Not The BBC News: 25 January 2015

At a Mass in Calabria, Sicily, the Pope publicly stated that Mafia members will be excommunicated. “Those who in their life have gone along the evil ways, as in the case of the mafia, they are not with God, they are excommunicated,” he said. His statements are likely to have a strong impact in southern Italy, where Mafia members like to portray themselves as devout Catholics to improve their local credibility. Some of the Pope’s advisors are starting to worry that the Mafia will target him for assassination.

There is a ray of hope for Pastor Saaed Abidini, the Iranian-American pastor who has been imprisoned in Iran for more than two years. President Obama has agreed to meet with his wife. The opportunity arose because Obama was making a visit to Boise, Idaho where his wife lives, so she wrote to him and asked for a meeting, which he agreed to. The Obama administration has raised the issue with Iran previously by telephone, but with no result.

In Kachin state in north-east Myanmar, the long-running conflict between the Burmese government and the (ethnically distinct) Kachin people has hit the headlines because the Burmese army tortured, raped and killed two Kachin schoolteachers returning home from a convention organised by the Kachin Baptist community. There have been decades of oppression of the largely Christian Kachins by the Burmese authorities, and some retaliation, but a peace deal was signed in May 2013. However, there was a recent rebel attack, and the army seems to have retaliated by attacking these two teachers. For more than a century, Christians in the region have worked as volunteer teachers to bring education to the remote regions where Government education is unavailable.

The annual March for Life took place in Washington DC, with hundreds of thousands of people marching in support of pro-life causes. They then heard speeches from senior churchmen and politicians, including one Democrat senator. Simultaneously, the House of Representatives passed a bill that aims to prevent abortion clinics receiving any taxpayer funding.

A government-funded conference centre in London has apologised to a Christian group for banning an event they had organised. Christian Concern had organised a debate presenting views for and against gay marriage, but the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre cancelled the event the day before it was due to happen, saying that Christian Concern’s views were “inappropriate” for a Government-owned building. However, Christian Concern took legal action, and an out of court settlement has now been reached, along with the apology.

A former member of the successful Christian rock group The Newsboys has announced that he is now an atheist. He claims that the group got together as a group of friends at a Christian school, and decided to call themselves a Christian rock group because of the strong Christian beliefs of the parents who owned the house they usually met at. He, however, was more interested in playing rock ‘n roll than in being Christian; when the band dissolved, and later when his marriage collapsed, he became interested in cosmology and psychology as he searched for his own beliefs.

In ancient Egypt, Pharaohs were buried with death masks made out of gold, but average Egyptians had death masks made of linen or papyrus. Scientists recently developed a technique of dissolving the glue that holds the masks together without harming the ink, which allows the ancient scraps of paper to be read. One such scrap turned out to be the earliest known document of the New Testament – it is a fragment of the gospel of Mark, dating to around 90 AD. A spokesman said how amazed he was to discover such a document in Egypt.

In sport, football’s FA Cup fourth round weekend produced some major shocks. Seven of the top nine teams from the Premier League played, and none of them won; Manchester United and Liverpool both drew against lower league opposition (Cambridge Utd and Bolton), while the others all lost. The biggest shock was table-toppers Chelsea losing 4-2 at home to Bradford City, after leading 2-0 at half time. Middlesbrough beat Manchester City away, Blackburn beat Swansea, and Southampton and Tottenham both lost at home to Crystal Palace and Leicester respectively. Just to add to the craziness of the weekend, Watford scored seven goals in the second half of their League game against Blackpool to win 7-2, and Cristiano Ronaldo was sent off while playing for Real Madrid. Some folk who like to believe in portents are saying it was a great day for teams whose name begins with B. The remaining two of the top nine Premier League teams play today, against Brighton and Bristol City.

And finally, a senior leader and MEP of Hungary’s far right Jobbik party, which is anti-Semitic among other policies, resigned when he discovered that he himself was a Jew. Csanad Szegedi says he wasn’t especially anti-Semitic himself, but he was indifferent to the issue, and he was inclined to disbelieve stories of the Holocaust. However, after rumours about his heritage began to circulate, he went to visit his 94 year old grandmother, who revealed for the first time that she had survived Auschwitz (but lost her whole family there) and his grandfather had survived labour camps. Szegedi has now left Jobbik (but remains as an independent MEP); apologised for any anti-Jewish comments he has made; and is planning a trip to Auschwitz.