The annual Channel 4 Political Awards offer an entertaining entree to the world of parliamentary politics, says Simon Barrow. But an award to a controversial lobby group raises questions about how politics is conducted - not least by Christians.

Church leaders and journalists have little idea of the pressures that each other face, according to German Lutheran Bishop Margot Kässmann, who has called for a new understanding.

Despite huge state-sponsored protests in Serbia, the rulers of the newly independent Kosovo say that their aim is social harmony, democracy and a plural secular settlement in the region.

The Economist magazine, a highly influential English-language international weekly, has come out in favour of the disestablishment of the Church of England and a clearer distinction between religion and governance.

Pope Benedict XVI has told a gathering of academics that science should serve rather than enslave humanity, warning that the reduction of human beings and nature to mere 'objects' is not good for the spirit of reasoned enquiry.

United Sikhs, a UN affiliated international advocacy NGO, joined other civil rights organizations over the weekend in asking Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to discuss the Sikh turban issue in France with President Sarkozy.

An educational institution in southern Africa is hosting a major theological consultation on HIV prevention called by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA), based in Geneva. Participants are expected from across the globe.

Senior Baptist theologians have joined other church figures and civil rights groups in calling for an end to the existing blasphemy laws in Britain, which are now seen by a wide cross-section of the public as an unjust anachronism.