Stocks plunged worldwide and oil closed below $80 today on news that Germany will end its European Union membership effective 2012.

Financial analysts and global security experts are unable to predict how the unexpected move will shape an increasingly interconnected world. This much is known, nobody knows why the Germans made this decision, they won’t say why, and we have no way of making them talk. Read the full story

BRUSSELS – GlossyNews.com- Veggie Exporters Without Borders is appealing for calm over an E. coli outbreak that has Europeans fearing for their lives.

Now, even Russia, a country with few rules and regulations, has decided to slap a ban on vegetables from Spain and Germany, making exceptions only for the potato.

Germany is pressing to find the cause of this bacterial infection that has sickened thousands. With German anger mounting and the Fatherland on the hunt for one nation or group of people to blame, alarmists warn the E. coli outbreak could trigger a third World War.

Earlier in the week, Germany mistakenly blamed Spanish cucumbers for the E. coli outbreak, a move that outraged Spain. The German Agriculture Minister went as far as calling the Iberian gourds “low-calorie killers.”

Relations between Germany and Spain have remained sour ever since Spain beat Germany en route to winning the FIFA’s World Cup in 2010.

“Eat Your Vegetables?”

European child psychologists fear the E. coli outbreak’s long-term effects on children.

“Kids already hate vegetables and now they find out vegetables can kill you. Suddenly, a cucumber is a green missile – a salad, a toxic concoction of death,” says Dr. Helmut Krantz, the only person we could find to comment.

He believes certain children will grow into “malnourished mutants with low IQs, like ‘gypsies’” and then added something about his eugenics program.

Meantime, this particular E. coli strain has already put a strain on the Spanish tourism industry. Buñol’s world-renowned La Tomatina Festival in August has been cancelled, fearing it could quickly turn into the first ever E. coli Extravaganza.

AMSTERDAM (GlossyNews) — The Anne Frank House Museum, hoping to bring the lesson of Frank’s life and death to a new base of readers, launched the publication of the historic diary as a comic book. Spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker said the book is aimed at teenagers who might not otherwise read Anne Frank’s diary.

Bekker said, “Anne Frank wrote the diary between the ages of 13 and 15. Unfortunately, children today between the ages of 13 and 15 can’t read. So, we felt turning her gruesome tragedy into a comic book was the only way to get 21st century teens to understand the events of World War II. Which is, in itself, almost as tragic.”

VATICAN CITY (GlossyNews) — It appears that Pope Benedict XVI has had an epiphany about the sex scandal continuing to plague the Catholic Church: lack of fish in a priest’s diet can lead to inappropriate sexual behavior toward young men.

The Pope has asked the Vatican physicians to look into this possibility, explaining that because priests are no longer officially required to abstain from consuming meat on Fridays, the levels of mercury in their systems from lack of fish has dropped significantly. Read the full story

TEHRAN, Iran (GlossyNews) — Airlines refusing to call the waterway between Iran and the Arabian peninsula the ‘Persian Gulf’ will be banned from Iranian airspace, the transport minister told local media.

The warning was directed toward air carriers in neighboring Gulf Arab countries, who have a history of referring to the body of water as the ‘Arabian Gulf’. Read the full story

Belgian Prime Minister Herman van Rumpy Pumpy appears to be the frontrunner for selection as the dystopic E-USSR’s first permanent president at a summit in Brussels this coming Thursday.

The centre-right of left leader has a reputation as a canny duckfat chewer with a self-deprecating sense of humour (he jams sticks of rhubarb in his ears and does reindeer impersonations) which has helped him to hold together a fractious national coalition government who have suffered several calamitous ‘giggle’ failures this past two years after he abolished the Ministry for Graft and Corruption. Read the full story