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| - AFP's fact-check service debunks misinformation spread online. Here are some of our recent fact-checks: A video has been viewed tens of thousands of times on YouTube and Twitter alongside claims that it shows military vehicles in a Chinese city along the country's border with North Korea in late April 2020. The claims circulated online following speculation about the health of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The footage, however, shows armoured vehicles on the streets of Yancheng, a Chinese city some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) southwest of the China-North Korea border. With the US economy in freefall due to the COVID-19 pandemic, posts that list purported phone numbers for job seekers have been shared thousands of times on Facebook and Instagram. But the numbers do not reach hiring hotlines; the companies mentioned in the posts recommend looking for openings on their official websites. "This number is not associated with Verizon," a spokesperson for Verizon, one of the companies listed in the misleading posts, told AFP. Multiple posts on Facebook, Twitter and on various websites have shared a purported quote about the novel coronavirus from Japanese physician Tasuku Honjo, the 2018 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The posts claim that Dr Honjo said COVID-19 is "not natural" and was "manufactured in China". Dr Honjo has refuted the purported comments, dismissing the posts as "misinformation". An online report shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter claims that one of Britain's first volunteers to be injected with a trial COVID-19 vaccine has died. However, the claim is false and originated on a website with a history of spreading misinformation. UK health officials, the scientists behind the trial and the volunteer herself dismissed the report. Multiple Facebook posts shared hundreds of times claim that COVID-19 patients will experience respiratory symptoms that progress in severity in three distinct stages. The posts also prescribe purported home remedies for the disease, including eating garlic and gargling salt water and vinegar. Health experts, however, say that COVID-19 symptoms vary from person-to-person and the purported treatments listed in the posts have been widely debunked. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. afp
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