A number of protesters have been arrested while trying to run from a Hong Kong university campus surrounded by police.

Officers used tear gas, rubber bullets and batons to fight off protesters as they tried to break through a cordon that is trapping hundreds on a university campus.

Some campaigners have thrown petrol bombs and fired arrows at officers.

The violence is some of the worst seen in the territory since anti-government demonstrations began almost six months ago.

The protests started over a controversial extradition bill, and have now evolved into broader anti-government demonstrations.

Co-founder and chair of human rights charity Hong Kong Watch, Ben Rogers told Premier the Hong Kong government is to blame for the escalating violence and called for it to “address the grievances and the demands of the protesters”.

“We of course, condemn acts of violence by the students, but we also have to understand that has been as a result of the desperation and frustration.

“It’s worth remembering that the violence really was started by the police. The protests were entirely peaceful some months ago.”

“The government need to hold an independent inquiry into police brutality, an inquiry that holds the police accountable for horrific violence that they have carried out, but also to set out a plan for political reform for universal suffrage for democracy.”

“If they don’t do…

John MacArthur, a popular international preacher and the senior pastor at Grace Community Church in California, said last month that Beth Moore, an American preacher, should “go home” and criticised women trying to join Congress, be President and reach other prominent positions.

MacArthur was criticised, not just by supporters of women preachers, but also by conservative leaders, who said his tone was unkind.

He took the opportunity on Sunday to explain his view on women preachers in more detail to his church, saying: “Today I want to address a very important issue that has been stirred up on the internet with me kind of in the middle of it”.

During the panel discussion in which he made the original comments, he was asked to play a word association game in front of a conference crowd and the phrase he had to comment on was Beth Moore.

MacArthur said on Sunday: “I do not like to give short answers. I don’t like to get put in a position to do that, because I feel like that just escalates confusion, so I want to take the opportunity to address the issue of women preachers this morning and to give you a more thorough answer from the Word of God on this very, very important subject.”

He said Paul’s teaching said that women were to “maintain submission to men in all churches, in all times” and that it was a sign of the Church’s rejection of God’s word that so many…

Michael Phelan from Buckinghamshire says the Church, much like the NHS, is robbing Africa of its priests to fill British dioceses.

Currently, the Catholic Church internationally has a shortage of priests, something which has been used as a catalyst for those who want married men to be allowed to be ordained and those who want women priests.
 
Speaking to Premier, Rev Phelan said: “Their solution to the problem has been importing people from third world countries, a bit like the National Health Service, where we rely upon robbing developing countries of their talent in that way.

“The Catholic Church is tending to recruit priests from Africa and India and various other places to make up for the shortage of numbers, which has cultural problems in that there are differences in the culture but also…where you have a service of the word and communion, the word does rely upon people being able to understand the foreign priest who’s talking and where there are sort of either pronunciation problems or even vocabulary problems.”

“My youngest brother is a missionary in East Africa. So I’m certainly not against the diversity in the church. But it means that if you have people who can’t be understood in the locality or easily understood, that doesn’t help in terms of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.”

In response to his call, a spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops’…

The allegations will be explored in investigative Italian TV show Le Iene on Sunday.

The accusations date back to the 1980s and 1980s at the Vatican’s St Pius X youth seminary. The boys were between the ages of 10 and 14 at the time.

The Guardian reports during the programme one of the accused priests is confronted by a journalist about the allegations.

After he hears the accusations made against him in the audio interviews, he responds: “No, it’s not possible. I can’t remember … I’m not saying they’re lying, I’m saying they have misunderstood.”

The criminal complaints come after the Vatican said in September it would seek to indict 28-year-old Fr Gabriele Martinelli, for allegedly abusing several altar boys in 2012 when he trained at the youth seminary. According to The Guardian, that move was prompted by Le Iene’s first investigation into the school in 2017.

The Vatican also said two months ago that it was seeking to indict a former rector at the youth seminary. It was claimed Fr Enrico Radice, assisted someone to commit an offence.

Gaetano Pecoraro, one of the two authors of the investigation said: “We decided to keep digging as we had the feeling that the previous cases were not isolated.

“There were more victims and more priests involved in sexual abuse within the Vatican.”

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Folau, who was sacked by Rugby Australia (RA) in May for posting controversial comments on social media, described the fires as a “little taste of God’s judgement”.

Wildfires have raged across eastern Australia in recent weeks destroying hundreds of homes and killing six people.

Speaking to members of Sydney’s Truth of Jesus Christ Church on Sunday, the former Wallabies player implied the natural disaster was an act of judgement by God following the nation’s recent decision to pass laws on abortion and same-sex marriage.

“God’s word says for a man and a woman to be together, one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage to be together.

“Abortion – it’s now okay to murder and kill unborn children and they deem that to be okay.

“Look how rapid these bushfires, these droughts, all these things have come in a short period of time, do you think it’s a coincidence or not?

“God is speaking to you guys – Australia, you need to repent and take these laws and turn it back into following what is right by God,” Folau said.

Australian Prime Minister and Christian, Scott Morrison has condemned Folau’s remarks as “appallingly insensitive”.

Morrsion told reporters on Monday: “He is a free citizen, he can say whatever he likes but that doesn’t mean he can’t have regard to the grievance [and] offence this would have caused to the people whose homes have burnt down.”

Folau is…