Weekly Daily Brickbats Archive 2009 May 8-31

British developer Geoffrey Key knew he had trouble when he found a brown long-eared bat in one of two houses he wanted to demolish. The bat is legally protected, and local officials gave permission for the demolition and construction of new homes only after forcing Key to build a £20,000 heated home for the bats.

Florida corrections officer Walter Schmidt had been fired after tasing at least two children during a "Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work" event. Schmidt says their parents gave him permission to zap the children.

The Chinese government quarantined dozens of Mexicans in their hotels because of fears of swine flu. None of them showed any flu symptoms, but they were sent home after several days. Chinese officials also quarantined 22 Canadian students as soon as they got off their plane. Again, none of them had flu symptoms.

An Afghan court has sentenced Ghows Zalmay to 20 years in prison for blasphemy. His crime? He translated the Quran into Dari. Religious experts testified it was an accurate translation, but it didn't include the original Arabic text, and the court found that blasphemous.

Over two years, the city of New Orleans sent Mary Kieff some 226 parking tickets, with fines totaling nearly $20,000. Kieff insisted she hadn't violated any laws. Finally, after a local TV station got involved, the city admitted that she should not have gotten the tickets. Kieff has a "ZZ Top" personalized license plate, and the city uses ZZ as the code for vehicles without license plates. City workers were entering that code in the wrong place, and the result was that she was getting every ticket issued to a vehicle without a license plate.