Brickbats
Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl planned to spend a few days in New York shopping and sightseeing, but she was arrested upon arrival at JFK International Airport. It seems Lillendahl overstayed a U.S. visa more than 10 years ago. Upon her arrest, Lillendahl says, she was interrogated at the airport for two days and denied food and drink. Her feet and hands were chained, she was removed to a jail in New Jersey, she was interrogated some more, and finally she was deported to Iceland.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has ordered all female civil servants to wear Islamic head scarves. He also has declared women to be the root of all crime committed in Chechnya because they have sex with men.
A seventh-grader in Parker, Colorado, is facing disciplinary action for making a list of people he doesn't like. "We determined there apparently was no threat or intent to harm anyone," said a spokeswoman for the school system. Still, officials at Sagewood Middle School sent a letter home to parents about the list, notified the parents of children on the list, and plan to discipline the boy who wrote it.
Officials at Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, suspended 70 students for five days for protesting a new rule mandating that they tuck their shirts into their pants. Officials say the protesters broke a school rule against "encouraging other students to violate school rules or regulations."
In response to a lawsuit filed by the French booksellers union, France's highest court has ruled that Amazon.com may no longer offer free delivery of books in that country. The price of books is highly regulated in France, and booksellers may not discount books more than 5 percent off the publisher's suggested price.
The Tennessee Department of Revenue has started posting agents to watch cigarette sales in stores in surrounding states, all of which have lower cigarette taxes. Tennessee law bans people from bringing more than two cartons of smokes into the state without paying Tennessee taxes. Revenuers look for anyone with Tennessee tags buying cigarettes and call ahead to officers in the Volunteer State, who can arrest the miscreants after they cross back into the state. If they have three cartons or more, officials can seize their cars.
The crew of a British Ministry of Defense helicopter broke low-flying rules to spy on a sunbathing au pair. The downdraft from the chopper caused some £250,000 in damages to the Sussex mansion it was flying over. The ministry says it should not be held liable for the damages because the pilot did not know he needed permission to fly that low.
Police in Bangladesh arrested cartoonist Arifur Rahman and seized copies of a newspaper supplement containing one of his cartoons. The cartoon made wordplay on the name Muhammad, and many Muslims said it insulted their religion.
