A group of leading Southern Baptists has denounced the denomination’s stance on global warming as ”too timid”. Its cautious response to the environment is seen around the world as ”uncaring, reckless and ill-informed”, they say. Their statement has widened divisions about climate change within the American evangelical movement.

When he went down from Oxford for the Christmas holiday Bilawal Bhutto was just another undergraduate fresher, posting his picture at a Halloween party on Facebook. Recently, on his return to Britain, the chairperson of the Pakistan People’s Party was mobbed by journalists and camera crews at a heaving London press conference.

Protestant churches reacted with dismay to a new declaration approved by Pope Benedict XVI insisting they are mere ”ecclesial communities” and their ministers effectively phonies with no right to give communion. Coming just days after the reinstatement of the Latin mass, the document left no doubt about Benedict’s eagerness to back traditional Roman Catholic practices and attitudes.

After being reviled for more than 2 000 years as the embodiment of treachery, Judas Iscariot’s side of the story was finally published last week. Thanks to a newly discovered gospel in Judas’s name, we now know what his excuse was: Jesus made me do it.