Not The BBC News: 7 September 2013

A Christian-owned bakery in Oregon which refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple has been forced to close down. Not only did the bakery suffer an official investigation, death threats, and a boycott from homosexual activists, but LGBT protestors also “inundated” other marriage businesses in the area with phone calls and threatened them with boycotts if they worked with the bakery. “That tipped the scales”, said Mr Klein, the bakery’s owner.

A Christian street preacher in Basildon was arrested because a bystander made a false accusation against him to the police. He was held at Basildon police station for seven and a half hours before being released.  He commented that Christian street preachers now seem to be treated as “guilty until proven innocent”, and expressed gratitude to the Christian Legal Centre for reacting quickly and effectively by sending a solicitor to support him at the station.

An Italian lady who became pregnant by her married lover, who then demanded she have an abortion, decided to write to the Pope about her situation as she felt she had no-one else to turn to. She refused the abortion and told the man to get out of her life. This week, Pope Francis telephoned her and offered to baptise her baby.

A survey of Internet users in America found that 21% had had a social network or email account taken over by someone else without permission; 12% had been stalked or harassed online; and 6% had been the victim of an online scam and lost money.

Manchester United have not, after all, signed a left back from Real Madrid on loan; the paperwork was not completed before the transfer deadline.

More than 100 police removed 40 children from a Christian community in the southern German state of Bavaria. The dawn raids followed "new evidence pointing to significant and ongoing child abuse by the members." There was no resistance from the “Twelve Tribes” community, even though it has denied the allegations. Meanwhile, 70 members of an Islamist sect who lived in an underground bunker on the edge of the Russian city of Kazan for nearly a decade have been charged with negligence and child abuse. The sect’s children were “dirty but well-fed”; some had never seen sunlight.

A volunteer lifeboat crew in Norfolk saved the lives of three teenage girls who had been trapped by rising tides. The girls were hanging onto a marker buoy in a strong current and were near exhaustion.

A bill to legalise gay marriage in Scotland is proceeding with apparent haste (i.e. double-length committee sessions) through the Scottish Parliament. The head of the Scottish Roman Catholic Church has objected strongly, due to “many strong recommendations to the contrary and an overwhelming public rejection of the proposals in unprecedented numbers during the consultation period last year.”  The Evangelical Alliance added that it is “disappointed” that the Scottish Government had made “little substantive effort” to protect freedom of speech or conscience.

England beat Moldova in a (football) World Cup 2014 qualifying match to go top of their group; unfortunately for their goal difference, Ukraine beat San Marino 9-0. England’s next two matches are against their two closest rivals, Ukraine (Kiev, 7 September) and Montenegro (Wembley, 11 October).  Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland all lost; of these, only the Republic of Ireland have an outside chance of qualifying.

Following a complaint by the British Humanist Association to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, the London Oratory (a Catholic school) is being forced to ditch its policy of prioritising children for admission based on their parents' activities in local Catholic parishes. A liberal rabbi, writing in the Guardian, suggested that it was “immoral” to allow schools to “base admission on belief.”

And finally, the electrical retailer Currys have apologised to an “embarrassed and uncomfortable” job applicant after he and other applicants were asked to do a robot dance as part of their job interview. A spokesman said, “These dances are part of team building exercises that would not normally be used in a job interview process. We are investigating.” The applicant was offered another interview but declined.