One of These Stories Is From The Onion

Can you spot which one?  Don't cheat by clicking on the hyperlinks.

1) "Nakheel's $12 billion Palm Island May Sink, Flood - Surveyor"

"Dubai World's troubles aren't limited to its $26 billion debt pile after a surveying expert said Palm Jumeirah, the landmark development of its real estate unit Nakheel, may be sinking into the Persian Gulf.

The island, dredged from the Gulf's seabed, is sinking by an average of 5 millimeters a year and may flood in the future if ocean levels rise, according to an executive at leading European ground survey company Fugro NPA Ltd."

2) "Chinese Husband Allows Wife To Attack Him Once a Week" (hat tip Tyler Cowen)

"The 32-year-old man, who was named by the Chongqing Evening News as Mr Zhang, took the unusual step after suffering intense abuse from his wife, who studies kung fu.

"I don't want to beat him, but arguments are inevitable and I can't help myself," his wife told the newspaper. She added that in the week before they signed the deal, she had beaten him up three times."

3) Labor Department: "Available Labor Rate Increases to 10.2%" (hat tip Barry Ritholtz)

"In what is being touted by the Labor Department as extremely positive news, the nation's available labor rate has reached double digits for the first time in 26 years, bringing the total number of potentially employable Americans to an impressive 15.7 million.

 "This is such an exciting time to be an employer in America," said Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, adding that every single day 6,500 more citizens join America's growing possible workforce.

"There's such a massive and diverse pool of job-ready Americans to choose from. And each month the number only gets higher."

"While our current available labor rate of 10.2 percent isn't quite as robust as it was in 1982 or 1933, we're happy to say that reaching that benchmark is no longer out of the realm of possibility," Solis continued."

4) The Power of Arbitrage

"Enthusiasts of frequent-flier mileage have all kinds of crazy strategies for racking up credits, but few have been as quick and easy as turning coins into miles.

At least several hundred mile-junkies discovered that a free shipping offer on presidential and Native American $1 coins, sold at face value by the U.S. Mint, amounted to printing free frequent-flier miles. Mileage lovers ordered more than $1 million in coins until the Mint started identifying them and cutting them off.

Coin buyers charged the purchases, sold in boxes of 250 coins, to a credit card that offers frequent-flier mile awards, then took the shipments straight to the bank. They then used the coins they deposited to pay their credit-card bills. Their only cost: the car trip to make the deposit."

5)  Man Picks Up Half A Million Dollars Worth of Discarded Winning Horse Racing Tickets over 10 Years

"For the past 10 years, Jesus Leonardo has been cleaning up at an OTB parlor in Midtown Manhattan, cashing in, by his own count, nearly half a million dollars’ worth of winning tickets from wagers on thoroughbred races across the country.

During his glorious run, Mr. Leonardo, 57, has not placed a single bet.

“It is literally found money,” he said on a recent night from his private winner’s circle. He spends more than 10 hours a day there, feeding thousands of discarded betting slips through a ticket scanner in a never-ending search for someone else’s lost treasure.

“This has become my job, my life,” he said. “This is how I feed my family.”

Leonardo, who favors track suits and wears his graying hair and bushy beard in long ponytails, is what’s known in horse racing parlance as a stooper — a person who hangs around racetracks and betting parlors picking up tickets thrown away by others. Most tickets are losers, but enough are winners to make it worth his while"

-KD