Asia Bibi is displaying symptoms of dementia at an “early” stage, according to a campaign group trying to free her – the British Pakistan Christian Association (BPCA).

The Association cited a recent visit to Bibi by a Pakistani journalist who suggested her memory, mental sharpness and judgement were in decline.

Bibi was found guilty under Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws in November 2010 after being accused of insulting the Islamic prophet Mohammad and drinking from the same water source as Muslims in June 2009.

For most of the past nine years, Bibi has been held in solitary confinement inside a Pakistan prison cell – sentenced to death, despite support from high-profile figures including the Pope.

Concerned solitary confinement has had a serious toll on Bibi’s welfare, Wilson Chowdhry from the BPCA said: “No divine being needs human help which makes blasphemy laws so petty and ridiculous.

“Yet, the intolerant nature of Muslims in Pakistan has meant an innocent mother-of-five has lost a relationship with her family and through the onset of dementia, she may never be able to bond effectively with them again.

“If delays in her Supreme Court appeal take any longer, then the freedom we have all hoped to gain for her will be extremely shallow and will quickly become a new period of isolation.”

A description given by a…

Mike Pompeo also said he expects talks to take place between American and Turkish officials this week about the future of Andrew Brunson.

Speaking with reporters in New York on Monday, Mr Pompeo said: “Yes, he could be released this month.

“He should have been released last month.

“And he should be released today, in fact.

“We have talked to the Turks.

“They know the expectations.”

Mr Brunson (pictured below with his wife, Norine) had been leading a small church in the coastal city of Izmir for more than 20 years before he was arrested in October 2016 and later charged with espionage and terrorism offences. He faces up to 35 years in prison. Mr Brunson denies any wrongdoing.

The 50-year-old from Black Mountain in North Carolina is accused of links to a movement spearheaded by Fethullah Gülen, a cleric Turkey considers responsible for an attempted coup in July 2016.

Thousands of people including judges, soldiers and teachers were suspended in a subsequent crackdown by authorities.

The detention of Mr Brunson has drawn condemnation from President Donald Trump and prompted him to double import tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President, is also visiting the US this week for a meeting at the United Nations.

Turkish presidential spokesman Ibraham Kalim was quoted as saying a decision on…

Reverend David Boase, 69, is priest at two Episcopal churches in Alton, Illinois.

According to the Washington Post, when he took his US driving test in 2005, a government official asked him if he wanted to register to vote and duly processed his UK documents without raising the issue of citizenship.

Rev Boase admits taking part in a ballot on boosting resources for the local fire department but says he did not know he was doing anything wrong or illegal.

He told the Washington Post: “It’s a shame when a person tells the truth and admits fault, intends to explain in all honesty, with full disclosure, and still everything falls apart.”

Rev Boase was born in Cumbria and studied at the universities of Durham and Oxford.

He says he feels at home in Illinois and wants to stay there and become a US citizen.

Rev Boase’s lawyer believes his case is only happening because of a change to the US Citizenship and Immigration Service brought in by President Trump in an executive order in January 2017.

His local parish have started a GoFundMe campaign to help with his legal fees.

Rev Boase though expects to be deported by an immigration judge on Friday and is currently selling his home and its contents.

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The abuse, which occurred over a period of 68 years, is one of the biggest Catholic Church scandals in Europe.

The report was commissioned by the German Bishops’ Conference and conducted by researchers from three German universities, who examined cases from 1946 until 2014.

“We are experiencing a very dark hour in our church’s history, which will hopefully result in a cleansing and renewal,” Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck, from Essen, wrote in a letter to his diocese.

“The dangers are far from being exorcised. We must fear that there is and could still be sexual abuse among us.”

The Washington Post reported that an advance copy of the 356-page report was shared with it by German newspaper Die Zeit.

The news outlet confirmed details of the experience of individual victims are not included and the report doesn’t provide the names of alleged abusers or those who allegedly helped protect them.

While the report includes interviews with 214 victims, the researchers found that only 30 per cent had reported the abuse to someone else, and that the majority of those who did were punished for doing so.

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Aldi Novel Adilang said he ran out of food within a week and survived on fish and seawater he strained through his clothing.

The 18-year-old added that he turned on a lamp every time he sighted a ship and cannot remember how many passed by “unaware of my ordeal”.

Interviewed by local news portal TribunManado, Aldi said he thought he “was going to die out there”. He said at one point he became suicidal and considered jumping into the ocean, but remembered his parents’ advice to pray in times of distress. He had a bible on board so he did.

He was rescued by a Panamanian-flagged vessel off Guam on August 31, about 1,200 miles from his original location, and returned to Indonesia with officials earlier this month, according to the Indonesian consulate in Osaka, Japan.

The teenager had been employed since the age of 16 in one of the world’s loneliest jobs: lamp lighter on a rompong – a wooden fishing raft with a hut on top – moored about 78 miles off the coast of North Sulawesi.

The coastline is not visible from the fishing rafts and the numerous rompong are miles apart from one another, said Mr Adilang’s mother, Met Kahiking.

Supplies are dropped off to the light keepers about once a week.

“I was on the raft for one month and 18 days. My food ran out after the first week,” said Mr Adilang.

When it did not rain for…

Writing in the Radio Times, the Catholic and former Tory MP questioned why the BBC show Strictly Come Dancing has two female presenters.

Widdecombe, who was herself once a contestant on the dance show, said that women have “never had it so good” and that it is now a “positive advantage to be a woman in the media”.

She added: “Why, BBC? Why, when Strictly Come Dancing is predicated on teams of men and women, do we have two women presenters?

“It’s all part of the pattern of quotas and all-women shortlists that pervades not just the Corporation (unofficially, of course, and definitely in practise) but also politics both with a big P and small one.”

The 70-year-old former Conservative politician criticised what she described as “the age of the whine and the whinge”.

“Until the 1970s, it was lawful for employers to advertise a job with two rates of pay, one for men and one for women,” she said.

Known for not mincing her words, Widdecombe lived up to her reputation in her critique of the #MeToo movement.

“So keen are women to embrace victimhood that members of the #MeToo movement wail about flirtatious conduct decades ago and even a Cabinet minister whimpers about an off-colour joke of several years earlier”, she claimed.

“It’s enough to make one wonder if we should have stayed at home darning socks.

‘The biggest mystery of all, however, is why the men so cringingly put up…