Dr Idowu-Fearon condemns rumour-mongers

THE Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, the Rt Revd Dr Josiah Idowu-Fearon, has condemned those who knowingly spread false “rumours and gossip” about the Communion, including the suggestion that it did not apply “consequences” to the Episcopal Church in the United States as agreed at the 2016 Primates’ Meeting. “Everything asked for in the communiqué has been done,” Dr Idowu-Fearon said, presenting his annual report to the Anglican Consultative Council’s (ACC’s) Standing Committee at the start of its four-day meeting in London this week. Moving the next ACC meeting from Brazil to Hong Kong had been decided after the Brazilian Bishop Francisco de Assis da Silva had spoken of economic, political, and provincial difficulties of hosting the meeting, Dr Idowu-Fearon said. “Please tell people the true story before spinners go to work.”

Asylum-seekers and migrants ‘crammed’ on Greek Islands

THOUSANDS of asylum-seekers and migrants, mostly from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, are living in “squalid, inadequate, and rapidly deteriorating conditions” in reception centres on the Greek islands, the UN refugee agency UNHCR has reported. It is appealing to the Greek government to do more to help, after it was reported that refugee children had tried to take their own lives. Overcrowding on some islands is on a par with March 2016, it says. More than 3000 asylum-seekers have permission to move to the mainland, but transfers “have been slow” because of a lack of facilities. On Lesvos, “More than 7000 asylum-seekers and migrants are crammed into shelters built to accommodate just 2000 people. A quarter of those are children,” a UNHCR spokesperson said. news.un.org