Weekly Daily Brickbats Archive 2007 March 22-31

Jon Karlung took his daughters Saga, 3, and Nelly, 1 out sledding one afternoon. He chose a hillside near Sweden's Royal Palace. A little too near for some palace guards. Karlung said a guard at a sentry box about 100 meters away began shouting at them. He walked over to talk to him and was met by that guard and three others carrying rifles. They told him he was being ejected from the hillside. But the palace's garrison manager says the guards acted wrongly. "If the family was out sledding and didn't disrupt anybody or break anything then they had the right to go sledding there. The sentry seems to have been over-zealous," he told local media.

In Saudi Arabia, an appellate court has upheld a lower court ruling forcing a married couple to divorce against their will. The family of the woman filed suit to dissolve the marriage, saying her husband's lineage was not prestigious enough. After the lower court ruled in the family's favor, the woman refused to return to her family, and she was imprisoned, since Saudi law requires females to live with their families until marriage.

Albano Ramirez Santos was reportedly unhappy because his truck had been stolen, so he threw himself on the subway tracks in Mexico City. Train station employees removed him and turned him over to police. But when they got him to the police station, he was unconscious and an ambulance had to be called. A forensic report later found he died of blows to the chest and head, and prosecutors have charged two police officers with beating him to death.

A Moroccan court sentenced Driss Ksikes and Sanaa al-Aji to five years in prison. The two had been convicted of publishing jokes about Islam, sex and politics. The magazine they worked for was also banned for three months.

In Wales, the Gwynedd County Council has informed Jeanette Gordon-Crawley and her husband Gordon that they are under investigation for smoking in their own home. A council official says a neighbor complained she could smell the smoke in her home. "We can't see how smoke from our house could possibly get into the house next door," said Mrs. Crowley. But a council spokesperson told a local newspaper, "We are duty-bound to investigate."