The United Nations is warning that more than half a million people are in need of emergency assistance after storms Fay, Gustav and Hanna battered the island of Haiti. Church and development groups are responding with urgent aid.

To boost morale and ease the Monday blues, the Church of England offered early morning commuters on 1 September a prayer published in a freesheet morning newspaper read by some 1.5 million who travel by train and underground.

Leading evangelical Christian celebrity Sir Cliff Richard, who is now aged 67, thinks the church should be supportive of committed gay relationships and says he is sick of intrusive speculation about his own sexuality.

A pastoral delegation sent by the World Council of Churches to Georgia and Russia in the wake of the bitter conflict there has not been able to get safe passage to visit South Ossetia from the Georgian side of the ceasefire line.

Black church leaders have joined health experts in welcoming findings from a new opinion poll showing widespread public opposition to adding the DNA of innocent mental health patients to the National Criminal DNA database.