Dr Congo: Public health officials in West Africa have declared that bushmeat is not to be considered as one of your 5-a-day – and it goes without saying that 5 pieces of bushmeat does not make up your recommended daily dose of fruit and vegetables either.

“The misunderstanding lies in the term,” said Dr Janice Banza from Dr Congo’s Ministry of Public Health. “While meat is obviously a good source of meat, a bush is a plant, which is a form of vegetable. Hence the confusion.”

On behalf of cosmetic firms such as L’Oreal and Estee Lauder, militias in the region frequently capture animals so cleansers and mascara can be tested on the creatures – and then eat them with their cold, bare hands. “Sometimes I feel we are being played by faceless corporations,” said General Eric Mensah, a local militia leader, oblivious to the fact that his honchos often make whole populations faceless as a result of their dirty work.

“I’m sorry to bang on about this,” said Dr Banza, “But much of the confusion is about the pairing of terms and etymology,” she said, referring to the practice where nerdy people collect insects. “If apple sauce and blueberry muffins are good for you, why not bush meat? It’s just two words pushed together – one healthy, one full of protein, yet could also be full of Ebola or Marburg. But it’s a risk many militia bros are happy to take to satisfy their daily 85g of the stuff or whatever.” 
 

Spain: People from all backgrounds who couldn’t be bothered to control their urine output are now providing comfort to those who have more hair than some – but less than you might imagine.

Upcycling is when you move something from lower in the body to somewhere higher up, and that’s exactly what’s going on here. “We’ve found out about piss’s ability to regenerate hair growth quite by accident,” said Ben Iberico from adult nappy firm Tena, citing the scientific name for the outflows rather than the slang ‘urine’.

“One of our patients tossed their pee pants onto a hairless ferret they kept for emergencies. When they returned a week later they found the ferret had grown quite a mane, although it probably died from starvation or apathy rather than the effects of piss on its head.”

Tena now plans to establish a ‘wear and share’ scheme across the Iberian Peninsula. Baldies would be matched with wee leakers of a similar blood type, with robots made of a rust-free ceramic then tasked to deliver the pants from floating distribution centres.

“So co-workers don’t suspect anything we have used AI to devise special hats for patients to wear for the 12-week process,” said Iberico. “They’re not great to be honest – some of them have six fingers – but we are confident we can effectively leverage piss to help baldies become normal and that’s what matters.”

China: An opportunistic magpie has flown away with the cure for H5N5 avian flu from a research lab in Wuhan – causing other ground floor labs in the region to step up security and close all windows for starters.

Health officials were understandably furious. “This is such a schoolboy or Proud Boy error,” said Barry Li, the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “After trying to win back confidence after the botched Covid release, we were really hoping to mollify the West with this cure, even though avian flu [including H5N5, which infected a human for the first time this week] is a disease of our making and mainly only affects us.”

To help the community rally together, local birdwatchers have been out in force with their binoculars to try and spot the culprit and hopefully recover the cure – which is in a vial about yay big.

Why they have only trained their sights on local schools and swimming baths in the region, however, has caused one female parent to utter, “I don’t give a shit about avian, bat or pangolin flu. We have bigger problems to contend with. Unfortunately, most of them are in the local communist party, so they are ‘protected’,” she said, with the implied scrunching of the fingers gesture.

Barry Li drew on his fake Gitanes philosophically. “They’ll probably just call in the army,” he said. “Which is kind of like sending in a hammer to catch a mouse, but we have the biggest military in the world and Taiwan is not on the cards just yet. Or Japan. Maybe Korea. Yeah, we might have a little surprise for them if you get my drift."

UK: The common flu has been renewed for another season – even though it hasn’t yet been picked up by any network and ratings for last year’s episodes were pretty awful.

While the flu has been around since at least 6,000 BCE – pre-dating life itself according to leaders in Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party – in recent years many suspect it has been artificially supported. “Who benefits?” asked Britain’s Eamonn Holmes on his popular GB News trollcast. “Apart from the government the only ones making money from the flu are big pharma firms like GSK, Kenvue and Reckitt – and I’m willing to name names.”

“It’s unfortunate that flu keeps on coming back. It’s a complete mystery,” said Bill Mamet, Reckitt’s head of sales. “If only we could find a cure to banish flu once and for all, but that would probably cost thousands. Until then we’ll just have to protect people as best we can,” he said, rubbing his hands with glee.

Recently the common flu has faced competition from Covid, norovirus and avian flu – which is even worse as it is airborne. “Let’s take the same approach to these ailments as common flu and acute angina,” said Mamet in a hot mic incident at a recent sales conference in Barbados. “I said ‘angina’ you fucking muppet!”
 

Estonia: Backpain sufferers are being encouraged to try a new treatment to help cure their affliction and stop their moaning – with a welcome side-effect that will finally lead them to do some good in the community.

Dr Dolores Sepp, a chiropractor with the Confido Clinic in Tartu, is leading the mostly legal experiments. “Let’s face it, not everyone can navigate the outer workings of a stream with confidence. Especially those who were previously known in a derogatory fashion as dwarves and midgets but who now prefer to be called Inuits.”

The solution, in case the penny hasn’t clicked yet, is for a backpain sufferer to gain relief by lying across a stream to stretch their spine. This also forms a handy bridge with their backs and leg limbs serving as a transport hub. “The patient can then use a special whistle that only short people can hear to summon them, while also saying ‘It’s okay, our back has got you’,” said Dr Sepp. “Instead of: ‘We’ve got your back,’ it’s the other way round. Which is genius.”

One downside is that because a person’s back is mostly positioned to the rear of their body, you can’t see who is coming. “Bad tall people could take the piss by using the human bridge when they could easily leap the stream in a single bound. That happened in early trials. Spines were snapped and some people were drenched, but we’re working hard to minimise these risks with a stricter sign-up policy based on how many squares have a car or stalker in their image.”