Brickbats
Brevard County, Florida, has fired firefighter and paramedic Kenneth Hallenbeck after he was caught on video dumping a cancer patient from a gurney to a hospital floor. Hallenbeck had asked the man to get out of the gurney, but the patient refused because a bed wasn't ready for him. This apparently angered Hallenbeck.
In Florida, Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Mark Mahon has banned any speech on Duval County courthouse grounds that might "degrade or call into question the integrity of the court or any of its judges." Mahon's order also covers passing out literature.
Over the past year, faculty leaders in the University of California system have undergone training in how to avoid offending students and each other. The training teaches that certain phrases can be considered "microaggressions." Among them: "I believe the most qualified person should get the job" and "America is the land of opportunity."
The Cherry Tree Primary School in Colchester, England, has directed teachers to look through students' lunches and make sure they don't contain scotch eggs or Peperami sausages.
A federal judge has issued a restraining order against Lee County, North Carolina, Sheriff Tracy Carter and his deputies. The judge found that Carter had deputies arrest a man trying to serve him with a subpoena in a use-of-force lawsuit against the department.
Two years ago, some parents donated an equipment shed for the baseball team at Nevada's Arbor View High School. Now officials say it has to go, because providing a shed for the boys' baseball team and not the girls' softball team violates Title IX. The company the school system hired to tear down the shed is charging $21,000, a fee the parents will have to pay.
The Pentagon has admitted shipping live anthrax spores to labs in as many as nine states and one foreign country via a commercial carrier. The labs expected the spores to be dead.
Malaysian officials detained two Canadian siblings for causing a recent earthquake in the country. Lindsey and Danielle Petersen were part of a group of tourists accused of showing disrespect to a mountain held sacred by locals by stripping down and posing for a photo there. An earthquake struck the area six days later.
A 2012 federal transportation bill designated Broadway and 7th Avenue in New York City's Times Square as federal highways. This means those streets are now subject to the billboard limits imposed by the Highway Beautification Act. Federal officials say they are working with the city to try to find some way to keep the roads' famous signs from having to be removed.
Cops in Greenwood Village, Colorado, have offered $5,000 to a family whose home they destroyed in a standoff with a shoplifting suspect. When an officer tried to arrest the alleged thief at a local Walmart, he fled and entered the house at random. Officers then used explosives on the home to force him out.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Brickbats."
