Daily Fact Check from NewsGuard AI

Did Trump announce the end of the Iran war and declare “total victory” this month?

Popular Health Influencer Promotes Radioactive Water, a Long-Discredited, Dangerous Health Hoax

By John Gregory

What’s happening: Spurred on by a popular health influencer, social media users are claiming that exposure to the radioactive element radium in drinking or bathing water is safe and actually provides health benefits, a dangerous false claim that was discredited nearly a century ago.

Context: Bathing in water containing radium or consuming products with radioactive water was baselessly promoted as a cure-all beginning in the 1920s.

• One method of consuming radium water was irradiating water at home in ceramic jugs lined with radium and uranium. Companies that sold the jugs promised that they could “remove cellular poisons,” according to a 2010 press release by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST.

A closer look: The false claim has been resurrected, thanks to Matt Roeske, a health influencer and owner of Arizona-based supplement company Cultivate Elevate.

• In a Sept. 24, 2026, video posted on the Cultivate Elevate Instagram account, which has 501,000 followers, Roeske drank from what he said was a vintage 1920s radium water jug, saying radium water was “perfectly harmless” and could “heal every single ailment.” The caption on the video stated, “Radioactive Radium Water healing all in 1929.” The video received 170,000 views and 10,700 likes in five days.

• Roeske posted the video the same day on X, where he has 121,000 followers, receiving another 281,000 views and 6,800 likes. An Urdu-language X account, @Pro_truthseeker, reposted Roeske’s video on Sept. 25, receiving 15,000 views and 52 likes.

Actually: Exposure to high levels of radium can cause severe health effects, including anemia, cancer, and death, according to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

• A 2010 NIST study tested the same brand of vintage radium water jugs seen in Roeske’s video and found that the water contained high levels of radon — the gas formed as radium decays — and also toxic levels of arsenic and lead.

Another radium water product from decades ago, Radithor, was described by its manufacturer to be “harmless in every respect” and a cure for diabetes, heart disease, and “sexual decline,” among other conditions, according to a 2008 document produced for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education in Tennessee.

• The dangers of radium water consumption gained national attention in 1932 when wealthy socialite and industrialist Eben Byers died from jawbone cancer caused by years of consuming Radithor. A 1932 Time magazine article described Byers’ condition before his death, saying that most of his teeth and jaw had been removed and “the remaining bone tissue of his body was slowly disintegrating and holes were actually forming in his skull.”

• In a Sept. 26 Instagram video, Roeske claimed that Byers’ death “was a make-believe story” meant to suppress the health benefits of radium water.

• In response to a NewsGuard email seeking comment from Roeske, a Cultivate Elevate customer support representative did not comment on the health claims and instead sent NewsGuard links to two other Roeske videos about radium water.

Zooming out: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s website cites the dangers of radium water products, particularly Radithor, as one of the motivating factors behind a push to expand the agency’s authority in the 1930s.

• These efforts eventually resulted in the passage of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, which remains in effect today, requiring all new medications to go through an approval process to prove they are safe before being sold to consumers and prohibiting companies from claiming their products cure ailments without supporting scientific evidence.

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Midterms Watch: Elon Musk Falsely Claims that Requesting a Voter ID in New York and California Is “Illegal”

By Aron Ouzilevski

What’s happening: X owner Elon Musk and other pro-Trump social media users are falsely claiming that New York and California have made it illegal for poll workers to ask voters for ID, thus making election fraud what Musk called “mandatory.”

A closer look: On Sept. 27, 2026, Musk wrote on X: “In New York and California, they have made it illegal for officials to ask for or for you to show your voter ID! They made election fraud mandatory.” The post received 6.5 million views and 100,000 likes in one day.

• The next day, pro-Trump commentator Eric Daugherty, chief content officer of the Florida-based conservative news outlet Florida’s Voice, posted: “NOW: Elon Musk just sounded the alarm to millions of Americans that New York and California ‘made election fraud MANDATORY.’ In New York and California, they have made it illegal for officials to ask for or for you to show your voter ID!’” The post received 155,600 views and 5,600 likes.

Asked about his post, Daugherty told NewsGuard in a direct message: “NewsGuard is heavily biased toward Democrats and was wrongly funded by taxpayers during the Biden administration. Of course they’d try to justify voter fraud and the blatant theft of our republic by attacking figures like Elon Musk who merely want voters to prove who they are — which should be the bare minimum. The real victims are American citizens being disenfranchised, not lawmakers in blue states who prohibit a broad requirement of photo ID.”

Musk did not respond to an emailed request for comment on his post.

Actually: It is not illegal for poll workers in either state to ask for a voter’s ID. In fact, poll workers in both states are directed to ask for ID when a voter’s identity has not been verified during registration, state election officials said.

• The New York State Board of Elections states on its website that first-time voters will be asked for an ID “if the Board is unable to verify a voter’s identity before Election Day.” In New York, election officials first attempt to verify voters’ identities using a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number, according to the election board website.

• The California secretary of state’s website says that people voting for the first time after registering by mail “may be asked to show a form of identification when you go to the polls” if they did not provide a driver’s license number, California ID number, or the last four digits of a Social Security number when registering.

Both states generally instruct poll workers not to ask other voters for ID. California’s 2026 poll worker training standards state: “Poll workers must not ask a voter to provide their identification unless the voter list clearly states identification is required.” New York City’s poll worker manual gives a similar instruction, saying, “Do not ask the voter for ID unless ‘ID required’ is next to their name in their voter records.”

• However, these rules are not codified in state law, and they do not prohibit election officials from asking for IDs in all instances.

Zooming out: Musk has donated almost $91 million to boost Republicans ahead of the midterms, Business Insider reported.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to include more context on state rules for poll workers and comment from Eric Daugherty.

This newsletter was edited by Sofia Rubinson and Eric Effron.

Reality Check is produced by co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.

We launched Reality Check to shed light on the false claims spreading online, how they spread, and the forces behind them. Each day, we aim to bring you the story behind your news feed and help you stay informed about the false claims circulating in the news. Support our work by becoming a premium member.

Have feedback? Send us an email: realitycheck@newsguardtech.com.

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You know how I draw cars for Autopian members on their birthdays? Or close-ish to their birthdays? Well, I do and it’s just another perk of that incredible state of being we call Autopian Membership. Anyway, one of the ones I just did was a request for a Suzuki LJ20. I was aware of these before, in a vague way, but once I really started looking at them, I was hopelessly smitten.

The LJ series – which stood for Light Jeep, another reminder of how the term “jeep” was on the path to genericization, like Kleenex or Hoovering in the UK – was the start of the series that most of the world knows as the Jimny.

These early LJ series of Jimnys, introduced in 1970, seriously minimal. Jimnys have always been Kei-class, but back in 1970 that meant 360cc engines and under 10 feet of length. The early LJ10s had a two-stroke, two-cylinder air-cooled engine making 24 horsepower, good for 50 mph even with the off-road focused gearing. The thing only weighed 1290 pounds, after all.

Check out this great cowboy-inspired commercial from when they came out:

These two-stroke engines also had an oil injection system so you didn’t have to mix your oil and gas, like some sort of filthy animal. Later, Suzuki switched to a liquid-cooled engine for their LJ20, which got a power bump to a ravenous 28 hp.

Here’s a nice walkaround of one of those:

I suppose if anything, these Jimnys really showcase what a good design the basic original Bantam/Willys/Ford army Jeep was, because this is essentially a scaled-down version of that.

A little boxy tub on wheels, basically, with some seats and an engine bolted in. But it all just works! For moving two people and some cargo around rough terrain, it’s pretty hard to beat. Here, squint really hard at that picture up there and let’s see if we can see through it a bit:

Hey you did it! Great job! As you can see, it’s pretty straightforward Jeep-type engineering under there, ladder frame and leaf springs and solid axles, just all scaled down.

Suzuki’s brochures get pretty technical, including things like this diagram of the new liquid-cooling system for the LJ20. Look how tall that carb stands on an otherwise pretty compact and low engine!

Suzuki did get a little hyperbolic with some of their technical details, too. Like, sure, the CCI oil injecting system is great, but is it really “Epoch-making?” That feels a little too much. An epoch is a pretty big deal. We don’t call the last quarter of the 20th century the Suzuki CCI Epoch, after all.

They also were a bit hyperbolic with this description of the interior:

“Surrounds you with safe comfort?” I’m not sure I really believe any of those words. That interior is barely surrounding anything. It’s almost just two exposed seats on a platform. I’m sure those seats are comfortable enough, but this ain’t no Lincoln. And safe? An open 1970s Kei-class car is only safe if you run it into a wall of marshmallows or something.

The brochure also listed some interesting examples of how to outfit and use these LJs, including the usual pumping and hauling and fire service kinds of things. I was surprised to see this one, showing a whole camera/video tape rig in there. They mention it all running from the generator, which feels like a lot, but maybe? Those big CRTs did kind of slurp power.

Also, look at those spools of cable! And just how big all that stuff is! Your phone’s video recording abilities likely eclipse anything all this hardware could do.

Anyway, thanks for letting me share my daily obsession. I’d love to try and drive one of these early Jimnys; It’d be fun to take one out on some trail with David in his DIY WWII Jeep and see how it compares!

The post I’m Kind Of Smitten With These Early Two-Cylinder Two-Stroke Suzuki Jimnys appeared first on The Autopian.

We unveiled the 111CS at the Lotus United Gathering in Salt Lake City to a crowd of Lotus fanatics!  It was well received and the community was full of questions!

Hype merchants have a habit of overdoing it, but there’s no denying that China is making the US look more than a little antiquated when it comes to electric vehicles. Some of that is due to a deep integration of connected services and an extension of the car as part of the owner’s digital life—think additional infotainment screens and AI personal assistants, but with an Android phone-maker’s cadence of updates rather than that of a traditional car company. Other advances sound more appealing. China’s OEMs are in a battle over who can charge the fastest, and this week, Geely fired its latest salvo.

China might have a much younger driving culture than North America or Europe, but it has still been long enough to condition those drivers to how long it takes to fill a tank of gas. For all their many improvements over internal combustion engine vehicles—far greater efficiency, instant torque, very little NVH, more reliabiity, and so on—EVs do still take longer to recharge than it takes to refuel a car with a liquid.

At least until now, it seems.

Geely’s new battery can charge at up to 2.2 MW and will recharge from 10 to 70 percent in 4.5 minutes. A 10–98 percent charge takes 8 minutes and 40 seconds. Predictive thermal management is done through AI, with an average pack temperature of 55˚C and a peak temperature during charging of 65˚C, Geely said.

And while you might think pumping large amounts of energy into a battery quickly and repeatedly could harm its health, Geely says that, using AI, the system applies micro pulses of current to “reactivate lithium ions accumulated at the negative electrodes during repeated fast charging,” extending battery life by 20 percent. The pack has been tested in both the Zeekr 001 and Lynk and Co 10—maybe we'll see a Volvo or Lotus use the same tech someday.

The numbers eclipse those from BYD, which debuted a new product in March that can charge from 10 to 70 percent in 5 minutes and 10 to 97 percent in 9 minutes. But CATL still looks like it’s on top; in April, it announced an LFP battery that can charge from 10 to 80 percent in 3 minutes 44 seconds, or from 10 to 98 percent in 6 minutes and 27 seconds.

In the US, the most powerful car chargers deliver a modest fraction of those megawatt outputs. All but the newest Tesla Superchargers top out at 250 kW and 400 V; in the 800 V world, Electrify America maxes out at 350 KW, IONNA’s new machines are rated for 400 kW, and ChargePoint has a 600 kW charger on the market.

Meanwhile, our electric vehicles lag in their charging speeds. Hyundai and Kia’s popular range of 800 V EVs (including the Ioniq 5 and EV6) will actually max out around 240 kW on an 800 V DC fast charger, and Porsche’s Taycan will only accept up to 320 kW, not all 350. The latest wave of 800 V German EVs like the BMW iX3 and Porsche Cayenne are now arriving with 400 kW DC charging capabilities.

Megawatt charging in the US is still the preserve of heavy-duty EVs—buses, semis, and the like; ChargePoint told Ars recently that “if you take two Express solos [its new 600 KW charger] and join them with a common DC bus, you now can deliver 1.2 megawatts through one port,” said ChargePoint CEO Rick Wilmer.

“Now, obviously, a NACS connector or a CCS1 connector won't handle that much power, but an MCS connector will. So that's all part of the roadmap for the Express architecture, with the Solo being the first product off that architecture,” he said.

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Last year, the Trump administration did what it could to shut down work on the next US National Climate Assessment, eliminating funding for the US Global Change Research Program and booting hundreds of contributing authors. The administration even took past reports offline, forcing others to host copies so the information would still be accessible. And this all comes despite the fact that these reports are legally required.

Later in the year, the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society announced an effort to give researchers a central place to compile the kind of work that would have fed the next US report, as well as potential regional and local reports. This “US Climate Collection” works differently from the US Global Change Research Program or the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Rather than facilitating the writing of a giant, coordinated report, the groups are inviting teams of researchers to publish peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals, which will then be added to a centralized resource for future report-writers.

The first paper has now been added to that collection. It’s the work of 175 authors (many of whom had been working on the US report), and it is actually being published in two journals—one operated by the American Geophysical Union and one by the American Meteorological Society. That’s because this paper is intended to provide a roadmap to prioritize future contributions.

Assessments

Assessment reports like those produced by the US and the IPCC serve several purposes. Primarily, their authors read thousands of public papers so you don’t have to and provide a summary of what the existing evidence can and cannot tell us about a given topic. Not only does that give non-scientists a quick way to catch up on what we know, but it also creates reference points that are heavily cited by researchers themselves as they work to extend our knowledge.

In addition to being sources of information about scientific progress, assessment reports are also intended to be directly useful for planning and policymaking at all levels. Whether you’re a major city planning infrastructure to prevent flooding or a farmer looking to separate climate trends from weather variability, these reports should be go-to resources.

This new paper highlights a number of topics where scientists might best fill the vacuum created by the White House’s report-quashing actions. That includes some of the basics you would expect in any assessment report, like comparing measured trends to climate model projections.

But it also calls out areas that have seen developments in the last few years. Climate modeling has dabbled in machine-learning-based simulations, for example, as well as techniques to generate simulations with finer spatial resolution.

To-do lists

There have also been plenty of changes we'll need to catch up to on the human side. US climate policy overall has been a chaotic moving target. But on a more local scale beneath that, many climate adaptation and emissions reduction efforts are playing out. And while renewable energy continues to get cheaper and see more deployment, the AI data center rush has significantly reshaped the expectations regarding US electricity demand.

The paper also calls out ways that assessments could mirror or build on the regional focus employed by past National Climate Assessments. Zooming in on one portion of the United States is a great way to connect the dots and make the science more concrete and relatable. Using Alaska as an example, it notes that research connecting permafrost thaw and wildfires has recently explored how heavy metals like mercury can be subsequently released into surface waters.

One silver lining to working outside of a federally coordinated US National Climate Assessment would be that these analyses don’t have to stop at national borders. That could mean expanding analysis into Canada, or it could mean evaluating how trade links the US to a climate impact elsewhere in the world.

Following this publication, we’ll begin to see a variety of papers roll in covering these topics, and likely more besides. “I see this roadmap as seeding and accelerating a distributed synthesis effort rather than launching a centrally managed research program,” Melissa Kenney, a leader author on the paper, told Ars. “The goal is for papers to synthesize our current scientific understanding of key topics to support a network of climate assessment efforts occurring at state, local, sectoral, or other scales.”

Any groups working on those assessment reports will then be able to lean on the US Climate Collection in the absence of a high-quality US National Climate Assessment.

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2026. DOI: 10.1175/BAMS‐D‐26‐0305.1 and Earth’s Future, 2026. DOI: 10.1029/2025EF007336 (About DOIs).

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