Xbox user accidentally destroys all of the Middle East

Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and all of the Middle East have been reduced to a single charred, radioactive and smoking desert devoid of life this weekend, after an Xbox Live user accidentally logged into the United States Military Defence Network server and went onto inflict what he is calling “the greatest high score of all time” against the group of Arab countries.

According to a Commission headed by the Supreme Court and the Senate, 14-year-old Jake Ericson accidentally logged onto the Pentagon’s wireless servers at about 3:14pm yesterday afternoon after he put new hit First Person Shooter game Call of Duty: Ghosts into his console’s disc tray. Ericson then proceeded to load what he thought was a special downloadable Drone Strike mission, which resulted in the deaths of some 42 million people.

“Usually in these games, if you kill a friendly soldier or a civilian – except in that No Russian airport mission controversy, of course – you die,” said the Commission in its final report. “But outside of the game, there was no such limitation placed on Ericson. His pursuit of topping the leaderboard was unhindered.”

Ericson, who has mastered this game over many years and versions of Call of Duty, was reportedly unstoppable.

“When we saw one of our drones go rogue and start this senseless and horrifying slaughter, we tried to shoot it down with counterdrones, missiles, and countermeasures,” said Military spokesman Hope Infyre, “but he just pressed the Right Trigger button to deploy flares and barrel roll.”

In spite of the controversy, however, Infyre said that they had to look at the “silver lining in all of this”.

“This just shows us how warfare is evolving,” he said. “We shouldn’t punish him, but instead learn from him. If we could boil down war to just one drone, think how much that could save us in yearly budget allocations on Defence.”

The Department of Defence has since considered offering Ericson and other COD fans full-time positions training a future generation of warriors, but they say there are still some legal considerations to be ironed out.

“First of all, we’ll need to amend or even possibly rewrite the Geneva Convention and its laws on the rules of engagement,” said the DOD in a statement, “because right now it doesn’t say anything about the ethics, morals or legality of calling everyone around you a bunch of noob faggots and then teabagging their dead corpses after you shoot them in the back.”

Longevity, healthy lifestyle potentially fatal – study

The news got scarier and the world a considerably more bleak, depressing place to live this morning, after doctors working in conjunction with medical researchers at the Institute for The Study of Dangerous and Inevitable Illnesses announced yet another way you are probably going to die.

“The first few symptoms of this disease are iniquitous and dangerous because you feel normal, like a normal, healthy sixty-to-seventy-year-old,” said Dr Koff Formiplese. “And then BOOM: you’ve got it.”

The so-called Old Age Syndrome (OAS) has been shown to affect nearly one in a thousand people, mostly senior citizens between the ages of 60 and 90. The disease has a mortality rate of 100%, and is likely to affect you or someone you know at least once in your or his or her lifetime.

“This rare medical condition has diverse and wide-ranging symptoms,” said Formiplese, “such as hair loss, flaccid and weathered skin, brittle bones, arthritis and an increased susceptibility to infection from cuts and bruises. Also, it massively degrades their driving skills, and makes them give really strange birthday presents to people. The people who have this disease carry an unacceptably elevated risk of dying and they have a much higher than ordinary chance of developing cancers, lung, bone and liver diseases, and usually have a much poorer immune system. We need to find out what is causing this terrible affliction and end it once and for all.”

To deal with the disease, many people now resort to lumping all the infected into one huge Hospice Village, where activities like tennis, water aerobics and increasingly infrequent family visits are used to provide some relief from the condition.

However, there is a silver lining.

“Though everyone who catches the disease eventually and inevitably dies, many of them live for a very long time with the disease,” said Formiplese. “You could say it’s a manageable condition. And many studies show that simply smoking a few packs of cigarettes a day, taking high doses of illegal narcotics, avoiding the gym, eating deep-fried butter... these are all proved methods for guaranteeing you don't catch OAS.”

In light of many diagnoses like these by healthcare specialists, lawyers and legal representatives now believe they have identified two of the most leading causes of OAS, and are now gathering cases and names to back up what is set to be one of the largest a class action lawsuits in the history of the world, eclipsing the comparatively meagre settlements won from tobacco giants and poisoned water suppliers.

“We now know that statistically if you spend time in a gym or in the vegetable section of a supermarket, you’re more likely to develop symptoms,” said legal professional Claus Akshin. “as such, we’re preparing litigation against the Health Industry – places like Virgin Active and other gyms – and against fruit producers, farmers and grocers who stock produce that is dangerously high in vitamins, minerals and fibre, all of which are proven to directly contribute towards OAS.”

He went on to say how these insidious farmers were exacerbating and already out-of-control problem.

“There’s apparently a greenish sticky thing called celery that actually has a negative calorie count,” said a legal expert. “What kind of sick bastard would force his clients to burn energy to eat his food?”

They are also considering the Home Shopping Network and other infomercial channels, but proving causation will be tough if not impossible.

“They say ‘Guaranteed Results’ and ‘Money-back Guarantee’ and stuff like ‘get the abs you always wanted in no time’ but we can’t really find a single example where these products have actually inflicted one of our unfortunate victims with the kinds of Body and Muscle Mass changes that indicate the onset of OAS.”

However, Virgin Active CEO and farmers everywhere have been staunchly defensive.

“We’ll defend ourselves to the last,” said Virgin Active CEO Richard Branson. “I’m not even sure if the research is sound: in fact, most of the people who come to our gyms don’t end up being healthy and ripped anyway. Hell, the largest percentage of our subscribers is Guilty New Year’s Resolution folk, and they all quit almost immediately after Day One.”

Farmers, too, have defended their actions.

“Eating our produce might bring you OAS, sure,” said murder carrots and grim reaper corn grower Moor Talitie, “But eating alternative foods – fatty foods and carbohydrates – is clinically proven to give you higher cholesterol, excess adipose tissue and heart conditions: what doctors are now calling Fat Fuck Syndrome. I mean, I know it’s choosing between two evils, but ours is definitely the lesser of the two.”