Everyday News

In September 2014, 21-year-old Jasmine Tridevil claimed that she’d had a third breast surgically implanted. The story was so irresistible that outlets across the world ran with it, until it was revealed to be a hoax and we all got on with our lives. But this wasn’t the only viral story launched by the woman.

In 2013, a Florida woman supposedly chose not to turn her attacker over to the police, provided he stand beside the roadside wearing a sign saying “I beat women, honk if I’m a scumbag.” It was an Internet sensation, and it came courtesy of Tridevil’s alter-ego, Alisha Jasmine Hessler. Hessler apparently has skill with this. Her Florida-area business listings were changed after the triple-breasted story broke to claim she’s a “provider of Internet hoaxes.”

As of March 2015, she appears to now be getting her kicks talking to tabloid newspapers about her status as a hoaxer.

7. Emma Watson’s nude photos were never going to leak online.

8. That time a teenager working in Target became a huge meme was not a marketing stunt; the claim that it was a marketing stunt was, in fact, a marketing stunt.

9. A young dog attack victim probably wasn’t asked to leave a KFC because of the scars on her face.

10. Nobody was giving away $10,000,000 for retweets.

11. There wasn’t a UFO over Portsmouth, England.

12. There wasn’t a wolf in an Olympic luger’s hallway.

13. This wasn’t a photo from the polar vortex that hit the US in January.

14. This wasn’t the most adorable mugshot ever.

           

15. This is not a true fact about the casting of the Harry Potter films.

16. France did not ban working after 6pm.

17. There was not a deadly great white shark heading straight for the UK.

18. The UK was also not threatened by a ghost ship infested with cannibal rats.

19. Doritos could not give you Ebola.

                        

20. Red-headed people did not face extinction.

21. A computer did not pass the Turing test.

22. This was not former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s toilet.

23. This was not a picture taken from a plane flying over a rainbow.

24. A sex tape that went viral was not of an Argentinian teacher having sex with a student.

 

 

25. A Chick-Fil-A manager did not ban the word “bae”.

26. Jose Canseco’s finger did not fall off.

27. The Turin shroud was not created by a radioactive earthquake.

28. Banksy was not arrested and that is not his face.

29. The NRA did not take out an ad on Grindr.

30. #EndFathersDay: not a feminist hashtag.

31. Malia Obama: not pregnant.

32. The Big Mac: not being discontinued.

33. Macaulay Culkin: not dead.

34. Wayne Knight: also not dead.

35. And nobody actually said “fuck her right in the pussy” on live TV, because it was a hoax, except then people started saying it anyway, so now it is real again.

(Reuters) - An Airbus operated by Lufthansa's Germanwings budget airline crashed into a mountainside in the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 people on board including 16 schoolchildren.

Germanwings confirmed its flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf went down with 144 passengers and six crew on board.

One of the plane's black box recorders has been found at the crash site, about 100 km (65 miles) north of the Riviera city of Nice, and will be examined immediately, France's interior minister said.

In Washington, the White House said the crash did not appear to have been caused by a terrorist attack, while Lufthansa said it was working on the assumption that the tragedy had been an accident, adding that any other theory would be speculation.

Aerial photographs showed smoldering wreckage and a piece of the fuselage with six windows strewn across the steep mountainside cut by ravines.

"We saw an aircraft that had literally been ripped apart, the bodies are in a state of destruction, there is not one intact piece of wing or fuselage," Brice Robin, prosecutor for the city of Marseille, told Reuters after flying over the wreckage in a helicopter.

Germanwings believed 67 Germans had been on the flight. Spain's deputy prime minister said 45 passengers had Spanish names. One Belgian was also aboard.

Also among the victims were 16 children and two teachers from the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium high school in the town of Haltern am See in northwest Germany, a spokeswoman said.

Barcelona's Liceu opera house said on Twitter that two singers, Kazakhstan-born Oleg Bryjak and German Maria Radner, had died while returning to Duesseldorf after they had performed in Wagner's Siegfried at the theater.

French police at the crash site about 2,000 meters (6,000 feet) above sea level said no one had survived and it would take days to recover the bodies due to difficult terrain, snow and incoming storms.

Police said search teams would stay overnight at altitude. "We are still searching. It's unlikely any bodies will be airlifted until Wednesday," regional police chief David Galtier told Reuters.

In Paris, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament: "A helicopter managed to land (by the crash site) and has confirmed that unfortunately there were no survivors."

It was the first crash of a large passenger jet on French soil since the Concorde disaster just outside Paris nearly 15 years ago. The A320 is a workhorse of aviation fleets and one of the world’s most used passenger jets.

It has a good safety record. However, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network, Tuesday's crash was the third most deadly involving an A320. In 2007 a TAM Linhas Aereas A320 shot off a runway in Brazil, killing 187 people, while 162 people died when an Indonesia AirAsia jet went down in the Java Sea in December.

SHARP DESCENT

Germanwings said the plane started descending one minute after reaching its cruising height and continued losing altitude for eight minutes.

"The aircraft's contact with French radar, French air traffic controllers, ended at 10.53 am at an altitude of about 6,000 feet. The plane then crashed," Germanwings' Managing Director Thomas Winkelmann told a news conference.

Winkelmann also said that routine maintenance of the aircraft was performed by Lufthansa on Monday.

Experts said that while the Airbus had descended rapidly, its rate of descent did not suggest it had simply fallen out of the sky.

France's DGAC aviation authority said air traffic controllers initiated distress procedures after they lost contact with the Airbus.

"The aircraft did not itself make a distress call but it was the combination of the loss of radio contact and the aircraft's descent which led the controller to implement the distress phase," a DGAC spokesman said.

In emergencies, pilots are trained to try to fly the aircraft as their first priority, then pay attention to navigation and only then communicate with the ground.

The aircraft came down in an alpine region known for skiing, hiking and rafting, but which is hard for rescue services to reach. The search and recovery effort based itself in a gymnasium in the village of Seyne-les-Alpes, which has a small private aerodrome nearby.

STORMS, SNOW, CLOUD

As helicopters and emergency vehicles assembled, the weather was reported to be closing in.

“There will be a lot of cloud cover this afternoon, with local storms, snow above 1,800 meters and relatively low clouds. That will not help the helicopters in their work,” an official from the local weather center told Reuters.

Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr, who planned to go to the crash site, spoke of a "dark day for Lufthansa".

"My deepest sympathy goes to the families and friends of our passengers and crew," Lufthansa said on Twitter, citing Spohr.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would travel to the site on Wednesday. Germanwings and the Catalan regional government were preparing to take Spanish relatives there.

Family members arrived at Barcelona’s El Prat airport, many crying and with arms around each others’ shoulders, accompanied by police and airport staff.

In Llinars del Valles, the Spanish village that hosted the German schoolchildren, Mayor Marti Pujol said the whole village was distraught. "The families knew each other," he told Reuters. "The parents had been to see them off at 6 this morning."

King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain called off a state visit to France in a sign of mourning for the victims. They had arrived in Paris minutes after the crash happened.

In Washington, President Barack Obama said his thoughts and prayers were with Germanyand Spain after what he called the "awful tragedy".

Airbus confirmed that the plane was 24 years old, having first been delivered to Lufthansa in 1991. It was powered by engines made by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and France's Safran.

The 20-year-old black University of Virginia student bloodied by alcohol-control officers outside a bar last week was denied entry after a "polite and cordial" conversation because he named the wrong ZIP code for the address on the Illinois license he presented, the pub says.

The state police and Alcoholic Beverage Control officials are investigating the arrest of Martese Johnson, which triggered campus protests and allegations of racial profiling and police brutality.

Johnson "did not appear to be intoxicated in the least" and simply walked off after being turned away, the Trinity Irish Pub said in a statement released Saturday night. It called reports that bar staff were "belligerent" toward Johnson or that he was belligerent to management "patently untrue."

A Breathalyzer test showed Johnson was not intoxicated.

The statement also said the Charlottesville bar and restaurant "does not nor has it ever discriminated on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin," which is illegal.Johnson, a third-year honors student who serves as leadership development chairman for the university's Black Student Alliance, was charged with obstruction of justice without force and public intoxication or swearing. He needed 10 stitches to close a gash in his head.

In its version of events, the pub said co-owner Kevin Badke was at the door just after midnight Wednesday to monitor the St. Patrick's Day celebrations and be sure underage drinkers did not enter. He said the ABC had alerted the bar beforehand that it would be watched closely because "they were Irish."

Until 10 p.m., the pub admits patrons of all ages. After that, "under no circumstances do we allow anyone under the age of 21 to enter the establishment," the statement said.

Johnson had been in line to enter around 12:30 a.m., and Badke, who is from the south side of Chicago, was at the door helping check identifications. Badke asked Johnson for his ZIP code, a key question used to catch fake IDs. Johnson's answer didn't match the 2011 Illinois license he presented, and "probably realizing the reason for the error, stated that he had moved," the statement said.Moments after Johnson walked away, he was confronted by three uniformed ABC special agents. He is seen on a video down on the sidewalk, his face bloodied, steps from the Trinity entrance.

Johnson can be heard yelling that he was a U.Va. student. "How did this happen, you (bleeping) racists!" Johnson screams.

The ABC arrest report describes Johnson as "belligerent" and "very agitated." The arresting officers have been reassigned to administrative duties during the investigation, which Gov. Terry McAuliffe is monitoring.

The incident went viral Wednesday afternoon on Twitter and other social media, with scores of postings to #MarteseJohnson and #BlackLivesMatter.

Thursday, in a statement read by his attorney, Johnson said he was "shocked that my face was slammed into the brick pavement three blocks from where I attend school."

"I trust that the scars on my face and head will heal but the trauma from what the ABC officers did will stay with me forever," his statement said. "I still believe in our community. I know this community will support me during this time."