Brickbats
County Commissioner Ronda Storms of Hillsborough, Florida, has made a name for herself by campaigning against sexually explicit material. These days she's in trouble for distributing it. In April, Storms received an e-mail that contained a nude woman's picture and was so upset she decided to share it with her fellow commissioners and staff. Now some of the people she forwarded the photo to have demanded she be investigated for misusing a county computer and distributing obscene material over the Internet.
Police arrested a man in Birmingham, England, for throwing an object onto the field during a soccer match between the Chelsea and Fulham teams. Fulham manager Jean Tigana was hit by the dangerous projectile -- a stalk of celery.
Doug Nicoll faces a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. His crime? Trimming the bushes on his property in Norfolk, Virginia. Nicoll didn't know the property had been designated a wetland, where city law says it's illegal to cut or remove plants. Officials explain that the bushes might die if trimmed, causing soil erosion. Yet Nicoll has been trimming his healthy bushes since 1994, when he bought the property.
Delegates to a British Commonwealth conference on democracy and the media voted down a resolution to condemn Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's crackdown on independent media. Britain, India, and Australia backed the move. But African members of the Commonwealth lined up against it. "We should stick to our own theme of promoting relations between parliamentarians and the media and enhancing the free press and democracy," a South African delegate said.
An Egyptian court has ordered that posters for the movie So That Our Lord May Love You be taken down. The ads feature scantily clad women near the word Lord. "This contradicts religious and spiritual values in Egyptian society," the court ruled.
Cuba has banned sales to the public of computers, along with photocopiers, printers, and mimeograph machines. Officials have refused to comment on the move, other than to blame Cuba's lack of computers on the U.S. economic embargo. But the likely cause is the rise of independent journalists printing stories unfavorable to the government on the Internet.
Norway's government has unveiled a plan to mandate that corporate boards be at least 40 percent female. State-run companies have a year to comply. Other companies must meet the quotas by 2005. To be fair, the measure would also mandate that at least 40 percent of board members be male.
The Northern Ireland Assembly is considering restrictions on the sale and possession of crossbows. Currently, anyone over 18 can own a crossbow. But in recent months several people have attacked horses with the weapons.
