Unnecesary <br> appeared in link

Would be nice to have actual code used to get this behavior. CKEditor and browsers modify non-standard code.

I know, but we have to reproduce this on our end, and it's a pain retyping code from images... Anyway, I retyped it and not getting the br in the 3rd step you described. Where exactly are you placing the caret? Are you pressing the Del button or Backspace? When I but it in the top empty line, and press del, it removes the first </p> tag, as it should. Using Win8, Chrome 33. Code I put in source:

<p>
<br>
</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin" style="padding: 0 10px;">Buzz Aldrin</a></p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin">Buzz Aldrin</a></p>

I get this code:

<p><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin" style="padding: 0 10px;">Buzz Aldrin</a></p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin">Buzz Aldrin</a></p>

Sorry, but I'm having a hard time understanding using the images. Please provide a test case with steps of what you do, the code you use (in text format), the buttons you press and the resulting code you get. Images are not the best way to debug something that might be...