Well, for a start, Ireland is out today as I can’t improve on this photo of the front page of The Irish Daily Star from The Boiling Frog :

I had considered North Korea and South Korea exchanging artillery fire across the border (from The Grauniad) :

South Korea warned today that it will unleash “enormous retaliation” if North Korea launches fresh attacks against its territory.

North Korean troops bombarded Yeonpyeong, an island in disputed waters, with dozens of rounds of artillery earlier today, reportedly killing two South Korean soldiers and injuring around 20 people.

Seoul placed its military on its highest non-wartime alert level, scrambling F-16 fighter jets to the western sea and returning fire, officials said. It warned that the attack was a violation of the armistice that ended the Korean war in 1953.

The South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, who convened an emergency security meeting shortly after the initial bombardment, said an “indiscriminate attack on civilians” could never be tolerated.

“Enormous retaliation should be made, to the extent that [North Korea] cannot make provocations again,” he said.

The assault is one of the most serious in the decades since the war, given the involvement of civilians, although previous firefights around the disputed maritime border have resulted in a higher number of casualties.

But then The Daily Mash trumped any notion of that making it as a post :

CAN’T YOU ALL JUST SETTLE THIS OVER A NICE PLATE OF DOG? WORLD ASKS KOREA

NORTH and South Korea have been urged to settle their differences over a big plate of dog chops.

As North Korea fired shells at the South, terrified people around the world urged the two nations to remember their shared love of freshly killed pet.

Ban Ki Moon, the South Korean general secretary of the United Nations, offered to roast a pair of Dobermans with honey and sage and then follow it up with his special Pekinese ice cream with grated Beagle.

The UN chief said he would invite the leaders of both countries to his dog banquet as the first stage in securing a peace agreement, but warned that it could take a while what with the leader of North Korea being completely and utterly out of his fucking mind.

Although while I was there, this one from the vaults made me laugh like a drain :

INVENTOR UNVEILS ALL-IN-ONE PORTABLE TRAGEDY SHRINE

A BRITISH inventor has developed an all-in-one council estate tragedy shrine that can be erected within seconds of something ‘sad’ happening.

The Portagrief weighs just two kilograms and comes pre-loaded with decaying tulips, a poorly-composed sympathy poem and a tatty-looking teddy bear.

Inventor, Martin Bishop, said: “Within moments of something happening to somebody you’ve never met, you can share your fake sadness with friends, neighbours and the audience of Sky News.

“It’s the indispensable item for the childish, mal-educated grief-vampire who wants to appear really upset in as public a way as possible.”

The Portagrief will be offered in three basic models – the Executed Gangsta, the Teenage Traffic Accident and the Little Angel, which will include a card with the message ‘yoos in hevin now’.

There was this little snippet that caught my eye but it is too depressing to contemplate the consequences of what the US is doing.

Well, folks, it’s official – mark November 22, 2010 in your calendars – today is the day the Ponzi starts in earnest. With today’s $8.3 billion POMO monetization, the Fed’s official holdings of US Treasury securities now amount to $891.3 billion, which is higher than the second largest holder of US debt: China, which as of September 30 held $884 billion, and Japan, with $864 billion.

As an aside here – anyone know what the hell the UK is up to there or is it a cover for Chinese buying through UK fund managers?

After all, the last time it was tried on this scale ended rather badly aka the Weimar Republic :

“The inflationism of the currency systems of Europe has proceeded to extraordinary lengths. The various belligerent Governments, unable, or too timid or too short-sighted to secure from loans or taxes the resources they required, have printed notes for the balance.”

John Maynard Keynes

So finally, it looks like I will have to settle for this amusing little note from Pravda :

Citizen of the Netherlands helped to prevent a political mistake. Over 100 car owners received license plates with abbreviation ‘NSB’ on them, a Dutch equivalent of the word ‘Nazi.’ NSB is the notorious abbreviation for the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging, the Dutch fascist party which collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
Officials representing the Dutch transportation ministry said that the abbreviation appeared on the plates as a result of a computer program error. The program tracks down banned letter combinations for the registration of new plates (for example KKK for the Ku Klux Klan). Banned letter combinations also include abbreviations for political parties, swear words, etc.

New plates have already been issued and will soon be provided to all affected cars.

Whilst they may be ever tolerant to the point of being over-run by other nationalities, one thing certain to wind up the Dutch is being called a collaborator – they have long memories there.