News in Brief: Robert Spencer’s Conference, New Police Uniforms and Sheep Placenta Face Cream

We unfortunately must report that one of the major stories of the past two weeks was when noted Islamophobe Robert Spencer visited Iceland, invited by a shadowy group known as Vakur. Spencer, who mostly writes on his blog JihadWatch, preached to the choir at Grand Hótel, expounding upon his idea that Islam is a threat to Western civilisation, while a group of Icelanders held a peaceful protest outside. Not all was peaceful, though, as one of our reporters was given a veiled threat by someone identifying themselves as “security.” Shortly after the lecture, Spencer reported that he had been poisoned at a restaurant. A released medical report showed there was MDMA and amphetamines in his system, so chances are his drink had been spiked with Ecstasy. In fairness, this might not have been a poisoning attempt. Maybe someone just wanted Spencer to feel something resembling empathy.

The economy might be booming right now, but some of Iceland’s civil servants are having a rough time of it. First, it turns out that the Icelandic Coast Guard is too ill-equipped to deal with major accidents at sea. In fact, they only have a single rescue vessel at sea at any given time. Second, the police can’t afford new uniforms, due to a lack of funds, and existing uniforms are in some cases shared with other officers. As a uniform costs just over 176,000 ISK (over $1,600 USD), replacing the old uniforms will be no small expense, but unless we expect cops to start going casual, it’s an expense that needs to be made.

A group of enterprising students at the University of Iceland have released the invention we’ve all been waiting for: sheep placenta face cream. That is a pretty evocative image, but rest assured the cream in question only contains such active ingredients as collagen and antioxidants; it is not literally gooified sheep placenta. It might also be of some comfort to know that no sheep were harmed in the making of the cream—all the placentas were harvested from the live birth of lambs, and instead of being thrown away, they can now be put to use making your skin look young and healthy.

If you find that the rapidly changing amount of sunlight disturbs your sleep, you might normally turn to good ol’ Melatonin for relief. If you live in Iceland, you might notice that Melatonin is prescription-only and pretty expensive, so your best bet is to order it online, right? Not if customs has anything to say about it. In fact, customs have seized about 60 shipments of Melatonin since the beginning of this year alone. Guess your actual best bet is to either buy thicker curtains or try to smuggle it into the country in a vitamin bottle (not that we would ever condone such a risky move).