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.
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).
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.
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." that, except for the missing leg, she is enjoying a normal life.
