Fars fooled by Onion

Fars earnestly reported that a Gallup survey had found white rural Americans would rather vote for Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than President Barack Obama, failing to realise the story was a spoof produced The Onion – the US equivalent of Britain's Private Eye.

After being ridiculed on the internet, the news agency – best known for publishing the anti-Israeli diatribes of senior Iranian officials – took down the story and yesterday issued a correction.

But the 900-word amending statement, written in English, was almost as strange as the original article.