Truth is Stranger than Fiction

Here’s a fun “true or false” quiz: only one of the following news stories is fictive. Guess which one! [Answers after the jump.]

• ‘CSI’ Set to perform at Super Bowl halftime show: just 10 days before its highly anticipated on-field performance at the Super Bowl XLIV halftime show, the popular CBS crime drama CSI is gearing up for what network executives are promising will be a “thrilling, high-tech whodunit on fourth and inches.” According to CBS sources, the hour-long live performance on the Dolphin Stadium 50-yard line will feature the CSI cast and crew moving briskly through a tightly plotted narrative involving the investigation of several grisly murders in the greater Las Vegas area.
• Osama bin Laden abandons old “jihad” tactic, takes up crusade against global warming: “The effects of global warming have touched every continent. Drought and deserts are spreading, while from the other side floods and hurricanes unseen before the previous decades have now become frequent,” he said, adding that Washington’s rejection of the Kyoto protocols shows that they and their corporate sponsors are  “the true criminals against the global climate.” Tapping into recent populist anger against the bank bailout, he added: “The world is held hostage by major corporations, which are pushing it to the brink. World politics are not governed by reason but by the force and greed of oil thieves and warmongers and the cruel beasts of capitalism.”

• Lancaster Mennonites launch plan to kidnap teenage girl, bring her to Kentucky: It’s a tale as old as time: A teen defies parents, plots an escape and runs away from home. Except this 14-year old didn’t want to walk on the wild side, as many teens do. She wanted to join a strict, splinter group of the Mennonite church. Three church members were arrested Wednesday for allegedly concealing the girl from her parents and from police after she ran away from home.In arrest warrant affidavits filed in the case, an unusual tale unfolds of escape plans that were to be burned or destroyed, a middle-of-the-night getaway, a change from modern clothes into Mennonite garb, a hiding place in a chicken coop and a stubborn refusal by church members to hand over the girl.