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.

Beijing, March 19, 2010 -- A press release issued by the Chinese government today announced the countrywide implementation of a new high-tech tracking initiative designed to "increase security and prosperity for all citizens of the People's Republic of China." The plan, detailed by Zhou Bo Kai, chief executive of China's Ministry of Public Security, will involve the implantation of long-range, high-frequency RFID devices in every one of China's estimated 1.4 billion citizens over the next 18 months.

Redmond, Washington and Washington, D.C., February 26, 2006 -- Microsoft Corporation, makers of the game console Xbox 360, announced today the popular home entertainment device will be sold bundled with a share of a Republican United States congressman or senator as part of a special spring "consumer confidence" marketing initiative.

The standard Xbox 360 handset can be used to direct Republican lawmakers' legislative agendas

Salt Lake City, Utah, June 29, 2108 -- A spokesman for the Human Reduction Institute's Very Small People Project announced at their annual meeting today that the group had achieved "only limited success" thus far in their attempts to reduce the size of human beings by 90 percent or more. The project, which has been coming under increasing fire over the past decade, may now be in danger of being scuttled altogether. Representatives of the institute remain optimistic, however.