Vicar of Baghdad: We need military action NOW Daily Mail

  President said the speed of the Islamic State advance was surprising, and there is no quick fix for the problem

  But was definitive that U.S. would not be dragged back into ground confrontations in the country

  U.S. military sources revealed that more strikes had been made against IS mortars and convoys

I have just returned from a secret visit to Qaraqosh – once the largest Christian town in Iraq, but no longer.

Today, Qaraqosh stands 90 per cent empty, desecrated by the gunmen of the fanatical Islamic State terror group now in control. The majority of the town’s 50,000 people have fled, fearing that, like other Christians in this region, they will be massacred.

The militants, in a further act of sacrilege, have established their administrative posts in the abandoned churches.

My visit, under the noses of the gunmen, was frightening – but that is nothing to the terror of the poor souls left behind.

Since I went to St George’s Anglican church in Baghdad in 2003 – the only Anglican church in the city – I have seen countless terrible things. Many of my congregation have been killed or mutilated in the years of violence.

But I have never witnessed anything on the scale, or which has affected me quite so dreadfully as on this visit to the north of Iraq.

In the nearby city of Irbil, I found many of those Christians who had fled. Some 30,000 refugees are packed into the Kurdish capital, forming a new Christian suburb.

I spoke to one woman who had survived the massacres in Qaraqosh. She had a bandaged left hand. When IS soldiers could not remove her gold wedding ring, they had simply hacked off her finger. She wept as she told me.

Comment

Please remember to prayer for Canon Andrew White and our fellow believers in Iraq,  Today in the west we can go to Church in relative safety,  but  our fellow believers in Iraq are being attacked and murdered by Islamic fundamentalists because they're Christians.

Read more here:

Further Reading:

MAURICE GLASMAN: This is a battle for civilisation... the UK cannot remain neutral

  Islamic State fanatics seize towns and tell terrified Yazidi 'Become Muslims by noon today... or we kill all of you'

War victims flee back to Syria as refugee camp in Lebanon is burned to the ground by invading Islamic State fighters

Bombing in Iraq could last weeks, says Obama as U.S. launches air strikes... but he insists there will be no boots on the ground

'We have no plan B': Alex Salmond admits he has no back-up plan if an independent Scotland was not allowed to keep the pound. Daily Mail

  First Minister made admission in an open letter to voters in today's Sun

  'It implies settling for second best', he said, insisting Scots can keep pound

  But his plan is contested by all three main political parties in Westminster

  Ed Miliband reveals he will campaign against currency union in 2015 election

Alex Salmond has admitted there is no acceptable 'Plan B' if an independent Scotland is barred from using the British pound. The First Minister said dropping the pound 'implies settling for what's second best' - but still insisted there will be a deal on a currency union with the rest of the UK.

His admission came in an open letter to voters setting out why he has not yielded to calls to disclose a back-up plan, if his favoured option of sharing the pound and the Bank of England fails.

The letter, published in the Sun, declared: 'It is revealing that our opponents in the No camp like to talk about a "Plan B" on currency.

'It's revealing because it says it all about what they think of Scotland.

'Plan B implies settling for what's second best. And neither myself, my colleagues in the SNP, or the wider Yes campaign will ever settle for second best for Scotland.

Read more here:

Further Reading and Insight

Beyond the Scottish Independence Question, Looking at a Greater Devolution in The United Kingdom, A Perspective,

Drivers warned to brush up on new road tax rules or face £1,000 fine as the disc disappears from windscreens in October Daily Mail

  End to practice whereby car sellers include remaining tax in sale

  Drivers will no longer need a tax disc from October

  Onus is on the seller to inform the DVLA of ownership change

The tax disc with months left to run has long been a handy money-saving perk when buying a used car, but new rules will see that benefit axed from October when they vanish from our windscreens.

And motorists need to be aware of impending tax disc changes or face a £1,000 fine as well as potential penalty charges against a car they no longer own, experts warn. 

Automatic number plate recognition cameras enforcing road tax will end any tax disc is in the post excuses and spell penalties for those who forget to renew, while those buying and selling used cars will need to make doubly sure everything is done by the book.

The death of the tax disc has been well documented. This is Money revealed the Government was plotting its demise back in 2012 and the change was officially announced in last year’s Autumn Statement.

Yet experts at hpicheck.com say many drivers are likely to get caught out and now realise that the end of the tax disc will also see a tightening of enforcement.

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As Eritreans and Sudanese riot in Calais over the best spot to jump onto lorries bound for Britain, one mother of a little daughter says 'Nothing will stop us getting to your schools and hospitals!' Daily Mail

Wearing a clean dress and pink socks as she waits patiently to be smuggled across the Channel to England, Kidan Tedros is the youngest child at the Calais camp where African migrants armed with guns, flick-knives and iron bars rioted this week.

The four-year-old is sitting on a wall by the refugee camp which is spread over sand dunes and the base for 1,300 Eritrean and Sudanese who try, night after night, to jump on lorries where they can hide and be taken illegally on ferries sailing to Dover.

The little girl arrived in Calais three weeks ago with her mother, Laula, 40, after travelling at least 3,200 miles from Eritrea, a country in north-east Africa which is run by a ruthless dictator. Terrified, they watched when this week’s riot broke out and French police moved in to quell the violence and fired rubber bullets.

This mass exodus of desperate peoples from war-ravaged, religiously divided and impoverished countries on the giant continent — as well as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Egypt — poses a disturbing immigration problem for Britain.

Of course, this isn’t a new issue. Twelve years ago, our government agreed a deal with France to close the Sangatte refugee camp in Calais because it had become a magnet for illegal immigrants. Labour politicians promised the days of ‘soft touch’ Britain were over.

Yet as today’s Biblical scenes of human suffering show, the problem is getting worse. Indeed, it has been compounded by this week’s mischievous call by Calais’s deputy mayor for the refugees to be given ferry tickets to Britain and for the scrapping of the arrangement under which the UK’s border controls officially begin at Calais, rather than Dover.

This, he suggested, could happen for an experimental month so that the UK Government might comprehend the pressure Calais is under.

Read more here:

Cappuccino Communication - Knowledge is power (1/2)

·         John Glass,   General Superintendent - Elim Churches 

Terror at luxury tower in Swansea where premiership stars live as armed police take down lone gunman who held man hostage during two-hour siege. Daily Mail

  Officers used tasers to subdue gunman holding victim hostage in penthouse

  Man entered exclusive Grape & Olive restaurant in Swansea at around 4pm

  Residents trapped inside luxury flats of 29-story tower by armed police 

  Two-hour siege ended as Villarreal arrived at the Marriot Hotel next door 

  South Wales Police say incident ended peacefully and no one was injured 

Armed police stormed the tallest building in Wales yesterday ending a two-hour siege and freeing a hostage.

Officers used tasers to subdue a lone gunman who had been holding his victim in the penthouse restaurant of The Meridian Tower in Swansea, South Wales.

The drama began shortly after 4pm when the man entered the exclusive Grape & Olive restaurant carrying a handgun.

Residents were trapped inside their luxury flats in the 29-storey tower as armed police cordoned off the building and evacuated diners from the top-floor restaurant.

Paramedics wearing protective clothing and helmets were seen entering the tower around 5pm.

Police told around 60 locals who had gathered to watch the siege to ‘move out of sight of the tower’ as the police helicopter circled the upper floors.

The siege lasted for around two hours while a police negotiator entered the tower alongside armed police and talked to the gunman.

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Toll road hero who came to the rescue when his council closed a vital route could lose his home if his gamble goes wrong. Daily Mail

  Mike Watts, 62, built his own road which bypassed a key local road in Kelston, Bath, which was closed for maintenance 

  He borrowed an adjoining field from a farmer friend and, at a cost of £150,000 to himself and his wife Wendy, 52, made the bypass

  Mike needs 1,000 cars a day at £2 per car, per journey for 150 days to break even 

Every minute or so a car rumbles past, churning up dust and small stones. Drivers and passengers wave and shout thank-yous through their open windows.

‘It’s a pleasure,’ Mike yells back, beaming from ear to ear. ‘Enjoy the view!’

They do indeed. But even they aren’t as happy as Mike, who’s had quite a week.

For, suddenly, he’s become a national hero. People have called for him to be knighted and (though I suspect this might be slightly tongue in cheek) honoured with a statue on the green in his home village of Kelston, near Bath.

And all because, when faced with the indefinite closure of a key local road while it is mended, forcing him to take a 14-mile diversion to work as a council repair team sorts it out at the speed of a glacier, Mike took matters into his own hands.

His solution was not a civilised ‘reopen our road, please’ campaign or angry letters to the Bath Chronicle newspaper, pointing out that nothing had been done since early February when a crack appeared in the A431 and the road was closed.

Read more here:

Further Reading:

Businessman sets up private toll road just 340 yards long charging motorists £2 a time to bypass closed section of main road