Ekklesia's good friend and contributor Harry Hagopian, an ecumenical, legal and political expert on the Middle East, has recently recorded a podcast on the appalling and murderous attack on the Coptic Orthodox Church in Alexandria, Egypt, on New Year's Eve 2010.

Modern football isn't just sport, it's big business these days - well, big business for some, and small business, survival or worse for many others (the majority, in fact). So the question of who owns and shapes the game in Scotland is central to the current debates about league restructuring and future development.

As I have observed in previous articles arising from my 2011 Ghana trip, economic and political life here is comparatively stable and prosperous, and there has been substantial growth over the past decade - but how benefits are assessed very much depends on perspective. Structurally, and in terms of levelling income and power distribution, things look much less rosy, for sure.

If you want Western-style consumption, you'll find it in abundance at the Accra Mall. But thankfully, there are many in West Africa keen to encourage sustainable tourism that is both environmentally and culturally sensitive.

Travelling around as a comparatively prosperous person in a country marked by significant poverty and inequality is not easy - unless you are largely insensitive to these things, which sadly, some Westerners seem to be, just reckoning that "this is simply the way things are" and revelling in how much their overvalued dollar can buy.

The current government in Ghana has declared that it intends to make the West African nation a 'first world' country by 2020. That is clearly fanciful, but recent oil discoveries mean that huge amounts of money will undoubtedly be spent over the next ten years. The question is, what will this mean for the people of Ghana as a whole, and especially for those trying to escape poverty?

At the beginning of the first volume of Selena Axelrod Winsnes' English translation of Danish sources on West African history, originally published from 1697 to 1822, there is a reproduction of the opening text from a slave ship captain's log. It records the commencing of a journey "In the Name of Jesus."

New Year celebrations in Ghana have a markedly different feel to those you will have experienced in Scotland, Wales and England.

With its many natural harbours and gold deposits, 58 of the 60 colonial forts built on the Guinea Coast of West Africa are situated in what is modern Ghana - the first former European (latterly British) colony to gain independence, in 1957.

Dr Rowan Williams' Christmas sermon amounted to a rebuke to the most prosperous in society, according to BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott. Goodness. So what did the Archbishop of Canterbury actually say?