If you want a little flesh with your blackjack, it’s going to cost you. Casinos in Las Vegas are lowering their payouts at blackjack tables in order to cover the costs of exotic dancers performing in nearby “party pits,” a recent addition to the gambling experience that’s popular with younger card players. Overall, casinos are dropping their payouts by 20%. For instance, instead of providing a 3:2 ratio (a winner gets $3 for each $2 bet), casinos are going with a 6:5 (winning $6 on a $5 bet).

The Obama administration has been criticized by those on the left for its continuation of many Bush-era policies on terrorism. But one area where it differs from the previous administration is in its recruiting of spies and interrogators.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is looking for a few good agents … who speak Ebonics. Critics of “African American Vernacular English” can make fun all they want, but the DEA is taking Ebonics seriously as part of its efforts to acquire information about drug dealings. The DEA office in Atlanta wants to hire nine agents who are fluent in Ebonics, not only to track down perpetrators but also convict them in court.

Taking it slow on the roads outside Beijing, China, hasn’t been much fun lately, but low speeds are part of the excitement at a racetrack in England.

The prince wants his castle back. The prince is 47-year-old Valery Kubarev of Russia, descendant of Ivan the Terrible, who claims the Russian government has no legal claim to the Kremlin and should turn over management of it to his Princes Foundation, which represents an aristocratic family dating all the way back to Rurik, a 9th century prince. It was the Ruriks who established the Kremlin, and neither the Soviet or present government ever registered ownership of the 69-acre complex of buildings and towers.

Each year the English language loses hundreds of words, just from people ceasing to use them. This reality is unacceptable to the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary, who are asking individuals to “adopt a word,” whether it is “old words, wise words, hard-working words. Words that once led meaningful lives but now lie unused, unloved and unwanted.” Meanwhile, 90% of written communication uses only 7,000 different words.

A judge in Saudi Arabia has asked at least two hospitals if they will intentionally sever a man’s spinal cord as punishment for his crime of crippling another man with a meat cleaver. The culprit already was convicted for the attack and served seven months of a 14-month sentence before being released. The victim, Abdul-Aziz al-Mutairi, then asked Judge Saoud bin Suleiman al-Youssef in Tabuk province to impose Qisas (retaliation) punishment, which means an eye for an eye—literally—on his assailant, who now works as a school teacher.

For the sixth time, a court case will attempt to decide once and for all the owner of the world’s largest rough emerald. The 840-pound, 180,000-carat green gemstone has been the source of much trouble for individuals from the U.S. and Brazil, where the emerald was originally discovered. Battling for ownership are Ken Conetto and Anthony Thomas of California, two men whose friendship has been ruined over their fight to claim the stone which is valued at at least $400 million. Over the last nine years the emerald has moved from São Paulo to San Jose to New Orleans to Las Vegas, been stolen at least once and changed hands several times and was once put on eBay for $75 million.

What once was St. Mary’s Cemetery in Ventura, California, is today a public park—but the original occupants of the cemetery are still around.