Not The BBC News: 14 November 2013

Israel's gay community has filed a criminal complaint of incitement against an ultra-Orthodox mayor after he said there were no homosexuals in his town and that homosexuality should be dealt with by the health ministry or the police. They claim that comparing gays to lawbreakers or public health dangers constitutes incitement under the Israeli criminal code.

Activists from the group Occupy Wall Street have set up a group called Rolling Jubilee whose goal is to set people free from debt. They do this by buying up bad debts from debt recovery companies at a fraction of the debt’s original value, and then cancelling the debt. They expected to spend $50,000 to buy $1 million worth of debt; in fact they have been able to buy debt at half that price, and so far they have spent $400,000 to buy and cancel nearly $15 million worth of (mostly US medical) debts.

In East-Central Nigeria, what originally appeared to be a weekend raid by Fulani Islamists against a Christian village has seemingly developed into a sustained offensive by over 5000 armed men – too many of the Nigerian security forces to repel. Almost 40 people have been reported killed, and thousands displaced.

A UK Government minister has claimed that Christians faced “extinction” in their ancient homelands. Baroness Warsi said, “Terrorists are subjecting Christians in the Middle East to “collective punishment” for American foreign policy. Worshippers are now regarded as newcomers and agents of the West, despite having lived there for centuries. Christian populations are plummeting. In Iraq, the Christian community has fallen from 1.2m in 1990 to 200,000 today. In Syria, the horrific bloodshed has masked the haemorrhaging of its Christian population." The Baroness, a Muslim, called on other Muslims to defend Christians, as recently happened in Tahrir Square in Egypt. ”A bomb going off in a Pakistani church shouldn’t just reverberate through Christian communities; it should stir the world,” she said.

In technology news, two mobile phone networks which can be carried in just four suitcases each have been sent to the Philippines by Vodafone to help those affected by Typhoon Haiyan. The portable network, which is powered by generators, consists of an antenna, a foldable mast, an industrial computer and a base transceiver station. Vodafone say that more than 1,000 text messages are being sent a minute and that thousands are travelling to the two sites to make telephone calls.

In sport, Scotland scraped through qualifying group in the Rugby League World Cup and now face New Zealand in the first knock-out round. England will tackle France at the same stage. Co-hosts Wales, however, concluded a disastrous performance with a third qualifying defeat, against the Cook Islands who had not won any of their five previous RLWC games.

Also in sport, Sachin Tendulkar is currently playing his 200^th and final cricket test for India.

And finally, a chase involving members of the public dressed as Batman and Robin, a Smurf, David Hasselhoff, Robin’s dad and some police officers has led to an arrest in a Tesco supermarket in Musselburgh, East Lothian. Police made the arrest last Friday after 'Robin' was assaulted outside the supermarket. A tweet subsequently appeared on an official police Twitter feed stating: "Thank you to Batman, Robin, Robin's Dad, a Smurf, and the Hoff for helping us on Friday night. #Tesco, sorry about the toilet roll aisle."