UK Churches are encouraging people to add Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to their Christmas card list and include a personal greeting asking the minister to ensure that every family and child has enough this Christmas.

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A year after the US Senate published a major report into the CIA torture programme, there is no sign of either the UK’s own inquiry or a decision from the Crown Prosecution Service regarding the role the British Government played, says the legal and human rights organisation Reprieve.

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The civil liberties and human rights organisation Liberty will today launch a legal challenge to the Government’s criminal records disclosure scheme, which forces people with more than one conviction to divulge them forever when applying for certain types of work, regardless of individual circumstances or the minor nature of the offences.

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As the COP21 climate summit in Paris draws to its close on 11 December, Christian Aid’s Senior Climate Advisor, Mohamed Adow,  said: “The new Paris Outcomes text represents good progress. It is much cleaner and presents clear options to help ministers get tougher and resolve the sticky issues.”

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Decades of poorly regulated arms flows into Iraq as well lax controls on the ground have provided the armed group calling itself Islamic State (IS) with a large and lethal arsenal, says a new report from Amnesty International.

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The UN and its partners have launched a $5 billion initiative to expand renewable energy capacity in Africa as the Secretary-General  told the UN climate change conference (COP21) in Paris that saving energy is a triple-win in the battle against global warming.

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Some MPs who voted to bomb Syria may have done so with reluctance or misgivings. Remarks made by George Osborne in the USA, and evidence which has emerged since the vote, may already be causing them to regret their decision just one week later.

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