LOS ANGELES, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- According to entertainment sources Tuesday, down-and-out starlet Lindsay Lohan was spotted entering a Beverly Hills mansion, reportedly the site of a risque photo shoot. Insiders later verified that the secretive gig was for a nude pictorial to appear in a future issue of Playboy. One reporter specializing in celebrity goings-on stated that Lohan was indeed prepared to flash more than just her sallow teeth and bloodshot peepers: “She’s not getting any acting work, and there’s no way she can keep up with her soaring bail amounts. Her father was also arrested today, so the family’s coffers are going to be drained faster than a 40-ounce Pabst within reach of Lindsay’s coke crusted fingernails. Hefner’s people have been approaching her since she did that Herbie film. This was inevitable.”

Photo courtesy Irrational Games

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- The Federal Housing Finance Agency introduced new rules Monday to provide underwater homeowners the opportunity to refinance their mortgages at lower rates through the federal Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). The agency estimates that nearly a million homeowners could take advantage of the program by the end of 2013. To date, HARP has helped only a fraction of the people it was designed to assist, partly because the homeowners seeking to refinance have been denied by the banks. The banks themselves are under no obligation to refinance mortgages worth less than the value of the properties. By easing eligibility rules, the Obama administration hopes to remedy the situation. But GOP candidate Herman Cain attacked the program immediately, saying, “Have we all gone nuts? Houses underwater? When we first started talking about a housing bubble, I didn’t think we literally meant a big ole air bubble in the briny deep. We’re trying to lower taxes and enforce accountability for irresponsible financial decisions. What message are we sending when we bail out the near-sighted owners of submarine properties? It’s okay to fail up? Well, it ain’t. It’s not our fault they didn’t build houses on land.”

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Representatives of Family Stations issued a public apology Friday evening to the families of eight college students after admitting that an embarrassed and disgruntled Harold Camping attacked them with his cane in Golden Gate Park. Although the precise details of the assault remain sketchy, authorities claim that Camping had requested to be taken to the area to assess the Lord’s loving and merciful slaughter of sinners, as well as His progress in sucking the souls of the pious back to Heaven.

“What Mr. Camping found,” one officer on scene described, “was a group of over 20 college students face down on the lawn. He must have believed that his rapture had begun. When he realized that he’d happened upon an elaborate display of planking, he just went nuts. At this time, we are placing Mr. Camping on a 72-hour mental health hold. None of the students were seriously injured, and no one’s pressing any charges at this time.”

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SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Family Stations’ End Time prophet, Harold Camping, has been unusually silent since his May 21 rapture prediction failed to materialize in the terrifying manner he envisioned. At that time, he rationalized the anticlimactic event as a “spiritual rapture,” in which sinners were placed on God’s naughty list while those slated for salvation were duly noted on His nice list. “More than ‘thy rod and thy staff,’ it seems that the Lord operates more bureaucratically,” said a spokesperson for Family Stations. “I guess you could look at it more from the perspective of ‘thy clipboard and thy form in triplicate.’ God may not play dice, as they say, but it seems that He’s a stickler for lists, process optimization and organizational best practices.”

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Muammar Gaddafi, the ruthless and erratic dictator of Libya, was killed Thursday as rebels overtook his stronghold in Sirte, a former fishing village and Gaddafi’s hometown. He was 69. Gaddafi, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of ordering the killing of civilians, was toppled by rebel forces on August 23, just a week prior to the anniversary of the 1969 coup that placed him in power. Senior officials in the interim government hailed Gaddafi’s death as paving the way toward “liberation” after eight months of war. Despite public celebrations throughout Libya, however, uncertainty lingers. Accounts of the particulars of Gaddafi’s death seem confused, the future of Libya’s oil exports remain ambiguous, and nobody can agree on the official spelling of Gaddafi’s name. As such, the interim government has issued a global Request for Proposal to select a winning bidder to design the fallen leader’s headstone, with a standardized spelling of his name.