Five people sustained injured this morning when a malfunctioning New Jersey subway escalator suddenly began running in reverse.

Riders heading above ground on the Exchange Place PATH station in Jersey City were making their way to the top of the stairway when without warning it began going down instead of up, according to a spokesman for the Port Authority.

At least one person was taken to the hospital.

Spokesman Ron Marsico told ABC News station WABC that officials don’t know what caused the escalator to malfunction. A witness posted video of the incident on YouTube.

Nick Lukish, of Brooklyn, N.Y.,  told WABC he was  midway up the escalator when the stairs began moving down. He saw a stampede of people at the bottom of the escalator as people jumped out of the way and over to the other escalators, he said.

Lukish, 33, said he sustained cuts and bruises.

Two of the PATH station’s three escalators have been shut down.

(Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP)

The director of “Zero Dark Thirty,” the Hollywood dramatization of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, said that she felt obligated to include grisly scenes of detainee torture at the hands of the CIA to tell the whole story of how America’s most wanted man was finally killed.

“It’s important to be faithful to the research,” Kathryn Bigelow said Sunday after a screening of the film at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. “Personally, I find it reprehensible, but I think to have omitted it would’ve been to whitewash history.”

The movie, which has been lauded by critics since its limited release last month, features several disturbing scenes in which alleged al Qaeda members or associates are beaten, force fed or subjected to simulated drowning while under CIA supervision.

“It is part of that history, part of that story,” Bigelow said. “It’s not all of that story. There were many, many, many tactics that led to the finding of Osama bin Laden.”

That observation echoed a previous statement by acting CIA Director Michael Morell, who said that enhanced interrogation played a role in the hunt for bin Laden but was not the “key” to finding the al Qaeda leader.

“…[T]he truth is that multiple streams of intelligence led CIA analysts to conclude that bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad[, Pakistan]. Some came from detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, but there were many other sources as well,” Morell said on the CIA website in December. “And, importantly, whether enhanced interrogation techniques were the only timely and effective way to obtain information from those detainees, as the film suggests, is a matter of debate that cannot and never will be definitively resolved.”

Last week three high-powered senators, Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.), Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D.-Mich.) and 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain (R.-Ariz.), revealed they had written two letters to Morell in December demanding to know what impact the CIA may have had on the depiction of enhanced interrogation in the film and whether the agency “misled” the filmmakers into thinking the tactic was effective.

“As you know, the film depicts CIA officers repeatedly torturing detainees. The film then credits CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques as providing critical lead information on the courier that led to the [bin Laden] compound,” one letter says. “The CIA cannot be held accountable for how the Agency and its activities are portrayed in film, but we are nonetheless concerned, given the CIA’s cooperation with the filmmakers and the narrative’s consistency with past public misstatements by former senior CIA officials, that the filmmakers could have been misled by information they were provided by the CIA.”

READ: Senate Intel Committee Probes Bin Laden Movie Scenes

But Mark Bowden, author of “The Finish” which also chronicled the hunt for bin Laden, argued last week that the film is hardly pro-torture.

“Torture is presented as part of this story, something [the protagonist] accepts,” he wrote in The Atlantic. “But it’s also shown to be at best only marginally useful, and both politically and morally toxic.”

Bigelow also noted Sunday that the movie shows that the key piece of evidence that put the CIA on bin Laden’s scent – the real name of the terror leader’s courier – was not found through enhanced interrogation, but in a diligent review of files the CIA already had for years.

“[Finding bin Laden] was an accumulation of a tremendous amount [or work] and also the dedication of these men and women who devoted their lives, ten years of their lives… to finding this man,” she said.

It’s likely a lot of people in those same stands know the story of Don Buckhannan and his son, Daniel Buckhannan, the rabid Alabama fans whose Christmas surprise turned them both into viral stars.

When Daniel Buckhannan, of Oxford, Ala., gave his dad with two hard-to-come-by tickets to the game for Christmas, hidden inside a brown hat that was the signature of legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant, he recorded what he knew would be an emotional reaction.

He posted the video online for just family and friends but today, less than one month later, the video has been viewed more than 9 million times.

“It was better than what’s on the video,” Don Buckhannan, a retired railroad worker, told ABC News’ Josh Elliott today from Miami.  “I saw the BCS logo on the ticket and I knew immediately what Daniel had done for me.”

“This is one for the memories,” he said.

Tickets to the championship game are now selling for as much as $60,000 online but don’t expect the Buckhannans to cash in.  The pair have been attending Alabama games together for nearly 20 years.

“I grew up as a ‘Bama fan all because of him,” Daniel Buckhannan, himself a father of two, told Elliott.  “He’s done a lot for me and so to have the opportunity to give him this ticket means a whole lot to me.”

Also don’t expect the father-son pair to even consider that Notre Dame, the underdogs, might pull off a surprise win.

“If ‘Bama plays the way they’re capable of playing we should be okay.  I feel confident we’ve got the ‘Bama players and coach Saban so we should be okay,” Daniel Buckhannan said.

(Image Credit: ABC News)

Millions of counterfeit dollars are flooding cash registers, and more often than not, this “funny money” is being manufactured using everyday office equipment, federal authorities said.

Heath Kellogg, a graphic artist known as “The Printer,” his father and four other men were busted in November after authorities said the men produced more than a million dollars in counterfeit bills.

The operation was shockingly simple. Kellogg, who is a self-taught graphic artist, and his team, allegedly used a printer to produce the front of fake $50 bills and printed the back of the bills separately before carefully gluing it all together.

“It’s easier today because the technology has gotten so good and people can make better fakes,” said Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent and ABC News consultant.

How-to guides, easily found on the Internet, guide people through the counterfeiting process.

A Rhode Island man was arrested in November after he allegedly learned how to use a chemical soap to rub off the ink on $5 bills, turning them into counterfeit $100 bills.

Despite the flood of fakes, the government said new security features on money, such as color shifting numbers and portrait watermarks that show the same face that’s on the front of the bill, do make a difference.

                                                                                                             (Image Credit: ABC News)

The Mall of Louisiana was evacuated Saturday night after a flash mob turned into an ugly brawl.

Cellphone video captured the chaos as shoppers jammed escalators and ran for the nearest exits in Baton Rouge, the state capital. Employees at the mall were ordered to abandon their cash registers and evacuate immediately.

The fight broke out in the mall food court, where 200 teens had gathered for a flash mob.

“We think there was some sort of post on social media about a flash mob for tonight which drew such a large crowd of juveniles,” Casey Rayborn Hicks, a spokeswoman for the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, said.

Hicks said deputies are investigating the events that led to the fight.

The panic was especially acute, weeks after a gunman opened fire at an Oregon mall, killing three people, including himself, and injuring one.

“Saw people running and screaming I turned around a girl told me someone has a gun I started running with them,” shopper Missy Melancon wrote on Facebook.

No injuries or weapons were reported, though nerves were rattled.

“Never been that scared in my life,” Juston D’Nea Millet wrote on Facebook.  “People were running everywhere.  It was like a movie, but you were in it.”

(Image Credit: ABC News)

The pitfalls of apparently mixing alcohol and air travel were taken to a new level when an evidently intoxicated man was constrained to his seat with duct tape on an international flight.

Iceland Air said the man went on a rampage on a New Year’s Eve flight from Reykjavik to New York, hitting, screaming at and spitting on other passengers.

Passengers took matter into their own hands, taping the man to his seat.

Andy Ellwood tweeted a photo of the disruptive passenger that a friend of his, who was on board the flight, had snapped and wrote on his blog that the man became unruly after drinking all of the duty-free liquor on board.

“He was restrained by passengers and crew and was monitored for his own safety for the duration of the flight,” Iceland Air said in a statement to ABC News.

The man, who has not been identified, was taken by police to an area hospital where he was treated for alcohol poisoning. Port Authority police wouldn’t confirm that the man in the picture was the person they took into custody, but  said he had not been charged.

                                                                                                  (Image Credit: ABC News)

A New York musician posed as a saucy femme fatale in order to come face-to-face with the man who took his iPhone.

Nadal Nirenberg left his iPhone 4 in a cab on New Year’s Eve. The next morning, around 6 a.m., he noticed someone was using his online dating profile, which was linked to his phone, to troll for dates.

The Brooklynite decided to lure the person with his phone into a honey trap. He set up a phony female profile on OK Cupid, complete with a cleavage-bearing photo plucked from the Internet, and began communicating.

“My best version of talking as a girl as a flirty girl, I should say, is adding winky face emoticons,” Nirenberg said.

The mark took the bait, writing: “U wanna meet?”

When Nirenberg said he did, the target, thinking he was communicating with a buxom beauty, asked, “Will you kiss me?”

Nirenberg coyly responded, “Well … I don’t have a boyfriend.”

They made a plan to meet up at Nirenberg’s Brooklyn apartment for a date.

The man with Nirenberg’s iPhone showed up in a nice jacket, smelling of cologne, and had a bottle of wine, Nirenberg said.

“I followed him up the stairs and he turns around and, basically, I confront him right here,” Nirenberg said. “I put the $20 in his hand to defuse the situation as fast as possible, but I had a hammer in my hand just in case.”

The man handed over the iPhone, took the money and ran, but not before Nirenberg got the last word.

“As he was walking away, I was surprised, I said, ‘You smell great though,’” Nirenberg said.

It was a happy ending for the musician, who said 10 minutes after he got his phone back, he received a text for a last-minute gig.

Courtesy San Francisco Animal Care & Control

They say cats have nine lives, and for one Siamese cat yesterday in San Francisco, after nine long, lost years, he was finally reunited with the people he shared his first life with.

Vanilla the cat went missing from his owner, Dara Gerson, nine years ago in Sausalito, Calif., and was presumed to be lost forever. Despite Gerson’s and her daughters’ efforts to find him, posting signs around the neighborhood and searching for days, the cat was nowhere to be found.

“We lived in Sausalito and my older daughter was holding the cat, and somebody had a dog that scared the cat and the cat ran out of her arms,” Gerson told ABCNews.com. “We put up posters and asked everyone in the neighborhood and never found him. But we never gave up hope. I’m a pretty intuitive person and assumed he was still alive.”

Vanilla was indeed alive, and had somehow over the years made his way across the Golden Gate Bridge to a home in Noe Valley, about six hours away from Gerson and her family.

READ ALSO: Missing Dog Reunited With Family After Four Years

The cat had been living with a gentleman who was recently diagnosed with dementia. In early December, the man’s caretaker contacted the San Francisco Department of Animal Care and Control about what to do with Vanilla. The man was being admitted to the hospital and wouldn’t be returning to the house, so he wouldn’t be able to keep looking after the cat.

“We don’t know how he got Vanilla at all, but we took him into custody because his then owner wasn’t able to take care of him,”  said Kristen Hall, a worker with Animal Care and Control.

“Whenever an animal comes in, we scan them for microchips. Vanilla had a microchip and it did not match up to the person he had been living with, which was the man that had been hospitalized. But it matched up to Dara, who had the same cellphone as all those years ago.”

Since losing Vanilla, Gerson had moved to Topanga, Calif., but luckily had never changed her cellphone number that she registered to Vanilla’s microchip. She was elated to hear Vanilla had been found all these years later.

“I just got a call. It was the best Christmas present our family got,” Gerson explained. “We got a call from an officer at the animal control and asked if I was the owner of a cat named Vanilla. And I was like, ‘Well, yeah, a really long time ago.’ We were literally jumping around and screaming and going bananas. We were absolutely devastated when he went missing.”

No one knows exactly where Vanilla has been all these years, and are unfortunately unable to ask his most recent owner for any clues.

“We can’t find out what the backstory is because the gentleman just isn’t available for that memory,” Animal Care and Control deputy director Kat Brown said.

READ ALSO: Former Marine Raises $4K for Dog Reunion

But thanks to the technology of microchipping, which implants a chip the size of a grain of rice containing the owner’s information between the animal’s shoulder blades, along with a little bit of fate, the beloved pet is now home. All the way back over the Golden Gate Bridge with his original family.

“It is definitely an awesome story,” Gerson said.  ”You don’t ever really hear about pets getting reunited with their owners after nine years. The amazing thing, he was so awesome then, and he’s still just as awesome now. I had another child that’s been born since we had him. He was so amazing with our older daughter and he still has the coolest demeanor.”

(Image Credit: WCBV/ABC News)

Massachusetts rescue crews braved frozen waters in two separate rescues today to bring stranded deer to safety.

The state environmental police, the Waltham fire department and the Animal Rescue League managed to coax the first deer from the slippery ice at Stony Brook Basin in Waltham today, ABC News affiliate WCVB-TV reported.

A short while later, rescuers responded to a report that another deer was stranded in the Cambridge Reservoir in Waltham.

As it tried to flee, the deer was captured on video slipping and sliding on the ice as rescuers slowly made their way to the animal using an inflatable raft.

The rescue crews were able to subdue the deer and bring it to safety on land. The doe was taken for a medical evaluation and later had to be euthanized, WCVB reported.

A third deer was found dead today on the ice in Waltham.

                    Jewelry thieves accidentally hit KFC instead of jewelry store                      Image credit: Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In a jewelry heist gone incredibly wrong, just after 8 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, two thieves planned to rob Wrights Jewelers in Beaudesert, Australia, about 45 miles south of Brisbane.  But instead they knocked through the wrong wall and found themselves inside a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet next door.

Police say the suspects, Dwayne Doolan and Peter Welsh, were prepared to raid a store full of precious stones and gems. Instead, they found themselves surrounded by trays of the Colonel’s Original Recipe and Extra Crispy chicken as well as stares from surprised workers after smashing through the wrong block wall in a restroom.

But they quickly regrouped and robbed the fast food joint instead, police said.

The Queensland Police Service released a statement saying, “The men threatened staff with a metal bar and made demands for cash. Two female employees complied and handed over a sum of cash to the men.”

After robbing the fast food chain, the thieves left on foot with $2,600.

No one was hurt in the armed robbery, police said.

Queensland police arrested the two men in connection with the armed robbery. In the police report,  one man is charged with one count of armed robbery and two counts of stealing. The other suspect is charged with “one count of armed robbery, two counts of stealing, one enter premises with intent to commit offense and one attempted enter premises with intent to commit indictable offence.”

Both suspects appeared in the Southport Magistrates Court on Jan. 3. One suspect made bail and returned to court on Jan. 5 while the other remained in custody.

Sgt. Barry McErlean with Queensland Police said, “Both have been remanded to appear again on March 5.”