Brand names at any expense

India's middle class is humming with "brand freaks" obsessed with luxury labels like Prada and Louis Vuitton, according to a February Washington Post dispatch, even though more than half the country lives in "abject poverty" (and even though Gandhi got along fine with just a loincloth!). Said one super-consumer, "I'll spend my whole salary for a really swank brand and eat (steamed rice cakes) for the rest of the month." According to the newly launched India edition of Vogue, the country's "Me Culture" has taken over, where, on an Ahmadabad road underneath towering billboards for Tag Heuer and Mont Blanc pens, barefoot kids with begging bowls tap on car windows. Though animal rights activists estimate that the country has more uncared-for dogs on the streets than any other in the world, Gucci dog bowls are for sale in New Delhi.

Government in action

Two Atlanta-area schools began a pilot program in January paying students $8 an hour, plus a possible performance bonus, to study math and science harder in special study halls (as an alternative for students whose financial need forces them into after-school jobs).

Two ex-employees of Sioux Manufacturing Corp. revealed in a 2006 whistle-blower lawsuit that the company had been shorting the quality of the Kevlar in more than 2 million combat helmets sold to the Pentagon during 1994-2006, and in February 2008, Sioux agreed to pay $2 million to settle the dispute. The company did not contest that the Kevlar threading was lighter than the contract required, but the Pentagon said it knew of no troop injuries linked to the substandard threading. In August 2007, however, while the Pentagon was still investigating, the U.S. Air Force nonetheless contracted with Sioux to produce new Kevlar combat helmets.

Least competent criminals

-- Eric Livers, 20, a wanted man in Cheyenne, Wyo., fled apparently scot-free to Portsmouth, N.H., but could not resist calling his former Wyoming employer to ask that his final paycheck be mailed to his New Hampshire address. The employer called authorities, and Portsmouth police picked up Livers in February.

-- Jeremy Hart, 24, was arrested in Topsham, Maine, in December after allegedly burglarizing a home while the residents were asleep. As Hart was leaving, according to police, he hit a snowbank in the driveway, causing the car to stall, and Hart to become so cold that he sheepishly walked back, rang the victims' doorbell, and asked if he could come in and get warm. (The residents, aware that Hart had just been in their house, had already called police.)

Insincere inmates

Many inmates file lawsuits over the allegedly poor quality of prison food, but noteworthy was the one recently filed by Missouri inmate Norman Lee Toler (serving 10 years for statutory rape), demanding kosher food as required by his devout Judaism, even though, in a previous prison stint, he was a notorious Adolf Hitler sympathizer with Nazi tattoos who amassed white supremacist photos and literature. Said a spokesman for the state attorney general, "We have serious factual doubts about … his sincerity."