The world of news is complex - and false stories and visuals are often widely shared on social media. Blasting News’ editorial team spots the most popular hoaxes and misleading information every week to help you discern truth from falsehood . Here are the most shared claims of this week, of which none are legit.

USA

Claim: U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter: "My blood IS the vaccine"

Facts: A tweet presumably shared by U.S President Donald Trump’s official account reads: “My blood IS the vaccine”

Truth: The fake tweet has not been shared on Trump’s official account, as Snopes reports. It does not appear on Trump’s official account nor on the archives of Trump’s deleted messages, Snopes says.

USA

Claim: A campaign ad for Donald Trump features footage of Dr Anthony Fauci appearing to praise the U.S President’s coronavirus response

Facts: The member of the Coronavirus Task Force, Dr Anthony Fauci, appears in a campaign ad for Donald Trump. In the footage he is seen praising the U.S President’s response to coronavirus: “President Trump tackled the virus head on, as leaders should.” A second footage of Fauci follows where he says: “I can’t imagine that...

anybody could be doing more.”

Truth: Dr. Fauci shared a statement to this ad saying that the footage was from an interview on Fox News from March 2020 and that the comments attributed to him were shared “without his permission in the GOP campaign ad and were taken out of context from a broad statement made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.” He added: “In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate,” AFP Fact Check reports.

FRANCE

Claim: French Minister delegate in charge of Citizenship wants to compensate the drug dealers

Facts: The news platform, GerardInfos, that describes itself as “the media for France's populism,” has shared that the French Minister Delegate in charge of Citizenship, Marlene Schiappa, wants "to offer financial compensation to young dealers, to understand underage dealers.” The website describes it as a way of "making them win twice, between sales and compensation.” The information has been widely shared on French social media.

Truth: The general idea that Schiappa shared is to reintegrate young delinquents through a simple integration mechanism. Schiappa said it could be "town planning, collection or cleaning". The idea, she said, is "to compensate for what the 'little brothers' might earn by doing a few hours of choirs for the dealers. Based on the principle of “you break, you repair,” this can also have a positive impact in the city,” Le Monde reports.

UK

Claim: UK government-backed campaign, ‘Rethink. Reskill. Reboot’ which targets those who work in the arts sector

Facts: Social media users widely shared an ad from a UK government-backed campaign.

It shows an image of a ballet dancer with a message that reads: “Fatima’s next job could be in cyber (she just doesn’t know it yet).” This message insinuates, according to social media users, that the UK government targets people that work in the arts and thus doesn’t value this professional sector.

Truth: The ‘Rethink. Reskill. Reboot’ program intends to encourage people from “all walks of life” to consider a career in cyber security, said Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden in a tweet. Reuters reports that an archived version of the campaign shows several professional backgrounds from a barber to a barista, and thus does not just target the arts but various industries.

RWANDA

Claim: Rwanda has dropped French as an official language and replaced it with Swahili

Facts: A Facebook post that has been shared hundreds of times, according to AFP Fact Check, claims that Rwanda has dropped French as an official language to replace it with Swahili.

Truth: AFP Fact Check contacted Rwanda’s government spokesperson who said that French was still an official language, along with Kinyarwanda, English and Swahili.

BRAZIL

Claim: Image shows Pope Francis wearing a cross with the 'colors of gay pride'

Facts: Image shared on Facebook shows Pope Francis wearing a colored cross around his neck. According to the caption of the posts, the artifact have the “colors of gay pride.”

Truth: According to information from the Brazilian fact-checking agency Lupa, the cross has no relation to the LGBTQIA+ community, having been created by the Latin American Youth Ministry and given to the pope during an event in October 2018.

According to Lucas Galhardo, representative of the National Confederation of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) in Youth Ministry, the colors represent territorial regions: green corresponds to Mexico and Central America, yellow-orange to the Caribbean region, red to the Andes and blue to Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.

PORTUGAL

Claim: Beatified young man's body was "found intact" about 14 years after his death

Facts: Posts shared on Facebook claim that the body of the young Italian Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006, victim of leukemia, and beatified last Sunday by the Catholic Church, was “intact and incorruptible” when he was exhumed about 14 years after his death.

Truth: According to information from the Portuguese fact-checking agency Polígrafo, the bishop of theDiocese of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino, where the young man's body is exposed for the worship of the faithful until October 17, said in a statement last October 1st that the body was “in the normal state of transformation, typical of a corpse” and that a “reconstruction of the face with a silicone mask” was carried out.

SPAIN

Claim: Video shows the first dinosaur cloned by the Chinese

Facts: Video shared on Facebook claims to show what would be “the first dinosaur cloned by the Chinese.”

Truth: According to information from the Spanish fact-checking agency Newtral, the claim is false. The video actually shows an ultra-realistic mechanical replica of a Parasaurolophus that is part of the “Jurassic World: The Exhibition” exhibition in Chengdu, capital of the Chinese province of Sichuan.

LATIN AMERICA

Claim: Director of WHO says there will be another pandemic and that it will be “another tragedy”

Facts: An article shared thousands of times on Facebook claims that the director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom, warned at a press conference about the possibility of a new pandemic.

“The WHO chief cries and alerts the world: 'Prepare for another pandemic, it will be another tragedy',” reads the news headline.

Truth: The article shared in the posts does not specify the location or date on which the press conference would have occurred. According to information from the fact-checking service of the Peruvian newspaper La República, the video in the article is from a press conference held by the WHO on 9 July, 2020. On this occasion, Tedros Adhanom did cry when he called for solidarity and leadership between countries. However, there is no evidence that he said, at this or any other press conference, that there will be a new pandemic and that it will be “another tragedy.”

WORLD

Claim: Oreo launches new crab cake flavor

Facts: Image shared on social media claims to show the packaging of a new flavor of the famous Oreo cookies: crab cake.

Truth: According to Snopes, the claim is false. The image was originally published last May by @Hollow.Foods Instagram account. The account’s bio says that the page creates products for the “worlds worst grocery store.” In contact with Mondelez International, the company that manufacturers Oreo cookies, Snopes got the following answer: “I can confirm that this is not a real OREO cookie flavor.”