Joshua Shores, 34, a Subway restaurant employee in North Platte, Neb., who was allegedly caught on surveillance video pocketing the $502 he was supposed to drop into the restaurant’s safe, tried to tell police and a judge in August not to worry, that he is not a thief but an undercover CIA operative and that the agency would reimburse the money.

He had lost his CIA badge, he said, which is why he was working at the Subway, waiting for the agency to send him a new one.

Outrageous Medicine

In July, India’s Medical Association began investigating three doctors who appeared on television to promote their amputation services specifically to beggars, whose income prospects grow with the more sympathy they engender. One doctor said he would remove a leg below the knee, leaving it fairly easy to fit a prosthetic, for the equivalent of about $200.