Last Friday kitchens, toilets and washing facilities were installed at the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) peace camp at Newport's Tredegar Park, where it is estimated thousands of protesters will camp ahead of the NATO summit for more than 150 heads of state and ministers at Newport's Celtic Manor Resort. Police have taken over Rodney Parade sports ground to manage extra policing. Security will be provided by 9,500 police drawn from 43 police forces with 12 miles of security fencing already in place at key sites in Cardiff and in Newport. It is not known how many campaigners will descend on Newport from CND snd Stop the War peace campaigners arriving in coaches from London, Birmingham, Norwich and Newcastle and foreign campaigners from further afield. At the summit the UK will call for increased defence spending  by NATO's 28 member states and has set an example by a decision to order almost 600 armoured vehicles. This will be the UK’s largest single order for such vehicles for more than 30 years and underpin nearly 1,300 jobs across the UK. See 

Jim Murphy, the former Scottish Secretary, was forced last week to suspend his ‘100 towns in 100 days tour’ when groups of independence supporters started disrupting the events. They shouted down members of the public, intimidated his staff, threw eggs and called him names during events in Montrose, Dundee and Kirkcaldy. Mr Murphy alleged they had coordinated their actions using Yes Scotland social media. We are asked to pray for no more ugly scenes that disrupt campaigning. We are asked to pray for the campaign leaders to display strong leadership by speaking out loud and clear against unacceptable behaviour. Also please pray that the police will take firm action against bad behaviour at all events leading up to the referendum.  See also: 

This is a call for Christians to pray as Muslims go on the Hajj. October 2 - 4, 2014! The Hajj, one of the five pillars of the Islamic religion, begins on the 8th day of the 12th month of Dhul Hijjah of the Islamic calendar. Because the calendar is based on the moon’s cycle, the Hajj begins nine days earlier each consecutive year. In 2014, the Hajj will start on 2 October the and last for 3-4 days. During this time, Muslims from all over the world will flock to Mecca to perform the rituals and follow the steps of Muhammad, their prophet. Anyone who is not a Muslim cannot enter Mecca, and therefore cannot perform the Hajj. Muslims go on the Hajj to be cleansed of sin; You can watch a short video about the Hajj on YouTube at: 

An average of one person a fortnight travels from the UK to Switzerland to receive help to take their own life, a study has suggested. Researchers from Zurich University said 126 Britons visited the country's clinics to die between 2008 and 2012. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal in the UK, but the Swiss permit assisted suicide in some circumstances. Britons accounted for a fifth of the foreigners going to Swiss right-to-die facilities over the period. The total number of foreigners going to the country to die rose from 123 cases in 2008 to 172 in 2012. Some 611 people from 31 countries travelled to the country over the five-year period to take advantage of its liberal laws on assisted dying. British patients were second only to Germans as the biggest national group to seek help to end their lives in Switzerland

The battle for Helmand contributes to a troubling security outlook for Afghanistan where the hard-line Taliban, in power from 1996 to 2001, are seeking to oust foreign forces and set up an Islamist state. Helmand province is the source of about half of Afghanistan's opium, and some areas have fallen under the control of drug dealers and the Taliban. In June, as many as 800 Taliban fighters were involved in some assaults on government offices and police outposts in Sangin. Afghan forces say they have killed 400 Taliban across Helmand since then. Please pray for wisdom for our government as they respond to the deeply worrying and barbaric attacks waged by ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) both with humanitarian and intelligence efforts. More: 

The head of NSPCC's helpline says it ‘beggars belief’ that information received by Rotherham council was not acted upon robustly. A report commissioned by Rotherham Borough Council and written by Professor Alexis Jay found that 1,400+ children were subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. Professor Jay said there had been collective failures by the council's leadership and senior managers. Also South Yorkshire Police failed to prioritise the issues. Five Rotherham men were jailed for sexual offences against girls in 2010, but police regarded many child victims with contempt. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist (perpetrators were of Pakistani origin), others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so. Please pray that this expose will lead to better safeguarding of vulnerable children in the future and successful prosecutions of corrupt managers and officials.

A Birmingham MP said the estimate of 400 – 500 Britons fighting in Syria was ‘nonsense’, claiming that more than twice as many British Muslims have travelled to Syria to fight for extremists. Ghaffar Hussain, managing director of the Quilliam Foundation an anti-extremism think tank, said that ISIS have plenty of Western recruits willing to partake in brutal violence. They were radicalised in the West before going to Syria. The ISIS message is slick and sophisticated. They’re the richest terrorist group in history with 2000+ European recruits. A former British diplomat in Iraq said British recruits originally travel with humanitarian ideals, but become brutalised by the conflict. He said, ‘They go out to try to protect civilians in Syria and enter into an underworld of violence. Others were impressionable young men escaping poverty and dead end jobs in the UK saying to themselves, ‘I could be a hero, or I could be a super villain.’

In 1706 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland called the nation to pray and fast ahead of the 1707 vote for or against Scotland remaining in the UK. Queen Anne and the governments in Edinburgh and London issued the statement, ‘That all may be done to the glory of God and the good of Christ’s Church’. Again the church across Scotland is actively involved in a referendum. The year of prayer ‘The Stand’, launched last November, enabled Christians and churches to seek God’s will together in this crucial year. The Evangelical Alliance produced a manifesto ‘What kind of nation?’ to widen the debate from political, economic, social, educational and cultural issues, to include Scottish values, universal values and biblical values. Christians from both sides of the campaign are engaging in the hustings. Pray that debates would consider wider issues than just economic factors. Pray the Church across Scotland would be heard as they speak into the national conversation. See also 

Minimum pricing and tough new rules for drink-driving were amongst a host of recommendations unveiled by a group of MPs and peers this week, in response to a ‘national pandemic’ of alcohol abuse. The All Party Parliamentary Committee on Alcohol Misuse revealed its manifesto for 2015, which demonstrates the cost of alcohol-related incidents, and calls for new measures to minimise alcohol-related harm. Incidents ranging from drink-related crime to hospital admissions are thought to cost the UK economy as much as £21 billion annually. In the foreword to the manifesto, Tracey Crouch, who chairs the group, said: ‘The facts and figures of the scale of alcohol misuse in the UK speak for themselves’. She believes that there ‘must be a more thorough and full package of measures which tackles the problem more effectively and reduces the cost to people’s health of alcohol-related crime and treatment’.

Pensioner families across the UK will suffer social security cuts worth £6.38 billion a year by the time the government’s welfare reforms have taken full effect, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) warned yesterday (18 August) ahead of a new report on the impact of social security cuts to be published later this week. In the run-up to the last general election, David Cameron pledged to protect pensioner benefits. However, the TUC-commissioned analysis of welfare cuts, undertaken by Howard Reed of Landman Economics, shows that this pledge has been broken as a result of changes announced by the government over the course of this parliament. The analysis looks at annual cash losses to a number of benefits. It shows that a quarter of all social security cuts implemented between 2010 and 2016/17 will fall on pensioner families.