Jaelene Hinkle, who’s a member of the North Carolina Courage team, said she was chosen by the US team to play against Sweden and Norway in June 2017. However, she refused the opportunity because the numbers on the shirt for the matches were rainbow coloured.

“I felt convicted in my spirit that it wasn’t my job to wear it,” she told CBN’s The 700 Club.

“I gave myself three days to just seek and pray and determine what [God] was asking me to do in this situation.

“I’m essentially giving up the one dream, and I’m saying no to it. It was very disappointing.

“That’s where the peace turns to disappointment, because I knew in my spirit I was doing the right thing. Just because you are being obedient, it doesn’t make it easy.”

Hinkle said she hasn’t been selected to play for the US team since making the decision.

While she got support by her team mates and club manager for opting out of the matches, Hinkle was booed at a Courage game on Wednesday after her interview with CBN was broadcast.

Her club manager Paul Riley has continued to defend her.

“I give her a lot of credit. Whatever her beliefs are, whatever she believes in, that’s her. It doesn’t affect the team,” he said after the match.

Courage team mate Jessica McDonald added: “She is high on her faith, and in my honest option that’s absolutely incredible.

“If she’s for God, then that’s fine. That’s great if that’s what…

New Orleans-based Jesse Duplantis says he wants a Falcon 7X to enable him to travel anywhere around the world without having to refuel en-route.

In his regular This Week With Jesse video series, he said: “You know, I’ve owned three different jets in my life; just burning them up for the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Now, some people believe that preachers shouldn’t have jets.

“I really believe that preachers ought to have every available voice, every available outlet to get this gospel preached to the world.”

The 68-year-old leader of Jesse Duplantis Ministries purchased a Citation 500 aircraft in 1994, a Westwind 2 in 2004 and a Falcon 50 in 2006.

Explaining why a higher calibre plane is needed, he explained: “We believe in God for a brand new Falcon 7X so we can go anywhere in the world one stop.

Pointing to a picture of his Falcon 50, Duplantis added: “People ask, can’t you go with this plane? Yes, but I can’t go it in one stop.

“If I can fly it in one stop, I can fly it a lot cheaper because I have my own fuel for it.

“This one here, I have to stop and then you pay those exorbitant prices for jet fuel all over the world.”

According to the private jet website Sherpa Report, a Falcon 7X costs $54 million and needs $1.3 million to fund its upkeep each year.

Without mentioning why commercial airlines were not a practical option for his ministry, Duplantis added: “I really…

It all started in 1968, when it became normal for every household to have a television.

“This was the first time ever people had been able to see through mass media the immense suffering and pain of the people in Africa who were starving to death,” said Virginia Luckett, head of UK churches for Tearfund.

“There was a series of famines in the mid-60s that caused such a massive shock around the world. The Christians in the UK, particularly the Evangelical Church in the UK, said ‘this is wrong’.”

She told Premier that financial donations started flowing into the Evangelical Alliance to address the injustice happening and that’s when Tearfund was born.

It began with a passionate preacher named George Hoffman travelling around the country leading the call for Christians to show empathy to those suffering.

“They were involved in quite a lot of hospital-led work. Nurses were helping in famine situations,” Luckett said.

Year by year, as the need grew, so did Tearfund.

The group supports marginalised people, promotes education, advocates for clean water and feeds the hungry, and these are only a few of its responsibilities.

The one that’s probably the most widely-known is disaster response. It’s something Donald Mavunduse, head of the south and Eastern Africa team for Tearfund knows very well.

In a statement by the Christian body’s National President, Rev Samson Ayokunle criticised the requirement saying it gave Muslims an unfair advantage over Christians applying and was “another dirty slap on the 1999 Constitution”.

They added that for many Christian youths who sat the examination “the display of the Arabic language questions came as a rude shock” and was “obviously achieving the aim of the Islamic extremists who are hell bent on fostering their religion and culture on the Nigeria Police Force”.

According to local newspaper, Daily Post, over 37,000 job seekers undertook the test in 156 centres across the country.

CAN have called on President Muhammadu Buhari – who is a Muslim – to “cancel the exams and conduct a fresh one devoid of controversies”.

The statement went on to say: “It will be wrong for the President of Nigeria (who swore to defend both the Christians and Muslims alike) [to] turn around [and] allow his appointees seek to divide the nation through their actions.

”If the President can allow this affront now and he is still seeking the vote of Christians for a second term we do not trust he will keep us alive if he ascends that throne for another four years.

CAN have demanded for the exams to be cancelled and an exam without the Arabic questions to be provided for applicants to retake. 

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It paves the way for compensation to be paid to people who were sexually abused as children by church figures and puts pressure on other institutions to follow suit.

The country’s Catholic bishops and leaders of its religious orders committed to signing on to the 3.8 billion Australian dollar (£2.2 billion) national plan on Wednesday.

The church is the first non-government institution to opt into the plan and estimates it will itself be liable for about one billion dollars (£568 million) in compensation.

Federal Social Services Minister Dan Tehan expects more institutions to follow, saying there could be further announcements as early as Thursday.

Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson last week became the most senior Catholic cleric in the world to be convicted of covering up child sex abuse. He faces a potential two-year prison term when he appears in court in June to be sentenced for protecting a paedophile priest in the 1970s.

Pope Francis’ former finance minister Cardinal George Pell faces trial on sexual assault charges in Australia.

The exact details and nature of the charges have not been disclosed to the public, but police have described them as “historical” sexual assaults, meaning they are alleged to have occurred decades ago.

Catholic leaders have long backed a national redress plan but the churches, charities and other non-government institutions…