»Commits suicide after learning Harry Potter Spoiler«

A rabid Harry Potter fan took his life yesterday after inadvertently learning a plot spoiler from the soon-to-be-released J.K. Rowling opus, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

Jude Ralston, 32, of Hudson, Ohio left a suicide note indicating that since overhearing the plot spoiler at a shopping mall earlier in the day, “I no longer have a reason to live.”

Family and friends who gathered for a candlelight memorial outside Mr. Ralston’s house remembered a man who seemed to live only for Harry Potter – and wondered if they could have done anything to prevent his tragic fate.

“When Jude got that vanity license plate that said ‘Hogwarts,’ that seemed harmless enough,” said Polly Clovis, who attended Model U.N. with Mr. Ralston while the two were in high school. “But when he started wearing that wizard hat around town, we really should have seen that as a cry for help.”

According to friends of Mr. Ralston, the Potter fanatic had done everything in his power to protect himself from stumbling across Potter plot spoilers, even disconnecting his computer from the Internet and avoiding his favorite vintage comic book store.

Ms. Clovis said that she hoped Mr. Ralston’s death would cause federal authorities to tighten the flow of Harry Potter plot information to prevent similar tragedies from taking place.

“In my heart I believe that could have saved Jude’s life, even if he didn’t have one,” she said.

Elsewhere, President Bush called the jailing of a New York Times reporter “a positive step,” but warned that many other reporters were still at large.

The mission of the space shuttle Discovery suffered another setback last night when the shuttle’s onboard DVD player failed to function during an attempt by the astronauts to watch the movie “Oceans 11.”...
...According to one NASA technician who spoke on condition of anonymity, the space agency knew that there were problems with the shuttle’s DVD player prior to the launch but opted to continue with the mission regardless.

“A bunch of us were saying that it was only a matter of time before that DVD player totally broke,” the technician said. “We were like, you’ve got to equip the ship with a backup DVD player, but no one listened.”

The technician said that the astronauts could survive the rest of the mission without a working DVD player, but added, “If this were a mission to Mars, this would be a nightmare.”

Elsewhere, President Bush said today that the theory of “intelligent design” explains the creation of life on Earth but not his Social Security plan.