Brickbats
Organizers of the Alaska Hempfest in Wasilla are facing possible fines for allowing people to use cannabis at the festival. While marijuana is legal for recreational consumption in Alaska, state law bars its use in public. Nordica Friedrich, communication and music director for the festival, says the fines make no sense. "People would never go to a beer and barley wine festival and just talk about beer and barley wine and just look at pictures of it," she told the Associated Press.
Chinese officials have blocked the release of Disney's Christopher Robin in that country. The movie depicts the titular character, now an adult, getting a visit from his childhood friend Winnie the Pooh. Chinese censors have been cracking down on references to the comical bear on social media ever since critics of President Xi Jinping began mockingly pointing out his resemblance to the character.
Evelyn Strahle, 91, says she is trapped in her home after Prince George's County, Maryland, officials forced her son to tear down a wheelchair ramp he'd built in front of the house she shares with her 94-year-old husband. Officials say the son did not get the necessary permits.
A woman who was forced to give birth on the floor of the Macomb County, Michigan, jail is suing for violations of her civil rights. Jessica Preston was awaiting trial for driving on a suspended license. She says jail staff did not call for medical services until her baby was crowning. The county's attorney has responded that "there is no constitutional right to be born in a hospital, or any collateral right to be born outside a jail."
Two Department of Energy employees left radioactive material in their car when they stopped for the night at a San Antonio, Texas, hotel. The next morning, they found their car had been broken into and the material stolen. It joins roughly six tons of nuclear material the government can't account for but doesn't publicly discuss.
Robert Park calls it "The Blue Loop." It's a 1,000-foot-long trail of blue cups, blue toys, and other blue objects he placed in a wooded area of his home's yard. He says it's art. Officials with Bath Township, Michigan, call it junk. Even though it's all on his own property, the township has ordered him to remove it or they will take it down, bill him for the cost, and fine him $250.
Jimmie Williams III of Victorville, California, has been arrested several times because cops keep mistaking him for a man with a similar name and the same birthday. The other man has a felony warrant out for him, but Williams has a clean record—or at least, he did until the latest round of identity confusion. A San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy came to his home because of another matter, but after confusing him for the other person, the visit ended with the deputy wrestling Williams to the ground and handcuffing him. The sheriff's office figured out they didn't have the man they were looking for but still charged Williams with felony obstruction and resisting arrest.
The British National Health Service reports some 4.3 million patients are waiting on surgery, a 10-year high. They are supposed to have to wait no more than 18 weeks for nonurgent surgery, but 211,434 patients have been waiting for over six months.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Brickbats."
