Iran’s space program is kind of like North Korea’s search for mythical horse-like creatures: Officials say it’s moving along, and you don’t really believe them, but you’re still a little concerned because what if unicorns are real? How much of the world have we all been missing?

Today we’d like to offer some advice to all despotic, murderous dictators: If you want to be the news, you need to get the news right the first time.

Iran’s oppressive Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (think “I’m a dinner jacket”) regime managed to score a bit of media attention last week by proclaiming that it had launched a monkey into space. This was a major event for a country with very few friends that desperately wants to demonstrate its own power to the rest of the world. Over the weekend, the administration’s PR wing triumphantly announced the safe return of said monkey to Earth.

Welcome to the 20th century, Iran!

But wait: the Times of London observes that the two photos provided by Iran’s media relations people most definitely do not depict the same monkey. The little fella on the right has a mole that really gives it away, but come on.

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Sometimes the news is truly stranger than fiction—and sometimes karmic justice provides us with a much-needed laugh.

Today in PR fails that make us smile, The Taliban’s PR team (yes, that is a thing) sent out a press release last week…OK, yeah, let’s just consider that one for a minute: a press release from the Taliban.

Anyway, spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmedi wanted to forward an email from another Taliban spokesman to every contact on the terrorist organization’s email list. The problem? He mistook “carbon copy” for “blind carbon copy” and hit send—so everyone on the list could see the addresses of everyone else who received the message.

The list included more than 400 names; most were journalists, but the group also included quite a few members of the Afghan government in addition to some professors, political activists and even a few sympathetic warlords (who probably had Hotmail accounts). We know one thing: somebody’s Facebook pages are about to get hacked.

This isn’t just a PR fail for the Taliban—it’s also a stinging indictment of the Afghan government. All due to the kind of mistake our grandma might make while sending us one of those chain emails about the amazing numerical coincidences the will occur in the year 2011. Sounds like the Taliban needs a little help in the PR department, doesn’t it?

Any takers? No? We didn’t think so. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of guys.