Not The BBC News: Birthday Edition

It’s exactly a year since I wrote the first bulletin of Not The BBC News, in response to a friend who returned from holiday and asked if anything had happened. Since then I have published 108 bulletins – an average of slightly over two per week. The longest gap between bulletins was nine days; twice I have had so much material that I have published on three successive days. My thanks to all those who have corrected me or debated with me -- you help to keep me honest; and especially to those who ‘like’ the bulletins -- you encourage me to believe it’s worthwhile.

This bulletin contains some of my favourite stories from the past year. 

News Stories

A mission team who entered a very remote region of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010 received a pleasant surprise. They thought the people they were visiting might perhaps have heard of Jesus. In fact, they found a church in each of the eight villages they visited; a 1000-seat stone ‘cathedral’ in one village; and several ‘Gospel choirs’ who write their own songs and have regular sing-offs. It turned out the region had been visited by (and had its first education in reading and writing from) an American missionary for one month each year from 1912-1929; he returned home and died believing his preaching had made no impact.

A photograph being circulated on the Internet shows that, during recent violence in Egypt, one Christian church was protected from attack by a human chain of peace-loving Muslims.

The idea of providing a food bank for poor people has been taken one step further in a village near Barnsley where a “social supermarket” has opened. The shop, which is open only to people on benefits who live in the area, sells food rejected by other supermarkets (for reasons such as incorrect labelling) at discounts of up to 70% on prices elsewhere. A spokesperson said, “Manufacturers don’t want to throw this food away, but until now they’ve had no way of shifting really large quantities of rejected food.”

A journalist who was present at a pro-life march in Melbourne, Australia which was attacked by pro-choice demonstrators wrote: “I saw those Socialist Alliance protesters and feminists for hours shout down, blockade, hit, abuse and destroy the property of citizens, priests included, trying to peacefully express a different point of view – that killing babies in the womb is wrong [… ] In this demonstration I saw socialists and feminists betray almost every principle they profess to hold […] they call themselves progressives, but they are instead barbarians, so sure of their goodness that they feel licensed to do evil.”

The terrorist group Boko Haram has been responsible for the murder of numerous Christians in Nigeria, one of the most recent being an attack on a church that killed 22. However, World Mission reports that recently, two Boko Haram members became Christians. One convert said, 'If I could have died for a cause that I didn't even know my fate, now that I'm a Believer and follower of Jesus, I am willing to die for this truth no matter what.'"

The Vancouver School Board has mandated new pronouns for teachers to use to describe children who believe they are transsexual if the children request it. Teachers have been told to use the pronouns “xe, xem” and “xyr.” When a parent’s meeting was told of the change, one parent replied, “Six year olds aren’t qualified to understand all the intricacies of identity issues; some of them can’t even use the toilet yet.”

A US TV show is to feature an episode in which a father, a megachurch pastor who doesn’t believe in climate change, is verbally pitted against his daughter, an activist trying to shut down the local coal-fired plant. She wants to convince her father to make global warming the topic of his next sermon. What makes this show unusual is that it’s not fiction but a documentary; the father is Rick Joyner of Morningstar Ministries in North Carolina. His daughter Anna argues that “climate disruption is not a political issue; it’s a moral issue, it’s a justice issue, it’s a spiritual issue.” The series is called “Years of Living Dangerously.”

Sport

In the US Open golf, Jonas Blixt of Sweden created an unusual record when his tee shot ended up in a male fan’s back pocket; after taking a free drop, Blixt birdied the hole.

Technology

The first ball of the World Cup was kicked by a paraplegic wearing a mind-controlled exoskeleton. 29 year old Juliano Pinto was able to move the exoskeleton’s legs, and thus to walk and kick a ball, just by thinking about it. The neurotransmitters were developed by a team led by a Brazilian professor at a US university.

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 9 year old boy who was kidnapped from his driveway in Atlanta, Georgia, escaped by singing the same gospel song over and over again until the kidnapper threw him out of the car. Willie Myrick said as he sang “Every Praise” during the three hour drive, the kidnapper kept cursing him and telling him to shut up before finally opening the car door and ejecting him. The author of the song heard the story and flew from New York City to meet Willie; they hugged and then sang the song together to a crowded church.

A US man who is studying to become a Lutheran pastor and plays in a church worship band has an unusual “day job”; he plays bass guitar in (and is a founder member of) the heavy metal band Megadeth.  David Ellefson said of his first time in a worship band, in 1996, “I realised everybody can play pretty good! They’ve got real day jobs, so they have great gear. And people aren’t throwing Budweisers at you and heckling you.” Since 1996, Ellefson has sobered up, and eventually bought the church’s building; it now hosts MEGA Life, a contemporary church service aimed at recovering addicts.

Sister Cristina, the singing nun, has won the Italian edition of reality TV show “The Voice.” She says she believes her songs (including “Living on a Prayer””, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and “What  A Feeling”) express “the beauty of God”, and gave thanks to “the man upstairs.” She says she was inspired to go on the show by the Pope’s call for Catholics to get out on the streets and be closer to common folk and their everyday lives.

A Cold War nuclear bunker in Lithuania has been turned into “Europe’s strangest theme park”. Visitors are welcomed by Soviet anthems on a creaking radio, flickering striplights, and a huge guard in a green uniform with a large Alsatian dog. The guard yells at them in Russian, “Welcome to the Soviet Union. Here you are nobody.” They are then given “coffee” which has no coffee in it;  forced to listen to a brutal set of rules and to watch the hoisting of the red flag; and are then given damp overcoats before being interrogated (in Russian) for three hours in freezing cold rooms, shown socialist propaganda, and pressured to sign false confessions. “Someone always faints,” said the park’s director, “it’s very easy to break people’s will.” The park’s goal is to help people understand what the Soviet Union was really like.

A café in Nice introduced a politeness-based pricing system. It advertises “un café” for €7; “un café s’il vous plait” for €4.25; and “Bonjour, un café s’il vous plait” for just €1.40. The proprietor said, “It started as a joke; the regulars started calling me ‘your greatness’. But now people in the café are far more relaxed, and smiling.”

An embarrassing error by Swansea council, made five years ago, has recently “gone viral” on the Internet. The council wanted to put up a road sign in both English and Welsh. They e-mailed a Welsh speaker to ask for the translation, and then ordered the e-mailed reply to be added to the sign. The sign that was erected read (in English) “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only” , but the Welsh said: "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated”