No, Castro is not Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s father
A story claiming that Fidel Castro was the father of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not true. The Canadian government denied it, Cuba has never claimed it and Trudeau’s parents never visited Cuba until several years after Justin Trudeau was born.
The Feb. 1 suicide of Castro’s oldest son, Fidelito, spurred the most recent report on several sites, claiming that Fidelito left a suicide note referring to Justin Trudeau as his half-brother. A theory that Castro was Trudeau’s father was also shared widely on social media after Castro’s death in 2016, when Trudeau caused an uproar over remarks praising the late Cuban leader.
The Canadian government denied the reports this week. Justin Trudeau was born on Dec. 25, 1971, to the late Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his wife, Margaret Trudeau.
Trudeau was born a little more than nine months after the marriage of his parents and more than four years before Margaret made a much-publicized first trip to Cuba and met Fidel Castro. Margaret was 22 when she married the 51-yearold prime minister and was the subject of intense media scrutiny. Experts say it would have been impossible for an earlier visit to Cuba to go unnoticed.
Cuban media have been unusually open about the death of Castro’s oldest son, Fidelito, describing it as a suicide after a long depression. Neither state media nor independent reporters covering the death have reported the existence of a suicide note.
Here’s a roundup of more of the most popular but completely untrue headlines of the week. None of these stories is legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked these out; here are the real facts:
NOT REAL: BREAKING: Second Parkland Shooter in custody
THE FACTS: Reports about a second shooter at a high school in Parkland, Florida, this week started with a tweet from an account falsely purporting to be former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. The account was later suspended and police say that suspect Nikolas Cruz acted alone in the massacre that killed 17 people. Also, Florida elections officials refuted a report that Cruz was a Democrat, saying that he was not a registered voter. And some social media posts this week wrongly identified Cruz as a man seen wearing a T-shirt with Communist leaders’ images. The man’s attorney said his name is Marcel Fontaine and he “suffered a lot of harassment” over the misused photo. Democratic votes; the company doesn’t even exist. The story posted by the site thepoliticonews claimed that Novus Ordo Sectorum Inc., owned by the Obamas and other wealthy Democrats, made machines that disrupted elections in 11 states. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission says that no voting machine maker by that name exists. Novo Ordo Sectorum, Latin for “New Order of the Ages,” appears on the $1 bill on a seal frequently cited by conspiracy theorists as a sign the U.S. is taking over the world with an authoritarian government.
NOT REAL: CDC Funded Study Shows the Vaccinated Shed 6.3 Times More Flu Virus, Just by Breathing
THE FACTS: The doctor who headed this University of Maryland study dismissed a chiropractor’s conclusion that the study says getting the flu vaccination makes a patient spread the virus more. Dr. Donald Milton says people who are not vaccinated for the flu are much more likely to transmit the virus than those who are. His study in January did conclude that patients who get vaccinated shed six times more aerosols, but said it was based on just 11 cases and does not imply that these patients would spread more flu.
NOT REAL: Trump refuses to let Jesus into his heart after learning he’s from Nazareth
THE FACTS: A Christian satire site falsely quoted President Donald Trump as calling Nazareth a “hole” and included an unrelated photo of the president from a year-old interview. The Babylon Bee, drawing a comparison between Trump’s reported remarks earlier this year about African countries, alleged that Trump said he wouldn’t accept Christianity anymore because he thought the town where Jesus came from was poor and undesirable. An accompanying image of Trump is from a January 2017 White House interview.
NOT REAL: Philip Morris Marlboro ‘M’ brand marijuana brand cigarettes now for sale in Four U.S. States
THE FACTS: Pot may be easy to find in at least nine states, but don’t hold your breath waiting for the Marlboro marijuana cigarettes to hit stores. Philip Morris said the company is not marketing marijuana products, despite a widely shared false story fearing a doctored, green-colored photo of a Marlboro pack of cigarettes, with packaging reading ‘Marlboro CANNABIS.’ The false story has circulated for years, with the latest iteration saying the ‘M’ brand is for sale in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska.