Breaking News!

[Jubal]

Breaking news! Area fakenewswriter fails to add "in other news" segment to the end of his post, leaving future posters baffled as to how to continue the Breaking News thread.

"There was just nothing there," said one horrified thread respondent, who declined to give his name for legal reasons and also for illegal reasons. "I was expecting more news, just a trailing line that I could use for the start of a falsified segment, but there was nothing there. Nothing at all. It was like staring into the endless void."

Initial investigations suggest that the rot in the Breaking News system could be caused by and affecting a number of senior members of Exilian, leading to concerns among the wider public that this might not be the last time someone takes the break in breaking news too literally. Administrators have asked the public not to panic, to report any concerns to the nonexistent moderation team, and to rest assured that reports of the rules of other forum games being breached will not affect regular forum members. Or indeed anything else whatsoever.

In other news, in the exciting world of caesar salads...

[The Seamstress]

Breaking News! Grief about Leaf.
Prior to the annual caesar salad beauty contest, Edna Green, 81, accused her neighbour, Frederic Leaf, 90, of stealing her award-winning secret family dressing recipe known to inexplicably transform even the flabbiest wilting greens into delicious, exceptionally pretty salads. Leaf broke into Green's cottage climbing a bean trellis and managed to copy the secret ingredients from Green's recipe book. "He's a greedy scoundrel, old Leaf, and now a thief and swindler, too", Edna Green said, "I'm not surprised". Mr. Leaf was arrested after the police had positively identified his dental imprint on a piece of cheese that had fallen out of his pocket when he fled the crime scene. He refused to give a statement. Edna Green's caesar salad won the contest for the 25th time in as many years.

In other news... a sentient, sinister antique sewing machine.

[Jubal]

Breaking news! A sentient, sinister antique sewing machine has been forced to deny multiple rumours that it is considering running for the leadership of Britain's Conservative party.

"I have no aims at that particular office," the machine said in its statement to the press on Monday. "Whilst I have long supported a return to the age of petticoated spinsters looking like haunted ghosts as they attempt to create elaborate fabric creations to make up for the crushing realities of pollution and social constraints, and I agree that the Conservatives are the party best places to make that reality, I want to be very clear that the time is not right for me to take up that mantle. Or those trouser legs."

Speculation, despite this, continues to abound. Some backbench MPs are thought to be considering endorsing the sewing machine anyway in order to bounce it into running, with one noting in a high tension thread on X (formerly Twitter) that "Labour will have the next election stitched up if we don't get running soon. We need to win back Hartlespool. I mean Hartlepool."

With a rapidly emerging field of contenders, some are asking whether a sewing machine who isn't in the House of Commons would be up to the task, with James Cleverly reported to be A/B testing attack lines against the machine including "we need a leader who can't be needled so easily" and "don't let us be hemmed in on policy".

One former minister, who asked not to be named, perhaps summed the situation up best.

"We're all waiting to see what platform it's going for, what its angle is, what stitch type it's using. It has some traditional views, but it's a lot more forward-thinking than Jacob Rees-Mogg was so we'll be able to play it as a modernising influence if we need to. And hey, at least it's not Liz Truss."

Now we move onto our next story - the Olympic heptathlon competition...

[The Seamstress]

Breaking news! Local seamstress didn't know what "heptathlon" meant and looked it up, thus learning a New Thing. As her interest in sports and the Olympic games happens to be near zero, and despite thinking about it for a while, her brain unfortunately refused to come up with a witty new "breaking news" story involving the heptathletic competition. "Heptathlete is a funny word, though", she told our reporter.


In other news:  A mysterious humming & glowing object, spotted in the night sky.

[Jubal]

Breaking news! A mysterious humming & glowing object, spotted in the night sky, is under investigation for breaking quiet time regulations in Austria.

A variety of municipal ordinances may have been breached by the mysterious object, which is emitting a hum that resonates deep within the souls of all who hear it and, crucially in legal terms, is audible between the hours of 10pm and 6am even at weekends.

Some churches have issued concerns that the mysterious humming could be a harbinger of an oncoming apocalypse, and certain parliamentarians have been considering raising questions about alien invasion as a possibility - but for now, say residents of many villages in Lower Austria, the focus needs to be on ensuring that it recieves the same absolute force of legal response as the real threats in society, like people drinking late on a Friday night, guitarists, and lawnmower users.

In other news, we turn to unexpected outbreaks of pillow-fighting...

[The Seamstress]

Breaking news! Unexpected outbreaks of pillow-fighting baffle Cornish town.
"I've never seen anything like it before", a witness said, "everyone beating each other up with pillows. Pillows! What horrid place has the world become?!" Indeed, no one would have thought it possible, but this morning at approximately 5 am the first panicked phone calls were coming in at the local police station. DCI Peter Cushion and two young constables arrived at the scene a few minutes later. "Mayhem, pure madness. I've seen a lot of grim stuff in my 30 years as a policeman, but this..." DCI Cushion's expression grows dark. "First we saw five individuals swinging those really big, really poufy pillows above their heads, and when we came closer and turned a corner, it was like a battlefield. Dozens of people fighting each other, some with sofa pillows, some with bolsters, one even wielded a cat bed." The pillow-fighting could only be stopped and the fighters questioned with the help of the special pillowfight force which was rushed in via helicopters. None of the fighters were able to make coherent statements, though. "I just... had... to fight...", one of them stammered, "I don't know why. Aaaargh!!" - Investigations are ongoing. Rumours about a strange alien smell wafting through the town hours before the outbreak remain unconfirmed.

In other news... an inexplicable decline in cheese sales.

[Jubal]

Breaking news! An inexplicable decline in cheese sales is causing a major crash in the Cheese Analytics sector.

Cheese sales have been declining, and everyone knows it. Fewer people are going for cut-price cheddar, one-off wensleydale, and buy one get one free brie. The graphs are pointing down a whole half or even three quarters of a percent, and shockingly, nobody knows why.

Whilst the decline in cheese sales is actually minimal, the fact that nobody can explain it is causing companies to dramatically lose faith in their cheese analytics departments, which is uncovering a much bigger economic weakness: it turns out that up to forty percent of the workforce in some companies has become devoted to cheese analytics, cheese stock & share management, and cheese testing. Those companies are now shedding jobs, and it appears that recession is on the way.

A cheese analyst who was reached out to for comment made an inhuman noise which was either a cry of anguish or the name of a particularly unusual soft cow cheese from Cornwall: we would bring you an analysis of that, but our South West England cheese analyst has recently been fired.

In other news... "it's the Big One", they're saying in airports across Europe and Asia.

[The Seamstress]

Breaking News! Mystery unsolved: "It's the Big One".
Strange sightings in the sky are being reported from airports across Europe and Asia. "It is... big!" one shocked pilot says, wide-eyed. "So d--n big. I've seen a bunch of crazy s--t up there, but nothing was as big." The co-pilot shudders: "Look at that, Harry, me says, the Big One! It's the Big One!" Many more witnesses confirm the strange story, but stranger still, no one seems to be able to tell what the mysterious Big One actually is or looks like. One of the Dutch stewards who were among the first ones reporting the incident speaks of a scaly iridescent beast, but no one believes him. So what is the truth? We'll probably never know.

In other news... the Poisonous Pumpkin Scandal of 1974, a cold case finally closed?

[Jubal]

The Poisonous Pumpkin Scandal of 1974, a cold case finally closed?

The 1974 poisonous pumpkin crop were, by all accounts, placed into long-term cold storage in a deeply haphazard manner. Several resignations and a minor public outcry took place at the time, but the problem had remained unfixed until, recently, a new approach was tried.

Rather than using a hard box, a softer leather case has finally allowed several poisonous pumpkins to be placed into the thousand-year-long freeze where they await their presentation to Yh'surht'ghtor The Pumpkin Entity at the end of human time.

In other news, the otter priests are preparing for their once-a-decade pilgrimage...

[The Seamstress]

Breaking news! Otter pilgrimage is otter-ly exciting.

The otter priests have assembled in the Temple of Otter Devotion, with many of them coming from all around Otteropolis for their once-a-decade pilgrimage up The Holy Stream to the mountains, where its mysterious well only known to initiates of the otter priesthood is located. Rumour has it that the well actually is a portal to an-otter realm - the priests never confirmed nor denied it, so this has to remain a mystery. The purpose of the pilgrimage however is widely known among the populace, as it is the same since forever: praying to The Otter Deity for abundant fish and exciting new TV shows.

In other news: For the first time in known history, a sheep is running for president.

[Jubal]

Breaking news! For the first time in known history, a sheep is running for president.

The promises the sheep is giving include not fleecing the public on tax, 24 hour opening for baaaas, and plans to ram through a range of new legislation on areas of importance to the public. The sheep has promised to work across the aisle if elected, saying that there are good people among the farming community but that it doesn't want to work with mutton farmers specifically. It would also be the first female president, but has been avoiding mentioning the fact in case it puts off centrist voters.

It's still unclear how the sheep actually filed its nomination papers, and its opponents have already been alleging that it may be in the pocket of Big Satire and simply being used for base humour rather than being a serious candidate.

In other news: a gallant pixie has made headlines after a brave rescue...

[The Seamstress]

Breaking news! Gallant pixie saves the day.

Yesterday at around 3 pm, loud rumbling noises echoed through the streets of Upper Doomburrow, and panicky screams soon followed. A thunder cloud had been stolen and magically tampered with, by entities yet unknown, and let loose above the village, targeting villagers and trying to lightning-zap them into oblivion. The police was unable to do anything since you can't arrest or shoot a cloud, and the fire brigade was too busy putting out small lightning-induced fires to think about anything else. So the cloud rumbled on, at one point threatening to zap local teacher Ms. Mary Hasbadluck who got stuck in a bush while trying to flee. But then, literally at the last moment, she was rescued by the owner of a nearby shop: Mr. Peter Peixie, commonly known as "Mister P", rushed to her aid, and the two were able to flee into his shop before the cloud could even react. Since Mister P happens to be a pixie in possession of some magical abilities, he then proceeded to analyse the threat using his pixie-radar, and, soon having found the spell that originally transformed the cloud into a rumbling menace, successfully transform it back into a normal cloud. While the villagers were cheering, the cloud evaporated, looking ashamed of itself.

In other news: Previously unknown species of mushroom discovered - what that means, and why you should probably not eat it.