Abuse of government-issued credit card privileges made the headlines in the U. S. and Canada this week. A few days after the U. S. General Accountability Office reported widespread charging of unauthorized items among federal employees, a Canadian bureaucrat made news by charging $230,000 to her state-issued credit card to buy souvenir coins which she deposited in her personal bank account. Veronica Topic, 24, later withdrew the money, purchased electronic gadgets and auctioned it on eBay. The Canada Border Services Agency employee even had the gumption to have the laptops, Palm Pilots and other gizmos delivered to her office, which caused raised eyebrows among her officemates.

India's lucrative outsourcing sector is not limited to back office jobs. It is now emerging as a major supplier of "back bedroom jobs" as an infant outsourcing hub as well. According to the International Herald Tribune, reproduction is the newest addition to the Asian tiger's outsourcing industry. Couples from the United States and Europe are asking Indian women to serve as surrogate mothers, leading to a boom in the number of clinics offering the procedure.

On July 5, the first special flight that will allow passengers to fly in their birthday suit, naked that is, will take off from Erfurt in Southeast Germany to its destination in the island of Usedom off Baltic Sea. "All the passengers will fly naked, but they are only allowed to undress once they are in the plane. But then they will be able to enjoy the hour-long flight in the way God intended," Enrico Hess, the founder of the travel company OssiUrlaub, has been quoted as saying.

A local reverend's ticket to the upcoming National Football Conference was mistakenly shredded after asking his assistant to get rid of a stack of papers on his desk. The tickets for the Sunday game at the Lambau Field with the Green Bay Packers were placed on the desk of wheelchair-bound Rev. Walter Hermanns, who had multiple sclerosis. Rev. Hermanns was getting some assistance from friend Andrew Duncan with tasks such as straightening out his home, as was the case Friday night.

A Pennsylvania owner of a pharmacy gave $20 lottery tickets to his relatives for Christmas, later on discovering that one of those tickets won the $1M lottery. Fred DePasquale, owner of The Medicine Shoppe, said that he bought 35 tickets from his own store, giving away 20 to relatives, five to customers, and 10 to himself. It was later on that one of the tickets, given to an in-law, won the $1 million prize.