Yes, they’ve been debunked. It takes two seconds to Google the key words involved in both stories and there’s tons of debunking articles, using actual fact.
As Biggles says though, the unfortunate thing is that they don’t need to be true. They gather enough pace amongst supporters of the opposition, they get shared at the touch of a button on thousands of Facebook pages and then ignorant people who can’t be bothered to look it up/don’t want to look it up share it as gospel on messageboards etc.