IT MUST BE TRUE…

I read it in the tabloids

A Frenchman is suing his government for abuse of power, for denying him the right to smile in his passport photograph. Named as “Thierry”, he is believed to be a civil servant who was angered when his passport was rejected because it featured him with an expression that Le Parisien described as a “slightly ironic grimace that borders on a discreet smile”. In a letter to the AFP news agency, the man asks: “Is it responsible, in depressed France, for the authorities to penalise people if they smile?”

A police officer who allegedly tasered an innocent woman later tried to atone by sending her a photograph of a cake, iced with the words: “I am sorry I tased you.” The woman was not impressed: she went ahead with her civil suit, in Florida, charging him with battery; it then emerged that he hadn’t even baked the cake himself. A reporter for the website Gizmodo found that the image had first been posted online a year before the incident by a police officer in Massachusetts, who’d accidentally fired his stun gun at a colleague.

An elementary school in Portland, Oregon, has granted permission for a local Satanic Temple to run an after-school programme for its pupils. A spokesman said the club would focus on “rational thinking” and ”benevolence for everyone”. On its After School Satan website, the Satanic Temple explains that it aims to provide parents with an alternative to the many clubs run by “proselytising” evangelical Christians. It’s not yet clear, however, how many schools have signed up to the programme.