The UK and France should use what ever leverage they have over Chad and Eritrea to encourage them to help build a consensus among the Darfur rebels and bring a just peace to the Sudan killing fields, says a leading church agency.

Christian women activists have expressed anger at what they say is an alarming crisis due to female feticide in India, after two dumps of illegally aborted female foetuses were found in the world's second most populous nation.

US-based Jewish groups have praised a Vatican declaration that it will consider the elimination of a prayer of conversion that exists in the Catholic Church's traditional Latin Mass, and that has caused much offence.

To mark the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the National Council of Churches USA's Special Commission for the Just Rebuilding of the Gulf Coast is sponsoring an Ecumenical Work Week in late August.