truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

In addition to addressing the usual state homeland-security concerns, Kentucky's statute requires anyone licensed as a first responder to disasters to take an oath against dueling ("I, being a citizen of this state, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons ... nor have I sent or accepted a challenge (to duel), nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge (to duel), so help me God"). Another provision requires the state Homeland Security Office's executive director to "publicize" a legislative finding that "reliance upon Almighty God" is necessary to homeland security.

Tennessee anesthesiologist Visuvalingam Vilvarajah was arrested in February in Kentucky and charged with providing controlled-substance prescriptions (OxyContin, methadone) to as many as 350 non-patients. However, the more basic question is why Tennessee licensed Dr. Vilvarajah in the first place, since he had been approved by the state Department of Health even though officials knew that he was on parole at the time after serving a sentence for murdering his wife and mother-in-law. A department spokeswoman told The Tennessean newspaper that no law prevented Dr. Vilvarajah's licensing.

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."

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).

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.)

And in December, the Daily Telegraph reported that 45 officers from the Lancashire county police were assigned to help install speed indicator signs but only after being sent to a two-hour class that included safety instructions on climbing a 3-foot ladder. Said a spokesman, "If we didn't do it and people were falling off ladders, we would be criticized."