Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Not The BBC News: 22 October 2013


The Maryland Board of Physicians has decided to take no action against an abortionist who had a 29-year-old mother die from complications arising from an illegal late term abortion in his clinic, even though he failed to provide the woman with any after-abortion care; instead he let her leave the clinic for a hotel and then left town.

In a case that parallels the case of the Christian bed and breakfast owners in Cornwall, a Mennonite couple in Iowa are being sued for refusing to rent out their art gallery for a gay wedding. They have received up to 60  emails and 30 phone calls per day about the incident, many of which are threatening or hateful, and also have been hit financially as other couples have cancelled receptions at the venue; they say they are “amazed at this ridiculous hatred.” They have now filed their own lawsuit against the Iowa Civil Rights Commission on the grounds that forcing them to go against their beliefs by opening up their venue for same-sex weddings would be a breach of the Iowa Civil Rights Act.

Anti-Christian violence in Egypt has resurged with a drive-by shooting of a wedding party who were leaving a church. Three people were killed including an eight year old girl, and nine were wounded.

A new semi-legal scam is affecting owners of computers and mobile phones. Consumers who type in “Apple Tech Support” into a Web search engine in order to get the telephone number may find themselves phoning another company instead. A US consumer spoke to a company called MyTechHelp for four and a half hours, at a cost of $250, without ever being advised she wasn’t talking to Apple. The scam also affects HP (where third party companies charge consumers for drivers that are freely available from HP’s website) and Microsoft (where fraudsters cold call consumers offering ‘online diagnostics’ in order to obtain passwords and bank details). One solution to this is to report technical support issues using Twitter; Microsoft’s Twitter team are especially responsive, with replies often taking in less than an hour.

In sport, Sir Alex Ferguson’s autobiography has been released. As expected, Ferguson is critical of some of his past players and managerial rivals; however, the degree of criticism directed at former club captain Roy Keane is surprising. “The hardest part of Keane was his tongue,” Ferguson wrote.

And finally, a 37-stone (580lb/265kg) man who recently flew from Wales to Ireland followed the airline’s policy for overweight passengers and booked two seats. However, the check-in staff didn’t seem to be aware of this policy; on his outward flight he was given a window seat and an aisle seat, and on his return flight they gave him two seats in different rows.

No comments:

Post a Comment