Maldives: No, Our Country Isn't Underwater

Atlas makers have decided to omit the Maldives from future editions because global warming threatens to submerge the island nation, a climate-change skeptic Telegraph writer claimed in a satirical column. Sound ludicrous? Not to some newspapers and opposition politicians in the Maldives, who took the bogus story seriously and demanded that their government take a stand, the BBC reports.

The Maldives' top diplomat in the UK has written to the newspaper asking for an apology to be published, along with a clarification. The people of the Maldives aren't lacking a sense of humor, the diplomat says, but the satirical article went too far when it suggested that the country was hyping the danger of rising seas in an effort to "blackmail the international community into giving the Maldives more aid money." (More global warming stories.)