Roundup: Asylum seekers, reason and credibility, climate science, blasphemy, rivers, Pi, Palestine

UnitingCare Australia expresses concern about asylum seeker announcement

UnitingCare Australia’s National Director Lin Hatfield Dodds has expressed concern about Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen’s announcement that between 5,000 and 7,000 refugees will be put on bridging visas under the ‘no advantage principle’.

Has the Church of England finally lost its reason?

The “No” vote constitutes a real crisis in representational structures in the Synod, as well as a noted new tension between Church and State.

Scientists, gas and global warming

Shooting the messenger.

Laws penalising blasphemy are widespread

Several recent incidents have drawn international attention to laws and policies prohibiting blasphemy – remarks or actions considered to be contemptuous of God or the divine.

A global treaty on rivers: key to true water security

No broad-based international agreement on sharing rivers currently exists, even though much of the world depends on water from rivers that flow through more than one nation. But that may be about to change, as two separate global river treaties are close to being approved.

Life of Pi

A story to ‘make you believe in God’.

Justice for Palestine is the key to Gaza peace

The Israeli seizure and occupation of Palestinian land, and the denial of a Palestinian state, is the root cause of the on-going conflict and the current flare up in Gaza.

Williams urges realism on Church which has ‘lost credibility’

The Church of England needs a reality check about the way it is perceived and the way it operates, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.