NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years.

The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment's Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said. - From Stars and Stripes article: NBC's Brian Williams Recants Iraq Story After Soldiers Protest


Just in case you still harbor any doubt that mainstream media is nothing but a pathetic amalgamation of useless liars and propagandists...

Enter NBC's star reporter Brian Williams. A man apparently so vain and attention starved that he actually invented a war story from 2003 to make himself look tougher. Then he continued to tell the false narrative until U.S. soldiers called him out on it.

What a complete and total embarrassment.

A Japanese man has been arrested for allegedly drugging and raping over 100 women by pretending to be running a clinical trial, local police and media reported on Tuesday. The suspect reportedly filmed the assaults and sold the footage as porn online.

The fake medical study involved "measuring blood pressure during sleep," AFP quoted the Japanese investigators as saying. The female victims came across the study through advertisements and agreed to willingly participate in what they believed to be research.

What the victims did not know, is that 54-year-old Hideyuki Noguchi was allegedly using sedatives that knocked the women unconscious in order to rape them. The perpetrator took victims to various hotels and resorts to conduct the trials and filmed each individual assault, according to police. Assaults took place over a two-year period, until November 2013.

The moment when a regional TransAsia passenger flight crash-landed into a river was caught on dash-camera. One of plane's wings cut through a highway railing mere meters from the filming vehicle.

Norwegian lawmakers are working on a bill to introduce a national ban on begging in the streets and even want to extend it by proposing jail for helping the homeless with money, food or shelter.

According to the draft of the law, begging in the streets will be punishable with fines and even imprisonment for up to one year. This was the original plan when the draft first emerged in June.

After further amendments, the same punishment may now hold true for those who give beggars money or offer any help, local media report. The bill was sent for more consultations until February, 15.

Plans to fight begging appeared last year after the polls showed that more than 60 percent of the population said it should be considered a crime. The government report stated there were up to 1,000 beggars in the country, which has a population of five million, and the majority of them were foreigners who "work" in groups.

Last year local councils got the right to ban begging in areas under their control but the new law is to be put into effect in the whole country.

The authors of the law also state it is necessary to punish people aiding beggars, as the police need the authority to prosecute those running begging networks as an organized business.

The harsh austerity measures imposed on Greece by its EU creditors led to the major spike in suicides in the country during the peak of its crisis in 2011 and 2012, a survey by the UK's leading medical magazine said.

"The introduction of austerity measures [in Greece] in June 2011 marked the start of a significant, sharp, and sustained increase in suicides, to reach a peak in 2012," the report by BMJ Open said.

The scientists, who analyzed data gathered by the Hellenic Statistical Authority from over the past 30 years, said that a total of 11,505 Greeks took their own lives - 9,079 men and 2,426 women - from 1983 to 2012.

The number of total suicides rose by over 35 per cent in June 2011 when the austerity measures were introduced, leading to violent protests and strikes, the research said. The number of people taking their lives was rising until the end of the year and continued into 2012, it added.

GR Editor's Note: The following letter by a young Ukrainian girl was brought to our attention. The letter translated from Russian depicts the drama of young girl, It describes the context of oppression prevailing in Ukraine's capital directed against those who opposed the Maidan.

Unfortunately, I had to close all posts in my VK(VKontakte) [Ed. note: VK is a version of Facebook] about Maidan (they aren't erased, but now are visible only to me) because after the Maidan "victory" in Kiev the real nightmare began. About that, people prefer not to speak because they are very much afraid. There are [Right Sector] militants everywhere.

My co-worker was beat in front of the entrance to her apartment for writing anti-maidan posts in her VK page. How did they find her? No one knows. She is in intensive care and at the first mention of that event, you can't appease her tears.

At school the other day, my neighbor's boy called his parents at the break using a mobile phone and spoke with them in Russian. His schoolmates took away his phone and broke it. They broke his bag, tore all his textbooks and note-books, and then beat him up. They demanded he speak only Ukrainian or "for the rest of his life be afraid because they will find and will cripple him". This is a boy in 7th grade.

From time to time on the streets it is possible to see this picture; As a person is approaching a group of people, the group asks questions: "Were you on Maidan? Do you support Maidan? " If both answers are "no" the group cruelly beats them and kicks them.

The number of new cases of Ebola rose in all three of West Africa's worst-hit countries last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, ending several weeks of encouraging declines across the region.

Suspicion of aid workers, especially in Guinea, and unsafe local practices were continuing to hamper efforts to halt the deadly virus, the United Nations agency said.

"An unsafe burial that took place in early January in the (Guinean) eastern prefecture of Lola, on the border with Côte d'Ivoire, has so far resulted in an outbreak of 11 confirmed cases," it said. Investigators had been initially rebuffed by the local population, it added.

Mourners have caught the haemorrhagic disease in the past by touching the highly-contagious bodies of dead loved ones, sometimes by laying hands on them to say goodbye.

The WHO said a week ago that there had been 99 confirmed cases in the week to Jan. 25, the lowest tally since June 2014, raising hopes that the tide might have turned.

But its new figures, for the week ending Feb. 1, showed the first recorded rise in new cases across all three countries this year.

The Arizona Attorney General's Office is asking for dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a teacher who was brutally assaulted and raped after being left in an unguarded prison classroom with a convicted sex offender.

The AG's reasoning is essentially this: the woman knew she was in a prison, so what did she expect?

No, seriously. That's the reasoning.

"Plaintiff is an ADOC (Arizona Department of Corrections) employee who routinely worked at the prison complex," Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Weisbard wrote in his motion to dismiss. "By being placed in a classroom at the complex, the officers were not placing Plaintiff in any type of situation that she would not normally face. The risk of harm, including assault, always existed at a prison like Eyman."

Weisbard made his pitch on Monday to U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton, who is pondering the matter.

Hopefully, she's pondering a nice strongly-worded response to AAG Weisbard.

The woman, who works for DOC as a teacher, was scheduled to give a GED exam to seven sex offenders housed at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Eyman on Jan. 20, 2014.

Normally, such tests are given in the visitation room, which is monitored by security cameras and corrections officers. But on that day, because of a special event, she was sent to an unmonitored classroom, handed a radio and told to use it if there was any trouble, her lawsuit says.

The test lasted 90 minutes during which not a single corrections officer checked on her or radioed to ask if everything was okay. As they finished, six inmates left, returning unescorted to their dorm. One, Jacob Harvey, lingered.

According to the lawsuit, the 20-year-old inmate grabbed her from behind and took her to the ground as she struggled. He then stabbed her repeatedly in the head with a pen, choked her, slammed her head into the floor, tore away her clothes and raped her, the lawsuit says.

There was a bizarre scene on Tuesday morning in Arapahoe County Court as the jury selection continues in the Aurora theater shooting trial.

A woman answered her summonses with a child. She said the child is one of two children she babysits.

The woman told the court the child has not been immunized for measles and couldn't go to day care.


She asked to be excused but was rescheduled for another day. That's when she fell to knees, crying and pulling chunks of her hair out.

At that point she was released from jury.

She was one of 66 potential jurors who were released on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday's incident came after two other prospective jurors previously showed up intoxicated. Another one was high and at least one person had to leave in an ambulance violently ill. Despite all the incidents, the jury selection process is moving more quickly than expected and individual questioning should begin next week.

Icelanders will soon be able to publicly worship at a shrine to Thor, Odin and Frigg with construction starting this month on the island's first major temple to the Norse gods since the Viking age.

Worship of the gods in Scandinavia gave way to Christianity around 1,000 years ago but a modern version of Norse paganism has been gaining popularity in Iceland.

"I don't believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet," said Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, high priest of Ásatrúarfélagið, an association that promotes faith in the Norse gods.

"We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology."

Membership in Ásatrúarfélagið has tripled in Iceland in the last decade to 2,400 members last year, out of a total population of 330,000, data from Statistics Iceland showed.

The temple will be circular and will be dug 4 metres (13ft) down into a hill overlooking the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, with a dome on top to let in the sunlight.

"The sun changes with the seasons so we are in a way having the sun paint the space for us," Hilmarsson said.

The temple will host ceremonies such as weddings and funerals. The group will also confer names to children and initiate teenagers, similar to other religious communities. Iceland's neo-pagans still celebrate the ancient sacrificial ritual of Blot with music, reading, eating and drinking, but nowadays leave out the slaughter of animals.

Source: Reuters