Not The BBC News: 3 March 2014

In Toronto, another example has arisen of a gay customer taking legal action against a business that refused to serve her. In this case, however, she had gone to a men’s barbershop  for a “businessman’s” haircut, but chose a shop that was run by Muslims for whom touching women other than their wife is against their religious beliefs. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario will decide the case.

The BBC has blocked the general public from commenting on its blog postings about Scottish independence. When asked to comment on this, BBC News Online Scotland said that restricting online comments on some Scottish issues allowed a “more flexible and adaptable approach to how we cover the main news in Scotland.” The restriction, and the BBC’s unhelpful response (since, if taken at face value, it implies a desire to present the Scottish independence debate with a slant that the public might take exception to) has fuelled beliefs that the BBC is presenting a view that is biased against Scottish independence.

The Walt Disney company has announced that it will stop funding the Boy Scouts of America in 2015 because the Scouts’ membership policy bans gays from being Scout leaders.

Two Christian kindergarten teachers have been arrested in Liuzhou, China, officially on suspicion of “illegal business operations.” However, the authorities have harassed one of the two women for a long time and have made previous attempts to arrest her (e.g. by inviting her to a mandatory but non-existent meeting at the Bureau of Education) because she and her husband hold Gospel camps for college students twice a year, and sharing the gospel with college students is illegal in China. The arrest at the kindergarten was done without a warrant and with such noise and violence that many of the children were upset.

A number of reports about the Ugandan anti-homosexuality law have stated that the law was supported and encouraged by Western evangelicals such as Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, California. However, Warren  has publicly stated that he strongly opposes the law and has always done so; the false rumours apparently stem from an MSNBC reporter in 2009 who did not even ask Warren for his views. Meanwhile, a Ugandan minister of state, when pressed  by Stephen Fry on whether homosexuality was worse than heterosexual paedophilia, implied that the latter was more acceptable.

In cinema news, the Oscars were, as always, preceded by the Razzies (the Golden Raspberry awards for the worst films of the last year). The “winners” included the sci-fi flop “After Earth”, which saw Will Smith and son Jaden Smith take home the raspberries for Worst Actor and Worst Supporting Actor, and “Movie 43”, a sketch comedy film written by 19 different people and directed by 13. Despite featuring Halle Berry, Richard Gere, Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet, it was awarded Worst Film, Screenplay, and Director.  

The Oscar awards were mostly surprising for those who didn’t win (“American Hustle” got no award despite ten nominations; “Wolf of Wall Street” also lost out). The two top awards went to “12 Years a Slave” which won Best Picture and two other awards (including, surprisingly, Best Supporting Actress) and “Gravity” which won Best Director and also swept the board for technical awards.  The award for Best Original Song, from which the Christian-themed “Alone But Not Alone” was controversially disqualified, went to “Let It Go” from the film “Frozen.”

Meanwhile, the film “Son of God” has been released in the USA. Critics describe it as “earnest” but lacking the “personal vision” of “The Passion of the Christ” or “The Last Temptation of Christ.” (In the latter case, some may regard this as a good thing!) It took $26.5 million on its opening weekend in the USA, making it the second-highest grossing film of the weekend.

In technology news, two academic publishers have withdrawn more than 120 published conference papers after a scientist revealed that they were computer-generated nonsense.  One such paper claimed to “disprove that spreadsheets can be made knowledge-based, empathic, and compact.” The majority of the fake papers had been published by the New York-based IEEE; the Dutch publisher Springer was also caught out.

And finally, a bus driver in Dayton, Ohio, had his life saved by the Bible – literally. He had just got off his bus to fix a mechanical fault when three men assaulted him and shot him in what is believed to be a gang initiation ritual. He was hit once in the leg and twice in the chest, but the last two bullets lodged  inside a copy of the New Testament that he kept on his chest pocket. “I have heard of this happening in the war,” he said, “I’m glad to have joined the club.”