Opinion

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February 13, 2013

Charles Oliver: No happy birthday wish for you

Charles Oliver charlesoliver@daltoncitizen.com

Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council has proposed the government ban children in day care centers from blowing out candles on birthday cakes. Council members say blowing out candles spreads germs. They recommended that if children insist on blowing out candles they be given a cupcake with a candle to blow out.



A state audit has found California school systems have been dipping into funds meant to provide meals for low-income students and spending that money elsewhere. The biggest offender was the Los Angeles Unified School District, which used about $159 million in school lunch money to pay for things such as lawn sprinklers and the salaries of employees at a TV station it runs.



Customs officials nabbed Robin Hall when she returned to the United States following a Caribbean cruise. They had checked the ship’s passenger list against federal databases and found she’d never completed the 50 hours of community service she’d been sentenced to for a 1991 misdemeanor theft conviction. She ended up spending seven days in a Florida jail. I feel so much safer.



Donald Settle, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S Army, is suing the Louisville, Ky., police department for assault and wrongful detention. Settle, who has a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars, suffered a brain injury from an attack by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. Because of that, he has difficulty speaking. Settle says he was in a local mall shopping when officers approached him and told him the mall did not allow panhandling. Settle says he was dressed in a sweatshirt and sweat pants and the officers must have mistaken him for a homeless man. He said he tried to explain who he was and why he was there, but the officers pushed him to the ground, handcuffed him and threatened to Taser him.



When Lazaro Sopena married Hahn Dinh, he decided to take her surname. He got a new passport and Social Security card as Lazaro Dinh. And he went to the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles and got his driver’s license changed as well. A year later, the DMV wrote back to him, accusing him of fraud and canceling his license. The DMV allows women to change the name on their driver’s licenses by merely presenting a marriage certificate and paying $40. But officials said men have to go to court and legally change their names before the state will change their licenses. After media picked up the story, however, the DMV reinstated his license.



Pascagoula County, Mississippi Sheriff Mike Byrd at first said that an accidental discharge of a firearm in the office of the county’s narcotics task force injured an officer when a piece of tile shattered and scraped his leg. But a local newspaper later reported that a task force agent was poking Jackie Trussell, the unit’s commander, with a syringe. After repeatedly warning the agent not to do that, the commander fired his gun at the man’s feet, causing a piece of concrete to scrape the man’s shin. That led to an investigation, and Trussell was indicted for simple assault and suspended from his job without pay.



Charles Oliver is a staff writer for The Daily Citizen.

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