Tattle Tales.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: Tar Heel Tattler - Brief Article

* Perhaps they're peacekeepers: A state inspector marked down a Wilmington day-care center because its toys included plastic toy soldiers. The local paper quoted a Division of Child Development supervisor as saying children might use them "to hurt the other army men or to shoot the stuffed animals."

* Long arm of the law: Tom Ford and Robert Spransy tangled playing soccer. Spransy, a Chapel Hill accountant, wound up with a broken jaw. Ford, a Wake County assistant district attorney, was barred from matches held at Carolina Sportsplex in Morrisville. Police investigated, but no charges were filed.

* News you can lose: WSOC-TV, Charlotte's top-rated station, placed dead last in a national study of quality of local news coverage. The Queen City as a whole fared no better. Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington think tank, put it at the bottom of 14 cities it sampled for news on the tube.

* Not to mention much better barbecue: Marketing itself to Pennsylvanians, UNC Pembroke touts its mild weather and affordability: Out-of-state tuition, fees and room and board total $13,926, roughly what in-staters pay at the University of Pittsburgh. "My God, they must be desperate," the president of the 81-member Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania retorts.

* Slinging more than mud: While running for mayor of Lowell, Jim England was charged with trespassing after a security camera at a convenience store next door to his campaign headquarters caught him plopping a bag of dog poop on its entrance. England...