As thousands prepare to make trips across the Channel for the bank holiday weekend, British motorists were advised to cancel trips to France today as fuel pumps ran dry and violent industrial action against employment reform spread across the country.
Up to half of the country’s 12,000-odd petrol stations are now empty, as riot police were sent in to try and lift blockades of fuel refineries.
By this afternoon, all but one of the blockades manned by union activists had been cleared away, a government spokesman said, adding that the situation is ‘improving everywhere, all over the country’.
It came as French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that ‘this country is dying from its inability to reform’. Continue Reading…
On Saturday, Pope Francis met with the president of the Republic of Singapore, marking 35 years of diplomatic relations between the Southeast Asian country and the Holy See, and the first ever state visit by a Singaporean president to a Pope.
Christians should not talk to people about their faith unless they are actively invited to do so, the 
“The review will be chaired by Professor Mona Siddiqui, an internationally renowned expert in Islamic and inter-religious studies who was appointed OBE for her services to inter-faith relations. Professor Siddiqui will lead a panel of experts that includes experienced family law barrister Sam Momtaz, retired high court judge Sir Mark Hedley and specialist family law lawyer Anne Marie Hutchinson OBE QC. The panel will be advised by 2 religious and theological experts – Imam Sayed Ali Abbas Razawi and Imam Qari Asim. They will ensure the panel has a full and thorough understanding of the religious and theological issues relating to specific aspects of Sharia Law, and the way it is applied.” –
The Vatican’s liturgy chief has called on priests to celebrate Mass facing east.
“President Calvin Coolidge warned in a speech given May 15, 1926, at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia: “But there is another … recent development … the greatly disproportionate influence of organized minorities. Artificial propaganda, paid agitators, selfish interests, all impinge upon members of legislative bodies to force them to represent special elements rather than the great body of their constituency. When they are successful, minority rule is established. … The result is an extravagance on the part of the government which is ruinous to the people and a multiplicity of regulations and restrictions for the conduct of all kinds of necessary business, which becomes little less than oppressive. …” –
Hundreds of pastors congregated in Washington, D.C., this week to discuss America’s increasingly secular culture and what the church’s role should be in casting out its demons.
RIO DE JANEIRO 
A House conservative went after dozens of fellow Republicans on Thursday with suggestions that they’d sinned for backing an anti-discrimination proposal against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
CAIRO (AP) — An armed Muslim mob stripped an elderly Christian woman and paraded her naked on the streets in an attack last week in which seven Christian homes were also looted and torched in a province south of the Egyptian capital.