The Latest Breaking News from Brickbat

Iran's parliament is set to pass a bill regulating how men dress in public, banning apparel that "is against public modesty, such as clothing that does not cover a part of the body lower than the chest or higher than the ankle." But the Basij, the nation's morality police, is…

President Sadyr Japarov of Kyrgyzstan has imprisoned Aftandil Sabyrbekov, his niece's fiancé, on drug charges, after Sabyrbekov arranged an "embarrassingly ostentatious" marriage proposal and refused to apologize. Sabyrbekov and Japarov's niece videotaped themselves flying to a mountain location in a Kyrgyz Emergencies Ministry helicopter as deadly mudslides hit the south…

The Houston Police Department halted more than 260,000 investigations between 2016 and 2023 because of a lack of personnel. Now, department leaders say they will try to catch up on those investigations, especially the 4,017 rape cases that were put on hold. Police officials said they did not realize just…

In the United Kingdom, a National Health Service survey found that 26 percent of people in Cheshire and Merseyside who tried to book a dental appointment in the last two years were unsuccessful, and 20 percent of Cheshire and Merseyside residents who did get to see a dentist rated the…

In California, Cajon Valley Union Superintendent David Miyashiro ran up nearly $400,000 in charges on his school district credit card between May 2022 and March 2024. Miyashiro spent thousands of dollars for professional conferences and memberships in education associations, while also spending $76,000 on hotels, $30,000 on airfare, $10,000 on…

David O'Connor is a Navy veteran who spent many years as a commercial truck driver. He's had standard and commercial driver's licenses in New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, and for the past eight years, in Tennessee. But when he went to renew his license and get a REAL ID, Tennessee…

The New York legislature is looking at a bill that would ban the sale of gasoline-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers in the state. If passed, the bill would require rules to enforce the ban by Jan. 1, 2025.

A federal judge has awarded $1.5 million to a family after their two children, a boy and a girl who are U.S. citizens, were wrongly detained at the U.S.-Mexico in 2019. The family lives in Mexico, but the children attend school in the United States. As they attempted to cross…

For almost eight years, California law enforcement officials kept a death in police custody secret, labeling the case an "accident" and refusing to disclose basic information to journalists and the family of the victim, according to an investigation by Open Vallejo. Darryl Mefferd had seemed disoriented and dehydrated and was…

Federal agents arrested Penny McCarthy at gunpoint outside her home in Phoenix. They insisted that she was Carole Anne Rozak, a fugitive wanted on a 1999 warrant for probation violation in Oklahoma. At first, the U.S. Marshals Service said McCarthy's fingerprints matched Rozak's, but they later admitted the prints did…

German Transport Minister Volker Wissing has warned lawmakers he will ban driving on weekends if they cannot agree to a planned amendment to the nation's Climate Protection Act. Wissing said that is the only way to meet the emissions goals called for in the law. Negotiations over the amendment have…