Belt-Tightening Greeks: In October, Greece's largest health insurance provider announced, in a letter to a diabetes foundation, that it would no longer pay for the special footwear that diabetics need for reducing pain but suggested it would pay instead for amputation, which is less expensive. The decision, which the foundation said is not supported by international scientific literature, was published in the prominent Athens newspaper To Vima (The Tribune) and reported by the U.S. news site DailyCaller.com.

-- Retail Breakthroughs: (1) A shop in Santa Cruz, Calif., opened in September selling ice cream infused with extract of marijuana. Customers with "medical marijuana" prescriptions can buy Creme De Canna, Bananabis Foster or Straw-Mari Cheesecake, at $15 a half-pint (with one bite supposedly equal to five puffs of "really good" weed, according to the proprietor). (2) Spotted outside subway stations in Nanjing, China, in October: vending machines selling live Shanghai Hairy Crabs, in plastic containers chilled to 5 degrees C (41 degrees F), for the equivalent of $1.50 to $7, depending on size.

-- Good News for Frisky Married Muslims: (1) Abdelaziz Aouragh's recently opened Internet site sells Shariah-compliant aids to promote the "sexual health" of married couples, mostly lubricants, lotions and herbal pills, with lingerie coming soon (but no videos or toys). (All products have been cleared by Saudi religious scholars.) He says he aspires to open actual storefronts soon. (2) Ms. Khadija Ahmed, attending to customers while dressed in flowing robe and head scarf, is already open for business in Manama, Bahrain, offering, since 2008, lingerie, orgasm-delaying creams and even some sex toys. ("Vibrators" are "against Islam," she said, because they are intended as replications of a body part, but "vibration rings" are permitted.) Bahrain, obviously, is among the most liberal countries in the Persian Gulf region, but Ahmed is considering expanding to Dubai and Lebanon.

-- Shareholder James Solakian filed a lawsuit in October against the board of directors of Bible.com, on the ground that the website address -- a potential "goldmine," he says -- was not being properly exploited financially. Although the company's business plan was, explicitly, to become "very, very profitable," it also vowed, according to a Reuters report, to be governed by "Christian business principles."

-- Janis Ollson, 31, of Balmoral, Manitoba, is recovering nicely after being almost completely sawed in half in 2007 by Mayo Clinic surgeons, who concluded that they could remove her bone cancer no other way. In experimental surgery that had been tried only on cadavers, doctors split her pelvis in half, removed the left half, her left leg and her lower spine (and the tumor) in a 20-hour, 12-specialist procedure. The real trick, though, was the eight-hour, 240-staple reconstruction in which her remaining leg was reconnected to her spine with pins and screws, leaving her in an arrangement doctors likened to a "pogo stick." A September Winnipeg Free Press story noted that, except for the missing leg, she is enjoying a normal life with her husband and two kids and enjoys snowmobiling.

-- Kyle Johnson shattered his skull so badly in a high-speed longboard accident in June that ordinary "decompressive craniectomy" (temporarily removing half of the skull to relieve pressure) would be inadequate. Instead, doctors at McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden, Utah, removed both halves, leaving only a thin strip of bone (after placing Johnson in a drug-induced coma) and kept the skull frozen to prevent brittleness. After the swelling subsided, they reattached the skull to his head and woke him up gradually over a week's time. Johnson admits some memory problems and cognitive dysfunction, most notably his inability to focus on more than one concept at a time -- even when they are part of the same scene, such as two crayons on a table. Johnson said he probably won't go back to the longboard but, curiously like Janis Ollson, looks forward to snowmobiling.

-- Obese patients with an array of symptoms known as "prediabetes" have seen their insulin sensitivity improved dramatically via "fecal transplants," i.e., receiving the stool of a thin, healthy person into the bowel, according to researchers led by a University of North Carolina professor. Researchers said the strangers' implants were significantly more effective than those of a control group, in which a person's own feces was implanted. (News of the Weird has previously reported on success in treating certain gastrointestinal infections by stool transplants that contain the bacteria Clostridium difficile.)

-- Two University of Sydney researchers reported recently that the food-acquisition "strategy" of the brainless, single-cell slime mold appeared to resemble one of the strategies familiar to us so-called brain-containing humans, specifically, making a selection only after comparing it to readily available alternatives. Furthermore, Japanese researchers who mapped the slime mold's search for food found that its nuclei are arranged in a pattern that is seemingly just as logically helpful in food procurement as the service arrangements are in Tokyo's acclaimed railway system. (In October, the Japanese researchers were awarded a satirical "Ig Nobel" prize by the Annals of Improbable Research.)

-- In research results announced in June, a team led by a University of Oklahoma professor, studying Mexican molly fish, discovered that females evaluate potential mates on sight, based on the prominence of the moustache-like growths on males' upper lips. More controversially, the researchers hypothesized that males further enhance their mating prowess by employing the "moustache" to tickle females' genitals. (Catfish have similar "whiskers" and perhaps use them for similar purposes, said the researchers.)

-- In September, Russia's finance minister publicly urged citizens to step up their smoking and drinking, in that the government's new "sin" taxes mean more revenue: "If you smoke a pack of cigarettes," he said, "that means you are giving more to help solve social problems." (Alcohol abuse is already said to kill 500,000 Russians a year and to significantly lower life expectancy.)

-- Executive Brigitte Stevens announced in September that her perpetually underappreciated advocacy institution, Wombat Awareness Organization, had just been pledged $8 million by a single donor. According to Stevens, the $1 million annually she will receive in each of the next eight years is about 13 times the previous annual budget for the Mannum, South Australia, organization. The U.S. donor, who demanded anonymity, became interested in 2008 when, on an onsite visit, he was enthralled with "southern hairy-nosed" wombats.

Signs of the Times: (1) A 24-year-old Muslim woman was strangled in Newcastle, Australia, in April when the bottom of her burqa became tangled in the wheels as she was driving playfully at a go-cart track. (2) A 45-year-old, out-of-town man was killed in a street robbery in Oakland, Calif., in July after he became distracted while typing a location into his cell phone's map program to find his way to a job interview. The appointment was at Google Inc. (3) Horatio Toure, 31, was arrested in San Francisco in July after snatching an iPhone from a woman on the street and bicycling away. Unknown to him, the woman was conducting a real-time demonstration of global positioning software, and thus Toure's exact movement was registering on her company's computers. He was arrested within minutes.

In September (1991), the Avon, Colo., town council resorted to a contest to name the new bridge over the Eagle River, linking Interstate 70 with U.S. Highway 6. Sifting through 84 suggestions (such as "Eagle Crossing"), the council voted, 4-2, to give it the official name "Bob." "Bob The Bridge" is, still, a theme for several local festivals.

Modern Mummies: New York City artist Sally Davies offered in October the latest evidence of how unattractive today's fast foods are to bacteria and maggots. Davies bought a McDonald's Happy Meal in April, has photographed it daily, and has noted periodically the lack even of the slightest sign of decomposition. Her dog, who circled restlessly nearby for the first two days the vittles were out, since then has ignored it. (Several bloggers, and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, have made discoveries similar to Davies'.) Food scientists "credited" a heavy use (though likely still within FDA guidelines) of the preservative sodium propionate but also the predominance of fat and lack of moisture and nutrients -- all of which contribute to merely shrinking and hardening the burger and fries.

-- Maybe Just Safekeeping It for a Friend: Raymond Roberts, 25, was arrested in Manatee County, Fla., in September after an ordinary traffic stop turned up a strong smell of marijuana. At deputies' behest, Roberts removed a baggie of marijuana from his buttocks, but when the deputies saw another plastic bag right behind it (containing a white substance believed to be cocaine), Roberts said, "The weed is (mine)," but "(t)he white stuff is not ...."

-- Firefighter Richard Gawlik Jr. was terminated by Allentown, Pa., in August for abusing sick leave after he posted his daily golf scores on a public website during three days in which he had called off from work. Allentown firefighters' contract allows them up to four consecutive days' sick leave without a doctor's note, and given their shift schedule of four days on, four days off, a four-day, undocumented sick call effectively means a 12-day holiday -- a pattern that describes 60 percent of all firefighter "sick" days, according to an analysis by the Allentown Morning Call. (Gawlik's union president said the union would appeal and that "playing golf was well within the guidelines of (Gawlik's illness).")

-- Woody Will Smith, 33, was convicted in September of murdering his wife after a jury in Dayton, Ky., "deliberated" about 90 minutes before rejecting his defense of caffeine intoxication. Smith had claimed that his daily intake of sodas, energy drinks and diet pills had made him temporarily insane when he strangled his two-timing wife with an extension cord in 2009, and made him again not responsible when he confessed the crime to police. (In May 2010, a judge in Pullman, Wash., ordered a hit-and-run driver to treatment instead of jail, based on the driver's "caffeine psychosis." Some doctors believe the condition can kick in with as little as 400 mg of caffeine daily -- an amount that, given America's coffee consumption, potentially portends a sky-high murder rate.)

-- An Iowa administrative law judge ruled in September that former police officer William Bowker of Fort Madison deserved worker's compensation even though he had not been "laid off" but rather fired -- for having an affair with the wife of the chief of police. Although the city Civil Service Commission had denied him coverage (based in part on other derelictions, such as sleeping and drinking on duty and refusing to attend a class on search warrants), the judge ruled that Bowker's dismissal seemed too much like improper retaliation for the affair.

-- A lawyer in Xian, China, filed a lawsuit in September against a movie house and film distributor for wasting her time -- because she was exposed to 20 minutes of advertisements that began at the posted time for the actual movie to begin. Ms. Chen Xiaomei is requesting a refund (equivalent of about $5.20) plus damages of an equal amount, plus the equivalent of about 15 cents for "emotional" damages -- plus an apology.

-- In an April journal article, University of East Anglia professor Brett Mills denounced the 2009 British TV documentary series "Nature's Great Events" on the ground that the program's omnipresent and intrusive video cameras violated animals' privacy. "(The animals) often do engage in forms of behavior which suggest they'd rather not encounter humans," he wrote, "and we might want to think about equating this with a desire for privacy."

-- British entrepreneur Howard James, who runs several online dating sites, opened another in August to worldwide attention (and, allegedly, thousands of sign-ups in the first five days): dates for ugly people. James said new members (accepted from the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and Ireland) will have their photos vetted to keep out "attractive" people. (Based on the web pages available at press time, the photo-evaluation process is working well.)

-- Beyond "MacGyver": Keith Jeffery's book on the British intelligence service MI6, published in September and serialized in The Times of London, revealed that the first chief of the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) during World War I recommended, as the best invisible ink, semen, in that it "would not react to (ink-detecting) iodine vapor" and was, of course, "readily available."

(1) Mr. Hamen Vile was transferred from Gulgong Hospital in Australia, in August, to another about 30 miles away after Gulgong was discovered with dangerous levels of asbestos. Vile had lived full-time at Gulgong since 1952, when he suffered an accidental gunshot in the back. (2) Recently, MSNBC and The New York Times discovered that 104-year-old Montana copper-mine heiress Huguette Clark has cloistered herself for the last 20 years in an ordinary room at an unnamed New York City hospital. All of Clark's affairs are handled by an attorney who has almost no contact with her but oversees her three well-maintained estates in Connecticut, Santa Barbara (Calif.) and New York City, worth, respectively, $24 million, $100 million and $100 million.

Overconfident: (1) Xavier Ross, 19, passing by a piano at an art exhibit in front of the Grand Rapids, Mich., police station in October, could not resist sitting down to play a few notes -- and was arrested when officers recognized him from a recent home invasion case. (2) Selma Elmore, 44, was arrested in Lockland, Ohio, in October when she flagged down a police car to ask if there was an arrest warrant out on her. (Officers checked; there was; she ran; the warrant was minor; "resisting arrest" was more serious.) (3) Jason Williams, 38, was convicted in Maidenhead, England, in October of stealing a neighbor's window curtains, which he had immediately installed on his own windows -- in plain view of the neighbor's window.

Almost Impossible: (1) According to a case report in the New Zealand Medical Journal, announced in August, yet another person has swallowed whole a standard-size toothbrush. (A 15-year-old girl, running with the toothbrush in her mouth, tripped and fell, and her gag reflex did the rest.) (2) Ms. Cha Sa-soon, 69, became a national heroine in South Korea in May when she passed her driver's license written test on the 950th try (after taking two-hour bus rides to the test center almost daily for three years). (It took her only 10 more tries to pass the driving test, and Hyundai gave her a new car as a reward.)

Orange County (Calif.) Superior Court clerks discovered last fall (1989) that they had failed to complete the paperwork to make nearly 500 pre-1985 divorce judgments final, thus leaving the parties still legally married. The worst-case scenario for one husband occurred in April (1990) when an appeals court ruled that his supposedly-ex-wife, Bonita Lynch, was entitled to one-fourth of his $2.2 million lottery jackpot. The couple had been scheduled for final divorce 11 days before the jackpot was announced.

-- David Winkelman, 48, was arrested in Davenport, Iowa, in September on a misdemeanor warrant, still sporting "The Tattoo." In late 2000, Winkelman, reacting to a radio "contest," had his forehead inked with the logo of radio station KORB, "93 Rock," because he had heard on-air personalities "offer" $100,000 to anyone who would do it. Winkelman had the tattoo done before checking, however, and the disk jockeys later informed him that the "contest" was a joke. (Winkelman filed a lawsuit against the station, but it was dismissed. Ten years later, the "93 Rock" format has expired, but Winkelman's forehead remains busily tattooed.)

-- For most of 2010, California's dysfunctional legislature could find no acceptable tax increases or spending cuts to keep the state from going broke, and only in October did it manage to cobble together enough pie-in-the-sky bookkeeping tricks to create the illusion of a balanced budget. Nonetheless, the legislature has been busy. It created a "Motorcycle Awareness Month" and a "Cuss Free Week," considered changing the official state rock, and made it illegal to use non-California cows in the state's marketing materials (a decision that entailed five committee votes and exhausted eight legislative analyses, according to a September Wall Street Journal report).

-- At a U.S. Senate committee grilling in September, the head of enforcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission admitted that not a single agency staff member has been fired or demoted over the multiple missed signals handed to them in some cases 11 years before the Ponzi schemes of Bernard Madoff and R. Allen Stanford were uncovered. Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut said it appeared that "one side of the agency was screaming that there was a fire," but the other side of the agency demurred because putting it out would have been hard work.

-- The Prudential Financial corporation, holder of life insurance contracts on U.S. troops, modified the standard payout method in 1999 -- by encouraging beneficiaries to take not lump sums but "checking accounts" on which survivors could draw down proceeds "as needed." Though this arrangement obviously benefited Prudential, it was unclear to Bloomberg News (which broke the story in September 2010) why the Department of Veterans Affairs had endorsed it -- implicitly in 1999 and then in writing in September 2009.

-- Among the Medicare billings only recently discovered as fraudulent (after being paid): (1) Brooklyn, N.Y., proctologist Boris Sachakov was paid for performing 6,593 hemorrhoidectomies and other procedures over a 13-month period -- an average of 18 every day, 365 days a year (and 6,212 more than the doctor who billed the second-highest number). (2) Two Hialeah, Fla., companies, "Charlie RX" and "Happy Trips," between them billed Medicare $63,000 for penis pumps -- including a total of four to the same patient (by the way, a woman).

-- In October, the award-winning London theater company Duckie announced plans for a June 2011 production, "Lullaby," at the Barbican Pit, that would feature music and performances so soothing that patrons will be encouraged to attend in pajamas and lounge overnight in bed-seats, with an early morning shower included in the ticket price of 42 pounds ($66). Producer Simon Casson noted that, irrespective of the play, it is almost impossible to find overnight facilities in central London for that price.

-- A September one-woman "dance" recital of performer-writer Ann Liv Young as a naked "Cinderella" at a theater in Brooklyn, N.Y., ran overtime because Young could not answer a scripted call of nature, which was to have been performed live on stage. According to an incredulous New York Times reviewer, Young sought tips from the audience to get her bowels moving but finally gave up and ended the performance. The reviewer cited the show's "many layers of failure."

-- (1) People with tough times ahead: Donald N. Duck, 51 (arrested for DUI, Massillon, Ohio, June). Lord Jesus Christ, 50 (pedestrian injury, Northampton, Mass., May). Tara Wang (marrying Austin DeCock in Moorhead, Minn., in October). (2) Police saw them coming: Jerry Dick, 46 (pleaded guilty to indecent exposure, Greensboro, N.C., August). Kermit Butts, 26 (arrested in the slaying of Samuel Boob, Madisonburg, Pa., August). Cum Starkweather, 56 (arrested for prostitution, Springfield, Ohio, August). (3) Keeping the name but making all municipal signs theft-proof: Shitterton village in Dorset County, England.

-- (1) The ski-mask-wearing armed robber who knocked off a Wendy's in Atlanta on July 31 has not been apprehended, but police said he later called the store to ridicule the staff for having so little cash: "(N)ext time, there better be more than $586." (2) Ronald White, 35, was arrested in Cinnaminson, N.J., in July, and charged with shoplifting, and was released after posting $400 bail. Only afterward did police realize that some of the money was counterfeit, but five days later, White was re-arrested when he returned to the station to demand a partial refund for "overpaying" the bail.

-- In September, when Ms. Nomatter Tagarira was sentenced to 39 months in jail for fraud, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and several officials were hoping to close the book on an embarrassing episode. Tagarira had convinced them in 2007 that she had the ability, by chanting into a rock, to find diesel fuel in the ground and make it shoot to the surface. Of course, this could only be accomplished by Tagarira's having henchmen behind bushes using a pump, but apparently it worked, as she was rewarded with a $2.7 million fee and given use of a 50-vehicle convoy for her dowsing missions. Her ruse was not discovered until a year later.

-- No Time for Disguises: Larry Shawn Taylor, 18, was arrested in Seattle in September, having been rather easily identifiable when police stopped him. Two victims had reported being robbed by a man with "GET MONEY" shaved into his haircut on one side and "GET" tattooed on his right hand and "MONEY" tattooed on the left. (At least Taylor did not claim that someone else must have had the same configuration.)

-- (1) A 49-year-old Bakersfield, Calif., doctor, whose relationship with her boyfriend was described as "on-again, off-again," was killed in August when, after he had locked her out of his house, she tried to enter by sliding down the chimney, where she got stuck and asphyxiated. (2) A 29-year-old man, in a group of 12 "ghost hunters" on a field trip in Iredell County, N.C., in August, was killed by a speeding train. The 12 were investigating a rumored "ghost train" that killed 30 people in an 1891 crash and supposedly returns every year on the anniversary date.

-- News of the Weird reported in December 2002 that Inga Kosak had won the first World Extreme Ironing Championship in Munich by pressing a designated garment over a course of several ironing stations (e.g., ironing in trees, in the middle of streams). An October 2003 Wall Street Journal story shows the "sport" growing in prominence. South African Anton Van De Venter, 27, broke the high-altitude record in August by ironing his national flag at the 20,000-foot summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, while nude, in freezing temperatures (quote: "I came, I saw, I pressed a crease"), and British diver Ian Mitchell sawed through ice in Wisconsin in March and submitted photos of himself in a wet suit "ironing" (with a Black & Decker Quick 'n' Easy) a shirt that was braced against the underside of the ice.

Thanks This Week to Nancy Korenchan, Adriel Reed, Joe Weckbacher, Roger Leduc, Jeff Carrick, Bruce Leiserowitz, Steve Dunn, Jonathan Bearce, Gil Nelson, Elaine Weiss, Brent Hunter, Peter Hine, and Mike Mendenhall, and to many finders of Lord Jesus Christ, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.