Houston, Texas, June 28, 2009 -- Somali pirates hijacked and have taken control of the International Space Station, NASA sources announced yesterday. The pirates, who approached the vessel using small, inflatable spacerafts, are demanding a ransom "in excess of ten million dollars", according to Dr. Julius Vern, vice-administrator of NASA's International Space Station program, or they will destroy the vessel.

Baghdad, Iraq, March 12, 2012 -- Iraqi President George W. Bush is currently in perhaps the most pressing peril of his long political career following a conviction by the highest religious court of Iraq for blasphemy, a crime punishable by death under Iraq's strict Sharia law. Under the ruling, President Bush is scheduled to be executed via public stoning before the next full moon, expected March 30. A spokesman for Bush stated he plans to appeal the ruling.

Boulder, October 28, 2008 -- A seven-year dietary and fitness study released today reaches the disturbing conclusion that Halloween candy, long a staple of American holiday witches, goblins, vampires and presidents of all ages, may be a contributing factor in obesity.

The study, which tracked the flab ratios and eating habits of over 4,000 young individuals in 20 cities across the United States, concludes that "Halloween candy, if consumed in excessive quantities, almost certainly contributes to short-term and potentially long-term weight gain."

Mountain View, CA, January 29, 2008 -- A spokesman for Google confirmed today the official website of the Republican party, gop.com, has been delisted from the internet search engine due to repeated spelling and syntactical errors.

A Google search for gop.com returns zero results

The spokesman said the decision to delist gop.com was made automatically on the basis of syntactical algorithms, and did not necessarily represent the opinion or action of any human Google employee.