New Categories Announced for Nobel Prize
STOCKHOLM--The Nobel Prize committee has announced that new prize categories will be introduced for 2003. The existing categories--Literature, Physics, Medicine, Economics, and Peace--have lost some of their meaning over the last few years. In an effort to reinject some pizzazz in the awards, the committee is sponsoring over a dozen new, hip, less controversial awards. "We needed to address the changes in the world. We don't want the Nobel Prize to become some cheap and politically-motivated sham," said spokesman Sven Ingar.

A selection of the new prize categories follows, along with the current nominees and rationale:

· Nobel Prize for "Cake-and-Eat-It" Hipocrisy--Paul Erlich; for claiming from 1990-2002 that global warming will turn the earth a giant puddle while from 1970-1990 he claimed that global cooling would turn the earth into a giant ice cube.

· Nobel Prize for Endless Dithering--The United Nations; it's their reason for living.

· Nobel Prize for the Blindingly Obvious--The former Nobel Prize in Medicine winners from Australia; they linked catching the common cold to inadequate rest.

· Nobel Prize for Being a Shameless Political Weasel--Gerhard Schroeder; for bashing the US, endangering NATO, belittling the Holocost, and torching western relations all to pull in enough votes to keep himself in office.

· Nobel Prize for Cheating--Democratic Party of New Jersey; for the Torricelli Switcheroo.

· Nobel Prize for Crimes Against Humanity--Four way tie between Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, and the writers of Boston Common

· Nobel Prize for Abject Stupidity--Two way tie between George Lucas for Attack of the Clones and the TV executive who decided to give Anna-Nicole Smith her own cable show