Answer to which two are fake

So which two were fake? Go here to the see the question first and don't scroll down, because the answers follow.

OK, you were warned.

NASA predicts our galaxy will collide with Andromeda: REAL. I got a bit tricky by not giving the expected time --- six billion years from now. NASA scientists announced at a press conference to announce that the Hubble space telescope allowed them to measure Andromeda's movement accurately for the first time. God too held a press conference, where he announced that the merger would probably not result in layoffs

Obviously I made up that last bit. God only tried to hold a press conference; he kept getting drowned out by Romney campaign staff who had been sent to disrupt and jeer. Well, why not? It worked so well at David Axelrod's press conference.
Prehistoric turtle ate crocodiles: REAL. Carbonemys cofrinii lived among other gigantic reptiles in Columbia roughly 60 million years ago, a few million years after the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. Carbonemys would have coped with 50-foot boas and 20-foot crocodiles, and paleontologists think it preyed on the smaller crocodiles as well as smaller turtles.

I expect the people behind the next story reacted to that turtle story by wondering how Adam and Eve avoided getting eaten by them.

North Carolina Republicans propose banning accurate sea level measurements: REAL. A group of Republican state legislators want to require that estimates of sea level be based only on historical data, making linear projections of trends since 1900. Scientists would be prohibited from including more recent data, like, don't be shocked, global warming. Water expands as it warms, the ocean is really big, you figure it out. You figure it out, because North Carolina scientists might shortly not be allowed to.

Would you believe this is being pushed by lobbyists for land developers along the coast who find rising sea levels dreadfully inconvenient? Global warming is false because then they would lose some of the shoreline they want to develop. Yes, to them, that makes sense.

Newly discovered star is closest to Earth: FAKE. Completely made up. There might be all sorts of objects closer than Alpha Centauri, which is about four light-years away (the distance light travels in a year) since astronomers think there all loads of "rogue planets" --- planet-sized objects unattached to any star, and we don't know how many smaller objects are floating around in interstellar space. Probably a closer star would be big news (and raise fascinating questions about how we managed not to see it before), so if that's what tipped you off that this was a fake, well done.

Ohio voter arrested for not having photo ID: FAKE. I used this one to make a point. It's easy to believe a story that sounds like just the sort of thing the people engaging in voter suppression would love to do --- why stop at taking people's voting rights away when we can have the fun of using law enforcement to harass these vicious people who probably don't even vote Republican? --- but it hasn't happened yet. That's why it's useful to engage in our own fact-checking, especially when a story makes the noxiousness of noxious people obvious, and sounds completely possible. To believe the anecdotes and factoids that support our side is exactly the trap Fox News and conservative talk radio keeps springing on their credulous audiences. Especially if the story is just perfect, research before repeating.

Of course, since I told you I made it up, you don't actually need to fact-check it. This time.