Parts of BSF HQs sealed as member of staff tests +ve

NEW DELHI: Two floors of BSF headquarters in Delhi have been sealed after a staff member tested positive for Covid-19. The 8-storey head office is located at Lodhi road that also houses the CRPF headquarters, which was sealed a day before.

NEW DELHI: Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) has released a chatbot on WhatsApp where people can message and check on fake news claims. Replies from IFCN’s database of debunked fake news will be available to people at +1 (727) 2912606.

Baybars Örsek, director at IFCN, Poynter Institute, said the chatbot which is available in English alone, and will be released in Hindi soon. “The service is launching in English but will be available in other languages, including Hindi, Portuguese and Spanish, in due course,” Örsek said.

A release from WhatsApp said through the bot, people can check whether a piece of content about Covid-19 has already been rated as false by fact checkers.

“Since January, more than 80 fact-checking organisations from 74 countries have identified more than 4,000 hoaxes related to the novel coronavirus. All this information now forms the CoronaVirusFacts database and is updated daily by the IFCN so that chatbot users can navigate and access its content,” the release said.

“The bot allows users to review IFCN’s database of 4,000 debunked myths, to search for fact checks by word or phrase, access to tips to protect themselves from falsehoods, and also to find out how to contact local fact checkers in their country,” Örsek said.

Through the bot, a user can access a global directory of factchecking organisations, and the user’s country is detected from the mobile country code to provide contacts of fact-checking organisations which are closest. “The person can then submit a piece of information for review directly to its local fact checker or visit it,” WhatsApp said in a release.