Weekly Daily Brickbats Archive 2008 October 8-31

Some parents in Volusia County, Florida, became concerned when their children were late getting back from school. They were even more alarmed when their children did get home and told them a school bus driver tried to kill them. At least nine children say the driver became upset when some of them wouldn't stop talking, so she parked the bus on train tracks and threatened to get off and leave them there unless they shut up. The driver has been reassigned while authorities investigate the claims.

Saudi Arabia has banned the sale of cats and dogs as well as the public exercising of them in Riyadh. Authorities say men are using their pets in efforts to strike up conversations with women.

Lawrenceville, Massachusetts, police officer Kevin Sledge has been charged with rape and kidnapping after allegedly assaulting a woman while on duty. Sledge reportedly left his post in the booking room one night and picked up an inebriated woman. He brought her back to the station, then repeatedly left his station to return to his car and assault the woman.

Jack Anderson may be just six, but he's long been on the U.S. government's no-fly list. Well, actually it's someone with a name similar to his. But it's close enough.  His mother Christine says the first time he had trouble with airline security was in 2004, when he was just 2 years old. She says it took her family an hour to convince officials that the tyke in the stroller wasn't the man on the list. It happened again, two years later. Since that encounter, the Andersons have driven, not flown, on vacations.

German poet Friedrich Schiller has been dead for more than 200 years. That's probably why he hasn't paid his mandatory TV and radio license fee. But that didn't stop the government from sending him a bill. In fact, bills kept coming to the Friedrich Schiller Primary School even after the headmaster wrote to the collection agency reminding them that Schiller has been long dead.