Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain has been elected leader of the Reform Rabbis of Great Britain. “A key task is to rescue the image of religion from its associations with violence and internal strife and showing how it can be a force for good.”

An Arabic and English-language children’s comic featuring 99 superheroes each representing one of the 99 divine attributes of Allah is on sale in the Middle East. “We are trying to eliminate prejudice against our culture,” said the comic’s creator, Naif al-Mutawa.

As proof of God’s love for women, a Norfolk church is offering them a day of beauty treatments. Dereham Baptist church’s “Esther Spa day” is inspired by the biblical figure Esther, pampered for a year before presentation to King Xerxes.

www.iraqprayer.org, a website urging churches to pray at least three minutes a week for an end to the violence in Iraq, has been launched.

More than 70 pastors have signed a pledge to protect children following claims that children accused of witchcraft were being subjected to exorcisms. “We have put in place a structure to improve the theology of those who are misinterpreting the Bible,” said Jean Bosco Kanyemesha, head of a group of Congolese church leaders in the UK.

A Kentucky museum promoting the truth of the creation story opened this week. Creation Museum offers visitors “a walk through the Bible using science, geology, biology, astronomy, and anthropology to confirm the accuracy of Bible history”. Displays are built around the “Seven C’s of God’s Eternal Plan: Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Christ, Cross and Consummation”.