Two aid and development groups, both Geneva-based, with similar names and backers, have announced they are to unite and will formally launch in March 2010 as the ACT Alliance, which will have access to billions of dollars.

The world is losing the war against AIDS, says Sister Sheila Flynn, an English-born Irish nun who works with HIV-affected women in South Africa, as she urged churches to mobilise a collective effort to tackle the pandemic.

The World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Institute in the Swiss countryside has been the setting of a major month-long global dialogue on the state of religion in the world - an invitation to honesty, deeper understanding and the renewal of conversation.

Geneva's International Museum of the Reformation has been awarded the Council of Europe Museum Prize for 2007. The president of the council's parliamentary assembly prsented the award earlier this week.