Washington lobbyists are crying in their (genetically modified) corn flakes. The president wants to ban the likes of farmers, gun-advocates, and other industry executives from wining and dining federal workers, for free, at seminars, conferences and, cocktail parties.

Here are some pessimists convinced that all this seemingly good news about our improving economy is anything but.

The world's greatest "warrior for light" succumbs to the darkness and lays down his paintbrush.

"Nukes? Oh, yeah, no, we can totally make them whenever we want to," Iran says. "It's just that we, um, don't want to. For now."

The ouster of a populist senior official testifies to the largest rift in China's ruling party since the Tiananmen Square protests some 23 years ago.

A Navy jet crashed into a squat complex of apartment buildings in Virginia and, amazingly, no one died.

Occupy's "summer of discontent" includes a question: Should the movement focus on police brutality, and street conflicts, or should it re-emphasize its social aims, or can it possibly manage to do both?

A proposal for an underground park in New York City—complete with fiber-optically delivered sunlight maybe strong enough to grow plants—might secretly offer a blueprint for helping humanity survive a radiation-filled apocalypse.

An attorney for Ralph Clyde Turner, the despondent man who shot at and injured Portland cops last spring, argued in court yesterday that Turner was seriously ill and not in his right mind and shouldn't be prosecuted criminally.

Someone in Tulsa might be singling out, and shooting, African-Americans. Black community leaders say they are "on edge."

An elderly man was arrested after cops found him sitting in a chair inside his condo, chewing the flesh off his dead wife's left arm. Hello, safety net! The man is probably suffering from untreated Alzheimer's or dementia.

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