August 3, 2008 – Borrowing a page from the MTA’s popular Nostalgia Trains in the subway system, the NYPD will be starting a Flashback Friday program starting next month.

Every Friday, a selected precinct will have its officers will dress in vintage uniforms and drive vintage vehicles. As a concession to safety and contractual obligations, all officers participating will have modern radios, safety devices, and weapons.

At a One Police Plaza news conference, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said of the program, “This is a new way for the department to engage with the community and give them a first hand look at the NYPD’s history.” Kelly dismissed the accusation that it was a way to shift the light away from ongoing investigations into alleged brutality. “This is just a new form of community policing.”

Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association was skeptical of the plan, “I really don’t see how it will do anything except make our members look like they are in some sort of costume drama. It seems more like a publicity stunt than anything else.”

August 3, 2008 – MTA New York City Transit officials are puzzled by data that shows that last Tuesday the 5:35 p.m. southbound train from the Court Square station actually ran on time. The Brooklyn-Queens crosstown line, which opened for full service in 1937 as the IND GG train, had never seen an on time train until last week.

NYC Transit President Howard Roberts Jr. told The Limes, “This is obviously an anomaly and we are working hard to correct it. The G train is well known for its spotty service record. We need to live up to our customer’s expectations and make sure the G runs with its usual inefficiency and delays. ”

A sampling of regular G train riders were shocked to hear of a train running on time. “I have to wait like twenty minutes before it comes,” said Sarah Lewis of Greenpoint. “Can’t they screw up and get it running on time all the time?”

Harvey Green of Long Island City remarked, “Once in eighty years? Sounds about right.”

August 3, 2008 – The American Association of Physicists and Astronomers (AAPA) announced today at a Midtown press conference that the Universe is moving closer to “ultimate destruction” due to the Mets slipping out of first place and the Phillies taking over the top spot in the National League Eastern Division.

Dr. Eugene Woodling, director of the AAPA, expressed grave concern, “This could rupture the Space-Time Continuum as we know it. We know the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is coming into play, as well as the lack of a decent Mets bullpen, and we have come up with a device to compensate. We call it a Heisenberg Compensator and have several prototypes already deployed. We can’t get into specifics about the machines, but we have more faith in them than the Mets relief staff. Still this is not as bad as the situation in 1980. At least not yet.”

Mets General Manager Omar Minaya in a conference call told reporters, “Don’t blame our bullpen for putting the universe in peril. It is just baseball and we all know given past history the Phillies are destined to loose. You have to trust me.”

Baseball expert and Fox network commentator Tim McCarver summed up the situation with his usual brilliance, “You have to win games because if you don’t you’ll need to win more.”

August 3, 2008 – The last time an Olympic games had this sort of buzz was back in 1936 at the Berlin games. The way dissidents are being rounded up, minorities repressed, and a whitewash is being put on an evil empire’s capital city is strikingly similar. The efforts of billions of dollars along with the untold millions of dollars were used as bribes to get the International Olympic Committee to legitimize the regime by holding the games in Beijing are finally coming to fruition.

“If one thing these evil regimes have in common it is to create stunning propaganda,” said Ian McKenna, sports director of Human Rights for All. “The Nazis had Leni Riefenstahl to sculpt their message; the ChiComs have NBC which is owned by one of their biggest trading partners General Electric sculpting their message for American consumption.”

Not everyone seems to believe that the Olympics will be a Red Chinese propaganda fest. The Limes chief television critic, Larry Rawson, looks forward to the NBC coverage, “Those ChiCom bastards killed my brother at the Chosin Reservoir, but this is the Olympics. NBC is going to make sure we know and see what every American athlete did. Who cares about these damn foreigners? NBC is doing a much better job than ABC ever did with Jim McKay going on about all these foreigners. NBC knows it isn’t about sports it is about how the Americans do at sports.”

Las Vegas odds makers feel that there is a chance of a massive uprising that will surpass the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Vinnie “Jersey Boy” Giocatore, president of the Las Vegas Odds makers Association, said, “The consensus among our members is the odds of a massive uprising are 2 to 1 and a complete revolution 10 to 1. Most of the money is on the PRC government with a spread of plus1000 deaths. My gut tells me something will happen, but I am not sure what.”

Due to The Limes pro-Tibet and anti-Wal-Mart editorial positions, our correspondents were denied access to the games.