By LISA HOFFMAN, Scripps Howard News Service

Six women of note on Capitol Hill and environs are currently hobbled by fractures or other injuries to one or another of their extremities.
The latest to join the crutch-and-cast club is Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who broke an ankle in three places when she stumbled walking down her Baltimore church's steps July 19.

This past week brought the conclusion of the Chu-Chu race, one of the greatest matchups in recent congressional politics.
A special election was held Tuesday in a Los Angeles-area district to fill the former seat of Democratic Rep. Hilda Solis, who was appointed by President Obama to be secretary of labor.

The H1NI virus formerly known as swine flu has now effectively struck all corners of the globe, infecting tens of thousands of people in at least 64 nations, and continuing to spread readily across borders and within communities.

What kind of war might North Korea wage against South Korea, and, by extension, us?
Military intelligence officers told the authoritative publication Aviation Week that the North's million-man army is too "unbalanced" to repeat the 1950 offensive that backed U.S. and South Korean forces into a perimeter around Pusan.

There's no telling what kind of a hit, if any, President Obama took in the Wall Street collapse, but his financial-disclosure reports at least let us watch how his investment choices are faring from now on.

The Social Security Administration expects to send $250 economic stimulus checks to about 10,000 dead people.
The agency said it faced such a tight deadline that there wasn't enough time to make sure their records were accurate. The checks were part of the stimulus plan hastily cobbled together earlier this year as the economy tanked.

Some experts believe that the devastating Spanish influenza epidemic began in 1918 in Kansas, when an Army private at Camp Funston caught a particularly contagious variant of swine flu.
There's little doubt that the movement of hundreds of thousands of troops in that final year of World War I helped spread and evolve a disease that killed more than 50 million people worldwide.

It's starting to feel like Moscow on the Potomac around here, and not because of what some see as a push to nationalize banks and health care.
It's due to President Obama's penchant for enlisting high-placed experts to oversee one problem or another, which could leave Washington with more czars in power than the Russians ever had.

The feds have come up with a plan to unleash killer wasps along Texas' border with Mexico to help combat illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

Defense industry CEOs may want to duck and cover: their pay-and-bonus packages are coming into the sights of Capitol Hill lawmakers looking for their next populist prey.