approach, the attitude was “enforce, enforce, enforce, arrest, arrest, arrest. †But taking people to an emergency room or putting them in jail did nothing. “These people, they’re out within four hours most of the time,†he said. At least in Portland, Officer Hastings said, most police officers had accepted that part of their job was now dealing with mental illness and helping to find solutions. “We’ve realized that it is what it is,†he said, “and we’re the ones that are going to be responding to that. †| 1 | [
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FMD4435 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Hillary Clinton continued to resist calls to release her transcripts of paid speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs and other banks, saying she would hold onto them until Bernie Sanders and other rivals for the U.S. presidency released theirs. Sanders, her populist rival for the Democratic presidential nomination who has surged in polls with his furious rebukes of Wall Street and its role in the 2008 recession, said on Friday he had none to release because he does not give paid speeches to banks. Clinton’s reluctance to reveal what she privately told banks and other organizations has become an increasingly heated issue ahead of the election this November as she fights suggestions by Sanders and others from their party’s more liberal wing that she is too cozy with the U.S. financial industry. “I am happy to release anything I have whenever everybody else does the same, because everybody in this race, including Senator Sanders, has given speeches to private groups,†she said on Thursday night in a televised ‘town hall’ event with voters in Nevada. Nevada is the third state to vote for the Democratic Party’s nominee in caucuses to be held on Saturday. Clinton has earned more than $20 million for 92 paid speeches since leaving her job as U.S. secretary of state in 2013, according to records disclosed by her campaign, including $675,000 for three closed-door speeches to New York-based investment bank Goldman Sachs. Her husband, Bill Clinton, has earned even more since he stepped down as president in 2001. She says this income has no influence on her policies and that she would increase Wall Street regulation. Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, last gave a paid speech in 2004, according to his Senate financial disclosures, when he spoke about social activism at the California Institute of Technology in an event that was open to the public. He earned $2,000, according to his disclosures. On Friday, Sanders’ spokesman said the senator “accepts Clinton’s challenge.†“He will release all of the transcripts of all of his Wall Street speeches,†Michael Briggs said in a statement. “That’s easy. The fact is, there weren’t any.†Briggs said he hoped this was sufficient for Clinton to release her transcripts. Clinton’s standard speaker’s contract stipulated that the speech’s host make a transcript that would then remain in Clinton’s control. Spokesmen for Clinton and Goldman Sachs did not respond to questions. It remained unclear if Clinton’s Republican rivals would meet her demands. (Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Andrew Hay) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 1 | [
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FMD4436 | 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 Illegal to Peel an Orange in a California Hotel Room? Claim summaries: Never mind the meth labs. The real menace plaguing hotel operators is in-room citrus peelers.
contextual information: Readers love to chortle over lists of "loony laws," or regulations that supposedly make it illegal to perform acts that range from the benign to the ridiculous. Various examples claim laws do, or did, exist that prohibit activities that are highly improbable or downright impossible (e.g., fishing for sharks in a landlocked state), ban actions so mundane that government has no conceivable interest in regulating them (e.g., barbers eating onions on Sundays), establish rules that seemingly defy common sense (e.g., requiring fire engines to stop at red lights), or are laughably anachronistic (e.g., mandating that all taxis be outfitted with spittoons). Nearly all such cited laws fall into one of three categories: Long, obsolete (and since stricken) laws that addressed conditions or concerns which no longer exist, interpretations of laws that posit a unrealistically narrow or far-fetched application of them, and out-and-out fabrications. One very common example of a purported "loony law" holds that it is illegal to peel oranges in hotel rooms in the state of California: No such law exists, however, and the belief that it does stems from the category of "unrealistically narrow applications." Back in the early 20th century, California had a statute on the books (Act 6236) covering "the sanitation of food producing establishments, places where food is stored, prepared, kept or manufactured and in which food is distributed." Under that act, hotel rooms were deemed insufficiently sanitary premises for the storage and preparation of food, for obvious reasons. Nothing in that law specifically barred peeling oranges in hotel rooms, however. Peeling oranges was just one of the many, many activities that could be considered a form of food preparation or manufacture, along with cutting, slicing, chopping, dicing, peeling, skinning, trimming, or deboning any type of meat or produce or other consumable substance. More important, this statute was primarily a commercial regulation, aimed at preventing the use of hotel rooms as facilities for storing and preparing foodstuffs that would be served, distributed, or sold to others for human consumption. It was not intended to, and certainly would never have been used to, prohibit or punish hotel guests who might simply peel a single orange or banana in the privacy of their room for personal consumption. We don't know for certain how this law gained the current absurdly narrow interpretation that it specifically barred the peeling of oranges in hotel rooms, but that characterization is a very old one, as demonstrated by the following clipping of a newspaper article published in a Santa Cruz, California, newspaper in 1932: newspaper article | 0 | [
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FMD4437 | 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 Irish Spring Soap Repel Flies? Claim summaries: If it worked as well as people say it does, why don't they sell Irish Spring Fly Repellent?
contextual information: Bars of Irish Spring soap are marketed as a product to, you know, keep yourself clean. But according to the internet, these bars of soap have several other uses. Some websites claim that the soap keeps away mice, while others say it keeps away deer. One of the most popular assertions, however, is that Irish Spring Soap can be used to repel flies. bars of soap One viral Facebook post shared by Tabe Paxon in July 2020 read: Has anyone else noticed how bad flies are this year? Well I googled how to keep them away and..... who knew Irish spring original scent would really work???? Im amazed lol. Easily amazed I guess. Dad and me sit on the back porch a lot and dad even had a fly swatted out here with him bc they where so bad. Hung one bar of Irish spring and shocked how quickly and well it works. Thought I would share for anyone else annoyed with the flies The claim that Irish Spring soap repels flies has been amplified by a variety of home and gardening websites, such as grandmasthing.com, Homemaking.com, and even Buzzfeed. grandmasthing.com Homemaking.com Buzzfeed We're skeptical of this fly repellent solution for a few reasons. For starters, the sources we found pushing this claim don't provide much information as to why this works. Instead, the blogs offer vague and unsupported claims about how flies apparently don't like the smell. But that just doesn't pass the sniff test. Second, if Colgate-Palmolive, the company that owns the Irish Spring brand, truly had their hands on an effective insect repellent, why wouldn't they market it as such? Why wouldn't they make a product specifically targeting this need? Lastly, we have not found any credible studies or experiments documenting whether hanging a bar of Irish Spring Soap effectively repelled flies. In fact, the only unofficial experiment found appeared to show the exact opposite. In June 2021, the Pine Meadows Hobby Farm, a frugal homestead in the Cascade Mountains that creates video tutorials for their YouTube page, posted a little experiment to see if Irish Spring Soap truly repelled flies. The results? The soap did not seem to have any impact on the pest problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bGa9jvK11sWe reached out to Colgate-Palmolive and the American Horticulture Society, and we will update this article if more information is made available. | 2 | [
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FMD4438 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: There was a mass shooting in Hesston, Kansas.
Harvey County Sheriff T. Walton said that four people, including the gunman, are dead and 14 are wounded, 10 critically, after a series of shootings at an Excel Industries plant, its parking lot, and nearby streets, according to the Associated Press.
The suspect was an employee at Excel Industries, which makes lawnmower parts, identified as 38-year-old Cedric Ford. A police officer shot and killed Ford, who reportedly had an assault weapon and pistol.
The gunman apparently began shooting after county deputies served him a "protection from abuse" order, which are typically issued after violence in a relationship. The order was served around 3:30 pm local time, and the shooting began around 5 pm.
The Kansas City Star reported that a woman who identified herself as Ford's live-in girlfriend accused him of verbal and physical abuse, prompting the protection order.
Ford also had several convictions in Florida for burglary, grand theft, fleeing from an officer, aggravated fleeing, and carrying a concealed weapon, according to the AP.
The shooting came less than a week after another mass shooting at Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The shootings are a devastating tragedy, but unfortunately one that Americans are increasingly familiar with. As more of these events end up in the news, the country is being forced to consider why the US, more than any other developed nation, suffers from such extraordinary levels of gun violence. And it seems easy access to firearms provide one answer.
No other developed country in the world has anywhere near the same rate of gun violence as America. The US has nearly six times the gun homicide rate of Canada, more than seven times Sweden's, and nearly 16 times Germany's, according to UN data compiled by the Guardian. (These gun deaths are a big reason America has a much higher overall homicide rate, which includes non-gun deaths, than other developed nations.)
What's more, there appears to be a correlation between America's high levels of gun violence and gun ownership, as this chart from Tewksbury Lab shows:
Research reviews by the Harvard School of Public Health's Injury Control Research Center have concluded that more gun ownership leads to more gun violence. Other factors, such as socioeconomic issues, contribute to violence, but guns are the one issue that makes America unique relative to other developed countries in comparable socioeconomic circumstances.
Studies have found this at both the state and country level. Take, for instance, this chart, from a 2007 study by Harvard researchers, showing the correlation between statewide firearm homicide victimization rates and household gun ownership after controlling for robbery rates:
A more recent study from 2013, led by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher, reached similar conclusions: After controlling for multiple variables, the study found that a 1 percent increase in gun ownership correlated with a roughly 0.9 percent rise in the firearm homicide rate at the state level.
This holds up around the world. As Vox's Zack Beauchamp explained, a breakthrough analysis in 1999 by UC Berkeley's Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins found that the US does not, contrary to the old conventional wisdom, have more crime in general than other Western industrial nations. Instead, the US appears to have more lethal violence — and that's driven in large part by the prevalence of guns.
"A series of specific comparisons of the death rates from property crime and assault in New York City and London show how enormous differences in death risk can be explained even while general patterns are similar," Zimring and Hawkins wrote. "A preference for crimes of personal force and the willingness and ability to use guns in robbery make similar levels of property crime 54 times as deadly in New York City as in London."
How can the country address this? The research shows tightening existing gun control measures in the US would help: Studies in both Connecticut and Missouri suggested that gun licensing laws in those states helped reduce homicides and suicides.
But as Harvard's David Hemenway told Vox's Dylan Matthews, it would likely take decades for the mild gun control measures proposed in the US to have a significant impact. "It's all speculation," Hemenway said. "I suspect it would take a while (decades) for the US to get down to gun violence levels of other developed countries because a) we have so many guns which are durable, and b) we have a gun culture — we tend to use guns more often in more situations than citizens of other developed countries."
To have a more immediate impact, then, the US would have to find a way to quickly remove the number of guns in circulation. Other countries have actually done that: In Australia, after a 1996 mass shooting, lawmakers passed new restrictions on guns and imposed a mandatory buyback program that essentially confiscated people's guns, seizing at least 650,000 firearms.
According to one review of the evidence by Harvard researchers, Australia's firearm homicide rate dropped by about 42 percent in the seven years after the law passed, and its firearm suicide rate fell by 57 percent.
Although it's hard to gauge how much of this was driven by the buyback program, researchers argue it likely played some role: "First, the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback. Second, firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita fell proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates."
Still, similar policies would be difficult to pass in America, a nation in which gun culture and ownership are tremendously ingrained — notably, in the Second Amendment. And gun owners are backed by a powerful lobby: the National Rifle Association. Combined, these forces have stopped any serious gun legislation from passing at the federal level — although some states have passed new restrictions in the past few years.
But given the research, America's policies and attitudes toward guns have clear, deadly costs — including, perhaps, more events like the Hesston shooting. | 1 | [
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FMD4439 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: NATO has joined world powers diplomatic efforts to stop North Korea s missile program but it cannot yet rely on its U.S.-built shield to defend Europe, experts and diplomats said. The United States says the shield, more than a decade in the planning, is needed to protect against so-called rogue states, a term U.S. officials have used to refer to North Korea and Iran. But with Berlin, Paris and London potentially within striking distance of North Korea s missiles from next year, officials say the U.S.-led alliance s system needs more radars and special interceptors to destroy a rocket from Pyongyang. The NATO shield in its current state lacks the reach and early warning radars to shoot down North Korean rockets. It s a weak link, said Michael Elleman, a missile defense analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Early tracking is also difficult because North Korean missiles would be flying over Russia, where NATO obviously cannot put radars, he added. The sort of interceptor needed to shoot down North Korean ballistic missiles could breach a Soviet-era arms control agreement between the United States and Russia because of its greater range, arms experts say. Moscow has long objected to U.S. missile shield plans, saying their real aim is to neutralize Russia s own nuclear arsenal, rather than meet the perceived threat from rogue states . Russia s strategic concerns would, therefore, make it hard to renegotiate the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, something arms experts say would be required if a North Korean missile shield were to be fully effective. Alliance planning to confront any threat from Pyongyang is in its infancy. Following North Korea s country s sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3, two senior NATO diplomats told Reuters that protection against the North Korean threat was only beginning to be considered at NATO headquarters in Brussels. That was despite a more forceful diplomatic tone on the crisis and warnings on the scale and immediacy of the threat from U.S. President Donald Trump s new ambassador to NATO, France s defense minister and the alliance s deputy head. While analysts do not expect North Korea to have a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile until next year at the earliest, NATO s European allies could become a target as a way of threatening their closest partner, the United States, a third NATO diplomat said, stressing that was only speculation. The United States switched on its $800 million European missile defense umbrella in May last year at a site in Romania to protect against Iranian rockets. The system, controlled from a NATO base in Germany, includes radars and interceptors stretching from eastern Europe to the Mediterranean. A final site in Poland should be ready by late 2018, extending the European umbrella from Greenland and the Azores. To shoot down a ballistic missile from North Korea would require a new generation of interceptor, the Block II, which is still in development. It is capable of downing ballistic rockets earlier and at a much higher altitude. However, Elleman said that U.S. missile sites in Alaska and California, as well as in Japan and South Korea, were likely to be given priority before Europe, when they are ready in 2018. There will be a lot of competition for the assets, he said. | 1 | [
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FMD4440 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Posted on October 31, 2016 by Claire Bernish
Censorship by Facebook has become a thorn in the side of nearly anyone with an opinion differing from the narrative touted by the corporate press — for instance, sentiments not praising Hillary Clinton — and now, through both a new report from Reuters and emails published by Wikileaks, we have insight into why certain posts are targeted.
Facebook relies on a combination of artificial intelligence and human judgment to remove posts deemed offensive, violent, or otherwise unacceptable to its community standards — but precisely how the ultimate call to take down posts, pages, and groups are made remains unknown.
And Facebook takedowns, no matter the improvements to the process the social media behemoth claims to make, have been no less controversial or questionable — and those whose posts are censored have little if any recourse to argue their case.
Recent examples of head-scratchers which led to an international uproar, include Facebook’s removal of the iconic Vietnam War photograph of Phan Thị Kim Phúc — who, at just 9-years-old, was captured on film by an Associated Press photographer fleeing the aftermath of an errant napalm attack near a Buddhist pagoda in the village of Trang Bang.
That photograph helped cement in the collective American mind the horrors of the war, and ultimately fueled the success of the anti-war effort — but Facebook arbitrarily pulled the image for nudity — and proceeded even to ban the page of the Conservative prime minister of Norway for also posting the image.
Ultimately, the social media company reversed course in that case — but not before also taking down the equally iconic image of civil rights leader Rosa Park’s arrest.
But taking down of the image of Kim Phúc might not have been simply an error of AI, since it had been used as a specific example in training the teams responsible for content removal, two unnamed former Facebook employees told Reuters .
“Trainers told content-monitoring staffers that the photo violated Facebook policy, despite its historical significance, because it depicted a naked child, in distress, photographed without her consent, the employees told Reuters.”
In the final decision to reverse that censorship, Facebook head of the community operations division, Justin Osofsky, admitted it had been a “mistake.”
According to Reuters , to whom many current and former Facebook employees spoke on condition of anonymity, the process of judging which posts deserve to be remove and which should be allowed will, in certain instances, be left to the discretion of a small cadre of the company’s elite executives.
In addition to Osofsky, Global Policy Chief Monika Bickert; government relations chief, Joel Kaplan; vice president for public policy and communications, Elliot Schrage; and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg make the final call on censorship and appeals.
“All five studied at Harvard, and four of them have both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the elite institution. All but Sandberg hold law degrees. Three of the executives have longstanding personal ties to Sandberg,” the outlet notes. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg also occasionally offers guidance in difficult decisions. But there are others.
Company spokeswoman Christine Chen explained, “Facebook has a broad, diverse and global network involved in content policy and enforcement, with different managers and senior executives being pulled in depending on the region and the issue at hand.”
For those on the receiving end of what could only be described as lopsided and inexplicable censorship, recourse is generally limited and can be nearly impossible to come by. Often, the nature of posts and pages removed insinuates political motivations on the part of the censors.
Indeed, and once again flaring international controversy, Facebook disabled , among others, the accounts of editors of Quds and Shehab New Agency — prominent Palestinian media organizations — without explanation or even a specific example given for justification.
Although three of four Palestinian-focused accounts were restored, Facebook refused to comment to either Reuters or the accounts’ owners why the decision was reversed, except to say it had been an ‘error.’
In fact, although Chen and other Facebook insiders spoke with Reuters directly about contentious content removal policies and procedures, many details of the processes remain covert and sorely intransparent to the public who is so often forced to cope with the consequences.
Earlier this year, an exposé by Gizmodo showing Facebook’s suppression of conservative outlets via its “Trending Topics” section appeared to evidence extreme bias in favor of liberal and corporate media mainstays. Alternative media, too, which provides reports counter to the mainstream political and foreign policy paradigm, has often been the subject of controversial take-downs, censorship, and suppressive tactics — either directly by Facebook, or through convoluted algorithms and artificial intelligence bots.
However, considering Sheryl Sandberg and her loyalists populate the top-level group deciding the fate for content removal complaints, it would appear Wikileaks could provide answers for both post censorship and suppression of outlets not vowing complete fealty to the preferred, left-leaning narrative.
In a June 4, 2015, email to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta — an enormous cache of whose emails are still being published on a daily basis by Wikileaks — penned by Sandberg in response to condolences on the death of her husband, states , in part,
“And I still want HRC to win badly. I am still here to help as I can. She came over and was magical with my kids.”
After a wave of post removals and temporary page bans, it appears Facebook has begun to come to its senses for what actually violates community standards — and what might have political worth contrary to the views of its executives.
Senior members of Facebook’s policy team recently posted about the laxing of rules governing community standards, which — though welcome — might only provide temporary relief. Quoted by the Wall Street Journal , they wrote :
“In the weeks ahead, we’re going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest—even if they might otherwise violate our standards.”
While the social media giant deems itself a technology, and not news, platform, Facebook is still the bouncing off point for issues of interest for an overwhelming percentage of its users. Although it perhaps has some responsibility in regard to the removal of certain content, putting censorship in the hands of only a few individuals in certain instances is a chilling reminder of the fragility — and grave importance — of free speech. Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | 0 | [
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FMD4441 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Of course, when there s violence in protests, we hear a lot of blame getting thrown around. However, the loudest cries of injustice always seem to come from those who don t believe injustice happens to anybody but them the nationalist, racist, white supremacist alt-right. Such is the case today with the violence that erupted at the Berkeley protests. The problem is, the alt-right was all over Twitter working to incite violence against the antifa, or anti-fascists, whom they ve branded as terrorists.Ignoring for a moment the fact that these guys wouldn t know what actual terrorism is if it bit them, one particular person on Twitter spent much of the last six weeks telling his fellow alt-righters what to carry to Berkeley and how to set it up. They seem to think that attaching flags to sticks will disguise the fact that they re weapons.Check out what one of the leaders, named General Deplorable, posted to Twitter:General Deplorable s diagram up there is about how to ensure those sticks always legal, so they can carry them into battle, as well as how to put them together so they re harder for enemies to pull away from them in battle. Here are two other tweets that are incitements to violence as well:And this is General Deplorable s Twitter profile pic and info, which actually contradict each other:Here s the thing: This crowd of miscreants calls their flag poles based sticks. This is what they really are:This is what #BasedStick means: a flagpole that doubles as an insurrectionist s weapon. #Berkeleyprotests https://t.co/ZD2tGdqjk0 Marie Walshe (@lacanlune) April 16, 2017The Berkeley Police Department sees these as weapons. In fact, any stick pole, post, or the like that can be used as a bludgeoning tool (along with anything else that can be used as a weapon) are prohibited. To listen to these guys talk on their social media feeds and on their livestreams, though, it s the anti-Trump protesters who started everything, and Berkeley PD is horrifically biased. Yet, look at what they confiscated:Here are some of the prohibited items that have already removed from the park today. https://t.co/3qx3smYwgk pic.twitter.com/A70VCxFYEu Berkeley Police (@berkeleypolice) April 15, 2017The American flags belonged to the alt-right, and the black flags and red and black flags belong to what look like black bloc anarchists. Lately they ve shown up at protests and rallies specifically to cause violence. They re who every real American conservative thinks are the violent liberals, but they are a minority fringe group which currently lacks broad support.It s not likely that they ll ever change their minds on that, either.13 people were arrested and of course, General Deplorable and others are decrying the arrests and Berkeley PD for being biased towards the anti-Trump side, because of course.But they didn t go there to hold a peaceful rally. All of this shows that they went there specifically for violence.Watch a short video of melee below:Demonstrators are punching each other and even using skateboards and helmets as weapons in #Berkeley. https://t.co/PAK3WUbllH pic.twitter.com/7G8hLtsA4I NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) April 15, 2017Featured image via screen capture from embedded video | 0 | [
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FMD4442 | 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: 500 percent more traffic here?
contextual information: A portion of residential Northwest Austin has bristled at the prospect of a low-rise office park transforming into something much larger. Our attention was drawn to yard signs suggesting that the towering redevelopment at the southwest corner of Spicewood Springs Road and MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) would quintuple area traffic. Dallas-based Spire Realty Group LP seeks a zoning change to build up Austin Oaks, an office complex with 12 buildings of two to three stories each. In a version of its proposal made public in 2014, Spire stated that on the parts of the site closer to MoPac, it wanted to build two office buildings of 17 stories each, though those plans have since been scaled back to approximately 10-story buildings, according to Steve Drenner, an Austin lawyer representing Spire in its zoning case. Initial plans, also modified per Drenner, called for up to 610 apartments and townhomes in three- to five-story buildings, plus retail and restaurant space. The earliest construction was planned to start around 2020, after existing office leases expire. The 500% signs do not reveal any group or person as the originator or sponsor. By phone, Ann Denkler, a volunteer with a coalition opposing the redevelopment, told us the group did not create them. City 'unable to verify' traffic impact We reached out to city officials initially, wondering what data were available. By email, spokeswoman Sylvia Arzola informed us: The project and the traffic impact analysis are currently under review. At this time, we are unable to verify the traffic impact until a full evaluation of the project and accompanying mitigation is provided by the developer. Meanwhile, we found something close to the 500 percent claim in a September 2014 presentation by Jim Duncan of Austin, a city planner by profession. Duncan said he developed the presentation at the urging of a neighborhood friend and based his traffic projection on an engineering report written by another firm at the developer's request. That report, Duncan said, indicated daily car trips near the proposed Austin Oaks Planned Use Development would increase from 4,118 to 23,804 once the expansion was completed—a 478 percent increase. We turned back to Arzola, who agreed by email that it appears the traffic figures indeed came from the developer's consultant's study. However, she noted that a fresh traffic analysis was released in May 2015 based on the developer changing what it seeks to build. Duncan said he had heard about the revision discussions and, for that reason, he believed his calculation of the potential 478 percent increase in daily car trips near the project would likely be outdated. I'm sure the number is lower now, Duncan said. Traffic impact studies Arzola emailed us two traffic studies for the project, dated a year apart, and another city official, Bryan Golden, emailed us excerpts from a study completed in August 2014 (which appeared to be the one Duncan relied on). Each study presents predicted unadjusted daily trips in the area should the project be built out, with predicted increases ranging from more than 300 percent to more than 480 percent. Generally, unadjusted daily trips refer to daily car trips in an area, a city official told us, without reductions accounting for trips internal to a development or trips made on city buses. An unadjusted count includes trips expected due to existing developments plus the additional trips anticipated once the project is completed, Bryan Golden explained via email. The projections are generated by an engineering industry calculator, Golden said. The initial June 26, 2014, traffic impact analysis was completed by professional engineer Bobak J. Tehrany for Bury-AUS, Inc. That analysis, of 14 nearby intersections and 11 proposed driveways, stated that the redevelopment, upon completion in 2031, would generate an additional 20,736 unadjusted daily trips by car compared to approximately 4,248 daily trips attributed to the existing office complex, which breaks down to an eventual 488 percent increase. With the redevelopment, Tehrany wrote, all but two of the nearby intersections would need improvements. He noted that the maximum desirable volumes are currently being exceeded along the evaluated roadway segments, though he also stated that this does not mean the roadways have exceeded their respective capacities. The Aug. 19, 2014, traffic impact analysis—taking into account a nearby intersection the city wanted to add to the analysis, Amanda Swor of Drenner's firm told us by email—suggested the project would result in nearly 19,700 additional unadjusted daily car trips, up 478 percent from 4,118 previously recorded. We did not ascertain why the count of current-day traffic decreased. Most recently, the May 22, 2015, traffic impact analysis filed on behalf of the developers states: Based on the proposed land use intensities, it is anticipated that the development will generate a total of 19,819 unadjusted daily trips; however, due to the existing office land uses, the proposed redevelopment is anticipated to generate a net increase of 15,701 unadjusted daily trips. This takes into consideration the trips that already exist on the roadway network due to the existing development. That is, once the development is completed, nearby traffic would increase by 381 percent from the 4,118 daily car trips recorded previously. Developer's advocate says traffic likely to increase less By phone, Drenner pointed out that the May 2015 analysis includes a chart suggesting that once adjustments are made to account for car trips internal to the development, there would actually be a 332 percent increase in traffic. He noted that this latest analysis was based on Spire's modified development plan, which halved the number of residential units and reduced retail uses, filed with the city on April 30, 2015. Drenner also mentioned that the developers are proposing $1.5 million in spending to improve nearby streets and the creation of a fund that would accumulate money for area road improvements. Next, we wondered how much traffic near the site would increase if the developers added nothing. Denkler and Golden advised that analysts assume a 2 percent annual increase in car trips. At our request, Golden calculated that the 4,118 current unadjusted daily car trips would escalate by 37 percent to 5,653 in 2031—again, provided there is no expansion on the site. Our ruling Yard signs posted in opposition to a proposed Northwest Austin redevelopment state: 500 percent more traffic? Traffic studies filed in 2014 based on the developer's original proposal support the 500-percent figure, yet the developer later submitted a revised plan, and its May 2015 traffic analysis suggests at most a 381 percent increase in daily car trips, still a substantial spike. Perhaps the project and predicted traffic effects will continue to change. For now, taking into account the information available when the signs were made, we rate the claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | 1 | [
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FMD4443 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Hillary at the Laugh Factory, Part 7: Loser Users browsing this forum: Majestic-12 [Bot] , MSNbot Media and 29 guests Display posts from previous: Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology. ~ Ayn Rand
Rubiks & Rubik’s Cube ® used by special individual permission of Seven Town Ltd. Write down this number and report to your Kommissar at the nearest railroad station. Don't forget warm clothes and a shovel!
In Hillary's America, email server scrubs you
Obama transfers his Nobel Peace Prize to anti-Trump rioters
Democrats blame Hillary's criminal e-mail server for her loss, demand it face prison
Afraid of "dangerous" Trump presidency, protesters pre-emptively burn America down to the ground
Clinton Foundation in foreclosure as foreign donors demand refunds
Hillary Clinton blames YouTube video for unexpected and spontaneous voter uprising that prevented her inevitable move into the White House
Sudden rise in sea levels explained by disproportionately large tears shed by climate scientists in the aftermath of Trump's electoral victory
FBI director Comey delighted after receiving Nobel Prize for Speed Reading (650,000 emails in one week)
U.N. deploys troops to American college campuses in order to combat staggeringly low rape rates
Responding to Trump's surging poll numbers, Obama preemptively pardons himself for treason
Following hurricane Matthew's failure to devastate Florida, activists flock to the Sunshine State and destroy Trump signs manually
Tim Kaine takes credit for interrupting hurricane Matthew while debating weather in Florida
Study: Many non-voters still undecided on how they're not going to vote
The Evolution of Dissent: on November 8th the nation is to decide whether dissent will stop being racist and become sexist - or it will once again be patriotic as it was for 8 years under George W. Bush
Venezuela solves starvation problem by making it mandatory to buy food
Breaking: the Clinton Foundation set to investigate the FBI
Obama captures rare Pokémon while visiting Hiroshima
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White House edits Orlando 911 transcript to say shooter pledged allegiance to NRA and Republican Party
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John Kasich self-identifies as GOP primary winner, demands access to White House bathroom
Upcoming Trump/Kelly interview on FoxNews sponsored by 'Let's Make a Deal' and 'The Price is Right'
News from 2017: once the evacuation of Lena Dunham and 90% of other Hollywood celebrities to Canada is confirmed, Trump resigns from presidency: "My work here is done"
Non-presidential candidate Paul Ryan pledges not to run for president in new non-presidential non-ad campaign
Trump suggests creating 'Muslim database'; Obama symbolically protests by shredding White House guest logs beginning 2009
National Enquirer: John Kasich's real dad was the milkman, not mailman
National Enquirer: Bound delegates from Colorado, Wyoming found in Ted Cruz’s basement
Iran breaks its pinky-swear promise not to support terrorism; US State Department vows rock-paper-scissors strategic response
Women across the country cheer as racist Democrat president on $20 bill is replaced by black pro-gun Republican
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Martin O'Malley drops out of race after Iowa Caucus; nation shocked with revelation he has been running for president
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Hillary campaign denies accusations of smoking-gun evidence in her emails, claims they contain only smoking-circumstantial-gun evidence
Obama stops short of firing US Congress upon realizing the difficulty of assembling another group of such tractable yes-men
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Russia's trend to sign bombs dropped on ISIS with "This is for Paris" found response in Obama administration's trend to sign American bombs with "Return to sender"
University researchers of cultural appropriation quit upon discovery that their research is appropriation from a culture that created universities
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Green energy fact: if we put all green energy subsidies together in one-dollar bills and burn them, we could generate more electricity than has been produced by subsidized green energy
State officials improve chances of healthcare payouts by replacing ObamaCare with state lottery
NASA's new mission to search for racism, sexism, and economic inequality in deep space suffers from race, gender, and class power struggles over multibillion-dollar budget
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ISIS releases new, even more barbaric video in an effort to regain mantle from Planned Parenthood
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Shocking new book explores pros and cons of socialism, discovers they are same people
Pope outraged by Planned Parenthood's "unfettered capitalism," demands equal redistribution of baby parts to each according to his need
John Kerry accepts Iran's "Golden Taquiyya" award, requests jalapenos on the side
Citizens of Pluto protest US government's surveillance of their planetoid and its moons with New Horizons space drone
John Kerry proposes 3-day waiting period for all terrorist nations trying to acquire nuclear weapons
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State-funded research proves existence of Quantum Aggression Particles (Heterons) in Large Hadron Collider
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Junior Varsity takes Ramadi, advances to quarterfinals
US media to GOP pool of candidates: 'Knowing what we know now, would you have had anything to do with the founding of the United States?'
NY Mayor to hold peace talks with rats, apologize for previous Mayor's cowboy diplomacy
China launches cube-shaped space object with a message to aliens: "The inhabitants of Earth will steal your intellectual property, copy it, manufacture it in sweatshops with slave labor, and sell it back to you at ridiculously low prices"
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Experts agree: Hillary Clinton best candidate to lessen percentage of Americans in top 1%
America's attempts at peace talks with the White House continue to be met with lies, stalling tactics, and bad faith
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Study finds stunning lack of racial, gender, and economic diversity among middle-class white males
NASA: We're 80% sure about being 20% sure about being 17% sure about being 38% sure about 2014 being the hottest year on record
People holding '$15 an Hour Now' posters sue Democratic party demanding raise to $15 an hour for rendered professional protesting services
Cuba-US normalization: US tourists flock to see Cuba before it looks like the US and Cubans flock to see the US before it looks like Cuba
White House describes attacks on Sony Pictures as 'spontaneous hacking in response to offensive video mocking Juche and its prophet'
CIA responds to Democrat calls for transparency by releasing the director's cut of The Making Of Obama's Birth Certificate
Obama: 'If I had a city, it would look like Ferguson'
Biden: 'If I had a Ferguson (hic), it would look like a city'
Obama signs executive order renaming 'looters' to 'undocumented shoppers'
Ethicists agree: two wrongs do make a right so long as Bush did it first
The aftermath of the 'War on Women 2014' finds a new 'Lost Generation' of disillusioned Democrat politicians, unable to cope with life out of office
White House: Republican takeover of the Senate is a clear mandate from the American people for President Obama to rule by executive orders
Nurse Kaci Hickox angrily tells reporters that she won't change her clocks for daylight savings time
Democratic Party leaders in panic after recent poll shows most Democratic voters think 'midterm' is when to end pregnancy
Desperate Democratic candidates plead with Obama to stop backing them and instead support their GOP opponents
Ebola Czar issues five-year plan with mandatory quotas of Ebola infections per each state based on voting preferences
Study: crony capitalism is to the free market what the Westboro Baptist Church is to Christianity
Fun facts about world languages: the Left has more words for statism than the Eskimos have for snow
African countries to ban all flights from the United States because "Obama is incompetent, it scares us"
Nobel Peace Prize controversy: Hillary not nominated despite having done even less than Obama to deserve it
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BREAKING: Secret Service foils Secret Service plot to protect Obama
Revised 1st Amendment: buy one speech, get the second free
Sharpton calls on white NFL players to beat their women in the interests of racial fairness
President Obama appoints his weekly approval poll as new national security adviser
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Jay Carney stuck in line behind Eric Shinseki to leave the White House; estimated wait time from 15 min to 6 weeks
100% of scientists agree that if man-made global warming were real, "the last people we'd want to help us is the Obama administration"
Jay Carney says he found out that Obama found out that he found out that Obama found out that he found out about the latest Obama administration scandal on the news
"Anarchy Now!" meeting turns into riot over points of order, bylaws, and whether or not 'kicking the #^@&*! ass' of the person trying to speak is or is not violence
Obama retaliates against Putin by prohibiting unionized federal employees from dating hot Russian girls online during work hours
Russian separatists in Ukraine riot over an offensive YouTube video showing the toppling of Lenin statues
"Free Speech Zones" confuse Obamaphone owners who roam streets in search of additional air minutes
Obamacare bolsters employment for professionals with skills to convert meth back into sudafed
Gloves finally off: Obama uses pen and phone to cancel Putin's Netflix account
Joe Biden to Russia: "We will bury you by turning more of Eastern Europe over to your control!"
In last-ditch effort to help Ukraine, Obama deploys Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jackson's Rainbow Coalition to Crimea
Al Sharpton: "Not even Putin can withstand our signature chanting, 'racist, sexist, anti-gay, Russian army go away'!"
Mardi Gras in North Korea: " Throw me some food! "
Obama's foreign policy works: "War, invasion, and conquest are signs of weakness; we've got Putin right where we want him"
US offers military solution to Ukraine crisis: "We will only fight countries that have LGBT military"
Putin annexes Brighton Beach to protect ethnic Russians in Brooklyn, Obama appeals to UN and EU for help
The 1980s: "Mr. Obama, we're just calling to ask if you want our foreign policy back . The 1970s are right here with us, and they're wondering, too."
In a stunning act of defiance, Obama courageously unfriends Putin on Facebook
MSNBC: Obama secures alliance with Austro-Hungarian Empire against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine
Study: springbreak is to STDs what April 15th is to accountants
Efforts to achieve moisture justice for California thwarted by unfair redistribution of snow in America
North Korean voters unanimous: "We are the 100%"
Leader of authoritarian gulag-site, The People's Cube, unanimously 're-elected' with 100% voter turnout
Super Bowl: Obama blames Fox News for Broncos' loss
Feminist author slams gay marriage: "a man needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"
Beverly Hills campaign heats up between Henry Waxman and Marianne Williamson over the widening income gap between millionaires and billionaires in their district
Biden to lower $10,000-a-plate Dinner For The Homeless to $5,000 so more homeless can attend
Kim becomes world leader, feeds uncle to dogs; Obama eats dogs, becomes world leader, America cries uncle
North Korean leader executes own uncle for talking about Obamacare at family Christmas party
White House hires part-time schizophrenic Mandela sign interpreter to help sell Obamacare
Kim Jong Un executes own " crazy uncle " to keep him from ruining another family Christmas
OFA admits its advice for area activists to give Obamacare Talk at shooting ranges was a bad idea
President resolves Obamacare debacle with executive order declaring all Americans equally healthy
Obama to Iran: "If you like your nuclear program, you can keep your nuclear program"
Bovine community outraged by flatulence coming from Washington DC
Obama: "I'm not particularly ideological; I believe in a good pragmatic five-year plan"
Shocker: Obama had no knowledge he'd been reelected until he read about it in the local newspaper last week
Server problems at HealthCare.gov so bad, it now flashes 'Error 808' message
NSA marks National Best Friend Day with official announcement: "Government is your best friend; we know you like no one else, we're always there, we're always willing to listen"
Al Qaeda cancels attack on USA citing launch of Obamacare as devastating enough
The President's latest talking point on Obamacare: "I didn't build that"
Dizzy with success, Obama renames his wildly popular healthcare mandate to HillaryCare
Carney: huge ObamaCare deductibles won't look as bad come hyperinflation
Washington Redskins drop 'Washington' from their name as offensive to most Americans
Poll: 83% of Americans favor cowboy diplomacy over rodeo clown diplomacy
GOVERNMENT WARNING: If you were able to complete ObamaCare form online, it wasn't a legitimate gov't website; you should report online fraud and change all your passwords
Obama administration gets serious, threatens Syria with ObamaCare
Obama authorizes the use of Vice President Joe Biden's double-barrel shotgun to fire a couple of blasts at Syria
Sharpton: "British royals should have named baby 'Trayvon.' By choosing 'George' they sided with white Hispanic racist Zimmerman"
DNC launches 'Carlos Danger' action figure; proceeds to fund a charity helping survivors of the Republican War on Women
Nancy Pelosi extends abortion rights to the birds and the bees
Hubble discovers planetary drift to the left
Obama: 'If I had a daughter-in-law, she would look like Rachael Jeantel'
FISA court rubberstamps statement denying its portrayal as government's rubber stamp
Every time ObamaCare gets delayed, a Julia somewhere dies
GOP to Schumer: 'Force full implementation of ObamaCare before 2014 or Dems will never win another election'
Obama: 'If I had a son... no, wait, my daughter can now marry a woman!'
Janet Napolitano: TSA findings reveal that since none of the hijackers were babies, elderly, or Tea Partiers, 9/11 was not an act of terrorism
News Flash: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) can see Canada from South Dakota
Susan Rice: IRS actions against tea parties caused by anti-tax YouTube video that was insulting to their faith
Drudge Report reduces font to fit all White House scandals onto one page
Obama: the IRS is a constitutional right, just like the Second Amendment
White House: top Obama officials using secret email accounts a result of bad IT advice to avoid spam mail from Nigeria
Jay Carney to critics: 'Pinocchio never said anything inconsistent'
Obama: If I had a gay son, he'd look like Jason Collins
Gosnell's office in Benghazi raided by the IRS: mainstream media's worst cover-up challenge to date
IRS targeting pro-gay-marriage LGBT groups leads to gayest tax revolt in U.S. history
After Arlington Cemetery rejects offer to bury Boston bomber, Westboro Babtist Church steps up with premium front lawn plot
Boston: Obama Administration to reclassify marathon bombing as 'sportsplace violence'
Study: Success has many fathers but failure becomes a government program
US Media: Can Pope Francis possibly clear up Vatican bureaucracy and banking without blaming the previous administration?
Michelle Obama praises weekend rampage by Chicago teens as good way to burn calories and stay healthy
This Passover, Obama urges his subjects to paint lamb's blood above doors in order to avoid the Sequester
White House to American children: Sequester causes layoffs among hens that lay Easter eggs; union-wage Easter Bunnies to be replaced by Mexican Chupacabras
Time Mag names Hugo Chavez world's sexiest corpse
Boy, 8, pretends banana is gun, makes daring escape from school
Study: Free lunches overpriced, lack nutrition
Oscars 2013: Michelle Obama announces long-awaited merger of Hollywood and the State
Joe Salazar defends the right of women to be raped in gun-free environment: 'rapists and rapees should work together to prevent gun violence for the common good'
Dept. of Health and Human Services eliminates rape by reclassifying assailants as 'undocumented sex partners'
Kremlin puts out warning not to photoshop Putin riding meteor unless bare-chested
Deeming football too violent, Obama moves to introduce Super Drone Sundays instead
Japan offers to extend nuclear umbrella to cover U.S. should America suffer devastating attack on its own defense spending
Feminists organize one billion women to protest male oppression with one billion lap dances
Urban community protests Mayor Bloomberg's ban on extra-large pop singers owning assault weapons
Concerned with mounting death toll, Taliban offers to send peacekeeping advisers to Chicago
Karl Rove puts an end to Tea Party with new 'Republicans For Democrats' strategy aimed at losing elections
Answering public skepticism, President Obama authorizes unlimited drone attacks on all skeet targets throughout the country
Skeet Ulrich denies claims he had been shot by President but considers changing his name to 'Traps'
White House releases new exciting photos of Obama standing, sitting, looking thoughtful, and even breathing in and out
New York Times hacked by Chinese government, Paul Krugman's economic policies stolen
White House: when President shoots skeet, he donates the meat to food banks that feed the middle class
To prove he is serious, Obama eliminates armed guard protection for President, Vice-President, and their families; establishes Gun-Free Zones around them instead
State Dept to send 100,000 American college students to China as security for US debt obligations
Jay Carney: Al Qaeda is on the run, they're just running forward
President issues executive orders banning cliffs, ceilings, obstructions, statistics, and other notions that prevent us from moving forwards and upward
Fearing the worst, Obama Administration outlaws the fan to prevent it from being hit by certain objects
World ends; S&P soars
Riddle of universe solved; answer not understood
Meek inherit Earth, can't afford estate taxes
Greece abandons Euro; accountants find Greece has no Euros anyway
Wheel finally reinvented; axles to be gradually reinvented in 3rd quarter of 2013
Bigfoot found in Ohio, mysteriously not voting for Obama
As Santa's workshop files for bankruptcy, Fed offers bailout in exchange for control of 'naughty and nice' list
Freak flying pig accident causes bacon to fly off shelves
Obama: green economy likely to transform America into a leading third world country of the new millennium
Report: President Obama to visit the United States in the near future
Obama promises to create thousands more economically neutral jobs
Modernizing Islam: New York imam proposes to canonize Saul Alinsky as religion's latter day prophet
Imam Rauf's peaceful solution: 'Move Ground Zero a few blocks away from the mosque and no one gets hurt'
Study: Obama's threat to burn tax money in Washington 'recruitment bonanza' for Tea Parties
Study: no Social Security reform will be needed if gov't raises retirement age to at least 814 years
Obama attends church service, worships self
Obama proposes national 'Win The Future' lottery; proceeds of new WTF Powerball to finance more gov't spending
Historical revisionists: "Hey, you never know"
Vice President Biden: criticizing Egypt is un-pharaoh
Israelis to Egyptian rioters: "don't damage the pyramids, we will not rebuild"
Lake Superior renamed Lake Inferior in spirit of tolerance and inclusiveness
Al Gore: It's a shame that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of polar bears
Michael Moore: As long as there is anyone with money to shake down, this country is not broke
Obama's teleprompters unionize, demand collective bargaining rights
Obama calls new taxes 'spending reductions in tax code.' Elsewhere rapists tout 'consent reductions in sexual intercourse'
Obama's teleprompter unhappy with White House Twitter: "Too few words"
Obama's Regulation Reduction committee finds US Constitution to be expensive outdated framework inefficiently regulating federal gov't
Taking a page from the Reagan years, Obama announces new era of Perestroika and Glasnost
Responding to Oslo shootings, Obama declares Christianity "Religion of Peace," praises "moderate Christians," promises to send one into space
Republicans block Obama's $420 billion program to give American families free charms that ward off economic bad luck
White House to impose Chimney tax on Santa Claus
Obama decrees the economy is not soaring as much as previously decreeed
Conservative think tank introduces children to capitalism with pop-up picture book "The Road to Smurfdom"
Al Gore proposes to combat Global Warming by extracting silver linings from clouds in Earth's atmosphere
Obama refutes charges of him being unresponsive to people's suffering: "When you pray to God, do you always hear a response?"
Obama regrets the US government didn't provide his mother with free contraceptives when she was in college
Fluke to Congress: drill, baby, drill!
Planned Parenthood introduces Frequent Flucker reward card: 'Come again soon!'
Obama to tornado victims: 'We inherited this weather from the previous administration'
Obama congratulates Putin on Chicago-style election outcome
People's Cube gives itself Hero of Socialist Labor medal in recognition of continued expert advice provided to the Obama Administration helping to shape its foreign and domestic policies
Hamas: Israeli air defense unfair to 99% of our missiles, "only 1% allowed to reach Israel"
Democrat strategist: without government supervision, women would have never evolved into humans
Voters Without Borders oppose Texas new voter ID law
Enraged by accusation that they are doing Obama's bidding, media leaders demand instructions from White House on how to respond
Obama blames previous Olympics for failure to win at this Olympics
Official: China plans to land on Moon or at least on cheap knockoff thereof
Koran-Contra: Obama secretly arms Syrian rebels
Poll: Progressive slogan 'We should be more like Europe' most popular with members of American Nazi Party
Obama to Evangelicals: Jesus saves, I just spend
May Day: Anarchists plan, schedule, synchronize, and execute a coordinated campaign against all of the above
Midwestern farmers hooked on new erotic novel "50 Shades of Hay"
Study: 99% of Liberals give the rest a bad name
Obama meets with Jewish leaders, proposes deeper circumcisions for the rich
Historians: Before HOPE & CHANGE there was HEMP & CHOOM at ten bucks a bag
Cancer once again fails to cure Venezuela of its "President for Life"
Tragic spelling error causes Muslim protesters to burn local boob-tube factory
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu: due to energy conservation, the light at the end of the tunnel will be switched off
Obama Administration running food stamps across the border with Mexico in an operation code-named "Fat And Furious"
Pakistan explodes in protest over new Adobe Acrobat update; 17 local acrobats killed
White House: "Let them eat statistics"
Special Ops: if Benedict Arnold had a son, he would look like Barack Obama | 0 | [
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FMD4444 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A Russian aircraft carrying 217 passengers and seven crew members has crashed in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, according to Egyptian authorities. The Airbus A321 lost contact with both Egyptian and Russian officials after it took off from Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on a flight to St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Russian Aviation Agency says the airliner was a charter flight carrying tourists back from a popular Russian vacation spot, NPR's Corey Flintoff tells our Newscast unit. The plane was operated by Metrojet, a small airline formerly called Kolavia.
There were no survivors, both Egyptian and Russian officials say. Investigators are working to determine what caused the crash. The AP reports that during the brief flight, the airliner's pilot reported technical difficulties and said he wanted to make an emergency landing.
We'll update this post as new information becomes available.
Update at 2:25 p.m. ET: Russia Denies Group's Claim For Credit
Russian Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov, who is now on a flight to Egypt along with several other high-ranking officials, says that reports that the Russian airliner "was hit by terrorists in Egypt cannot be considered reliable," Russia's Interfax news agency reports.
That statement came after the ISIS affiliate in the Sinai put out a statement claiming responsibility for the crash. Experts on the group have told NPR's Alice Fordham that they're skeptical of such claims, adding that the group provided neither proof nor details about how they might have downed the aircraft.
With the cause of the crash under investigation, both Air France and Lufthansa say their planes will avoid flying over the Sinai Peninsula, as a precaution, the AP reports.
Interfax also reports that the loved ones of those on board the Metrojet flight will receive financial compensation, citing the Ingosstrakh insurance company's pledge of a benefit worth at least 2 million rubles (around $31,226) for each passenger. In addition, the Labor Ministry says the families of those on board will each receive 1 million rubles (around 15,613).
Russian investigators searched the airline's offices, to confiscate any documents related to the plane that crashed, Interfax says.
Update at 8:18 a.m. ET: Black Box Found; Many Bodies Recovered
At least 100 bodies have been recovered from the scene of the crash, according to Russia's Tass agency, which adds that at least one black box flight recorder has also been found. The state news outlet adds that the passengers included 138 women, 17 children, and 63 men.
"I now see a tragic scene," an Egyptian security officer tells Reuters in a phone call. "A lot of dead on the ground and many who died whilst strapped to their seats.
"The plane split into two, a small part on the tail end that burned and a larger part that crashed into a rock. We have extracted at least 100 bodies and the rest are still inside."
The officer adds, "We are hearing a lot of telephones ringing, most likely belonging to the victims, and security forces are collecting them and putting them into a bag."
A look at the plane's flight data on the Flight Radar site shows that after taking off from the Red Sea resort, it quickly gained speed and altitude after takeoff. But moments after it topped 400 knots and 33,000 feet, the airliner's speed abruptly fell to just 93 knots, with an altitude of 28,375 feet, according to the Flight Radar data.
The flight tracker data shows the airliner's flight lasted only about 20 minutes, halting when the plane was northeast of the town of Nekhel, in the central Sinai region.
Corey also notes that as the story developed early Saturday, conflicting reports emerged about the plane's crash site. Some Russian media outlets, he said, initially reported that the authorities lost contact with the aircraft over Cyprus.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin has declared a national day of mourning for Nov. 1, ordering flags to fly at half-mast. Earlier, Putin sent his condolences to the families of those aboard the plane, directed Russia's emergency agencies to assist at the crash site, and formed a commission to investigate the crash.
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El Sisi issued a statement offering "sincere condolences to the leadership, government and people of Russia as well as the families of the victims of the Russian plane crash that took place near Al-Hasana City in Sinai." | 1 | [
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FMD4445 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Hill’s Jonathan Easley reports on recent White House hires and Breitbart News alumni Julia Hahn and Dr. Sebastian Gorka. [From The Hill: The Breitbartization of the White House comes as no surprise to people at the conservative news site. “I’m surprised it took this long,†one Breitbart reporter told The Hill … “These two are ideologically in line with Bannon. They’re people he can trust. It makes sense. †… Hahn, 25, is said to be a favorite of both Bannon and Trump’s senior adviser for policy, Stephen Miller, a veteran of the campaign and attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions’s ( .) office. … Gorka’s primary focus at Breitbart has been the threat of radical Islam. He has been a fierce critic of what he describes as the Obama administration’s weak response to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and other international terror groups. … Now, Hahn and Gorka will add to Bannon’s stable of trusted allies in the West Wing, although one source familiar with Bannon’s thinking dismissed the notion that he is staffing up for a fight. … Breitbart News Editor Alexander Marlow also commented on the recent acquisitions of John Carney from the Wall Street Journal, Sam Chi from RealClear Politics, and Kristina Wong from The Hill: “There will always be this ‘Fight Club’ element where we look to punch the establishment when they deserve it,†Marlow said. “But we have a lot of reporting to do and will recruit and hire the most and sophisticated and sharpest minds in Washington to build the best team, period. We’re not going to follow any prescription that the media wants. †| 1 | [
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FMD4446 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Putin may be the one person Obama has absolutely no influence over. With Obama unable to use his Chicago thug-like political tactics on Putin, could this finally be the end of Hillary Clinton s career in politics? Hillary Clinton sits at the center of a raging firestorm concerning her arrangement of a private email account and server set up in her home from which top secret information may have been deleted. But despite Bernie Sanders apparent annoyance with the damn emails, the scandal just exponentially intensified, when Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed on Monday that Russia has possession of around 20,000 of Clinton s emails leaving open the possibility her deletions might not have been permanent after all. There s a debate going on in the Kremlin between the Foreign Ministry and the Intelligence Services about whether they should release the 20,000 of Mrs. Clinton s emails that they have hacked into, Napolitano told Fox News Megyn Kelly in an interview for The Kelly File.https://youtu.be/oounggTI-jkWith Clinton s repeated claims she employed the personal email server only for mundane communications and non-sensitive State matters having been proven outright lies, the deletions of 31,830 emails in the new context of Napolitano s statement have suddenly become remarkably relevant.As the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton s questionable email practices deepens, the question of who had access to what information previously located on the former secretary of state s server is now more critical than ever.One such individual, Romanian hacker Guccifer, who was abruptly extradited to the United States, revealed he had easily and repeatedly accessed Clinton s personal server and he wasn t the only one. For me, it was easy, the hacker, whose given name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, exclusively told Fox News; easy for me, for everybody. If Guccifer and Napolitano are right, Russia may, indeed, have possession of highly-sensitive information courtesy of Clinton s arrogant failure to adhere to the obligation to use a government email account during her tenure as secretary a situation worsened by the now-mendacious claim no sensitive information had been sent through the personal account.In fact, if Guccifer is to be believed as his extradition by the U.S. indicates news of the Kremlin having obtained potentially top-secret material may be the tip of a gargantuan iceberg. Using a readily available program, the Romanian hacker also claimed he observed up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world during sessions on Clinton s personal server. If just one of those unknown parties was connected to Russia, who the other nine might be could be central to the FBI s decision whether or not to charge Clinton for mishandling classified information.Adding yet another nail in the coffin case against Hillary on Thursday, the Hill reported conservative watchdog Judicial Watch revealed, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request, frustration with technical difficulties in obtaining a secure phone line led the secretary to direct a top aide to abandon the effort and call her without the necessary security in place. I give up. Call me on my home [number], Clinton wrote in a February 2009 email from the newly-released batch on the also notoriously unsecured server to then-chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.Via: Zero Hedge | 0 | [
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FMD4447 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: While it s exciting to see a great television show finally make its way back to the small screen, it s disappointing to realize another aspect of old school TV was also rebooted. While David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are both equal partners on The X-Files, as it turns out, when Anderson was approached for the reboot she was offered half as much money as her costar. So much for equal pay for equal work. Apparently, having an extra appendage in between your legs makes you somehow more valuable.The characters Mulder (Duchovny) and Scully (Anderson) go together like peanut butter and jelly, peas and carrots, Bert and Ernie. You wouldn t pay Ernie less than Bert, would you? Well, of course not. They re both male, and puppets we re getting off track.Here s the thing, back in the 90s, when The X-Files was originally airing on television, Anderson worked hard to make sure she was paid equally as much as her costar. When asked about the current pay disparity, Anderson said: I m surprised that more [interviewers] haven t brought that up because it s the truth. Especially in this climate of women talking about the reality of [unequal pay] in this business, I think it s important that it gets heard and voiced. It was shocking to me, given all the work that I had done in the past to get us to be paid fairly. I worked really hard toward that and finally got somewhere with it. Even in interviews in the last few years, people have said to me, I can t believe that happened, how did you feel about it, that is insane. And my response always was, That was then, this is now. And then it happened again! I don t even know what to say about it. It is sad. According to the Hollywood Reporter, both Anderson and Duchovny were paid the same in the end, but the fact that they weren t from the get-go is, well, sad, as Anderson said.Unless a show features a strong male lead and other female actresses are quite obviously supporting roles, co-leads, regardless of gender, should be paid the same. They both bring the same amount of talent and equity to their performances and the show s success.This is still a battle not only women in Hollywood have to continually face, but women in every profession nationwide. So, while some conservatives like to tout that women are already equal actually, no, they re not at all. It s important now, more than ever, to make sure we elect into the White House another person with the ideal of making sure equal pay for equal work happens once and for all. It s time. In fact, it s far past time. We need another liberal in the White House.Featured image: YouTube screengrab | 0 | [
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FMD4448 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Friday he had removed his name from consideration for a position in Donald Trump’s new administration as the president-elect narrows the field of people he is considering for secretary of state. Giuliani’s withdrawal from consideration came after Trump made clear that he was broadening his search for a secretary of state beyond the four finalists transition aides had identified: Giuliani, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former CIA head David Petraeus and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. In recent days, Trump has expanded his search for a secretary of state to include additional lawmakers and corporate executives, such as Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) and Alan Mulally, a former executive at Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Boeing Co (BA.N). The Wall Street Journal, citing two transition team officials, said Tillerson had emerged on Friday as the leading candidate for the State Department job. It said some Trump advisers saw Tillerson as a mold-breaking pick who would bring an executive’s experience to the post of top U.S. diplomat. Giuliani, speaking to Fox News, said he had actually sent a letter withdrawing himself from consideration back on Nov. 29 but that the transition team had rejected it, saying they wanted to continue to keep him in the running for the State Department. “I decided ... that the whole thing was becoming ... very difficult for the president-elect, and my desire to be in the Cabinet was great, but it wasn’t that great and he had a lot of terrific candidates,†Giuliani said in a phone call with Fox. He said he had met Trump on Friday and they agreed it was worth going ahead and releasing the letter as the president-elect narrows his choice for secretary of state. Trump indicated to supporters in Louisiana on Friday that he would have another Cabinet announcement next week “you’re really going to like.†“They’re down to the last two, three, four (candidates), so it made sense to ... get out of the way,†Giuliani said in the Fox interview. He said he had been considered for other positions in the Cabinet but was not keen on a role other than State Department. “That was the only one I had any real interest in. But it wasn’t so overwhelming that I’m terribly disappointed,†Giuliani added, noting that he would continue to act as a friend and informal adviser to Trump. Asked his view on Romney as a possible secretary of state, Giuliani said he agreed with other “very loyal supporters of President-elect Trump†that “Mitt went over the line†in his criticism of the candidate during the campaign. “You can make friends and make up, but I wouldn’t see him as a candidate for the Cabinet,†Giuliani said, though he added he would accept whatever decision Trump ultimately made. Giuliani’s withdrawal was likely to disappoint some of Trump’s most loyal aides, who appreciated how he had supported the president-elect all along and had been resistant to Romney. Earlier on Friday, CNN, citing an unnamed source, reported that Giuliani was told he was no longer in contention for secretary of state. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, praised the former New York mayor in a statement. “Rudy Giuliani is an extraordinarily talented and patriotic American,†the New York businessman said. “He is and continues to be a close personal friend, and as appropriate, I will call upon him for advice and can see an important place for him in the administration at a later date.†Reince Priebus, Trump’s incoming White House chief of staff, said in the statement that Giuliani “was vetted by our team for any possible conflicts and passed with flying colors.†Giuliani also told Fox the vetting process had turned up no conflicts. | 1 | [
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FMD4449 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: WHITEHALL TOWNSHIP, Pa. — With downcast eyes and a microphone clenched in one fist, Brian Farley stood uneasily before nearly 400 children from the Youth Soccer Club in eastern Pennsylvania. He had stolen their money. Mr. Farley, 55, the longtime treasurer of the nonprofit club, had pocketed $120, 000 from the organization’s bank accounts — money paid by parents so that their children could play. A county court judge had ordered Mr. Farley to repent publicly to club members as part of his guilty plea, and so there he stood, in front of a throng of children sitting on a grassy ball field waiting to play. The club’s leaders were so fearful that an irate parent might charge or assault Mr. Farley that they hired security to maintain order. “You try to be a good example to your children,†Mr. Farley, whose son and daughter had played for the club, told the gathering. “What I did was one of the worst examples you could ever set for your children. †The youth sports boom in the United States, fortified by at least 30 million participants, has turned what were once homespun local leagues into enterprises with annual budgets that experts who track nonprofits say regularly reach $250, 000 — if not twice that. Yet with the growth and development has come a long list of embezzlement and other corruption cases unfolding in a void of oversight and regulation and capitalizing on community trust. Across the country, people who volunteered as treasurers and other officers for Little Leagues and sports clubs have been prosecuted for pilfering gobs of money from the coffers: $220, 000 in Washington, $431, 000 in Minnesota, $560, 000 in New Jersey, and so on, according to law enforcement authorities, league officials, experts on nonprofit organizations and news reports. The approximately 14, 000 youth sports organizations in the United States take in annual revenue of about $9 billion, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Oversight of those sums is haphazard and not centralized, as there is no national agency in the country watching over youth sports. Investigators and prosecutors in several states say embezzlement investigations involving youth sports have become common, almost always committed by unpaid board members who are highly regarded in their communities. It is difficult to say whether the problem with embezzlement has worsened or if the growth of the leagues simply means more cases there is no clearinghouse comprehensively tracking fraud in youth sports. But investigators say the problem gets little public discussion even as, by some measures, there are signs of mounting cases. In the last five years, there have been hundreds of arrests and convictions in 43 states involving 15 sports, based on a study of news accounts and a database compiled by the Center for Fraud Prevention, an organization that aims to mitigate embezzlement in youth sports. And those are only the cases that have become public. Law enforcement officials estimate that they see only about half of the actual fraud in youth sports because organizations often cover up smaller misappropriations to protect their reputations and preserve the ability to raise money in the future. Some leagues have dissolved as a result. Most organizations survive, but they often must defer buying new uniforms fixing up insufficient or dangerous fields purchasing equipment and financing capital projects. Over all, the rate of fraud across the youth sports landscape, which includes thousands of prosperous travel teams, is probably small in scale given the vast scope of youth sports. In general, there is little data of any kind on how extensive embezzlement is among all nonprofit groups, let alone youth sports associations. Yet watchdogs of the nonprofit industry note that youth sports organizations rarely put in place routine checks and balances, such as having multiple people in charge of the money, opening the door to fraud. “People treat youth sports groups as social clubs and vest all their trust in one individual because they all know each other, but these organizations need to be treated like businesses with all the same internal and external financial controls,†said James Martin, the Lehigh County district attorney, whose office prosecuted Mr. Farley’s case. “Yes, everyone starts out with the best intentions, but then something usually goes wrong and no one is really watching. †A husband and wife were implicated in Michigan after a neighbor, an accountant whose sons played for the baseball league, joined the board and scrutinized the books, leading investigators to a case that uncovered $300, 000 in missing money. In Winslow, Me. (population 7, 794) there were three theft charges against members of volunteer sports clubs in a span, including one person who was charged with stealing from two clubs. In Wisconsin, a soccer mom confessed to another soccer mom about taking money from the local club, only to discover she was taking even more money. A woman in Vermont was convicted of stealing from a fund established to honor a dead child who had been a club member. The exposure of embezzlement leaves communities thunderstruck and wounded at the revelation of neighbors stealing from neighbors, friends cheating friends. The children of the accused are often best friends with the children of the accusers. “I couldn’t comprehend having to tell the 700 kids in our entire membership that the money was gone and they couldn’t play soccer anymore because their treasurer was a thief,†Diane Miller, the Youth Soccer Club’s current treasurer, said last month, recalling Mr. Farley’s arrest in 2013. “I wanted to cry. †While a preponderance of cases occur in suburbia, there have been dozens of arrests in farm communities and in big cities, too, including Manhattan. “There’s always a lot of cash involved in these organizations, and whenever there’s cash, there’s people eyeing the cash,†said Tim Delaney, president and chief executive of the National Council of Nonprofits. Erik Carrozza, the founder of the Center for Fraud Prevention, said: “Someone can easily skim 20 percent off the top and it will not be noticed for a while. Twenty percent for five years ends up being a lot of money. †That money gets spent in a variety of ways. The police have reported that purloined money has gone to dog grooming, tickets to Walt Disney World, illicit drugs, a child’s wedding, fishing trips, financial advice, N. F. L. and Major League Baseball tickets, lingerie, large deliveries of yard mulch, college loans and the interest on personal property being held in pawn shops. Gambling debt has played a role in many cases. Kevin Short, a lawyer who represented a hockey league official in Minnesota convicted of tax evasion after stealing more than $400, 000 from a league, said casino debt in fraud cases is so common now that investigators routinely check gambling habits when embezzlement is suspected. “It’s a standard question,†Mr. Short said. “Since gambling came into Minnesota, we’ve been having problems and embezzlement. †Prosecutors and defense lawyers say that many others who have embezzled from youth sports organizations have done so because they were enduring a period of financial distress because of a divorce, a job loss or both. From a facility where he is confined after serving several months in jail, Kevin L. Baker said he stole more than $200, 000 from the Kent Little League in Washington State because he was trying to survive financially. “I’m usually a trustworthy, honest person,†Mr. Baker, who was the league’s treasurer for seven years, said in a telephone interview last month. “I got in a bad situation, and when you’re in a bad situation, you make decisions that you wouldn’t normally make. †Since 2007, Mr. Baker, who coached his two sons in the league, had been a responsible volunteer at the league’s many activities. But in 2011, he lost his job, and his wife moved to Idaho with the couple’s sons as part of a divorce. A grandfather who had helped raise Mr. Baker and had been a father figure also died around the same time. To raise his spirits and to try something new — his grandparents had run a tavern — Mr. Baker decided to spend $100, 000 to buy a bar. The business started strong, then flagged precipitously. Mindy Young, who prosecuted the case, said Mr. Baker had taken money from the Kent Little League in 271 transactions that included cashier’s checks for as much as $20, 000. He knew that no one truly scrutinized the treasurer’s books he had been doctoring. But on Dec. 9, 2014, Kent’s Little League president, Greg Whitcomb, went to an Office Depot and tried to use the league’s A. T. M. card to buy $18 worth of envelopes. The purchase was denied. Based on the financial reports he had been receiving from Mr. Baker, Mr. Whitcomb believed the league had $227, 000 in bank and investment accounts. For a decade, the league had been soliciting donations and were finally on the verge of buying their own baseball and softball fields. The Kent Little League was actually in debt, owing uniform manufacturers $20, 000. “Worse, all the hard work by volunteers raising money for years was lost,†Mr. Whitcomb said. Mr. Baker turned himself into the Kent police. “I felt so guilty I couldn’t sleep at night,†said Mr. Baker, who has since been ordered to pay $208, 000 in restitution. Last year, Mr. Baker, who had no previous criminal record, was sentenced to 22 months in jail. It often takes suspicious board members or officers to uncover the wrongdoing. In the case involving Pennsylvania’s Youth Soccer Club, Mr. Farley’s crime was not uncovered until a new club president, Tino Babayan, hired a lawyer to advise the club about various matters, including its finances. The lawyer quickly became suspicious of Mr. Farley’s bookkeeping, especially when the club’s retainer check bounced. Mr. Babayan learned that 80 percent of the club’s money was missing. “Farley was basically paying off his bills and living as if the club’s account were his own,†said Steven Luksa, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case. Mr. Farley declined to be interviewed last month, but his lawyer, George Heitczman, said that when his client lost his job working on Wall Street, he began making loans to himself from the club’s account. “He felt he was just borrowing, but that is a slippery slope,†Mr. Heitczman said. “There were some payments back to the league, but Brian got so far behind. †Meanwhile, the club’s board members, facing a host of unpaid bills, were suddenly desperate to keep solvent. Mr. Farley offered the club and prosecutors a restitution deal the organization’s leaders and the club’s parent group balked. Diane Miller, the new treasurer, had pored over the bank records and saw that the club’s A. T. M. card had been used to pay for $500 hairdressing appointments, hotel stays, wine and cigars. “At that point, I wanted to find him,†Ms. Miller said of Mr. Farley, “and spit in his face. †But the club, which needed the infusion of cash, took the deal, which amounted to $55, 000. Mr. Farley received five years of probation and was ordered to make gradual, systematic repayments to for the remainder of what he owed the club. Mr. Farley, who has remained in the Allentown, Pa. area, has been paying back the money at about $225 a month and recently told another board member that he intended to pay back the roughly $60, 000 he owes the club. Ms. Miller is skeptical. “We’ll never see it all,†she said. Board members were forced to dip into their own pockets for $200 or $300 each to pay some of the club’s most urgent expenses and keep it afloat. This year, the club is thriving, with a growing membership roll. Coaches and other club members have adapted to new policies mandating invoices and receipts for any reimbursable expenses, regardless of how small the sum. Two board members are also required to extensively review the club’s books monthly. “We can’t let anything go unexamined,†Ms. Miller said. Like the Soccer Club, the Kent Little League in Washington had to run on a skeleton budget before it rebounded in part because several local sponsors donated time and money when they heard of Mr. Baker’s theft. A software company that had been working on a new league website chose to finish and install the website for free, allowing valuable registration fees to flow into the league’s bank accounts faster. Still, the Kent Little League misses the more than $200, 000 it intended to spend on new fields, cash Mr. Whitcomb knows the league will probably never recoup. As Mr. Whitcomb retrieved the mail at home not long ago with his son, he saw an envelope from Mr. Baker. “I smirked and handed it to my son and said, ‘Here’s the first restitution payment to your Little League,’†Mr. Whitcomb said. Inside the envelope were two checks for $14 and $11. There is another common thread to many fraud cases in youth sports: the scarcity of people running them, which significantly hampers the necessary oversight. Overscheduled, working parents are hesitant to commit the time to serve on boards. And no one wants to be an organization’s treasurer, which is the most tedious, thankless job. “People are always asking, ‘Can I pay to get out of my time working in the concession stand? ’†Mr. Whitcomb said. Many affluent organizations have turned to paying the officers of their boards of directors as an incentive to serve. Others are hiring bookkeepers. Crime or fraud insurance designed specifically to cover youth groups is gaining in popularity. There are groups that have tried to fill the void, like the National Alliance for Youth Sports, a nonprofit and youth sports advocate that helps train coaches and administrators. Little League offers guidelines to community leagues and training and information for volunteers. Nonetheless, in recent years youth sports officials have found themselves forced into unforeseen roles: crime investigator, mediator and crisis management specialist. “You start out wanting to help kids and you end up doing things you never thought you’d have to do,†said Mr. Babayan, no longer the Soccer Club president. When Mr. Farley concluded his apology to hundreds of young soccer players, Mr. Babayan, who had exposed Mr. Farley’s embezzlement, was standing a few feet away. As Mr. Farley dropped one arm and uncomfortably raised his gaze to the crowd, Mr. Babayan diplomatically stepped forward to grasp the microphone from Mr. Farley’s clenched fist. The children appeared confused. The parents were miffed. An awkward silence enveloped the grounds. “No one had ever seen anything like that before,†Mr. Babayan said. Eventually, the players stood and separated into groups. It was time to play. | 1 | [
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FMD4450 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Genius Kid Trolled White House Halloween Party, Idiot Obama Didn’t Notice Posted on November 1, 2016 by Robert Rich in Politics Share This
During certain holidays, Barack and Michelle Obama invite a few kids to the White House to join them in the festivities. However, the most recent incident wasn’t like all the rest as one kid decided to troll everyone there with a genius costume idea – and our idiot president didn’t even seem to notice what he did.
Yesterday, a few kids were invited to the White House Rose Garden in order to dress up for the annual Halloween trick-or-treat event. Although most kids were there for the candy and games, there was one costume that stood above the rest – a duck.
Now, this wasn’t exactly your typical duck costume with a kid inside, and he wasn’t your ordinary kid either. As can be seen in a picture posing with Obama, the duck was actually bandaged with its arm in a sling, thereby actually making it a “ lame duck .” Obama meets kid dressed as "lame duck" for Halloween at WH pic.twitter.com/5q4l04b5pM
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 31, 2016
Of course, Obama is about to adopt that name after the election as he begins the home stretch of his presidency. Although he hasn’t done anything except for forcing his legacy down America’s throat, these are the few months where slacking off is actually accepted from a man in his position.
At this point, a few things are unclear, including whether this kid was suggesting that Obama was a lame duck for his entire presidency or if our so-called Commander-in-Chief actually caught the genius pun. While some say he took the comedic jab with a bit of humor, others suggest the moron missed the subtle trolling entirely as it was just one of the endless droves of children in costumes that he took a picture with.
It’s unknown who was actually in the costume or if the idea came from the child or their father, but it’s being shared around social media for good reason. Obama has been nothing but a lame duck for the past 8 years after idiot voters actually believing the “hope and change” spiel voted for the man twice.
Fortunately, his days of freeloading and kicking back are about to become a thing of the past. Although nothing will change during his “lame duck” months, freeloaders of our nation are about to get a kick in the backside when Donald Trump is elected. We have been doing nothing for far too long – it’s time we kick things into high gear and actually do some great things, just like we used to do. | 0 | [
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FMD4451 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: CAMBRIDGE, England — His indomitable will steeled by a dozen years in the Soviet gulag, decades of sparring with the K. G. B. and a bout of near fatal heart disease, Vladimir K. Bukovsky, a tireless opponent of Soviet leaders and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, is not a man easily put off his stride. But he got knocked sideways when British police officers banged on the front door of his home on a sedate suburban street here early one morning while he lay sick in bed and informed him that they had “received information about forbidden images†in his possession. “It was all very bizarre and disturbing,†Mr. Bukovsky said. “This is not normally the language of a free society,†he added, recalling how his old K. G. B. tormentors used to hound him and his friends over texts and photographs declared forbidden by the Soviet authorities. The images sought by the British police, however, had nothing to do with politics but involved child pornography, a shocking offense in any jurisdiction. The officers hauled away a clunky desktop computer from Mr. Bukovsky’s study — a chaos of books and papers dusted with cigarette ash — and a broken computer from his garage. In April last year, the veteran Soviet dissident, a onetime confidant of Margaret Thatcher, finally found out what was going on: The Crown Prosecution Service announced that he faced five charges of making indecent images of children, five charges of possession of indecent images of children and one charge of possession of a prohibited image. The case was supposed to go to court in May in Cambridge but, after Mr. Bukovsky, 73, entered a plea it was delayed until Dec. 12. This followed a prosecution request for more time to review an independent forensic report on what had been found on Mr. Bukovsky’s computers and how an unidentified third party had probably put it there. “The whole affair is Kafkaesque,†Mr. Bukovsky said in an interview. “You not only have to prove you are not guilty but that you are innocent. †He insisted that he was the victim of a new and particularly noxious form of an old K. G. B. dirty trick known as kompromat, the fabrication and planting of compromising or illegal material. kompromat featured doctored photographs, planted drugs, grainy videos of liaisons with prostitutes hired by the K. G. B. and a wide range of other primitive entrapment techniques. Today, however, kompromat has become allied with the more sophisticated tricks of where Russia has proved its prowess in the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine. American intelligence agencies also believe that Russia used hacked data to hurt Hillary Clinton and promote Donald J. Trump in the U. S. presidential election, according to senior officials in the Obama administration. Russia’s cyberwarriors serve a multitude of goals, including espionage, the disruption of vital infrastructure — as happened in Ukraine last year when nearly a quarter of a million people lost electricity after a cyberattack on three regional energy companies — the discrediting of foes and the shaping of public opinion through the spread of false information. Hacking is not only a good way to get real information, like the emails of the D. N. C. but a relatively easy and usually untraceable way to plant fake information. For example, when unidentified hackers last year broke into the computers of a government research center in Lithuania, they stole nothing, but planted bogus reports on its website that the country’s stoutly president had worked as an escort and K. G. B. informer while a student in Leningrad during the Soviet era. A similar affecting the Lithuanian military’s website replaced a bland announcement about a coming NATO exercise with a fake statement that presented the exercise as part of a plan to annex Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, and join it with Lithuania, a member of NATO. The supposed NATO plan outlined in the phony text closely mimicked methods used by Moscow in 2014 to annex Crimea and stir up unrest in eastern Ukraine, including the seizure of military posts and police stations and calls for the establishment of the Kaliningrad People’s Republic. Written in faulty Lithuanian, the statement was “immediately obvious as a fake,†said Rimtautas Cerniauskas, the director of Lithuania’s National Cyber Security Center, which was set up last year in response to increased alarm over Russian aggression. But, he added, the stunt nonetheless succeeded in distracting cyberdefense staff members from their normal work for days and in spreading a lie that, though immediately exposed, polluted discussion about NATO. “I don’t believe in aliens, but if you see enough articles about aliens visiting Earth, you start to think ‘Who knows, maybe the government is hiding something,’†Mr. Cerniauskas said. Seemingly, no target is too small to warrant attention, no attack too petty. Trained to believe that the ends always justify the means, Russian security service operatives “have sick minds,†Mr. Bukovsky said. “They live in a virtual reality. †This blurring of all boundaries between truth and falsehood in the service of operational needs has created a climate in Russia in which even the most serious and grotesque accusations, like those involving pedophilia, are simply a currency for settling scores. Mr. Bukovsky is far from the only one fending off such allegations. Yoann Barbereau, the French director of the Alliance Française in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, has been struggling since early last year to defend himself against charges that he posted child pornography on a website for Russian mothers. His lawyers, pointing to evidence that his computer was tampered with after his arrest, believe that the material was planted by local security service officers to punish Mr. Barbereau for an extramarital romance with a woman connected to a powerful local official. In September, after months under house arrest, Mr. Barbereau fled. Konstantin Rubakhin, an environmental activist who lives in exile in Lithuania, also got a visit from police officers looking for child pornography. Mr. Rubakhin speculated that that raid, in June last year, may have been part of an effort to derail his application for political asylum or his work for the Civil Society Forum, a research group that investigates corruption. In the end, the Lithuanian police dropped the case. Getting someone labeled a suspected pedophile has the added benefit of fitting “perfectly with the Kremlin’s line that human rights activists are all just degenerates,†said Vytis Jurkonis, a Lithuanian human rights activist who works with Russian exiles. Russia has denied any involvement in all of these incidents. “Of course they do,†scoffed Linas Linkevicius, Lithuania’s foreign minister. “They never have anything to do with anything that is going on in the world,†he said, describing Russian hackers, whether working directly for the state or as freelance vandals, “as part of their weapons system. †“They have very efficient hybrid warfare means,†he added. In the case of Mr. Bukovsky and the others involving pornography stored — or planted — on the computers of Kremlin critics, the high degree of deniability offered by the shadows of cyberspace has left the accused struggling to salvage their reputations. “To use a technical term, you are completely screwed,†said Jeffrey Carr, the head of Taia Global, an American cybersecurity company, and the author of a book on cyberwarfare. “If something like this is sponsored by the Russian government, or any government or anyone with sufficient skill, you are not going to be successful. It is terrible. †Russia first flexed its cybermuscle publicly in 2007 with a blitzkrieg attack across a broad front in Estonia, a Baltic nation often at odds with Moscow. The computer systems there of the police, military, banks, media and government offices faced a lengthy barrage of superfluous requests designed to crash their networks, a tactic known as a distributed attack. Taimar Peterkop, the director general of Estonia’s Information System Authority, which watches over the core pillars of the country’s highly digitalized economy and government, said that after that early assault the cybermischief linked to Russia has only expanded in both range and sophistication. “Nowadays it seems they want to show they are everywhere,†Mr. Peterkop said. “Like flying bombers close to our and other countries’ borders, they perhaps simply want to show they have an important global footprint. It is almost as if they want to be seen, or maybe we are just responding better. †Last year’s assault on Ukraine’s energy system involved far more elaborate tools than those used in the 2007 distributed attacks on Estonia and were the first known successful effort by Russia or its proxies to knock out vital civilian infrastructure with hackers worming their way into control rooms. Robert Lee, the director of Dragos Security, a cybersecurity company in Maryland, who helped investigate the electricity shutdown in Ukraine, said that identifying the culprits would “never be certain†but that “when we look at tradecraft, capabilities and motive of the group involved, we can come to a assessment that the group was and a assessment that there were members in the government that knew this was going to happen. †This gray zone of uncertainty has been seized on by Russia as proof that it is the victim of “Russophobic†hysteria over its role in cyberspace. It has also left Mr. Bukovsky — and others caught in what they believe are kompromat traps — at the mercy of Western police and courts that demand hard evidence, not guesswork and accusation from defendants. Inside Russia, kompromat has featured for years in political and business disputes. Under President Boris N. Yeltsin in the 1990s, it was a dirty game played by both the Kremlin and its foes but, under Mr. Putin, compromising videos and other embarrassing material invariably target only the Kremlin’s opponents. Before becoming president at the end of 1999, Mr. Putin played a prominent role in a particularly spectacular example of this Russian specialty. As head of the Federal Security Agency, or F. S. B. in 1997, Mr. Putin won the trust of Mr. Yeltsin by helping to destroy the career of Russia’s prosecutor general, Yury Skuratov, who, after starting an investigation into Kremlin corruption, was disgraced on national television by the broadcast of a video that showed a man who looked like him in bed with two young women. Mr. Putin certified in public that the man in the video, widely believed to have been arranged and then filmed by the F. S. B. was indeed the prosecutor general. Mr. Skuratov resigned. The corruption investigation ended. A grateful Mr. Yeltsin named Mr. Putin prime minister and then president. For the Kremlin’s supporters, the verdict on Mr. Bukovsky is already in. On learning of the charges against him, Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the television outlet RT, posted a sneering message on Twitter: “The Pedophile Plan: rape a child, sign up in the opposition, emigrate, expose the flaws of the motherland and all will be well. Or not. †The idea that Europeans and Russian opponents of the Kremlin are sexual deviants with a taste for pedophilia is a strange but recurring theme in Russian propaganda. The Russian of a Norwegian man gained wide attention in state media, for example, with fabricated claims, made after she lost a child custody battle in Norway, that her former husband dressed up their son in a “Putin costume†and raped him. Foes of the Kremlin have sometimes picked up the same ugly club and used it to beat Mr. Putin, as did Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K. G. B. agent who died in London in 2006 from poisoning by a highly toxic radioactive isotope. Four months before his death, which a British inquiry ruled was probably murder approved by Mr. Putin, Mr. Litvinenko published an article that, without any evidence, asserted that the Russian president was himself a pedophile. Mr. Bukovsky, who was a close friend of Mr. Litvinenko, said he had strongly urged him not to publish. “I was very angry with him,†Mr. Bukovsky recalled, noting that in many ways Mr. Litvinenko, despite his ferocious hostility toward the Kremlin, still had the of a security officer and “could not understand the difference between truth and operational information. †On the “dark web,†an area of the internet that requires special software and authorization codes to enter, suspected Russian hackers openly offer to plant evidence of pedophilia as a way to destroy an enemy. “I’ll do anything for money,†promised an advertisement placed by a hacker who offered to ruin “your opponents, business or private persons you don’t like. I can ruin them financially and or get them arrested, whatever you like. †Boasting that it was possible to destroy both individuals and businesses, the hacker added, “If you want someone to get known as a child porn user, no problem. †He gave a price, denominated in Bitcoins, of around $600 per job. Paulo Shakarian, the chief executive officer of IntelliSpyre and the director of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at Arizona State University, said his team had analyzed the advertisement and concluded that it was probably posted by a Russian (or at least a ) hacker. He said the price was in the normal range of what hackers demand for character assassination. No matter what the court in Britain decides, Mr. Bukovsky has already had his reputation — and, by association, that of other Kremlin’s critics — trashed in Russia. Russian state television, in a report on the case, described the dissident as “a lover of child porn. †Mr. Bukovsky complained that European countries that expect clarity and follow rigid procedures easily fall prey to the dirty tricks of a regime that excels in hiding its tracks and creating confusion. “They are very good at using the West against the West,†he said. | 1 | [
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FMD4452 | 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 Bill Belichick Shake His Head at Mac Jones' Overthrow? Claim summaries: It's quite imaginative to believe that Belichick and a number of other NFL coaches and general managers would show disappointment at a single throw.
contextual information: In late March 2021, a video was shared that showed Bill Belichick shaking his head moments after NFL prospect Mac Jones overthrew a football. The New England Patriots coach was present to attend the University of Alabama football team's pro day. In the video, he was standing next to San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. The video appeared in articles that were shown to Google Discover users. For example, one story stated, "Bill Belichick isn't impressed with Mac Jones' throw at Alabama pro day." Another read, "Cameras catch Bill Belichick's reaction to Mac Jones' overthrow at Alabama Pro Day." Several articles seemed to suggest they could read minds. We found no indication that Belichick was shaking his head or showing disapproval at a single overthrow by Jones. In the video, it appeared that Shanahan and Belichick were having a conversation. The likely explanation for Belichick's head shake was that he was reacting to something Shanahan said. Four NFL coaches were present to watch Jones and other Alabama football prospects: Sean Payton of the New Orleans Saints, Matt Nagy of the Chicago Bears, Shanahan, and Belichick. The Associated Press also reported that Belichick was among a group of five general managers in attendance. In January 2021, Jones led the Alabama football team to the College Football Playoff national championship. He was also a Heisman Trophy finalist, placing third in the vote count. The team's head coach is Nick Saban. The same Twitter account that hosted the video of Belichick shaking his head also tweeted another video showing Jones throwing a deep ball with precision. ESPN also shared additional videos of the Alabama pro day that showcased Jones executing a number of solid plays. The Associated Press published a brief comment from Jones, who appeared to feel confident in his performance in front of Belichick and the other NFL coaches and general managers. "At Alabama, they told me to sit in the pocket and rip it, so that's what I did," Jones said. "That's what you're supposed to do when you're at Alabama. But when the NFL comes, I'll do whatever they tell me to do. I showed today that I can do everything that they want me to do." Without further evidence that Belichick was showing disapproval at a single throw by a Heisman Trophy finalist who led his team to a national title, we have rated this claim as "Unproven." | 2 | [
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FMD4453 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Saturday pressed the case for the central government in Baghdad to receive the income from Kurdistan s oilfields, saying the money would be used to pay Kurdish civil servants. Seeking to control the oil income from the autonomous Kurdish region is central to Abadi s strategy after the Kurdish referendum on independence held on Monday. The Kurdistan Regional Government said it plans to use the vote, which delivered an overwhelming yes for independence, as a mandate to seek the peaceful secession of the Kurdish region through talks with Abadi s government. Abadi, who rejects any talks with the Kurds on independence, wrote in a tweet: Federal government control of oil revenues is in order to pay KR (Kurdistan Region) employee salaries in full. No other statement was forthcoming from the government. It was not clear whether Baghdad had had any success in taking control of oil income from the Kurdish region in the north of Iraq, which for years has kept oil revenue and paid Kurdish civil servants. Abadi on Thursday said Turkey had told Iraq it would deal only with the Iraqi government on crude oil exports. Iraqi Kurdish crude oil is exported to world markets through a pipeline to Turkey s Mediterranean coast. Baghdad imposed a ban on direct international flights to the Kurdish region on Friday. | 1 | [
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FMD4454 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Donald Trump s son-in-law Jared Kushner has found himself at the focus of the Russia scandal which has gripped the administration. It s always the quiet ones you have to worry about, as they say. Kushner released an 11-page statement earlier in which he appeared to throw Donald Trump Jr. under the bus.Then Kush (I can call you Kush, right?) spoke for two hours in a closed-door session with Senate Intelligence Committee staff members investigating Russia s interference in the 2016 presidential election. After that, Kushner proceeded to talk to reporters, but didn t take any questions. I did not collude with Russia and I do not know of anyone else in the campaign who did so, Kushner said outside the White House.Kushner insisted that he has been fully transparent which is totally untrue, according to the written statement he issued just hours earlier.In that statement, Kushner said he had four contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign and transition and declared that none of them were improper, even though they were not disclosed previously.Even most Republicans agree that Donald Trump Jr. should not have held that controversial meeting with a Russian lawyer, which was attended by Kushner and former campaign manager Paul Manafort.According to Kushner, it s all cool because he said he did not read emails that showed that Junior enthusiastically accepted the meeting with the idea that he would receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton.Kushner went on to deny that Russians financed some of his business interests in the private sector. However, it s been revealed that Trump s son-in-law bought part of old New York Times building from a Soviet-born oligarch who is allegedly tied to money laundering. There are many other instances we could cite, too. Like, for example, Kush s meeting with Russian banker Sergey Gorkov. That bank is sanctioned so it s alarming that he would even take the 30 minute meeting.But since Kush feigns to be transparent, he can prove that right now.USA Today reports:Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on Kushner to testify in public under oath, and said his written statement raised more questions about his relationships with Russians. He noted that the White House senior adviser has repeatedly concealed information about his personal finances and meetings with foreign officials. There should be no presumption that he is telling the whole truth in this statement. At the very least, said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Va., the transcript from Kushner s meeting with staff members should be made public. Make everything as transparent as possible, Manchin told reporters. All of my actions were proper, he said outside the White House. So, the four undisclosed meetings (that we know about so far) were proper ?When Kushner sought top-secret security clearance which would give him access to some of the nation s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years, but he failed to do so. You know, because he s so transparent. He or she who has not had undisclosed contacts with Russian officials, let them cast the first stone.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 0 | [
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FMD4455 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: SAN FRANCISCO — Ultimate Fighting Championship seemed for years to be a curio, a niche sport for those interested in seeing combatants pummel one another in an octagonal cage. But U. F. C. has become a global sports empire — and now commands an price tag. The league, which promotes mixed martial arts, is expected to announce as soon as Monday that it has sold itself to a group led by the talent giant for about $4 billion, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Backing the deal are the private equity heavyweights Silver Lake, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and the investment firm of the billionaire Michael S. Dell. The deal highlights the power and reach of the U. F. C. whose fights are now shown in more than 156 countries and take place in all 50 states, and which claims millennials as some 45 percent of its audience. For its new owners, the league represents a prime source of content, particularly in the digital arena. Beyond its headline fights, which the company asserts are the events on TV, U. F. C. over all generates roughly 2, 000 hours’ worth of material each year, much of it available on its Fight Pass streaming service. The transaction comes just as U. F. C. concluded its latest series of fights, perhaps the biggest in the organization’s history. (The event, U. F. C. 200, drew more than 18, 000 fans to Las Vegas but was marred by some controversy, including the absence of stars like Ronda Rousey, Conor McGregor and Jon Jones, the last of whom was removed after testing positive for an undisclosed substance. It will be a windfall for U. F. C. ’s primary owners, the longtime casino entrepreneurs Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, though they will stay on as minority investors. The brothers bought U. F. C. in 2000 for just $2 million at a low point for the league, after the promoter spent years and millions of dollars battling to win approval from state athletic commissions. Before the arrival of the Fertittas, U. F. C. had begun climbing in popularity, thanks to early stars like Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock and a reputation for being just shy of civilized. But opposition loomed from Senator John McCain of Arizona, who derided the sport as “human cockfighting,†and former Governor George E. Pataki of New York, who banned the sport from the state. The early years under the brothers — who run the business through a company called Zuffa, the Italian word for “fight†— were still tough, with losses weighing over the enterprise. But the Fertittas took the brand to a new level, with more advertising, more effective social media marketing and better distribution through partnerships like the one with Fox. Licensing money for video games, clothes and more began to roll in. U. F. C. ’s revenue was about $600 million last year. Respectability came along with rules meant to curb the excesses of early fights and getting approval from each state’s athletic commission. The last came this year, when New York lifted its ban on the sport. And television programming like “The Ultimate Fighter†reality show elevated U. F. C. ’s presence in pop culture, turning athletes like Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture into mainstream stars. Combatants began appearing on ESPN and in the pages of Sports Illustrated. Successive generations of fighters, particularly Ms. Rousey, became even bigger celebrities. U. F. C. has demonstrated enormous digital reach as well, particularly after the introduction of U. F. C. Fight Pass streaming service in late 2013. Under the Fertittas, U. F. C. also swallowed up many of its competitors while pushing aggressively abroad, establishing beachheads in Europe, Asia and Australia. As part of that international campaign, Zuffa sold a minority stake in the promoter to an arm of the Abu Dhabi government six years ago. Not all has been rosy for U. F. C. however. The league has faced accusations that it underpays many of its athletes. And it remains dogged by concerns about the brutality of some of its fights. Along the way, the Fertittas, burly fighting enthusiasts who are bound to settle business disputes with a jujitsu match, have already earned themselves a fortune and amassed art collections. Rumors about a sale of U. F. C. in a deal have percolated since the spring. In May, the company flatly denied being up for sale. Its president, Dana White, said, “We’re not for sale,†though he conceded, “But let me tell you what. If somebody shows up with $4 billion, we can talk. †As recently as last week, Lorenzo Fertitta and Mr. White denied that they had sold the business. “We own the U. F. C. We did not sell the U. F. C. ,†Mr. White told The Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. (That’s true: The two sides signed the deal agreement over the weekend.) Such is the popularity of the company that it drew interest from a number of suitors, including big Chinese media players that reportedly included the Dalian Wanda Group, which owns the AMC theater chain, and China Media Capital, which owns stakes in pro sports teams like the Manchester City soccer club. But it was which already represents stars like Ms. Rousey in media rights and has represented U. F. C. itself, that emerged victorious. For the Hollywood colossus, which is led by Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell, acquiring U. F. C. is the latest step in creating a huge stable meant to command digital media. The agency has gained financial firepower for such deals, taking investments this year from the Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank and the mutual fund titan Fidelity. has already taken steps into the sports world, buying the Professional Bull Riders league last year. Still, U. F. C. is a much bigger step in the agency’s goal to become a platform for content, to which it can apply a host of levers — from marketing to talent management to television and digital distribution. Though represents Ms. Rousey and other combatants in their endorsements and movie deals, the agency will not get involved in the actual pay negotiations with athletes, according to the people with direct knowledge of the matter. Backing the agency are Silver Lake, which led the merger of WME and IMG nearly three years ago and which has long pushed portfolio companies to become bigger through acquisitions, and K. K. R. which has often worked with Silver Lake on major investments like the takeovers of GoDaddy and the chip maker Avago. Both firms will own minority stakes in U. F. C. Mr. Dell has been allied with Silver Lake since the investment firm helped him take his computer empire private in 2013, and then aided him in buying the data storage company EMC last year in what was the takeover in technology. Mr. Dell’s firm, MSD Capital, will own preferred shares in the sports league, which will essentially pay out interest. | 1 | [
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FMD4456 | 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: Trump expressed a wish for his political enemies to suffer in Hell in his Christmas Day 2023 post. Claim summaries: Readers asked Snopes if it was true that the former U.S. president had ended a Christmas message with the words, "May they rot in hell."
contextual information: On Dec. 27, 2023, readers emailed Snopes to ask if it was true that former U.S. President Donald Trump had written a post on Christmas Day that included the words, "May they rot in hell." A check of Trump's posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, showed dozens of new posts ("Truths") and reposts ("Retruths") in the previous two days. Buried below all of the more recent shared posts was a "trending" post in which Trump had offered a "Merry Christmas" message on Dec. 25. That post truly did include the words, "May they rot in hell," which appeared in all capital letters. The imprecation was aimed at so-called "thugs" Trump claimed were "looking to destroy our once great USA." The full post (archived) read as follows: post archived Merry Christmas to all, including Crooked Joe Bidens ONLY HOPE, Deranged Jack Smith, the out of control Lunatic who just hired outside attorneys, fresh from the SWAMP (unprecedented!), to help him with his poorly executed WITCH HUNT against TRUMP and MAGA. Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and sick as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS! Snopes has previously published a wealth of reporting about claims mentioned in the above post: "open borders," worldwide inflation, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Green New Deal, U.S. President Joe Biden's plans for taxes, Biden's record on energy independence, the idea of the U.S. military being "woke," Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the war in Israel and Gaza and electric-powered vehicles. open borders worldwide inflation U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan Green New Deal taxes energy independence woke Russia's invasion of Ukraine war in Israel and Gaza electric-powered vehicles On the same day that Trump posted his Christmas message on Truth Social, a Biden-Harris campaign spokesperson named Seth Schuster responded by calling it an "erratic Christmas Day rant," according to reporting from Washington Examiner. Washington Examiner We reached out to the Trump campaign by email to ask about the statement and will update this story if we receive a response. In addition to the Truth Social post on Christmas Day, Trump also released a video message on Christmas Eve that did not include the words, "May they rot in hell." Rather, the video simply showed Trump offering positive, forward-looking sentiments about Christmas, U.S. military servicemembers and the upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election. Dapcevich, Madison. Does Biden Support the Green New Deal? Snopes, 1 Oct. 2020, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-biden-support-green-new-deal/. Datoc, Christian. MSN.MSN.Com, Washington Examiner, 26 Dec. 2023, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-campaign-rebukes-trump-s-rot-in-hell-christmas-wish/ar-AA1m43Pg. Electric Vehicles Archives | Snopes.com. https://www.snopes.com/tag/electric-vehicles/. Huberman, Bond. About That Biden Tax Plan Meme. Snopes, 29 Oct. 2020, https://www.snopes.com/collections/about-that-biden-tax-plan-meme/. Ibrahim, Nur. Do Democrats Want Open Borders? Snopes, 17 June 2022, https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/do-democrats-want-open-borders/. Inflation Is Spiking Around the World Not Just in US. Snopes via The Conversation, 1 Aug. 2022, https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/01/inflation-us-world/. Israel Hamas War Archives | Snopes.com. https://www.snopes.com/tag/israel-hamas_war/. Kasprak, Alex. Did Biden Set US Back 50 Years on Energy Independence Progress? Snopes, 15 Feb. 2021, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-energy-independence/. Liles, Jordan. Did the Trump Admin Agree to Free 5,000 Taliban Prisoners? Snopes, 12 Dec. 2022, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-5000-taliban-prisoners/. Palma, Bethania. Top General Blasts Rep. Matt Gaetz for Offensive Comment About Military Being Woke. Snopes, 24 June 2021, https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/06/24/matt-gaetz-mark-milley-woke/. Ukraine War Archives | Snopes.com. https://www.snopes.com/tag/russia-ukraine/. | 1 | [
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FMD4457 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: 26 WikiLeaks bombshells on Hillary you need to know Most explosive revelations that could keep Clinton out of White House Published: 5 mins ago Leo Hohmann About | | Archive Leo Hohmann is a news editor for WND. He has been a reporter and editor at several suburban newspapers in the Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, areas and also served as managing editor of Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh, North Carolina. Print Hillary Clinton with top aide Huma Abedin.
WikiLeaks has provided a treasure trove of inside information on what Hillary Clinton really thinks about important issues such as trade and immigration, but Clinton herself has chosen not to answer questions about the revelations.
She has focused instead on criticizing the Russians as the source of the hacks, despite the fact there is no proof of Russian involvement.
The emails also shed light on how the Clinton campaign interacts with Wall Street banks, with friendly media, and how it worked to undermine the candidacy of Democratic rival Bernie Sanders with the help of the DNC.
WikiLeaks says it has about 50,000 emails from the private Gmail account of John Podesta, a senior Democratic Party official who has served as White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton and a senior adviser to President Obama. He was the author of Obama’s climate change policy. John Podesta
In February Podesta moved seamlessly from the White House to become chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Here are some of the most explosive revelations from the WikiLeaks email dumps featuring Podesta’s account and others.
Preference for Muslim Americans In 2008, when Podesta served as co-chair of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, Michael Froman, a former Citibank executive, sent Podesta a “list of African American, Latino and Asian American candidates, broken down by Cabinet/Deputy and Under/Assistant/Deputy Assistant level, plus a list of Native American, Arab/Muslim American and Disabled American candidates.” The Arab American list came with a special note to exclude Arab Christians – they had to be both Arab and Muslim.As New Republic reports, Obama’s eventual cabinet appointments ended up almost entirely as Froman recommended.Froman ultimately became the recipient of the largest bailout from the federal government during the financial crisis.
Shielding Obama In a March 4, 2015, email to Hillary Clinton’s lawyer Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s eventual campaign chairman Podesta asks if they should withhold email exchanges between Clinton and President Obama that were sent over Clinton’s private server.The day before Podesta sent his email to Mills, the House Benghazi Committee privately told Clinton to preserve and hand over all her emails.The email from Podesta to Mills says: “Think we should hold emails to and from potus? That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but I(t) seems like they will.” An email exchange between Podesta, Paul Begala, and Clinton pollster GQRR shows the Clinton campaign was pushing the Muslim Obama narrative back in January 2008. Included was a survey of Obama “negative facts” such as this one: “Obama (owe-BAHM-uh)’s father was a Muslim and Obama grew up among Muslims in the world’s most populous Islamic country.” The pollster writes “we have reworked the Obama message into the survey, as requested.”
Secret speeches to Wall Street Hillary Clinton was so enraged that Bill Clinton was forced to cancel a paid speech at Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley in 2015 that she “needed a cool down period.” The email chain, on March 11, 2015, before she formally launched her campaign, includes top aides to both Hillary Clinton and former President Clinton, and reveals that Hillary’s future campaign aides were concerned about the political impact of Bill giving a speech to a Wall Street bank. “Morgan Stanley is coming down,” wrote Robby Mook in an email to top Clinton aides.Top aide Huma Abedin explained that Hillary would not be happy about it, writing: “HRC very strongly did not want him to cancel that particular speech. I will have to tell her that [Bill] chose to cancel it, not that we asked.” Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and other financial firms, a point of contention during this year’s primary, were the subject of an email to Podesta. Excerpts from some of the speeches had been flagged by Clinton’s research team, including the necessity of having “both a public and a private position” on issues. It was just part of “making sausage” in the political arena, she said, that certain positions on issues needed to be kept hidden from the public. Some “flags” in Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches were noted in a Jan. 25 email from campaign research director Tony Carrk to top Clinton advisers, including Clinton’s declaration that “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” Countless establishment media outlets parlaying themselves as “fact checkers” tried to downplay this email by saying it was “mostly about trade,” not immigration, as if the words “open borders” were never mentioned. But the email exchange also shows how Hillary’s about-face on the TPP trade deal was mere pandering to Bernie Sanders’ voters and had no basis in reality in terms of how she really feels about trade deals. In a speech at Goldman-Black Rock on Feb. 4, 2014, Carrk pointed out, Clinton admitted she’s “Kind Of Far Removed” from middle-class struggles due to “The Economic, You Know, Fortunes That My Husband And I Now Enjoy.” Clinton, in other speeches, boasted of her ties to Wall Street, an issue primary opponent Bernie Sanders continually raised. Clinton still has refused to release transcripts of her paid speeches while blasting Donald Trump for not releasing his tax returns.
Working in tandem with ‘friendly’ media WND reported Tuesday emails showing reporters, editors and contributors not just advocating for Hillary Clinton but apparently colluding with the campaign. Univision Chairman Haim Saban urged the Clinton campaign to hit Donald Trump harder over immigration. The Boston Globe tried to time a Clinton opinion piece to do the most good in New Hampshire. CNBC’s John Harwood urged Clinton campaign chairman Podesta to watch out for then-GOP candidate Dr. Ben Carson. Democratic National Committee official and CNN contributor Donna Brazile apparently tipped off the Clinton campaign to a potentially difficult CNN town-hall question on capital punishment during the Democratic Party primary season. Brazile adamantly denies it . In a July 2015 email, New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich appeared to ask permission from Hillary Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, to use certain quotes of the presidential candidate in an article. Palmieri replied, suggesting he remove a reference Clinton made to Sarah Palin and delete Clinton’s statement, “And gay rights has moved much faster than women’s rights or civil rights, which is an interesting phenomenon.” CNBC correspondent John Harwood, who was widely criticized for posing biased questions to Donald Trump as a primary debate moderator, effectively served as an adviser to the Clinton campaign, emailing Podesta with the subject line “Watch out.” The warning was regarding GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson, who “could give you real trouble in a general (election).” Maggie Haberman, a former Politico reporter who now works for the New York Times, was described in a January 2015 memo as having “a very good relationship” with the Clinton campaign. “We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed,” the memo said.
Demeaning Catholics Podesta discussed fomenting “revolution” in the Catholic Church with a progressive activist while Hillary’s now-communications director Jennifer Palmieri mocked Catholics who speak out against the liberal social causes of the Democratic Party. “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church,” Sandy Newman, president and founder of the nonprofit Voices for Progress, wrote Podesta in February 2012 . The email, among the third batch released by WikiLeaks, was titled “opening for a Catholic Spring? just musing.” Podesta tells Newman of progressive organizations he and his colleagues created to recruit members of the church who can lead a revolution when the time is right.“We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this,” the Clinton campaign chairman writes. “But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up.” Clinton, who has accused Trump of praising Putin, called the Russian leader in a 2014 speech “engaging” and “a very interesting conversationalist.” Excerpts from Clinton’s speeches were contained in a document emailed to Podesta to point out quotes that could harm the campaign.
Collusion with DOJ Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon alerted staffers that the Justice Department was proposing to publish Clinton’s work-related emails, contending it showed collusion between the Obama administration and Clinton’s campaign. Fallon wrote that “DOJ folks” told him a court hearing in the case had been planned. The day after Hillary Clinton testified in front of the House Select Committee on Benghazi last October, Podesta met for dinner with a small group of well-connected friends, including Peter Kadzik, a top official at the Justice Department. Lawyers also told the Clinton campaign in emails that Hillary’s private email scandal “ smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc .”
Entanglements with foreign governments King Muhammad IV of Morocco made a $12 million pledge to fund the Clinton Global Initiative conference, but only if the likely presidential candidate attended the event as a speaker. Hillary’s top aide, Huma Abedin, wrote in a January 2015 email that “if HRC was not part of it, meeting was a non-starter.” Then she warned: “She created this mess and she knows it.” Hillary ended up not attending but her husband Bill did. An email from Hillary Clinton’s account to Podesta on Aug. 17, 2014, said Saudi Arabia and Qatar were “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Critics have pointed out that the Clinton Foundation has received considerable funding from the two Middle East nations. In a leaked 2013 paid speech to the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, Hillary said Jordan and Turkey “can’t possibly vet all those refugees so they don’t know if, you know, jihadists are coming in along with legitimate refugees.” Two years later she called for a 550 percent increase in the number of Syrian refugees coming to the U.S. largely from United Nations refugee camps in Jordan.
Insider’s insider had sway over DNC A WikiLeaks email dump on July 22 revealed that Debbie Wasserman Schultz used her position as head of the DNC to work in concert with the Clinton campaign to undermine the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt. Schultz was forced to resign over the emails. Issues used to undermine Sanders’ campaign included his faith, or lack thereof. The Clinton campaign tried to reschedule the Illinois presidential primary to lower the chances a moderate Republican would get a boost following the Super Tuesday primaries. “The Clintons won’t forget what their friends have done for them,” wrote Robby Mook, who later became Clinton’s campaign manager, in the November 2014 email to Podesta. | 0 | [
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FMD4458 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Chinese President Xi Jinping offered warm words for U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday, calling him a friend and saying he expected Trump s visit to China in November would be wonderful . China s relationship with the United States has been strained by the Trump administration s criticism of Chinese trade practices and by demands that Beijing do more to pressure North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons and missiles programs. Xi and Trump met for the first time in person at Trump s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in April. Trump has since played up his personal relationship with Xi, even when criticizing China over North Korea and trade. Meeting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at Beijing s Great Hall of the People, Xi said he had enjoyed his meetings with Trump and that the two had made considerable efforts to push the development of China-US relations. The two of us have also maintained a good working relationship and personal friendship, Xi said, in comments in front of reporters. I believe that President Trump s upcoming visit to China means an important opportunity for the further development of China-U.S. relations, Xi added. And I believe his visit will be a special, wonderful and successful one. In comments later reported by China s Foreign Ministry, Xi added that cooperation was the only correct choice for both countries, whose common interests far outweighed their differences. Both countries must on the basis of respecting each other s core interests and important concerns appropriately handle, via dialogue and consultations, differences and sensitive issues , the statement cited Xi as saying. Trump will travel to Asia in November for the first time since becoming president, stopping in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines on a trip expected to be dominated by the North Korea nuclear threat. Tillerson told Xi that Trump and his wife Melania were looking forward to going to Beijing. This is a relationship that continues to grow and mature on the strength of the relationship between yourself and President Trump. And we look forward to advancing that relationship at the upcoming summit, he said. There was no mention of North Korea in comments made in front of journalists at any of Tillerson s meetings, which also included top diplomat State Councillor Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. China s Foreign Ministry, in separate statements on Tillerson s meetings with Yang and Wang, simply said they exchanged views on the situation on the Korean peninsula, without elaborating. | 1 | [
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FMD4459 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Women’s shoe clearance! We’ve got your size! Save 20 percent! Macy’s has discount fever, and signs like these pepper its sprawling flagship store in Manhattan. But while shoppers love a sale, those discounts are coming at a steep price to Macy’s and the country’s other large department stores. “It’s poison,†said Mark Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. “They’ve created no motivation for consumers to respond to their promotions, since if you missed this week’s sale you just need to wait around until next week. †Or not at all. Shoppers may be addicted to discounts, but not necessarily those at the leading department stores. This week, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Kohl’s and J. C. Penney all reported unexpectedly weak sales, driving their stocks sharply lower. The headwinds facing department stores are coming from several directions, including from online shopping. The companies’ earnings look especially bleak in comparison with the broad retail picture in the United States. On Friday, the government reported that overall retail spending had ticked higher in April. But the results this week reinforced the degree to which companies have failed to adjust to discount retail chains like Ross and the TJX companies, T. J. Maxx and Marshalls, which have spent years developing their niche and are attracting more people. “Consumers like that idea of getting a bargain,†said Neil Saunders, a retail analyst for Conlumino. “That certainly has been unhelpful to the department stores. †of course, is nothing new. But the hunt itself has changed. The economic collapse of 2008 forced many Americans to cling tighter to their purse strings, and forced many shoppers to more aggressively hunt for options. That spurred many consumers toward retailers like T. J. Maxx, Marshalls and Ross, where many have remained, according to Jharonne Martis, the director of consumer research for Thomson Reuters. “During the recession, they were a favorite among customers,†Ms. Martis said. A decade ago, Mr. Saunders said, there were sharper distinctions between the customers who shopped at Nordstrom and those who picked through the racks at stores. In 2005, 5. 1 percent of shoppers who regularly used retailers also shopped at department stores for clothing, he said. Last year, that figure rose to 12. 9 percent. “People that used and discount channels tended to be a bit more isolated,†Mr. Saunders said. “Now, there’s a lot more customer sharing, and a lot more people who use department stores also use retailers much more freely. †The difference between the products offered at the different retailers is also getting blurry. Department stores and discount chains have sold increasingly similar products. Macy’s and Nordstrom may have once been associated with brands like Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, but those labels now frequently appear in the aisles as well, Ms. Martis said. That has made department stores less of a destination, she said. Still, department stores are trying to match the demand for discount shopping, slashing prices and combining points in a frenzied attempt to keep up with an increasing variety of rivals. But they have not done enough to stem the tide of losses. “When you have a significant amount of clearance, you dilute your own brand,†Ms. Martis said. “The department stores were built for a different decade. †Macy’s and J. C. Penney declined to comment for this article. Nordstrom and Kohl’s could not be reached for comment. Ms. Martis and other retail analysts said that department stores had done a poor job of keeping up with younger consumers. Those shoppers are often and generally less inclined to shop at the same stores that their parents once did. The promotions might do a good job of targeting people looking for low prices, but the brands sometimes do not. At Macy’s in Herald Square on Thursday, shoppers combed through entire rooms dedicated to discount shoes. But the assortment, however plentiful, may not have been for everyone. “They probably missed out on that whole sneaker thing,†said Jacqui Booker, 38, who had come to Macy’s to look at appliances. “The fact that they don’t sell a Jordan in here is probably keeping every kid away,†Ms. Booker said, referring to Air Jordan, Nike’s popular athletic shoe. On Friday, J. C. Penney reported a loss of 32 cents a share, and said that sales at stores open more than a year had fallen 0. 4 percent. sales at Macy’s fell 5. 6 percent in the first quarter. Some department stores, like Nordstrom, have been aggressive about opening their own discount chains. But while business improved at Nordstrom’s discount division, Nordstrom Rack, net sales fell 2. 2 percent. Also on Friday, the Commerce Department reported that retail sales rose 1. 3 percent in April, driven in large part by sales of automobiles and gas, along with online shopping. “The retail sales numbers underscore the shift, underscore the challenges department stores are having,†said Richard Jaffe, a managing director and retail analyst with Stifel Nicolaus. Amazon represents one of those main challenges. The online shopping giant has increasingly pulled consumers away from traditional stores, and has shown every indication that it intends to grow. But while Amazon accounts for half of all by some estimates, most shopping in the United States still happens in person. The problems at the larger department stores, Mr. Saunders argued, run deeper. “Amazon plays a big part of this, but it’s not the only part,†Mr. Saunders said. “I think retailers have to take some share of the blame themselves. †Including, some might say, for their discounts. “I think at this point,†Ms. Booker said, “everyone that knows Macy’s knows that you go on Sale Wednesday. †| 1 | [
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FMD4460 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: By BAXTER DMITRI
Is the s**t is about to hit the fan? Is the fur about to start flying? Maybe! It’s too early to tell. With a new investigation promised into the true facts behind 9/11, there are already rumors surfacing . . . rumors that certain people in high places are getting a bit worried and thinking about buying one-way tickets to Tel Aviv. WHODUNIT?!?
Donald Trump’s plans for his first 100 days in office are raising eyebrows around the world, but of all the items on his agenda it is the reopening of the 9/11 investigation that will provide the greatest earthquake for the establishment.
Trump believes that 9/11 has not been properly investigated and he plans to get to the bottom of it. “First of all, the original 9/11 investigation is a total mess and has to be reopened,” Trump said.
The election of Donald Trump has rocked the establishment and things are only going to get rockier for them during his first term. There is a reason George W. Bush didn’t vote for Trump in the election, leaving the presidential line blank and voting Republican down-ballot. Trump has pledged to investigate 9/11 in a way it has not been investigated before.
For the first time 9/11 will be investigated by someone who isn’t part of the establishment, with skin in the game and plenty to lose.
“First of all, the original 9/11 investigation is a total mess and has to be reopened” Trump announced to supporters. “How do two planes take out three buildings in the same day? I never got my head around the fact that nothing is mentioned about the destruction of Building 7 in the 585 page document,” he explained, talking about World Trade Center 7 which also collapsed – inexplicably – during the September 11 attacks.
Donald Trump has also taken cracks at former president George W. Bush. There will be no covering up for former presidents on Trump’s watch.
“The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush,” he said in a February debate. “He kept us safe? That is not safe. That is not safe.”
“Why did the administration at the time not take legal means against Saudi Arabia? Weren’t 19 of the high-jackers from Saudi Arabia? Americans deserve answers and I will definitely request a new investigation so that this horrible tragedy never happens again.” Donald Trump and the 9/11 Truth movement
While Trump might be railing against the establishment in reopening the 9/11 investigation, he has received support on this issue from a number of public personalities who have demanded the case be revisited – and not behind closed doors.
Former Senator Bob Graham has been demanding a new, transparent investigation “For years I have been campaigning for the release of the 2002 Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee 9/11 Inquiry’s report, to no avail” explains the former Governor of Florida. “These missing pages point to the direct involvement of the government of Saudi Arabia. Why are these being kept secret? Who has to gain from these games of secrecy?” he asks.
“I have read these documents myself and if the American public knew what was in these documents, there would be a revolution tomorrow in the streets of America” he acknowledged during a radio interview. “Americans deserve to know the truth” he concluded, visibly angered by the whole affair.
Since 2002, the release of a number of 9/11 Commission Report documents is hindered because they are congressional records, hence they are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The long withheld 28 pages were partially released to the public this year – heavily redacted – and the Saudi government claimed the release proved they were not responsible for supporting or financing the attacks. But it’s not as simple as that. There are direct ties to the Saudi hierarchy in the 28 pages. There are a lot of questions that need answering, and they were never going to be addressed under a Clinton presidency with all her ties to Saudi Arabia. But with President Trump’s executive powers, everything has changed. The establishment are on edge. More than half the country doesn’t believe the official version of what happened that day. There is now a renewed belief that this biggest of lies and cover ups is about to be dismantled.
The establishment did all it could to destroy Trump’s election chances.
Now they are on edge. Like this? Share it now. 3 thoughts on “ TRUMP BOMBSHELL! — I’m reopening 9/11 Investigation ” Gilbert Huntly says: | 0 | [
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FMD4461 | 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: iCloud Storage Scam Email Falsely Claims Your Payment Failed and 'All Your Photos Will Be Deleted' Claim summaries: Scammers pretending to be iCloud in emails claimed that a user's photos and videos would be deleted if their credit card details weren't updated.
contextual information: In late October 2023, the latest iteration of iCloud storage scam email messages circulated in users' inboxes. The subject line of one message that we reviewed read, "LAST ALERT: ALL YOUR PHOTOS WILL BE DELETED!" The message came from a dubious email address that did not end in @apple.com or @icloud.com. The email address showed the display name of "iCloud Storage." The message began as follows: iCloudFailed to attempt payment when renewing yourCloud storage subscription0 GB 48.9GB /50 GB We failed to renew your iCloud storageYour photos and videos will be deleted!! Your payment method has expired: Update your payment information!If you don't have enough iCloud space, you can upgrade storage plan The link in the message led to a page on menoshold.com, a scam website without a homepage. The page read as follows: Your iCloud Storage Is Full! Your photos, videos, files and private data will be lost. As part of our loyalty program, you can receive an additional 50GB storage by paying $1.95 one time only before all the files are deleted. Answer the following 3 simple questions to claim your special offer now. After filling out a brief survey, the page then displayed the following text: You will be redirected to the next page to claim the 50GB iCloud Storage with $1.95 only. Fill in your basic information and pay $1.95 with credit card or debit card. The 50GB iCloud storage will be added to your current device. The scam then led to a final page on hyperimmunizing.com, also a scam website with no homepage. On the page, we noted that the terms and conditions indicated the entire ruse was a hidden subscription scam, meaning that scammers were attempting to fool users into signing up for recurring monthly fees for services they did not choose. The terms did not mention a specific monthly cost or the types of services that would be provided, but did say at least some users would be "automatically billed every thirty (30) days to the credit card you provided." For readers who might be looking for customer support information, the hyperimmunizing.com website showed the phone number (833) 282-4266 and the email address support@bigprizestoday.com. A representative reached by the phone number only told Snopes that they were a third-party company that was located in Southeast Asia and that they provide services for U.S.-based firms. We advise users who submitted their credit card information to contact their credit card companies to alert them of this activity. If iCloud users have questions for Apple about their storage subscriptions, we recommend visiting the official website for iCloud Support. Apple also published a page about how to recognize scams that impersonate the company. the official website for iCloud Support page Recognize and Avoid Phishing Messages, Phony Support Calls, and Other Scams. Apple Support, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204759. | 0 | [
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