The future of popular girl band Sugababes is under threat after former member Mutya Buena lodged an application for legal ownership of the group’s name, thus creating an existential paradox that casts doubt on what it is to be a Sugababe. The last original band member, Keisha Buchanan (pictured right), left in September 2009.

Fellow founding member Buena inadvertently posited the potentially destructive paradox on Thursday as she made her application to the European Trademarks Authority. Known variously as the problem of Theseus’ Ship, Trigger’s Broom and Locke’s Socks, the philosophical conundrum questions whether an entity can remain the same object when all of its contituent parts have been replaced. Citing an ontological priciple formulated by 17th-century German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Buena disputed the authenticity of the current Sugababes.

“As Leibniz wrote in his Discours de Métaphysique in 1686, two objects can be identical only if their properties are identical. Therefore, the current Sugababes cannot, in fact, be the true Sugababes since they do not possess the band’s original properties – namely, comprising a black one, a white one and an Asian-looking one,” said the former pop sensation.

However, current band member Heidi Range contradicted Buena’s account, claiming that the Sugababes name is owned by the band’s record label, Universal.

“Mutya’s argument contains an intensional fallacy, since her definition of Sugababes depends on her own incedental description of the band’s essential properties. It would be just as valid for me to argue that the current band is indeed the same band, since it consists of three attracive women in their 20s dancing to songs they didn’t write.

“In any case, we are bound to ask whether Leibniz’s law is in fact an empirical or a logical principle,” said Range, who is the 613th different Sugababe.

Friends of drummer Pete Best, who played with the Beatles on their 1960 tour of Hamburg, say that the ‘fifth Beatle’ is watching the situation closely.

The massive earthquake that struck Chile on Saturday was punishment from God for a “pact with the Pope”, American televangelist Pat Robertson has claimed.

The tremor, which measured 8.8 on the Richter scale, is the latest in a line of punishments sent down from above, he said. It followed recent earthquakes in California and Haiti, blamed on the licentious behaviour of the regions’ residents, and hurricane Katrina in 2005, which was attributed to Ellen DeGeneres hosting the Emmys.

“This latest cataclysmic event is a message from the Lord to the people of Chile that they must abandon their wanton Popery or face the consequences,” Robertson told viewers of his 700 Club programme. “The fact that the destruction has centred on cities with Papist names like Concepción should tell us that this heresy is an affront to the one true faith, which, as we all know, is the Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism.”

The quake’s death toll presently stands at over 700, with several people also missing. The figure grew when a plane on an aid mission crashed, killing six. Strong winds precipitated by overly ostentatious praying at the Vatican were to blame, according to Robertson.

Concepción has been dogged by looting since the disaster, with around 160 people arrested and at least one person shot dead amid the unrest. Reports of cannibalism were refuted on Sunday when Catholic bishops explained that Chileans had that morning been consuming the transubstatiated flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, not of one another as Robertson had suggested.

Robertson’s prediction of a flood that would decimate populations of pagans was also thwarted after a tsunami warning in President Obama’s native Hawaii was lifted. Other metropolitan centres are still thought to be in danger, however, as a large wave appears to have travelled around almost the entire globe, circumventing several continents to target Sodom, Massachusetts.

The next parliament could be “the best hung parliament in recent British history”, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has claimed. His comments came in response to an ICM opinion poll that showed the gap between the three main parties narrowing ahead of this year’s general election.

“I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but the more seats we win, the more hung the next parliament will be,” Clegg told Cultsha in an exclusive interview. “We can feel ourselves getting bigger and more powerful just at the thought of it.”

Should the Conservatives fail to win an outright majority of seats in the House of Commons when the nation votes this year, it will almost certainly mean a more influential role for the Lib Dems. A coalition government would be a possibility, but Clegg has already ruled this out.

“This party is not going to get into bed with anyone who lacks the votes to form a strong, hard mandate,” he told us. “If what the people desire is a parliament that is well and truly hung, we are not going to disappoint them by flapping around with a limp, impotent coalition.”

Critics suggest that taking cabinet and ministerial posts under David Cameron’s leadership would be the Lib Dems’ best chance of wielding real power, questioning whether the party has the firmness and staying power to make its presence felt. Asked about this, however, Clegg was defiant.

“We aren’t going to let David Cameron ram his soft, wobbly legislation down our throats. With our stallion-like prowess, the other parties are going to be scared to take us on in the chamber, in the lobby, in the urinals – anywhere,” he said, grabbing his crotch and thrusting his pelvis forward repeatedly.

Clegg concluded: “However, it is likely that collaboration between political parties is going to be very important. In order to get laws passed, whoever becomes prime minister is clearly going to need every swinging dick he can find, and at this election, the Liberal Democrats’ swing will be bigger than Peter Snow’s pendulum can measure.”

Attractive female Lindsey Vonn has stunned the world after demonstrating competence in her chosen profession of proceeding quickly down a snow-covered mountain. The 25-year-old American lovely turned in an outstandingly skilled, elegant and pert performance in claiming the gold medal in the ladies’ downhill event at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Media commentators and Olympic officials had expressed concern that Miss Vonn would be unable to live up to her billing as the ‘Face of the Games’ after a shin injury cast doubt on her participation. However, the leg held up at the crucial time, transporting Miss Vonn’s face successfully down the Whistler course to the awaiting cameras.

Her victory was not a foregone conclusion, as she held off a tough challenge from fellow American Julia Mancuso to secure the win. Miss Mancuso closely matched her countrywoman’s split times and comely attributes through the majority of the course, but ultimately paled in comparison to the technique and radiance of Miss Vonn.

“This means everything to me,” the gold medallist told reporters with an enchanting smile. “I dreamed about what this would feel like, but it is much better in real life.” The world’s media will be given plenty more opportunities to enjoy the little angel’s charms, as she pursues gold medals in all five alpine events.

“It really is impressive how much this young lady stood out, especially given the amount of talent that is out there on the slopes.” said BBC commentator and former downhill specialist Graham Bell. “There’s obviously a long way to go still to win all five events, but what’s certain is that, out of five, I’d definitely give her one.”

British skier Chemmy Alcott gave the third best-looking performance of the day, though she was officially classified 13th after slowing to reapply her eyeliner at the third split.

Theories that the earth’s climate is changing as a result of human activity have been acknowledged as an elaborate joke perpetuated by almost all of the world’s climate scientists.

“It was good while it lasted,” said Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “but it’s time we came clean. Global warming was an April Fool’s Day gag that got out of hand. We really didn’t expect it to go on as long as it did.”

The intricately crafted fabric of lies began to unwind towards the end of 2009, when hacked emails from the University of East Anglia (UEA) revealed attempts to manipulate data to fit a predetermined pattern. The emails called into question the validity of the so-called ‘hockey stick’ graph, which suggests a rapid increase in the rate of global warming during the 20th century.

Further revelations in 2010 have revealed as baseless the IPCC’s assertion that the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035.

“In retrospect, we perhaps should have picked a more gently curved sporting implement, like a jai-alai cesta, but we thought ‘hockey stick’ was catchier,” said Pachauri. “We can’t really blame the UEA guys for messing up. We just ended up facing so much scepticism that we were asking the scientific community to keep the joke going with more and more ridiculous ruses.

“We were always going to come a cropper one day. We were just unlucky to have come up against the scrutiny of some top-class scientific luminaries at world-renowned institutions, such as Glenn Beck of Fox News.”

The admission will also set minds at ease about repeats of catastrophic weather events like Hurricane Katrina, which Pachauri conceded was actually generated using a cunningly concealed wave machine located in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists, meanwhile, no longer distracted by their climate japery, are expected to return to their core business of developing biological weapons.

In a stunning and uncharacteristic bout of openness, former UK prime minister Tony Blair has told the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war that he took Britain into the conflict with no motivation except “to fuck Saddam up”.

The outburst, which appears to have fully vindicated all protestors and critics of the war, came in response to the opening gambit from the panel’s chairman on Friday. “Good morning,” Sir John Chilcot began, before Blair raced hastily into his comprehensive mea culpa.

“Before you go any further, let me just say that I took over in 1997 with no other goal than to kick that guy’s ass so hard that I could play keepy-uppy with his tonsils,” said Blair, who headed the Labour government for 10 years. “Fuck international law, Saddam just needed a damn good going over.”

Asked whether he believed Iraq had an active WMD programme at the time of the invasion, the former prime minister responded: “Of course I did, if WMD stands for Weak Motherfucking Dogshit. That guy was pulling all sorts of lame BS all the God damn day. He just needed to be schooled on that shit.”

In previous submissions to the inquiry, Blair’s press secretary Alistair Campbell and then-attorney general Lord Goldsmith both said that the legal basis for going to war was sound, however Blair downplayed the significance of these points in his evidence.

“I couldn’t give a flying fuck,” he screamed, making a violent thrusting motion with his fist, before concluding: “UN Security Council Resolution 1441, schmUN Security Council Resolution 1441.”

Despite the unexpected revelations, observers suspect that the man who earned the name Teflon Tony will once again escape any legal consequences, given the inquiry’s limited powers. “Try as we might we’ve never been able to make anything stick to him,” said former cabinet member and Blair rival Clare Short. “Unfortunately, it looks like he might just get away with it yet again.”

The president of the Iranian Football Federation (IFF), Ali Kaffashian, has apologised for his organisation’s strange and confusing decision to send a New Year’s greeting to a fictional country. The IFF’s foreign affairs chief Mohammad-Manour Azimzadeh has also resigned, taking responsibility for the mistake.

The made-up state, ‘Israel’, which is thought to be a figment of Azimzadeh’s imagination, was included inadvertently on a mailing list of real countries, all members of football’s world governing body FIFA.

“This was a bizarre and puzzling action, about which we are deeply sorry. It is not acceptable for our foreign affairs director to go around inventing countries without explanation,” said Kaffashian. “Of course, we would like to reiterate our heartfelt good wishes to all of FIFA’s member states, but not to this one fake country, towards which we have no feelings whatsoever, since it doesn’t exist.”

Little is known about ‘Israel’, except that it is believed to be a region of ethnic Jewish and Arab peoples existing solely in the mind of Azimzadeh. His mistake, meanwhile, has been labelled the most embarrassing football gaffe since former England manager Steve McClaren sent a Christmas card to the national coach of Lilliput – a faux pas made worse by the fact that the card was 40 times larger than the recipient’s entire body.

Representatives of the national football association of ‘Israel’ could not be reached for comment, presumably because the contact details for the non-existent body correspond to no physical address, or else some ethereal plane inhabited only by pixies and rabbis.

Knee-jerk reactions to the attempted US plane bombing on Christmas Day have not been fast enough, prime minister Gordon Brown has claimed.

“If we hope to catch terrorists off-guard, we must demand much swifter deployment of strategic anti-terrorist knee movements,” he said on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show. “By delaying, we are only giving them a chance to cover their crotches, so to speak.”

The prime minister used the interview to pre-empt his own hastily commissioned review, by announcing the immediate roll-out of protective measures at Britain’s airports. They include the use of racial profiling and full-body scanners. The moves are in response to the alleged attempt by student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate a bomb on a flight bound for Detroit.

“It is absolutely critical at a time like this that we move quickly to target Middle-Eastern and Sub-continental Asian terrorists from carrying solid explosives onto airplanes,” said Brown. “Those who point out that the Christmas Day bomber was a black Nigerian man carrying a liquid device that was probably not dense enough to be picked up by the new scanners are simply splitting hairs.

“The important thing is that we take down whoever’s groin is in kneeing distance first.”

Brown also responded to recent debate about the role of Yemen in the bombing. It is believed that the London-based bomber trained in the impoverished Muslim country before boarding his flight to the US in Amsterdam.

“It is clear that we must make every effort to improve intelligence gathering and anti-terrorism strategies in Yemen as a matter of urgency, and at the exclusion of all other countries,” he said. “That is why we have taken the first opportunity to label it a failed state and close our embassy. That will hit the terrorists where it hurts – right in the ‘nads.”

A suggestive story implying a Facebook-related link between golfer Tiger Woods, musician Lady Gaga and the word ’sex’ has failed to produce any discernible increase in web traffic for gossip website Pimpsandhos.com, much to the publisher’s disappointment.

Despite repeated mentions of the disgraced sports star Tiger Woods in close proximity to in-vogue singer Lady Gaga and the words ‘Facebook’ and ’sex’, it seems the site has failed to influence search engine algorithms in any significant way. This is despite ‘Tiger Woods’, ‘Lady Gaga’, ‘Facebook’ and ’sex’ being amongst 2009’s most searched keywords.

“I was convinced any story about Lady Gaga and Tiger Woods being involved in Facebook sex was bound to give us an uplift in visits,” said Pimpsandhos.com site owner Tom Scheffler. “According to the analytics firms, ‘Facebook’ has run away with the title of most searched keyword this year, while ’sex’ is a perennial winner. I also thought Tiger Woods and Lady Gaga were guaranteed to bring in visitors after the year they have had.

“Michael Jackson could have completed the picture, but I couldn’t come up with a tasteful way of working him into the Facebook sex story alongside Lady Gaga and Tiger Woods.”

Google is highly secretive about how it works out its search rankings, saying only that it uses criteria that balance relevance with popularity. However any site that manages to push its way onto the first page of results for top keywords like ‘Facebook’, ‘Tiger Woods’, ‘Lady Gaga’ and ’sex’ can expect huge amounts of visitors via Google alone.

Yet the search engine takes a dim view of websites that attempt to trick its algorithms, penalising them in its rankings. “I guess this is where the ‘Tiger Woods, Lady Gaga Facebook Sex’ story fell down,” said Scheffler. “I’m just going to have to think of more imaginative, relevant stories to generate interest in the Celebrity Sex Tape section of the site.”

American football’s NFL has encouraged players to give permission for their brains to be removed and used for scientific study at the end of their sporting lives. High-profile players such as Ben Roethlisberger, Brian Westbrook and Kurt Warner have already been convinced with surprising ease to sign up to the initiative, intended to examine the neurological effects of sustaining voluntary concussions on a weekly basis.

“It’s great that so many players have agreed to give their brains to science once they no longer have any use for them,” said Professor Mary Eckhart of Boston University. “I’m glad, too, that they didn’t insist on keeping them until the end of their natural lives, realising that on retirement the organs will be so battered as to be functionally useless.”

The NFL has come under increased scrutiny this season as players have left games with concussions in almost every week of the schedule. Former players have also spoken out against the league, including former linebacker Barry Grant, 63, who experiences constant pain and has lost all use of his bones.

“I wish I had never played the game,” he said, propped upright at his Florida home by an elaborate system of pulleys and counterweights. “It hurts every day, but they never warn you it might end this way.

“You would think that a quarter-inch plastic shell around the skull would be plenty to keep you safe when charging head-first into a 240-pound running back at full speed. It certainly makes a cool sound. I mean there are disclaimers on the packaging that say things like ‘NO HELMET CAN PREVENT SERIOUS HEAD OR NECK INJURIES A PLAYER MIGHT RECEIVE WHILE PARTICIPATING IN FOOTBALL’ in capital letters, but who pays attention to all that legal mumbo-jumbo?”

Grant himself has also agreed to donate his brain to scientific study, completing this interview just as the surgeons got to work. “It’s not like it does anything for me any more, so we might as well take it out and see just how bashed up it is,” he concluded.

According to Professor Eckhart, the work will benefit all future generations of players. “We’ll be able to show just what happens to the brain as a result of playing the sport,” she said. “And as an added bonus, once we’re done with them, the brains are just the right size and shape to be fashioned into new footballs, which would be a fitting tribute to players that gave their heart and soul, as well as many other body parts, to the game.”