April Fools' Day hoaxes

The White House has managed to pull off an April Fools' prank ahead of the annual East Egg Roll.

The White House Twitter account warned followers earlier to be on the lookout for a "special video message from the president."

Instead, viewers got a surprise visitor to the press briefing room.

The piece began with a shot of the familiar lectern which was empty as the presidential entrance march played, before a small head peeked over the edge of the stand.

"It looks like you were expecting somebody else."

It was Robbie Novak, who plays "Kid President" in a series of popular YouTube videos.

"April Fools on all of you all," he said.

Watch: The Kid President gets a call from the White House

Scientists at Liverpool University have discovered a gene that determines whether a person will develop into a Liverpool or Everton fan, the Liverpool Echo claims.

It was previously thought that club allegiance was determined by "peer pressure and copying family members," but the new research challenges that theory.

According to the research, the Liverpool gene is associated with a "love of European travel" and "excellent long-term memory".

The gene only appears to explain allegiance to one of the two teams, indicating that either we are all Liverpool or Everton fans deep down, or that more research is needed.

Have you seen any April Fools' Day hoaxes in the news? Email them to us at yourstory@itn.co.uk or comment on our Facebook page.

Google widened its arsenal of web-browsing tools today to include an extra service for pirates.

As well searching for addresses, users of Google Maps can now search for treasure.

It is not the only April Fools' Day prank Google have pulled off: The search giant also tried to persuade users they can now 'search for smells'.

Read: Google's new tool allows users to 'search for smells'

Google claims to have unveiled its latest search gadget today in the form of 'Google Nose'.

The application purports to allow people to search for smells as they would webpages, images or videos.

Introducing the idea in a spoof promotional video, a Google engineer boasts that the service a is based on a "15 million scentabyte database of smells from around the world":

Have you seen any April Fools' Day hoaxes in the news? Email them to us at yourstory@itn.co.uk or comment on our Facebook page.

With the royal baby due this summer, BMW has announced the launch of its limited edition BMW P.R.A.M (Postnatal Royal Auto Mobile).

For those who are "too posh to push" it even comes fitted with a N.A.P.P.I.E (Nanny-Assisting Petrol-Powered Injection Engine).

No one's fooled by this advertisement.

One April Fools' Day prank that has provoked a strong reaction is YouTube's claim that it is planning to stop accepting video uploads.

In a video addressed to users, a YouTube employee announces that the entire website was an attempt to "find the best video in the world" and that the company will spend the next decade reviewing all of the entries to pick a winner.

One user commented on the video "I almost had a heart attack ... That wasn't funny," while another expressed their dismay at having to "wait a whole 10 years" for the winner to be announced.

The Guardian newspaper seems to have taken readers for an April Fools' Day ride with its advertisement for a new product called Guardian Goggles.

The pseudo-product builds on the idea of "augmented reality" whereby users can browse the Internet via a pair of glasses, and bears a passing resemblance to a real product being piloted by Google.

A promotional video on the newspaper's website says the glasses provide a "constant steam of specially-curated liberal and left-wing opinion".

Looking at fish in a fishmonger prompts comments about sustainability, for example, and the glasses even censor out the text in a copy of a rival newspaper the wearer happens to try reading.

The advertisement even features a celebrity endorsement from the Education Secretary Michale Gove.

Have you seen any April Fools' Day hoaxes in the news? Email them to us at yourstory@itn.co.uk or comment on our Facebook page.

Virgin Atlantic claims to be launching the world's first glass-bottomed aeroplane.

The airline tweeted this picture showing how the service will look:

Email you April Fools' Day suspicions to yourstory@itn.co.uk or comment on our Facebook page.

Social media website has announced on its blog that it will start charging users for vowels to encourage more "efficient" communication.

The company says it is re-naming itself 'Twttr' to reflect the change, and assures users that the letter 'Y' - which is sometimes described as a vowel - will remain free to use.

Each year the world's press does its part for April Fools' Day by publishing unlikely, and sometimes false, stories. Here are a few stories that are arousing suspicion this morning:

• The Daily Mail reports that a wildlife sanctuary in North Yorkshire has trained owls to deliver internal mail, Harry Potter style.

• The Telegraph claims that the Prime Minister waded into waist-deep mud to rescue a sheep near his house in Chipping Norton.

• Google has launched a web application called 'Nose' that allows users to smell what they are searching for.

Email your suspicions of false stories to yourstory@itn.co.uk or comment on our Facebook page.