By Raoul Thibodeaux, Avant News Staff Writer -- New York City, February 21, 2038 -- As the bell rang to close the trading session today at the New York Stock Exchange, board members of Global Earth World Planet International (GEWPI) celebrated with toasts of sparkling wine at an undisclosed location. They had reason to celebrate as their privately held consortium had just completed a two-week buying spree of all outstanding shares in every publicly traded company across the world.

Washington, D.C., June 29, 2007 -- Several of the small group of stem cell research opponents who signed the controversial "No Stem Cell Treatment Pledge" last fall are now embroiled in a legal dilemma since contracting various terminal diseases, all of which can be easily cured using medical procedures developed through embryonic stem cell research.

Bangcock, Maine, November 5, 2009 -- A coalition of apparently easily confused Maine voters last night voted overwhelmingly, by a ratio of 50.24 to 49.86 percent, a new state law, titled "The Defense of Marriage Act", to "prohibit Homo sapiens marriage as well as to retroactively render null and void any previously codified unlawful marriages between consenting Homo sapiens that may have shamefully taken place up to and including the date of the final vote tally."

London, August 29, 2009 -- Ice cream trucks, the ubiquitous roaming purveyors of frozen dessert products that infest suburban neighbourhoods around the world, announcing their arrival using strident, uniformly irritating off-pitch melodies, have been found in a recent study to be a leading international cause of insanity.