Weekly Daily Brickbats Archive 2006 November 1-31

Merchtem, Belgium, has banned the use of French in its schools. Parents and children will be allowed to speak only Dutch on school grounds. Both French and Dutch have official language status in different regions of Belgium. Merchtem lies in an area where Dutch has traditionally be the main language, but an increasing number of French speakers have moved there in recent years.

Christopher Nielsen suffered a seizure behind the wheel of his Ford Expedition and crashed it. And that was just the start of his troubles. When Longmont, Colorado, police and Boulder County sheriff's office officers arrived at the scene, they found Nielsen pacing outside the vehicle, and when he did not respond to their commands, they Tased him, five times. The county settled a claim by Nielsen for $90,000 and agreed to revise its Taser policy.

New York City police knocked down the door to Flexton Young's apartment, waking him, his wife and their children. Young says the police pulled belonging off shelves and out of drawers and tossed them to the floor. They slashed open the sofa and turned boxes upside down to empty them. Upstairs in the same apartment building, police were doing similar things to the apartment of the Pastrana family, where they pepper-sprayed the dog for good measure. Police say they had good information they would find drugs and guns in the apartment. They didn't. Young got a summons because they found half a joint in an ashtray. Police found nothing in the Pastrana apartment.

Temperatures dropped to near freezing in late October in DeKalb County, Georgia, but local school officials refused to turn on the heat. They say it's school policy not to turn the heat on until Oct. 30. And once the heat is turned on, it stays on at all schools even if it warms up again. But they said principals were free to petition for the heat to be turned on.

Profits at Great Britain's largest bingo chain dropped by a fifth after Scotland banned smoking in public in March. So the Rank company is laying off 200 people at its bingo operations.