Taliban Misplaces bin Laden

Kabul (AP) - Taliban officials have signaled to the United States that they are unsure of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. "We can't figure out what happened," said the official communiqué. "Our guys were guarding his cave, they went out for five minutes to get a sandwich - five minutes! - and when they came back, he was gone." United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that he is not inclined to believe the Taliban's story. "Given that sandwiches have not been available in Afghanistan since 1974, I question the sincerity of the statement," he stated in a press conference on Thursday.

U.S. Asks Cities to Change Names

Washington, D.C. (AP) - President George W. Bush has demanded that several world cities change names because they sound too much like "Osama bin Laden."

The cities include Osaka, Japan; Liden, Switzerland; and Omaha, Nebraska. The international leaders have yet to act on the president's request, but the mayor of Omaha gave the proposal resounding approval. "We just need to do what the president tells us in this time of crisis. If he wants us to change the storied name of our great city, even though it really doesn't have anything to do with Osama bin Laden, we’ll do it," he said. Omaha risks losing its federal highway funding if it does not comply. Consequences for non-compliance by foreign cities were not immediately clear.

Lucasfilms, News Networks Engaged in Collusion

Washington, D.C. (AP) - The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that it discovered collusion between the film company of George Lucas and the major news outlets NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX and CNN. The film company and the news networks agreed in secret on Sept. 15 that when the United States military forces retaliated against Afghanistan, the news networks would call their coverage "America Strikes Back," to subliminally advertise the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back. For this service, the news networks received fifteen spaces each in Lucas' underground bunker, in case of nuclear or biological Armageddon.

The SEC report revealed names of the journalists allowed into the Lucas hideout; it included Walter Cronkite, Regis Philbin, Connie Chung and the body of Edward R. Murrow. Also notable were those excluded from the list. NBC decided not to offer a space to Katie Couric. CBS anchor Dan Rather was left off the list because he asserted that he would refuse to enter the bunker if Chung did. And CNN's Bernard Shaw and Christiane Amanpour were denied spaces based on evidence that they are actually superhuman.