NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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Video shows a woman filling plastic bag with gas in 2019, not 2021

CLAIM: A video shows a woman filling a white plastic bag with gas at a Kroger station due to gas shortages in the Southeastern U.S.

THE FACTS: Social media users are sharing an old video of a woman filling a plastic bag with gasoline to falsely claim it shows someone panic-buying gasoline this week. Thousands of gas stations in the Southeastern U.S. were running out of fuel due to distribution problems and panic-buying following a cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline. One Twitter upload of the video, which shows a woman trying to tie a plastic bag sloshing with gasoline, received nearly 2 million views on Wednesday with the hashtag #gasshortage. “I just wanna know why..... why the bags and not a gas tank? This is dangerous #GasShortage,” stated a Facebook post sharing the video on Tuesday. But the video clip has nothing to do with current events — it first surfaced online in 2019. The video was taken at a Kroger supermarket service station in Houston. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission addressed the issue on Wednesday in a Twitter thread. “Do not fill plastic bags with gasoline,” the agency tweeted. “Use only containers approved for fuel.” Colonial Pipeline, which is biggest in the U.S., was shut down on May 7 after a ransomware attack. Colonial on Thursday reported that the pipeline's operations had restarted and gasoline deliveries were being made in all of its markets, though the company said it would take “several days” for things to return to normal.

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