ore than one in seven of American households suffered from food insecurity in 2008, according to the most recent data on hunger released by the US Department of Agriculture yesterday.

The US President Barack Obama has won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation”. Campaigners welcomed the news but urged Obama to live up to the Prize.

Senior staff of the National Council of Churches USA have praised President Obama's address to the Muslims throughout the world yesterday, renewing the Council's commitment to friendship and dialogue with Muslim people of faith.

The First Amendment Center in the USA has placed online the once unavailable five-volume treatise of the late Rev Dean M. Kelley, the internationally known National Council of Churches USA executive for religious liberty.

While the US the United States is trying to rally NATO behind its South Asian strategy, Asian churches have called "for the withdrawal of US-led international combat troops from Afghanistan".

A survey by Public Religion Research released March 6 shows that mainline Protestant clergy are much more likely to identify themselves as liberal and Democrat than conservative or Republican.

A reported decline in US Catholic and Southern Baptist membership raises eyebrows because they have grown dependably over the years, but now join the majority of mainline churches reporting a gradual decline.

Metropolitan Jonah, the new head of the Orthodox Church in America, says he "laughs off" any comparison made between himself and US President Barack Obama as a reformer and agent of change.

The US National Council of Churches' assembly focused on being global good neighbours, including immigration reform, the meaning of Christian unity in a pluralistic era, and obstacles to unity, racial justice and interfaith dialogue.

The geopolitical dynamics and instability in the Middle East makes that region an important element of any US president’s foreign policy, says Timothy Seidel. But the major parties are still trading in stereotypes, not solutions.