Millions are looking ahead to this winter with ‘fear and anxiety’ about the cost of heating their homes, the Archbishop of York said today as he backed the launch of a campaign to provide a network of warm spaces for people who struggle to pay their energy bills.

Archbishop Stephen Cottrell is encouraging churches to consider getting involved – if they are not already – in the Warm Welcome campaign, a network of venues from community centres to churches providing warm spaces over the winter for people struggling to heat their homes.

In a video message to support the launch, Archbishop Stephen said: “Sadly, what began as a cost-of-living crisis has simply become the new normal for many.

“Millions of people will look ahead to this winter with fear and anxiety, wondering how they are going to cope with high living costs.

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Prospect of winter energy bills causing anxiety and fear for millions, Archbishop of York warns, as he backs the Warm Welcome campaign https://t.co/2dzYUr2Wrm via @churchofengland

— John Thomson (@john59thomson) October 30, 2023

Schools across the country are preparing to see their budgets shift from flush to strained as billions of pandemic aid runs out in less than a year, putting at risk staffing and programs added with Covid-relief funds.

The 2023-24 school year represents the last full year in which districts can spend down what remains of the $180 billion in federal Covid-19 aid. High-poverty districts typically received more emergency relief, so now face steeper cuts as the money runs out.

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Billions in pandemic education aid runs out in under a year, posing a risk for schools that added staffing and programs with the Covid relief https://t.co/IM6bGBN2Q5

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 30, 2023

As the young couple prepare for a night out, the doorbell rings. Outside stands Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, universally known as Bibi. “You ordered a babysitter?” asks the smiling premier. “You’re getting a Bibi-sitter.”

The 2015 campaign ad concludes with Netanyahu addressing the camera: “This election, you decide who can best take care of our children.”

Eight years on, the spot that helped propel Netanyahu to another term in office is being revived on social media, interspersed with chilling footage of the killing of Israeli children by Hamas operatives on Oct. 7.

It’s become part of an intensifying campaign to hold him accountable and force him from office — an effort that now includes not only the political opposition but many former associates as well as some former heads of Israel’s security agencies and military intelligence

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces an intensifying campaign to force him from office — with even some former allies turning on him https://t.co/l7d6JxpZE4

— Bloomberg (@business) October 30, 2023

Until nearly the start of the attack, nobody believed the situation was serious enough to wake up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to three Israeli defense officials.

Within hours, the Tequila troops were embroiled in a battle with thousands of Hamas gunmen who penetrated Israel’s vaunted border fence, sped in trucks and on motorbikes into southern Israel and attacked villages and military bases.

The most powerful military force in the Middle East had not only completely underestimated the magnitude of the attack, it had totally failed in its intelligence-gathering efforts, mostly due to hubris and the mistaken assumption that Hamas was a threat contained.

Despite Israel’s sophisticated technological prowess in espionage, Hamas gunmen had undergone extensive training for the assault, virtually undetected for at least a year. The fighters, who were divided into different units with specific goals, had meticulous information on Israel’s military bases and the layout of kibbutzim.

The country’s once invincible sense of security was shattered.

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How Years of Israeli Failures on Hamas Led to a Devastating Attack. And a Prime Minister who refuses to accept elementary responsibility. A tour de force of reporting @nytimesworld : https://t.co/FYWsfn18EU

— Michael Powell (@powellAtlantic) October 30, 2023

O God, whose justice continually challenges thy Church to live according to its calling: Grant us who now remember the work of John Wyclif contrition for the wounds which our sins inflict on thy Church, and such love for Christ that we may seek to heal the divisions which afflict his Body; through the same Jesus Christ, who livest and reignest with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today the Church of England commemorates John Wyclif, Reformer, 1384 https://t.co/DySx1KOAU2

Image: Wyclif Reading his NT Translation to his Protector, John of Gaunt, in the Presence of Chaucer and Gower, by Ford Madox Brown (1847-8), Public domain, in Cartwright Hall, Bradford pic.twitter.com/noFUDcZ7mP

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) December 31, 2022

Grant us, O Lord, so to enter on the service of our Christian warfare, that, putting on the whole armour of God, we may endure hardness and fight against the spiritual powers of darkness, and be more than conquerors through him that loved us, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Het ochtendzonnetje gaf nog wat kleur voor de bewolking het overnam. Fijne maandag😀 #natuur #landschap #herfst #tuin #ElstUt #Elsterbuitenwaard #Nederrijn #mooieluchten pic.twitter.com/rsT7sbA8Fk

— Tjark Dieterman (@DietermanTjark) October 30, 2023

I John, your brother, who share with you in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Per′gamum and to Thyati′ra and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to La-odice′a.”

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden girdle round his breast; his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters; in his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Now write what you see, what is and what is to take place hereafter. As for the mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

–Revelation 1:9-20

"The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it."
~ Wendell Berry pic.twitter.com/QMsnfo805y

— Cian McCarthy (@arealmofwonder) October 30, 2023