Belgian workers take sick leave nearly four times as often as U.S. workers, mostly attributed to Belgian law, which grants full salary the first month and then government-guaranteed 80-percent pay indefinitely. A recent study, noted in a January Wall Street Journal report, found that only 5 percent of Belgian leave-takers were proven malingerers, but that the biggest medical problem now is easily-diagnosed "depression" (exacerbated by the worsening economy), leading to free-form medical leave-taking and creative treatments often unchallenged, such as for the man who frolicked on the soccer field, bought an Alfa Romeo, and reconnected with old friends (all of which, not surprisingly, said his doctor, lessened his depression).

-- On successive days in January in the courthouse in Sheboygan, Wis., 17-year-old Alan Jepsen and 17-year-old Norma Guthrie were each charged with sexual assault for having consensual sex with their respective 14-year-old, opposite-sex companions. However, Jepsen was charged with a felony (maximum: 25 years in prison), and Guthrie was charged with a misdemeanor (maximum, 9 months).

-- In January, a judge at Britain's Bristol Crown Court dropped the case against a 20-year-old man accused of robbing a driving instructor because the victim-witness was "too believable" in her testimony to the jury. Judge Jamie Tabor explained that the victim had only seen the defendant for a split-second, but that she appeared so sincere and courageous that the jury probably regarded her courtroom identification of the man as more authoritative than the mere glimpse deserved.

-- Australia's Queensland Rail agency disclosed in January that it would quickly offer refunds to passengers on a Cairns-to-Brisbane train that crashed just outside Cairns, but reiterated at the same time that it would not pay refunds to survivors of a November 2008 Brisbane-to-Cairns train crash that killed two and injured nine. The difference, according to a Queensland Rail general manager, was that the 2009 trip was just getting underway from Cairns when it crashed, but that the 2008 trip, also near Cairns, was "95 percent over" by the time the deadly crash occurred (and thus, the survivors had basically reached their destination).

-- Timothy Hoffman, 26, was awarded $76.6 million by a jury in Viera, Fla., in January for becoming paralyzed in a 2003 incident when, on a dare, he dove headfirst into the Indian River, which, unknown to him, was about a foot deep at that point. One reason for the large judgment may have been that the defendant, C&D Dock Works, one of whose employees may have been the one that issued the dare, is bankrupt and did not defend itself at the trial. (There was also evidence that Hoffman may have solicited the dare himself.)

-- Paul Sanchez, 67, an "occasional" golfer, filed a lawsuit in Brentwood, N.H., in February against the Candia Woods Golf Links for a 2006 incident in which his approach shot hit a yard marker in the fairway, bounced back, and struck him in the eye. Sanchez claimed the course owners were negligent in placing the sign in the fairway and also should have warned him that balls would bounce off of it.

-- (1) The $500,000 top prize in Alaska's January statewide lottery, to benefit the organization Standing Together Against Rape, for victims of sexual assault, was won by Alec Ahsoak, 53, who coincidentally is a twice-convicted sex offender. (2) Sweden's Hallands Nyheter newspaper reported in January that a police officer had endured four operations at a private clinic in Gothenburg to correct a birth condition that made one leg shorter than the other, but operations on the longer leg cut off too much, so it is now shorter than the leg that used to be the shorter one.

-- In January, an appeals court in Newark, N.J., reinstated Doris Sexton's worker-compensation lawsuit against a county-owned nursing home where Sexton had claimed that breathing a co-worker's perfume one day in 2004 had made her permanently disabled and tethered to an oxygen tank. A lower court had decided that it was far more likely that her disability was caused by Sexton's 43-year, pack-a-day cigarette habit than by the brief exposure to perfume.

-- Inadvertently, Raed Jarrar, 30, made his August 2006 airline flight from New York to Oakland, Calif., pay off handsomely for him, despite some inconvenience and harassment. Jarrar, an Iraqi-born U.S. resident married to an American citizen, was wearing a T-shirt with Arabic lettering at the JetBlue gate at JFK airport when the airline denied him boarding. After negotiating, he was allowed to board provided he cover the shirt and sit in the back row. In January 2009, JetBlue and two officials of the Transportation Security Administration agreed to pay Jarrar $240,000 to settle his racial profiling lawsuit. (The T-shirt read "We Will Not Be Silent" and was in both English and Arabic.)

-- In January, assistant coaches Scott Coy and Darren DeMeio, of the Westminister College (New Wilmington, Pa.) football team, who were in Nashville, Tenn., for a coaches' convention, were seriously injured during 4 a.m. horseplay-wrestling at their hotel. The men, who weigh a combined 525 lbs., crashed through the double-paned window in their fourth-floor room and fell to the ground in their underwear.

-- Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) John West, 20, and Ashley Sorensen, 20, were arrested in Auburn, Calif., in January after allegedly stealing the tires and rims off a car. The pair had put the tires on their own car and then violated a cardinal rule by returning to the crime scene, to see if the owner had called the police. (She had, and she pointed out the pair's car to officers.) (2) A man who demanded the bank's money in Nicholasville, Ky., in January left empty-handed after an employee at the counter informed him that the building is now a regional water-district office and not the bank that used to be there.

-- (a) On the Open Road: A 70-lb. pit bull jumped on a car's gearshift at a carwash in Pryor, Okla., in November, sending the car out of the bay, to circle the lot briefly. And a boxer-shar-pei mix similarly jostled the gearshift of a van in Port Jefferson, N.Y., in November, sending it through the front window of the Cool Beanz coffee shop. (b) On the Firing Line: Oregon State Police said a gunshot into a boat on Tillamook Bay in November was probably caused by a Labrador's jumping on a 12-gauge shotgun while the boat was unattended. And a 19-year-old man had several toes shot off on a hunting trip in January in Forrest City, Ark., when his dog jumped onto a shotgun in the front seat of his truck.

-- The Baltimore Sun reported in June 1993 that New York City artist Todd Alden had recently asked 400 art collectors worldwide to send him samples of their feces so he could offer them for sale in personalized tins. Said Alden, "Scatology is emerging as an increasingly significant part of artistic inquiry in the 1990s." A 30-gram tin of the feces of Italian artist Piero Manzoni, canned in 1961, sold just before that for $75,000. Subsequent to this story, News of the Weird periodically tracked the fluctuating price of the several Manzoni tins, including Britain's Tate Gallery's 2002 purchase for $38,000 (which was over 100 times the price of an equal amount of gold). A colleague of Manzoni revealed in 2007 that his tins probably contained just plaster, but a Tate curator pointed out the irrelevance of the physical content of art.

Though India is recognized as a world leader in promoting the health benefits of urine, its dominance will be assured by the end of the year when a cow-urine-based soft drink comes to market. Om Prakash, chief of the Cow Protection Department of the RSS organization (India's largest Hindu nationalist group), trying to reassure a Times of London reporter in February, promised, "It won't smell like urine and will be tasty, too," noting that medicinal herbs would be added and toxins removed. In addition to improved health, he said, India needs a domestic (and especially Hindu) beverage to compete with the foreign influence of Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

-- After 50 years' separation following their adoptions by separate families, identical twins Rosabelle Glasby of Australia and Dorothy Loader of Malaysia were reunited in September 2008 after a years-long search by Glasby, and she applied to bring Loader to Australia under the country's family migration policy. However, in January, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship ruled that, under the law, Loader is not related to Glasby (in that the adoption wipes out birth status).

-- Change We Can Believe In: In December, the city council in Brighton, Mich., passed an ordinance making it illegal for anyone to be "annoying" in public, "by word of mouth, sign or motions." Violators can be ticketed and fined.

-- States That Need Better Training in Arithmetic: (1) Two Maryland officials (reportedly new on the job) made a simple error in addition in 2007 (in estimating counties' property values) that was revealed in January 2009 to have cost state offices $31 million in overpayments, according to a Washington Post report. (2) In October, the Dallas school district was forced to lay off 375 teachers to ameliorate an $84 million deficit caused by a massive math error in the budget, according to a report by WFAA-TV.

-- Earlier, He Could've Gotten a Mortgage, Too: In a December test of the laxness of New York City's property-ownership office, a New York Daily News reporter walked out of the city's register of deeds with title to the $2 billion Empire State Building. His fake purchase document, with a fake notary public stamp and a fake "witness" signature (of "Fay Wray," star of the original "King Kong"), took 90 minutes to convert to an official deed, which of course came as a great surprise to Empire State Land Associates, to whose shocked representative the reporter "returned" the property the next day.

-- The campus police chief of Colorado State University, Dexter Yarbrough, also teaches a criminology class, during which he gives a flavor of real police work (since he's a former Chicago cop). According to audio recordings of his lectures reported in January by the campus newspaper The Collegian, Yarbrough acknowledged that police sometimes have to "lie" and "cut corners" and "beat (the) ass" of a suspect if they "deserve" it. Sometimes, a confidential informant gets paid off with police-seized drugs, but only after being warned, "(H)ey, if you get caught with this, you know, don't say my name." Most unenlightened of all was Yarbrough's characterization of some rape victims: "(E)ven when (women) say 'no,' (t)hey want the dick."

-- Police in Holland Township, N.J., removed three kids from the home of Heath and Deborah Campbell in January at the behest of the state Division of Youth and Family Services. The kids are 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell and his 1-year-old sisters, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell and JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell. The family was also in the news in December when their local ShopRite supermarket bakery refused to make a birthday cake with little Adolf's name on it.

(1) Michael Reed, 50, was charged with attempted robbery of Eddie's Fried Chicken in Fort Worth, Texas, in December. He was armed only with a tree branch and was quickly neutralized by a 56-year-old employee, who grabbed a broom, and the men proceeded to duel until Reed dropped his branch and fled (but was arrested nearby). (2) The Happy Egg Company (Lincoln, England) altered the packaging in January for its six-egg cartons to include the prominent warning, "Allergy Advice: Contains Egg."

(1) The Northwest Florida Daily News reported the arrest of a woman for trespassing in December in Mary Esther, Fla., after she was reluctant to leave a neighbor's porch. According to the newspaper, she eventually "left ... in anger, knocking over a dryer ... in the front yard." (2) Robert Blue, 53, was arrested in Las Vegas in January and charged with chaining his 15-year-old daughter to her bed at night to keep her from eating. Blue told police that the girl weighs 165 pounds, but that he wanted her at 145, which he said is her ideal fighting weight for mixed martial arts.

A masked man escaped in December after trying unsuccessfully to rob the Washman carwash in Portland, Ore. In the middle of the job, the man's gun literally broke apart and fell to the ground. As he continued to demand money, it became clear why robbing a carwash is tricky. The employee grabbed the nearest tool, which was the wand of a pressure washer (2,000 pounds per square inch) and hosed the robber, sending him fleeing.

Texas "Justice": As far as the state of Texas is concerned, Andre Thomas, 25, was and is sane and was and is competent to assist his lawyers. Thomas was convicted of murdering his wife and two kids in 2004 after a judge ruled him competent despite the fact that after the killings, Thomas had carved out the victims' hearts, put them in his pocket, and later tossed them in the garbage. In addition, before trial, Thomas had plucked out his right eye and eaten it. In October 2008, Texas' highest criminal court upheld the conviction and sentence, endorsing the trial judge's view of Thomas' sanity. In January 2009, on death row in Livingston, Texas, Thomas plucked out his left eye and ate it.

Elderly drivers' recent lapses of concentration, confusing the brake pedal with the gas (or "drive" with "reverse"): Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Joe Greenhill, 94, crashed into a restraining wall in downtown Austin, nearly winding up in Lady Bird Lake (December). A 90-year-old woman, driving her brand-new Dodge Challenger, rammed a pole while turning left in Pompano Beach, Fla. (October). An 83-year-old man drove through his garage wall and continued on about 70 yards in Lycoming Township, Pa. (September). An 83-year-old man drove 50 feet into Big 5 Sporting Goods Store in Milwaukie, Ore. (December). An 82-year-old man crashed his SUV into a tree on a Pittsburgh golf course after zigzagging out of control across the fairway (September). An 82-year-old man crashed into a group of Cub Scouts lining up for a Christmas parade (injuring 12) in Dallas (December).

In April 1997, Russian performance artist Oleg Kulik opened a two-week New York City show, "I Bite America and America Bites Me," in which he stayed in character as a dog, on all fours, from the time his plane landed in New York until the moment he left town. Kulik holed up in a gallery cage wearing only a dog collar and exhibiting dog behaviors and emotions, and visitors could enter the cage to play with him only after putting on protective padding in case Kulik bit them. Kulik had been arrested in three countries for biting his audience. (A Paris gallery owner has called Kulik "a great intellectual" whose art is rooted in the downfall of communism in Russia.)

One Industry That Needs No Stimulus: (1) Drug officials in California's Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties (north of San Francisco) estimated in January that two-thirds of the area's economy is based on probably illegal marijuana farming (illegal under federal law, but permitted for medical use by the state). One federal agent told MSNBC, "Nobody produces any better marijuana than (they) do right here." (2) In January, the director of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime acknowledged that during the bleak banking days of September and October 2008, with panic in the economy over the shortage of cash, often the main source available to some banks was drug dealers' steady deposits of money to be laundered.

-- Community Property: (1) As part of a highly contentious New York divorce, surgeon Richard Batista, who in good times had donated a kidney to his wife, demanded in January that she either give it back or compensate him with $1.5 million in consideration of the rarity of his kidney match. (2) Also in January, Thomas Rowley, 28, went on trial in Victorville, Calif., for his allegedly more direct approach two years ago after he and his girlfriend split. According to prosecutors, Rowley said that since he had paid for her breast implants, he felt entitled to recover them, allegedly by carving them out of her body (and consequently was charged with attempted murder).

-- Intimate Health Care: (1) A sex-education advocacy organization in Sweden complained in November about the government's program that, finally after years of resistance, provides prosthetic penises to newly transgendered males. The policy was nonetheless termed unfair because the devices are cosmetic only and do not "work." (Regulations prohibit taxpayer money for "sexual aids.") (2) In October, five employees of the health-care provider New Zealand Care resigned when the company ordered them to provide (as routine service to developmentally disabled patients who request it) assistance in masturbating.

-- Episcopal priest Gregory Malia, 43, of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., buys top-dollar champagne at New York City nightclubs, even leaving five-figure tips and treating his favorite waitresses to shopping sprees, according to a December New York Daily News report. Said Malia (who is a hemophiliac and owns a pharmacy devoted to blood-disorder medicine), "I work hard. I make good money. How I spend it, that is my business." Waitresses interviewed by the Daily News said "Father Greg" is a sweetheart, never doing anything inappropriate, but exceedingly generous, whether alone or with business clients. Said one waitress, "A bad night for him is (a tip of) $5,000."

-- Forbes magazine reported in December that state authorities were investigating Beverly Hills, Calif., plastic surgeon Alan Bittner over his claim that he had created diesel fuel for his and his girlfriend's SUVs out of liposuctioned fat from his patients. California law is said to prohibit using medical waste for such a purpose, but Bittner's claims came to light in patients' lawsuits over liposuction treatments, quoting Bittner as bragging about the biodiesel. Bittner wrote on one Web page (no longer online), "The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel, and I have more fat than I can use."

-- London's Gymbox in Bank athletic club, recognizing that lifting weights can be a boring way to exercise, introduced "human barbells" recently, hiring five men of various sizes (including two dwarfs) that customers could use for weights instead of the iron. One advantage of the humans is that, on request, they shout encouragement to the customer with each lift. The largest of the five is a 37-year-old, 340-pound man.

-- Walter Tessier was charged with one of the pettiest of petit larceny counts in January as sheriff's deputies in Amsterdam, N.Y., said he tried to defraud a Price Chopper store. Tessier had purchased a $10.99 lobster but returned it, claiming that it had turned "bad," and the store allowed him some crab meat in exchange, but employees discovered that the "lobster" was only its empty, carefully reconstructed shell that made it appear whole. Tessier then ran from the store but was arrested later at his home, where he had just finished the crab meat.

-- The sheriff in El Dorado, Kan., asked in January for help from the public in locating a missing boy named Adam. According to the sheriff, Adam's parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman, only recently reported him missing, even though they had not seen him since he ran away in 1999, when he was 11. The Herrmans' attorney said that his clients were nonetheless "very worried about him."

-- Parenting Handful: Late last year, Jack Burt, 5, of a rural area near Darwin, Australia, admitted to his dad that he had been kicked off the school bus for bad behavior (including hitting the driver in the head with an apple), provoking the father to use the episode as a teaching opportunity, according to the Northern Territory News. For the five-day suspension, Dad would not reward Jack by driving him but would make Jack walk the 2 1/2-hour, seven-mile distance to school and back each day. On the first day after the suspension, Dad proudly helped Jack aboard the bus, hopeful of having instilled a new maturity. However, three stops later, Jack was kicked off again, for fighting.

-- A Prosecutor's Worst Nightmare: At a dramatic moment in the November trial of a bus driver accused of rape in Edmonton, Alberta, the prosecutor asked the victim on the witness stand to look around the courtroom and identify her attacker. The victim adjusted her glasses and scanned the room, but looked past the defense table and pointed confidently to a man in the gallery later identified as a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter, who in fact had nothing to do with the rape. (The judge allowed her a second chance, based on the volume of other evidence against the defendant, and she correctly identified him.)

-- Apparent closure was reached in 2006 in a long-running News of the Weird story in which, for sexual thrills, a man periodically telephoned managers of fast-food restaurants and, pretending to be a police detective, persuaded the manager to strip-search one or more employees, supposedly to recover stolen merchandise, and to describe the search over the phone. In January, another man, John Brady, 49, was arrested and charged on New York City's Staten Island with telephoning women at random and instructing them to perform digital rectal exams on themselves, claiming that he was doing research on the digestive system. At least one woman complied.

Life Imitates the Three Stooges: In January, inmates Regan Reti, 20, and Tiranara White, 21, who had been booked separately for different crimes on New Zealand's North Island and were handcuffed together for security at Hastings District Court, dashed out of the building and ran for their freedom. However, when they encountered a streetlamp in front of the courthouse, one man went to the right of it and the other to the left, and they slammed into each other, allowing jailers to catch up and re-arrest them. (A courthouse surveillance camera captured the moment, and the video has been a worldwide sensation.)

"Fool for a Client" 3; Prosecutors 0: Between June and August 2003, high school dropout Jonathan Harris, 34, acted as his own lawyer in three Philadelphia felony cases and won them all, including a murder trial that could have sent him to death row. He had two more potential trials upcoming and taunted the prosecutor about taking him on again. (The prosecutor blamed the murder acquittal on unreliable and no-show witnesses.)