Singapore, August 29, 2011 -- Lorene Konigsburg, press spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee, announced today a significant change in IOC policy regarding "doping", the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes. Beginning with the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, there will no longer be any restrictions on the use of such drugs.

The policy shift, inspired in part by the increasing difficulty in detecting incidents of doping, is intended to help restore equality and a sense of excitement and competition to the games.

Washington, D.C., December 9, 2005 -- A Halliburton executive mistakenly left a $1.7 billion no-bid military procurement contract as a tip in a Washington, D.C. restaurant yesterday, a spokesman for the restaurant, B. Smith's at 50 Massachusetts Ave. NE, said yesterday.

Washington, D.C., March 19, 2007 -- Investigators poking the exposed underbelly of the otherwise heavily armored U.S. Department of Defense have uncovered a secret program that some have characterized a Machiavellian conspiracy, others a "collaboration of innovators", to boost future Army recruitment levels through genetic testing of embryos.

Army spokesman Rusty P. Grunt acknowledged the existence of the controversial program, known within the Defense Department as "Project G.I. Gene", but assured reporters there was nothing "ethically reprehensible" about it.

Colon, Michigan, December 9, 2008 -- For decades, his name was a household word, like Kleenex or Chapstick. Millions of people around the world had watched mystified as he defied physical laws and ordinances, performing remarkable magic tricks that were of equal delight to children, adults, and precocious horses. Today, in one of the great tragedies of modern necromancy, The Great Lumache is a broken man—lost, hopeless—bereft of illusions. An Avant News exclusive interview.

The Lumache Mansion in Colon, Michigan