Ottawa, January 24, 2006 -- Canadian voters, weepy and bleary-eyed from a national epidemic of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), voted the previously dark horse Conservatives, led by Stephen Harper, into Parliament yesterday. Voter turnout was a healthy 11.8%, with over 88% of voters reportedly staying home with "apathy, runny noses, or, in most cases, both".

Map of Canada

Mali, September 22, 2015 -- A local ostrich, Zzirrk Struthio II, has been charged with multiple ostricides following a grisly chance discovery in the two-toed, long-necked ratite's backyard. Mr. Struthio was taken into custody and is being held at the Municipal Pen on a bond of 100,000 grubs pending trial.

Two of Mr. Struthio's victims

"It was probably the most gruesome thing I've ever stumbled across," Krrbll Trrtt, a young ostrich who lives next door to Mr. Struthio with his parents, said.

Isthmus of Panama, August 8, 2014 -- The ambitious, eight-year project to widen the Panama Canal is now complete, with the inaugural transit of the first Airbus A380 Superjumbo scheduled to take place on August 15.

Panama Canal (detail)

Upton, New York, March 29, 2009 -- A team of physicists at Brookhaven Lab in Upton, New York are currently developing a revolutionary system that will protect coastal areas of the world against future tsunamis using the unique quantum mechanical characteristics of physicist Erwin Schrödinger's cat. The system should be operational within three years or as soon as a sufficient number of Schrödinger's cats can be cloned, whichever comes first.

STRAI tsunami cat (interior view)