In a surprise announcement yesterday, the British government stated that all penguins found wandering into the UK are to be "rounded up and shot on sight".

This startling news followed a recent meeting of government personality-cult leader Tony Blair with Microsoft CTO and alleged playboy philanthropist Bill Gates, to discuss plans to migrate all Government services onto the Internet by 2004. Apparently the entire government on-line experience will be based on the MS .NET platform, and only Windows Internet Explorer browsers will be able to access it.

Some penguins attempt to infiltrate the UK by sneaking in on an iceberg

After the interview, PM Blair was reported to have joked: "This is a Tux-free zone! In fact any Penguins found infiltrating our domain will be dot-netted!! Haha!" In fact this quote later turned out to be wrongly attributed to Mr Blair, and was discovered to have originated from an unknown respondent in the street.

Unfortunately, both the UK Military and the intelligence unit MI5 took the quote seriously, and have issued directives to their staff to shoot all penguins on sight, describing them as a "top-priority security risk to this sceptered isle".

London Zoo was reported to have been in mayhem yesterday evening, as a crack SAS squad infiltrated the penguin enclosure and spent an embarrassing hour trying to catch the slippery wet sea birds, then trying unsuccessfully to keep hold of them so that they could be tattooed with unique prisoner numbers before being frog-marched away in single file. Their efforts were repeatedly thwarted as the oily little buggers wriggled, slithered and slid out of the frustrated soldiers' hands, splashing back into the knee-deep water.

As darkness descended on the troubled zoo, an angry SAS officer barked that they would return in the morning with finer-meshed nets, asbestos gloves and a big vat of talcum powder.

John Chives, Web Designer, NY:
"Gosh."

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Dwayne P. Arkansas, Arkansas:
Yeeehw god for Linx dey do id again an piz all ovr M$!!!!!!!!

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