CHRISTIAN POPULATION OF ENGLAND AND WALES DROPS BELOW HALF FOR FIRST TIME IN CENSUS

The latest Census data has shown a fall in the number of people who describe themselves as Christian. The proportion of people in England and Wales identifying as Christian has dropped below 50% for the first time. Some 46.2% of the population described themselves as Christian on the day of the 2021 census, down from 59.3% a decade earlier, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

Those identifying as having “no religion” was the second most common response to the census survey, increasing to 37.2 per cent from 25.2 per cent in 2011, while those identifying as Muslim or Hindu registered an increase.

”For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2 per cent, 27.5 million people) described themselves as ’Christian', a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3 per cent (33.3 million) in 2011; despite this decrease, ’Christian' remained the most common response to the religion question,” the Office for National Statistics release said.

”There were increases in the number of people who described themselves as ’Muslim' (3.9 million, 6.5 per cent in 2021, up from 2.7 million, 4.9 per cent in 2011) and ’Hindu' (1.0 million, 1.7 per cent in 2021, up from 818,000, 1.5 per cent in 2011),” the ONS said.

Those identifying as Sikh also registered a small increase, up from 0.8 per cent (423,000) in 2011 to 0.9 per cent (524,000) in 2021, and Buddhists a similar hike from 0.4 per cent (249,000) to 0.5 per cent (273,000).

People identifying as Jewish remained about the same at 0.5 per cent of the population.

The religion question in the census is voluntary, which the ONS said was answered by 94 per cent of residents, an increase from 92.9 per cent in 2011.

The data also shows that London remains the most religiously diverse region of England, with Harrow in the north of the UK capital with the highest percentage of the Hindu population at 25.8 per cent, up from 25.3 per cent in 2011.

CHINA SENDS STUDENTS HOME, POLICE PATROL TO CURB PROTESTS

BEIJING: Chinese universities despatched college students house and police fanned out in Beijing and Shanghai to stop extra protests on Tuesday after crowds angered by extreme anti-virus restrictions referred to as for chief Xi Jinping to resign within the largest present of public dissent in many years.

China’s security officials have, however, struck a harder tone, reflecting the other side of the response to the protests. With a heavy deployment of security personnel in many Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai, the protests of the weekend have not been reported. On Monday, a gathering in Hangzhou in the east was broken up by a heavy deployment of police.

Meanwhile, Beijing’s Tsinghua University, where students rallied over the weekend, and other schools in the capital and the southern province of Guangdong said they were protecting students from Covid-19 by sending them home. But dispersing them to far-flung hometowns also reduces the likelihood of more demonstrations.

In Shanghai, police stopped pedestrians and checked their phones on Monday night, according to a witness, possibly looking for apps such as Twitter that are banned in China or images of protests. Images from a weekend protest showed police shoving the people into their cars. Some people were also swept up in police raids after demonstrations ended.

Sympathy protests were held overseas, and foreign governments have called on Beijing for restraint. US secretary of state Antony Blinken said the American position on the protests in China was the same as it was for demonstrations anywhere. “We support the right of people everywhere to peacefully protest, to make known their views, their concerns, their frustrations,” he said on Tuesday.

NEW ARMY CHIEF TAKES CHARGE IN PAK.

General Asim Munir, a former ISI head, assumed charge as the Pakistan Army chief on Tuesday, at a time when the cash-strapped country was in the midst of a political slug-fest between the government and Opposition leader Imran Khan.

General Munir replaced General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who retired after serving two consecutive three-year terms as the Army chief in the coup-prone country, where the military wields considerable power in matters of security and foreign policy.

The new Army chief would have to tackle a host of problems, including the threat from militants. He takes charge a day after the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) called off an indefinite ceasefire agreed with the government and ordered to carry out attacks across the country.

QATAR OFFICIAL SAYS '400-500' DIED ON WORLD CUP PROJECTS

DOHA - Qatar's top World Cup official said Tuesday that more than 400 migrant workers died in labour accidents in the country in the years leading up to the tournament.

Hassan Al-Thawadi, head of Qatar's delivery and legacy organising committee, gave the figure of 400-500 in a British television interview when asked how many workers had died "doing work for the World Cup".

The organising committee said his response referred to "national statistics covering the period of 2014-2020 for all work-related fatalities" in Qatar "covering all sectors and nationalities".

It said there were 414 worker deaths over the eight-year period.

Migrant workers make up more than 2.5 million of Qatar's 2.9 million population and labour conditions have been strongly criticised -- particularly on the huge construction projects that have transformed the tiny Gulf state in the past decade.

Qatar has never given precise figures for the number of deaths of foreign labourers though it has denied claims by rights groups that thousands died.

Authorities have insisted that only 37 workers on World Cup projects have died -- and only three in work-related accidents -- and Thawadi repeated this figure in the interview.

"One death is a death too many. Plain and simple," Thawadi said.

UKRAINE WAR: THE SURRENDER HOTLINE FOR RUSSIAN SOLDIERS

The Ukrainian government has said a scheme it created for Russian soldiers to surrender is getting up to 100 enquiries a day.

The "I Want To Live" project was started in September.

By calling a hotline or entering details through messenger apps, Russian troops can arrange the best way to surrender to Ukrainian forces.

Officials in Kyiv say they've had more than 3,500 contacts from invading personnel, as well as their families.

There's been an apparent increase since Russian President Vladimir Putin mobilised hundreds of thousands of Russian men, and since the city of Kherson was liberated.

The BBC has been given recordings from some of the calls.

As the dark hallways suggest, Ukraine's headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War isn't immune to the power blackouts which plague the country.

In a small office we meet Svitlana, not her real name, a Ukrainian call handler who speaks to Russian soldiers daily.

They can either get in touch over the phone or on most messenger apps, such as Telegram and WhatsApp.

She explains the evenings are busiest, when troops have more spare time and can sneak off and make a call.

300+ DEAD IN UNREST: IRAN GEN

Tehran : Iran has for the first time reported that more than 300 people have died in over two months of protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody. “Everyone in the country has been affected by the death of this lady,” said Brigadier general Amirali Hajizadeh of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a video published by the Mehr news agency. “I don’t have the latest figures, but I think we have had perhaps more than 300 martyrs and people killed,” said Hajizadeh, head of the Guards’ aerospace division.

ALZHEIMER'S DRUG LECANEMAB HAILED AS MOMENTOUS BREAKTHROUGH

The first drug to slow the destruction of the brain in Alzheimer's has been heralded as momentous and historic.

The research breakthrough ends decades of failure and shows a new era of drugs to treat Alzheimer's - the most common form of dementia - is possible.

Yet the medicine, lecanemab, has only a small effect and its impact on people's daily lives is debated.

And the drug works in the early stages of the disease, so most would miss out without a revolution in spotting it.

Lecanemab attacks the sticky gunge - called beta amyloid - that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's.

For a medical field littered with duds, despair and disappointment, some see these trial results as a triumphant turning point.

Alzheimer's Research UK said the findings were "momentous".

One of the world's leading researchers behind the whole idea of targeting amyloid 30 years ago, Prof John Hardy, said it was "historic" and was optimistic "we're seeing the beginning of Alzheimer's therapies". Prof Tara Spires-Jones, from the University of Edinburgh, said the results were "a big deal because we've had a 100% failure rate for a long time".

Lecanemab is an antibody - like those the body makes to attack viruses or bacteria - that has been engineered to tell the immune system to clear amyloid from the brain.

Amyloid is a protein that clumps together in the spaces between neurons in the brain and forms distinctive plaques that are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's.

CHINESE BILLIONAIRE JACK MA ‘LIVING IN JAPAN’, SAYS REPORT

Chinese billionaire and Alibaba founder Jack Ma has been living in Japan amid the Chinese government’s ongoing crackdown on technology companies, according to a report on Tuesday.

The usually high-profile Mr. Ma has stayed away from the public spotlight in China for more than two years and has avoided public engagements, coinciding with regulatory probes targeting e-commerce giant Alibaba and its financial payments arm Alipay.

Mr. Ma has been living in Japan for at least six months, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

He has also kept a low-profile in Tokyo, where he is living with his family, along with his private chef and security, and “keeping public activities to a minimum”.

Mr. Ma limits his engagements to visiting a few exclusive private clubs and spends his time painting and collecting modern art, the report said.

Many wealthy Chinese have left the country since 2020, to avoid the continuing “zero-COVID” pandemic restrictions that have both disrupted life in China and made it difficult for Chinese to travel abroad.

International flights are yet to return to normal while all foreign arrivals are still made to undergo quarantine.

THAI TEMPLE LEFT EMPTY AFTER MONKS FAIL DRUG TESTS

A Buddhist temple in Thailand has been left without monks after all failed drug tests and were defrocked, a local official said on Tuesday. Four monks including an abbot at a temple in Phetchabun province’s Bung Sam Phan district tested positive for methamphetamine on Monday, district official Boonlert Thintapthai said. The monks have been sent to a health clinic to undergo drug rehabilitation, the official said. “The temple is now empty of monks and nearby villagers are concerned they cannot do any merit-making,” he said. Meritmaking involves worshippers donating food to monks as a good deed.