Brickbats
The Pinal County, Arizona, sheriff's office fired Deputy Raul Alvarado for torturing a frog by Tasering it. The county's merit commission has ordered the department to rehire him.
A judge in Queensland, Australia, had Thomas John Collins briefly jailed for addressing him as "mate."
Zimbabwean police have arrested and beaten 46 human rights activists and union leaders, charging them with treason. Their crime: watching videos of protests in Egypt and Tunisia.
Neil Strauss is the author of The Game, which details the secrets of pick-up artists. He says the FBI has hired him to train agents on how to use pick-up techniques—which seem to consist of dressing like a pimp and playing head games with women—to elicit information from terrorists.
Steve Malfatto was ticketed for not wearing a helmet inside an Ocean City, California, skate park, even though he wasn't skating. Malfatto was helping his 5-year-old-son, who was wearing a helmet, learn to skate.
The Harrison School District in Colorado has barred a student from attending classes if he takes medicine to control his seizures. The boy was prescribed a lozenge containing THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. The school said he couldn't bring the pills to school because it would violate its zero tolerance policy on drugs. The family asked if the boy could walk home to take his medicine, but school officials said no, explaining that consuming the pills also would violate their policy.
The British Health Service Ombudsman has blasted the National Health Service for its care of elderly patients. In a report, the ombudsman says hospitals fail to provide "even the most basic standards of care" and details how elderly patients were given the wrong medicine, left in soiled clothing, and not given enough to eat or drink.
Officials at Sacramento's Mesa Verde High School suspended sophomore Danny Tobolski after he wrote a Facebook status update that described his biology teacher as fat. The school said Tobolski was guilty of cyberbullying.
The federal General Services Administration has provided its workers with identity theft insurance and paid to enroll them in a service that monitors their credit reports. The moves came after a government employee accidentally emailed the names and Social Security numbers of the more than 12,000 people who work for the agency to a private email address.
In Georgia, Gainesville State College President Martha Nesbitt ordered a painting removed from a campus art exhibit after a "Southern heritage" group threatened to protest it. The painting depicted a Confederate flag superimposed over images of a lynched black man and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Police in Pakistan have arrested Muhammad Samiulla, 17, for blasphemy. He allegedly wrote derogatory remarks about Muhammad, the founder of Islam, during a school exam. But police refuse to say what Samiulla wrote, because to repeat it would be blasphemy.
Charles Oliver
