Probably bad News

Remember that time Brian Williams was shot down in a helicopter in Iraq?

Well now neither does Williams, and he is apologizing publicly for the erroneous story which he has been telling for years after being called out by some of the troops who actually were in the attack.

Sorry dude, I don't remember you being on my aircraft, said Lance Reynolds on Facebook. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.

He brought up the story in a news segment Friday about a tribute to a retired soldier at a New York Rangers game.

But crew members told the military news site Stars & Stripes that this never happened, and Williams issued a retraction.

I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago, Williams said on NBC Nightly News Wednesday. I want to apologize.

The soldiers of the 159th Aviation Regiments Chinook which was actually shot down claim Williams was in a helicopter that arrived an hour later.

I don't know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another. Williams said.

He later elaborated and apologized further in a Facebook comment:

You are absolutely right and I was wrong. In fact, I spent much of the weekend thinking I'd gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in '08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp.

Now people on Twitter have started a hashtag to shame him called #BrianWilliamsMisremembers, in which he claims he was part of some other major historical events.

Miss Israel, Doron Matalon, took an innocent selfie with some of her fellow competitors on January 11 and posted it to Instagram. Little did she know this would start a firestorm of epic proportions throughout the Middle East.

Because that is the type of world we live in now.

The issue here is that- along with Miss Slovenia, and Miss Japan – Miss Lebanon, Saly Greige, is also in the photo. And her country is not very happy about it, since they consider Israel to be an enemy state (they are technically still at war).

According to Lebanon's The Daily Star, some citizens want her to be stripped of her crown for such an atrocity.

"You could have avoided mingling with the Israeli contestant like previous Lebanese contestants have done throughout the years. And if you were harassed like you say, you could have at least avoided the huge smile [we see] on your face," wrote one critic on Twitter.

Matalon thinks the the whole thing is absurd.

"It doesn't surprise me, but it still makes me sad," she wrote on Instagram. "Too bad you cannot put the hostility out of the game, only for three weeks of an experience of a lifetime that we can meet girls from around the world and also from the neighboring country."

Miss Lebanon is taking a different approach to the outcry by both apologizing and denying any responsibility for the photo. In a re-post of the photo on Instagram (with Miss Israel cropped out) Greige says Matalon jumped in to take the shot last minute.

"Since the first day of my arrival to participate to [Miss Universe], I was very cautious to avoid being in any photo or communication with [Miss Israel], who tried several times to take a photo with me," she wrote.

The Miss Universe pageant issued the following statement in response to the controversy:

"It is unfortunate to know a photo of four smiling women from different parts of the world, working together at an event, could be misconstrued as anything other than what it is, a celebration of universal friendship, which the Miss Universe pageant is all about."

Thanks to this incident, the competition which airs on January 25, will likely have a much bigger audience.

From Elite Daily:

... the south London home of Junior Francis, 33, was raided in November of last year due to suspicions he was selling hard drugs.

Francis claimed he was innocent, but his mobile phone proved otherwise.

He had taken several photos of himself holding massive amounts of cash and even posted them to his Instagram account.

Accompanying one photo was the caption “everything I got I work hard for it,” loosely quoting a lyric from Notorious BIG.

As protests heat up over the possibility of true democracy in Hong Kong and unrest over political oligarchy, this appeared on the Facebook page of Chai Yan Leung. The daughter of Hong Kong chief executive CY Leung had this to say, via Boing Boing:

"The necklace on my profile pic is not a dog collar, silly!!!" she said. "This is actually a beautiful necklace bought at Lane Crawford (yes - funded by all you HK taxpayers!! So are all my beautiful shoes and dresses and clutches!! Thank you so much!!!!)". Chai Yan hit out at those taunting her saying, "Actually maybe I shouldn't say 'all you'- since most of you here are probably unemployed hence all this time obsessed with bombarding me with messages". She later said, "It's ok, your mother still loves you".

Somehow the story is even worse than that sounds.

Kam Brock, @Akilahbrock, was pulled over by New York police and her car impounded when officers suspected she was driving under the influence of marijuana (none was found in the vehicle). After getting upset with officers and undergoing a medical evaluation, doctors thought she was suffering from a mental disorder - thinking her claims of being followed by Barack Obama on Twitter were bunk.

The only problem is that Barack Obama DOES follow @AkilahBrock, and around 640,000 other people. And now Brock is faced with thousands in medical bills after being sent to a facility. She's now pursuing legal action as a result of these stupid, insane events.

Check out a full video of the coverage here.

The Ohio woman pictured here, Monica Hargrove, might just take the cake this week. According to the Columbus Dispatch:

The division's public-information team posted Hargrove's mug shot on Sept. 10 on its Facebook page with a description of the charge: On Aug. 30, police said, she gave a friend a ride to a pharmacy to pick up a prescription and then robbed the friend.

Hargrove called police and said she wanted her picture taken off the page.

The detective said sure, just come on down to headquarters. She did and was promptly locked up.

She since has been indicted on robbery, aggravated-robbery and kidnapping charges.