I am glad you came up with a solution.
Regarding to the dates I just saw what you mean. It is a bug either in the configuration of the datatable plugin when it is rendered or in the plugin itself. The timezone used is actually the one you have in your browser. It is a javascript issue.
I am going to check it out and look how to fix it for the next update, which I am hoping is going to be the stable one.
In the meanwhile you can force the table to be rendered in plain html. The dates are correct there since there is not javascript trans coding timezones.
For cases like this that we know for sure it is a bug in the plugin, you can better open an issue in the tracking system.