London's Royal Opera House announced in February that its next biennial original production will be a libretto based on the life of the late Anna Nicole Smith.

London's Royal Opera House announced in February that its next biennial original production will be a libretto based on the life of the late Anna Nicole Smith.
Some laid-off workers may be desperate to exhibit their work skills at any available job, but February news reports highlighted two government bureaucrats who draw $250,000 a year between them yet have been prevented from doing a stitch of work for, in one case, six years, and in the other, 18 months. Randall Hinton is nominally the chief of investigations for the New York State Insurance Fund but was ostracized by his supervisors in 2002 and has taken home his $93,000 a year for zero work ever since.
"It was initially just an experiment," said the 26-year-old, Sebastopol, Calif., midwife apprentice who last year talked her boyfriend into photographing her cervix for 33 straight days so that she could chart its physical changes while monitoring her own mood, libido and body temperature. It was not easy, she told the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat in February. "It's so dark in there (that) even with (a lamp shining on it), the camera wouldn't focus." However, the boyfriend made it work. "He's a very talented guy." Eventually, the photos made it to the Internet, with her cooperation.
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.
More People Disrespecting Railroad Tracks: Toronto police officers investigating a robbery at The Beer Store in January parked their cruiser to investigate but admitted later (after a train had crushed it) that it was probably "a little bit on the tracks."
One Industry That Needs No Stimulus: 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."

