Although self-reported good health remains the biggest contributing factor to well-being, the importance of having a lifelong partner to contentment has increased.

Compared with six years ago, those asked in this survery done between October 2017 and September 2018, marital status mattered more to people. 

Those who are separated from their partner or widowed were, expectedly, more likely to report lower life satisfaction, compared with people who are single.

Being married made the average person 9.9% happier than those who are widowed and 8.8% higher than those separated from a partner.

Harry Benson from the Marriage Foundation told Premier Christian Radio’s News Hour the marriage’s link to happiness was because of the security it provides: “It’s blindingly obvious that if people are secure and content at home and they’ve got someone who they know is going to stick around till their dying days, then they’re more likely to have to be content in terms of life satisfaction or happiness”.

“That act of making a commitment to one another produces real clarity, it removes ambiguity about the future, it puts you both on the same page and it does it in a way that you can do in cohabitation but fewer couples do it this way.

“It’s so much more of a deliberate, intentional act where you you both know exactly what direction you’re going and the result is that people are very, very much more likely to stay together. Most marriages work, we’ve just produced some…

They also acquitted two others. 

Thursday’s ruling comes five years after Christians Shahzad Masih and his wife Shama Bibi (whose memorial is pictured above) were beaten to death and thrown into a brick kiln in the eastern town of Kod Radha Krishan in Punjab province.

Shortly after the incident, police arrested scores of people and five of them were charged and sentenced to death in 2016.

Under Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws, anyone accused of insulting God, Islam or other religious figures can be sentenced to death.

However, domestic and international human rights groups say these laws are often misused to settle personal scores.

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Meanwhile, vulture funds (the name given to funds which seek to profit by buying up high risk, high yield debt) in the UK and the US continue to profit from developing countries that are trapped in debt.

Three of the biggest root causes of debt crisis are lack of transparency, exploitative private sector actors, and ineffective, undemocratic global institutions responsible for managing debt.

These roots reach deep into the global financial centres, particularly the City of London, and the IMF and World Bank.

The UK is responsible for regulating much of the lending boom in impoverished countries, with 90% of publicly traded loans to the majority of African governments being given using English law.

Overall, while 20% of African debt is owed to China, 30% is owed to the private sector – mainly owed under UK law but due to lack of transparency we do not know the share of this held by UK-based banks.

The lack of transparency in UK law means there is not enough accountability of lending.

Christian Aid is calling for the UK to step up and meet what it say is its ‘moral responsibility to avert debt crises in developing countries that are often struggling to recover in the wake of humanitarian emergencies’.

 The early 2000s saw a major round of debt relief for countries caught in a trap of debt repayments, in response to the Jubilee 2000 campaigns.

Since the western…

Scientists from the University of Bristol have been assessing 1,300 human bones from the Hampshire cathedral with the aim of matching the remains with the names of eight kings, two bishops and one queen whose names are on six mortuary chests.

The researchers believe that some of the remains may belong to Queen Emma of Normandy who died in 1052 in Winchester.

The conservation project was launched in 2012 and three years later, radiocarbon dating carried out by experts from the University of Oxford confirmed the bones were from the late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman periods.

The team of biological anthropologists from Bristol have since been attempting to assess whether the bones related to the historical burial records.

A cathedral spokesman said: “This process involves recording the contents of the chests and determining the number of individuals represented, along with their sex, age at death and physical characteristics.

“Working in the Lady Chapel at Winchester Cathedral, which became a temporary laboratory, the researchers reassembled over 1,300 human bones, with the aim of restoring the identity of the kings, one queen, and several bishops traditionally thought to be within the chests.”

The spokesman explained that 23 partial skeletons had been reconstructed which is more than the remains of 15 people thought…

The windows date back to 1404 and tell the story of the spread of Christianity across the north of England.

Work to replace the medieval glass is expected to take 11 years to complete, according to the cathedral.

It is part of a 20-year project with the cathedral and York Glaziers Trust to add environmental protective glazing to more than 70 of its unprotected windows, buying time for other conservative work.

The restoration will also include maintenance of stones in the Cathedral’s South Quire Aisle, which dates from the late 1300s.

The project is supported by an innovative fundraising campaign organised by the York Minster Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

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