Reports of forced sterilisation and wider persecution of the Muslim group were "reminiscent of something not seen for a long time", he told the BBC.

The UK would work with its allies to take appropriate action, he insisted.

China's UK ambassador said talk of concentration camps was "fake". Read more

This is an increase of almost 50% on the value of arms licensed in the four years preceding the war, which amounted to £3,572,049,751 worth of arms (26 March 2011 - 25 March - 2015).

According to the United Nations, the bombing has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

UK-made fighter jets, bombs and missiles have all played a central role in the bombing.

Since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015, the UK has licensed £5.3 billion worth of arms to the Saudi regime, including:

• £2.7 billion worth of ML10 licences (Aircraft, helicopters, drones)
• £2.5 billion worth of ML4 licences (Grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures)

In reality the figures are likely to be a great deal higher, with most bombs and missiles being licensed via the opaque and secretive Open Licence system.

In June 2019 the Court of Appeal ruled that the Government has acted unlawfully when it licensed the sale of UK-made arms to Saudi forces for use in Yemen without making an assessment as to whether or not past incidents amounted to breaches of International Humanitarian Law. Continue reading

Today, pubs (short for "public houses") have become iconic, a popular destination for visitors to try drinks, traditional pub meals, and the cultural ambiance. But these local landmarks are closing quickly; only 39,000 are left in England, down a quarter from 20 or so years ago.

There are now more church buildings than pubs, according to recent figures announced last month by the National Churches Trust.

But the number of churches overall is falling too, just not as fast.

The share of Christians in the UK is declining, as in America and other parts of the Western world.

Total secularization isn't inevitably around the corner for at least two reasons.

• First, surveys show that many who say they have "no religion" still believe in God, pray, say they have a soul, or even read the Bible.
• Second, there is actually substantial growth among certain types of churches in the UK, all in the context of God's promise to build his church.

The three biggest UK denominations—Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Presbyterians—are all declining quite quickly.

Overall, their numbers have gone down 16 percent in just the last five years, Presbyterians the fastest (down 19%).

Two other major groups are also declining, Baptists and Methodists, but they are much smaller in size.

The three major denominations form 60 percent of church members, and the smaller two another 16 percent.

The remaining members often belong to the types of churches that are seeing the most growth right now—many of which have a Pentecostal bent, ranging from immigrant-founded denominations to Hillsong campuses.

Their increase, although significant, is unfortunately not enough to compensate for the drop among the bigger churches, but has moderated the overall decline.

Continue reading to discover which kinds of churches are growing the fastest amid demographic shifts in the UK.

• Image: Advocating Beer Variety

They hope the £100 million plan to help end rough sleeping on England's streets will be put into place urgently.

Around 4,750 people are estimated to sleep rough on any given night in England.

The scheme, which was launched on Monday, will offer cash for mental health and addiction support as well as help with accommodation.

The scheme's focus will be stopping people becoming homeless in the first place, with "swift, targeted support" to get those in crisis off the streets and into long-term housing, a Westminster spokesman says.

The plan includes £50 million for homes outside London. These will be provided to people ready to move on from hostels or refuges. An additional £30 million will be provided for mental health support for rough sleepers.

Bishop Richard Moth of Arundel and Brighton said he was "especially pleased" funding is targeted toward mental health help and treatment for substance misuse, "problems from which many of those living on the streets suffer."

Moth is the lead bishop for the Catholic Mental Health Project. This project works to support the Catholic community to further develop spiritual and pastoral care for mental health.

"While this plan is significant, we hope that further steps will be taken to ensure the sense of urgency that this challenge demands," Moth said.

According to the London-based Mental Health Foundation, homelessness and mental health often go hand in hand.

"Having a mental health problem can create the circumstances which can cause a person to become homeless in the first place," the organisation said on its website.

"Yet poor housing or homelessness can also increase the chances of developing a mental health problem or exacerbate an existing condition. In turn, this can make it even harder for that person to recover - to develop good mental health, to secure stable housing, to find and maintain a job, to stay physically healthy and to maintain relationships."

"Nobody should have to sleep rough and that's why we must do all we can to help the most vulnerable in our society get the support they need," Prime Minister Theresa May says.

"But we recognise this is a complex issue - as well as ensuring people have somewhere to live, we have to deal with underlying problems and ultimately help people turn their lives around."

Source

• Andover Advertiser
• Crux Now
• Image: Manchester Evening News

Nichols, who is the president of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales has asked the British government to review its decision to limit the number of unaccompanied child refugees it accepts from Europe.

To neglect these unaccompanied children is to leave them extremely vulnerable to human trafficking with all its terrible consequences," Nichols added. Read more

Although there is some obvious concern in the UK that the refugees may include terrorists, organizers say they are confident the refugees, who are drawn from predominantly Muslim camps, will not include members of the Islamic State terror group.

An estimated 11 million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of the civil war in March 2011. Now, in the sixth year of war, 13.5 million are in need of humanitarian assistance within the country.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 4.8 million have fled to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, and 6.6 million are internally displaced within Syria.

About one million have requested asylum to Europe. Germany, with more than 300,000 cumulated applications, and Sweden with 100,000, are EU's top receiving countries.

Philip McCarthy, chief executive of Caritas Social Action Network, the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales agency coordinating the project among the parishes, said all the refugees would be rigorously screened by the British government and the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR.

"People will be coming through the government scheme, so they will part of the same 20,000, and they will have already been screened by the United Nations and by others," he told Catholic News Service in a July 20 telephone interview.

"These are not people we are taking over and above (the 20,000) or independently," he added.

Source

• NZ Catholic
• syrianrefugees.eu
• Image: Pixabay

The government said it would draft regulations to allow human embryos to be created in this way to avoid mitochondrial diseases.

But the director of Human Genetics Alert, called the method "unnecessary and unsafe" and said it would lead to "a eugenic designer baby market".

Continue reading

The shocking statistics mean that more than 22,000 would-be adoptive parents vanish from the system every year.

The figures were made public for the first time by the schools and children inspectorate Ofsted. They were released just three weeks after the government-sponsored National Adoption Week called for thousands more people to come forward to adopt.

The Ofsted count showed that in the year which ended in March, 25,380 couples and individuals made inquiries about adopting a child.

Of these, only 4,145 (16 per cent) went on to make applications to adopt a child. Even fewer - 3,048 - were actually approved as prospective parents by council or agency social workers.

The drop-out rate has been revealed at a time when ministers have promised to sweep away the barriers to adoption put up by social workers over the past three decades.

Parents have been regularly turned down because social workers insist on precise racial matches, and white parents are routinely rejected as adopters of black or Asian children. Potential parents are also turned down because they smoke, or are too old, or social workers say their health is not good enough.

The Ofsted breakdown, based on returns from councils and voluntary adoption agencies, gave the same figure as Whitehall for the number of children adopted from the care system last year - 3,450.

Refused: Many would-be parents have been turned down because social workers insist on precise racial matches (file photo)

About 65,000 children live in state care, either in children's homes or with frequently changing foster families.

Children who grow up in care are likely to grow up with poor education and have a high chance of falling into drug abuse, crime or early pregnancy.

Despite regular warnings that adoption placements often break up, the Ofsted figures showed that there were only 115 'unplanned endings' of adoption placements during the year. Continue reading

Image: Priests for Life

The commissioning of 22 lay people is an effort to relieve pressure on priests.

"In some of our parishes in the diocese priests are being asked to celebrate over 120 funerals each year," Archbishop Kelly wrote in The Tablet.

Vocations in Liverpool declined sharply in recent years, and the archdiocese projected that the number of priests will decline from 170 to 100 by 2015.

The move is supported by the archdiocese's Council of Priests.

Archbishop Kelly said that the lay ministers - some of whom are drawn from the roster of Eucharistic ministers, catechists and religious sisters - would receive continuing support and training to ensure that the service they provide is "of the best quality".

The move is not seen by Catholics as "second-class".

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Image: Catholic Herald

Quoting the words of Pope Benedict XVI, he said: "In a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims."

O'Brien, who was protesting at Faslane for the first time, said: "I've been speaking of the teaching of the Catholic Church on nuclear weapons for many years now, telling our message to whoever is willing to listen, and I'm very pleased to repeat that teaching again.

There is no better place to say that it is not courageous of Britain to have these dreadful weapons of mass destruction.

"As you'll see, it's a consistent teaching, a central part of our pro-life stance, that has human dignity at its very core.

"And it's a message I'm all the more glad to repeat here at the gates of Faslane, which is the very heart of Britain's nuclear weapons industry."

Cardinal O'Brien said Trident was becoming obsolete, providing the opportunity to give it up.

He added: "Here at the gates of Faslane, there is no better place to say that it is not courageous of Britain to have these dreadful weapons of mass destruction.

"It is shameful to have them. If our government wished to truly be courageous it would unilaterally give up its nuclear deterrent, giving the witness and impetus for other nations to do the same."

The cardinal was joined by representatives from churches across Scotland in an Easter witness for peace.

In 2006 the British government, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, committed itself to replacing its entire submarine-based nuclear weapons system. That policy is currently being continued by the new British government under Prime Minister David Cameron. The present system, code named Trident, is headquartered at the Faslane naval base on the west coast of Scotland.

The replacement system will also be berthed there.

Sources

• BBC
• Catholic News Agency