As G20 leaders prepare to meet in London to try to agree how to maintain financial stability in the present economic meltdown, a new report reveals for the first time the massive global cost of business tax dodging.

The global financial crisis has affected the Russian Orthodox Church, which, like the State, is curtailing programmes and preparing for the possibility of further cutbacks.

Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed Church chiefs want the G20 heads of government, meeting in London next week, to move boldly on the current economic crisis and action on global warming.

A church-sponsored pilot project to provide a basic income to residents of a Namibian village has increased school attendance and employment while decreasing the poverty-related crime rate.

In a lecture at the Welsh Centre for International Affairs, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has argued that a change of heart as well as structural reform is needed to address the global economic crisis.

Some Norwegian church leaders want a five-year moratorium on oil and gas exploration on Norway's continental shelf in the North Sea, in particular off the Lofoten archipelago in the Arctic Circle.

The global financial crisis may increase social conflict, says the head of the International Labour Office, claiming that civil society groups have an important role in helping those affected to be heard.

The current financial crisis could signal the end of over-dependence on a selfish kind of capitalism, the spiritual head of the Catholic church in England and Wales has said in a newspaper interview.