LONDON, U.K -- Straight out of the pages of a fairy tale, and painstakingly planned to be that way, Catherine “Kate” Middleton wed Prince William at the Westminster Abbey altar Friday morning. With William second in the line of succession to 16 sovereign states within the Commonwealth, the marriage was seen by the Royal Family as imperative to preserving the bloodline and The Crown. But the union, despite the flawless execution of the nuptials, was not without its internal controversies. The foremost being the Queen’s displeasure with William’s choice of a commoner as a bride.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.* -- Officials in Alabama, expected to step up emergency relief efforts Thursday after a series of powerful tornadoes tore through the region and left over 180 dead, instead asked workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to leave. Kerry Lubgaite, head of the FEMA ground crew, described himself as “flabbergasted” when he received the instructions to abort the mission, presumably from Governor Bentley, Senator Jeff Sessions, and Senator Richard Shelby. Lubgaite, however, confessed that he could barely decipher the message, which was “packed with a bunch of language promising political favors to local businessmen. Somewhere in all that hogwash was a note saying that FEMA’s presence might be sending an anti-American message, but I couldn’t tell who actually wrote it.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Attempting to stanch the persistent distraction of questions concerning his citizenship, President Obama on Wednesday released the long-form birth certificate his incredulous critics have been demanding. The document, signed and sealed, revealed that Obama was born at Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, as he has always claimed. Donald Trump, one of Obama’s most vocal skeptics, expressed triumph with his personal crusade to put the “birther” doubts to rest. “I am really honored, frankly, to have played such a big role in hopefully getting rid of this issue,” said Trump.

But he also cautioned against drawing premature conclusions, contending that the document will need to be vetted for authenticity. More shockingly, Tea Party Republicans in Congress have now announced the formation of an exploratory committee to determine whether Hawaii is legitimately a U.S. state.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- In the wake of three highly publicized incidents of air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job, another controller has been discharged, this time at a local tower in San Narciso County, California. Several members of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have pressured regulators to consider allowing controlled naps during working hours to combat fatigue, citing numerous studies on the subject. But operators of the county’s municipal airstrip called the proposal ridiculous.

“These guys sit around in chairs all day watching radar screens,” explained Hank Serstound, a local aviation official who defended the termination of the controller. “I hear a lot about stress and fatigue in the media, but I don’t know where it comes from. The pilots are the ones flying the planes. All controllers have to do is tell them which runway to land on. A monkey could do it. And if I could train a monkey to speak and snort meth, I’d be staffing the tower with chimps who wouldn’t fall asleep. Look, this isn’t exhausting work; it’s white collar desk jockeying.”

SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- Ninety-six years after the Ottoman Empire wiped out more than a million Armenians in what historians have credited as the first modern-day pogrom, Kim Kardashian took time from the rigors of her glamorous lifestyle to urge the Turkish government to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. On her Twitter page, Kardashian wrote, “Even though so many countries around the world recognize the Armenian Genocide, the government of Turkey still denies it. I just found out about it myself, and it’s horrifying. Do the right thing, Turkeys [sic].”

Courtesy: Getty Images

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Sports journalists dug deep Wednesday for what is likely to become award-winning coverage of the Phoenix Coyotes being swept out of Stanley Cup contention by the Detroit Red Wings in the fist round of playoffs. Fox Sports posted the headline “Coyotes Disappointed at Quick Exit.” Other news agencies ran similarly insightful headlines, including “Fans Crushed at Coyotes’ Loss,” “Coyotes Frustrated,” and “Phoenix Earns Fewer Points than Detroit, Playoff Chances Uncertain.”

The startling revelations uncovered by reporters shook the sports world, and exposed an elaborate cover up from the Coyotes’ ownership team.

IRVINE, Calif. -- In January, a California woman filed a class-action lawsuit against Taco Bell, which sought no monetary damages, but objected to the fast food chain calling its products “seasoned ground beef” or “seasoned beef,” when a substantial amount of the filling was allegedly composed of water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, soy lecithin, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch, and other fillers. Alabama-based law firm Beasley Allen, which represented the woman in the suit, insisted that lab tests had shown Taco Bell’s meat was actually only 35 percent beef. Today, however, attorneys from Beasley Allen announced that they had dropped the legal action.

Greg Creed, Taco Bell’s president, expressed relief and triumph: “Our reputation was falsely tarnished, but today the record has been set straight about the high quality of our seasoned beef. To imply that our tacos were actually full of grains, vegetables, oats, and other fillings with no relationship to processed red meat was appalling. We’re not operating some tree-hugging, vegan, bark-and-beansprouts health food market. This is good old fashioned American food, inspired by Mexico, the country where we hire most of our workers. We feel totally vindicated, and want our valued customers to know that the tacos we sell are as beefy, indigestible, and unhealthy as they’ve come to expect.”

CHALMETTE, La.-- BP took a $40.9 billion loss in 2010 related to the Deep Horizon oil spill, including $13.6 billion for the initial response. Share prices plummeted to multi-year lows over growing uncertainty regarding potential liabilities (estimated at more than $100 billion), which raised fears of bankruptcy. Now, add abysmal stock prices to the $20 billion escrow fund and BP’s clean up tab, and you begin to realize how quickly deep pockets run shallow. By the time the well was capped 87 days later, 206 million gallons of oil had gushed into the Gulf of Mexico.

It has become a daunting, if not impossible, task to try calculating the financial hardships BP may be facing in the foreseeable future. To further complicate matters, the State of Louisiana has filed its most extensive complaint yet against the parties involved in the rig explosion, which occurred one year ago today. With BP shares now trading at historic lows, the company must find other revenue sources if it hopes to remain in business. Analysts there say they have.

AUGUSTA, Maine -- Joining the ranks of Ohio and Wisconsin, Maine has become the next crucial battleground in the GOP’s fight to reform the country’s archaic labor laws, thus restoring the economy to a thriving and sustainable contender in the 21st century global marketplace. State Representative David Burns is the latest Republican lawmaker concerned that the country is not fully utilizing all of its employment resources, which he says is imperative to repairing this struggling economy. Burns’ bill, LD 1346, proposes significant changes to Maine’s existing child labor laws, encouraging employers to hire children and teenagers at more competitive wages than their adult counterparts.

NEW YORK, N.Y. -- On May 18, 2010, the economically embattled country of Greece received 14.5 billion euros ($17.9 billion USD) in aid. Since that time, finance ministers across Western Europe, whose nations were responsible for taking steps to alleviate the distressed assets of several struggling countries, have watched the debt burden swell with no signs of abating. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Wednesday that Europe should prepare to restructure Greece’s debt if the forthcoming analysis from the European Central Bank and European Commission deems it unsustainable. However, Greek officials on Monday again denied that debt rescheduling was imminent, despite the insistence from financial markets that the country will need to renegotiate the terms of its public debt.

In a surprising announcement this morning, Bank of Greece Governor George Provopoulos said that his country had received another loan from what Greek bankers presumed to be the European Union.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In response to scrutiny over the newly released video that shows a TSA agent patting down a six-year-old girl, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano today requested the implementation of a law that would guarantee the right for government officials to search minors at will and without parental consent. In the letter sent to President Obama, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Speaker John Boehner, Napolitano stated:

“With the unrelenting threat of terrorism, we must constantly evaluate the security of our country and close off loopholes before they emerge. There are people in this world who would stop at nothing to undermine our great nation, to destroy our way of life, and steal our freedom. That is why we must act now. Every child that is waved through security by virtue of their age is a walking vehicle for the diabolical devices of our enemy. We must do what we can to close this loophole before it gets exploited.”

SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- The two economists on staff at The Bennington Vale Evening Transcript were discharged this morning after failing to submit critical research yesterday, which led to an unexpected absence of reporting and a letter that read, “No matter how we slice it, Obama’s plan seems more sensible and practical. There is no way to make heads or tails of Ryan’s data...his wildly improbable assumptions. It’s five am, and we have nothing to give you.” One economist went so far as to call Paul Ryan’s numbers “so fuzzy, they’re hairy.” Another quoted Greg Mankiw, who had described Reagan’s economic advisers as “cranks and charlatans...who told [Reagan] that broad-based income tax cuts would have such large supply-side effects that the tax cuts would raise tax revenue. I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don’t.”

In the end, our analysts left nothing else but a used paperback of “The Fountainhead” on the editor’s desk with the cryptic message: “It’s not going to happen. Call Waybill. BTW, we caught him masturbating himself with this book. We mean, this actual copy.”

BOSTON, Mass. -- Over 150 years ago today, the first shots were fired in the American Civil War at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Although the focus of the war is largely dominated by states in the Confederate South, Massachusetts played a pivotal role in the Union as one of the progressive leaders in the charge toward antislavery. And on this historic anniversary, one of the country’s oldest dialects, which traces its origins to Boston before the American Revolution, has become extinct after the last person to speak it died.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- One of the key issues dividing Democrats and Republicans in their formulation of the 2011 federal budget is President Obama’s sweeping health care reform. Opponents worry that by extending health care to the needy, the nation runs many risks: overpopulation, socialism, and the economic distress that will arise from the collapsing health care system once taken over by government “blue shirts,” a GOP allusion recalling both the German “brown shirts” of the 1940s and a common color of surgical scrubs. But according to a new study released by the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, the need for universal health care -- or any health care at all -- might be overblown.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- On April 7, the GOP controlled House of Representatives voted to block the FCC from upholding the free Internet concept commonly called “net neutrality,” which advocates say protects our right to access an open Internet. Senate Republicans have supported their peers in the House by introducing a “resolution of disapproval,” which strips the FCC of its authority to ensure unfettered access to Web sites across the Internet. In response, champions of free speech and consumer choice flooded Congress with angry letters of disapproval. Republicans, however, described the protests as “misguided and uninformed.”

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) -- Ranking Member on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee -- called the idea of equal access and open speech on the Internet an affront to civil liberties and free-market economies, coining the talking point “Electric Communism.”

SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- Conservative, conspiratorial, and controversial, FOX titan Glenn Beck announced yesterday that he would be leaving the network to pursue other projects that would better enable him to warn Americans of the pending socialist threat creeping in from the progressive quarters of the country. At the conclusion of Beck’s show on April 6, the host noted that his decision to leave was something he had been considering for a long time. He reassured loyal fans that “we will find each other…I will continue to tell the story and I’m going to show you.” Network executives admitted that they had no idea what Beck was intending to “show” his audiences in his new pursuits, but Roger Ailes praised Beck’s contributions and relevance: “We felt Glenn brought additional information, a unique perspective, a certain amount of passion and insight to the channel, and he did. But that story of what’s going on and why America is in trouble today, I think he told that story as well as could be told. Whether you can just keep telling that story or not, we’re not so sure.”

Beck, true to his idiom, concluded his broadcast by comparing himself to Paul Revere, an iconic hero of the American Revolution, which immediately provoked criticism and outrage from liberal commentators.

MADISON, Wis. -- Since taking office, Governor Scott Walker has made some unpopular decisions, seemingly without regard for established procedures or laws. Walker’s dubious parliamentary tactic to push through massive cuts in compensation for public employees and curtail collective bargaining agreements caused Democrats to abandon their posts. The issue has also led to activists gathering signatures to recall all members of Walker’s Republican controlled Senate. More critically, Wisconsin voters on Tuesday sent Governor Walker a clear message about their displeasure with his strong-arming an anti-union rights bill through the Legislature by electing Democrat JoAnne Kloppenburg to the vacant seat in the state’s Supreme Court. Voters hope that Kloppenburg will rule against Walker when his law is inevitably challenged before the high court.

Even fearing the collapse of his regime, Walker today refused to back down and instead announced a startlingly brazen plan to abolish the United States Congress and the Office of the President by installing a deceased puppet dictator as Emperor of America.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The federal government is bracing itself for a shutdown as Congressional Republicans and Democrats remain at an impasse over the budget. House Republicans today proposed a fundamental overhaul of government-run health programs, tax cuts, and sharp spending caps for the coming fiscal year, which begins October 1. Democrats, meanwhile, want to protect scientific research and education while striking over $2 billion from defense and security spending. Republicans want to exploit the budget to eradicate dozens of Obama priorities, such as health care reform and environmental protection. But perhaps the only surprise in House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s proposal is including the government shutdown in the budget as the primary cost avoidance measure.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- A former United States Army recruiter convicted of killing a woman nine years ago at Dodger Stadium is slated to be executed Tuesday, but his attorneys are now requesting an eleventh-hour reprieve, citing the inmate’s objection to drugs.

Levon Metzger, a senior attorney with the San Narciso-based law firm Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus, said in a statement before the press this morning, “The prison system’s come under a lot of fire lately, but my client is proof that rehabilitation is possible. He’s been clean for over eight years, which is the direct result of the prison’s healthy living program. And now what does the state want to do? Pump him full of drugs. That’s what lethal injection is: a bunch of drugs. It’s hypocrisy at the highest level.”

SPECIAL FEATURE -- Since its founding in 1978, Lego City has suffered through a history of controversial expansion, interminable redevelopment, and what most residents consider “pure chaos.” Accusations of illicit gerrymandering -- executed through back door political favors and flat out bribery -- have plagued the region since the first bricks were laid. The rogue’s gallery of disgraced politicians and their abettors include four city planners, a multitude of government contractors, two banks, and various assembly people.