reporter

As we continue our journey through the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23), we arrive at kindness — a virtue that often seems simple enough, yet carries divine power to heal, restore and reveal the very heart of God.View the full article

A Christian missionary father and his daughter have died after their plane crashed shortly after take off in Florida on Monday. View the full article

A Shia militant group is reportedly masquerading as the voice of the Chaldean Catholic community.View the full article

Here are three remarkable figures whose faith, intellect and courage helped shape Christianity as we know it today.View the full article

Not unlike 2,000 years ago when the Apostle Paul was divinely inspired to pen his letter to the church in Philippi, Tom “N.T.” Wright wants to remind everyone that the Gospel is still unchained.View the full article

A young Nigerian catechist who survived a near-fatal knife attack by extremists is to be honoured for his courage and steadfast faith.View the full article

Young man, there's a place you can go in the town of Paignton.View the full article

Faced with an ageing Noel Fielding, you too would cry out for God.View the full article

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a petition filed by former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis to reconsider the 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.View the full article

Incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan won with 98 per cent of the vote.View the full article

The Lausanne Movement is weighing in on how artificial intelligence might shape the future of Christian mission.View the full article

The head of the Anglican Church in North America has taken a leave of absence as an investigation into allegations of abuse leveled against him continues.View the full article

Research into Bible reading by the American Bible Society (ABS) has found that it impacts on generosity, compassion, and social attitudes.View the full article

Millions of people in the UK are facing a “household debt crisis”, according to new research from Christians Against Poverty (CAP), which warns that families across the country are struggling to afford essentials while managing debts they cannot repay.View the full article

The Nicene Creed was formulated 1,700 years ago in AD 325 at the Council of Nicaea. Later, one clause in it called the Filioque was a cause of division between the Eastern and Western Church. This is the story …View the full article

A leading BBC journalist will share insights gained while covering the war in Ukraine during a poignant remembrance service in London on the evening of 11 November.View the full article

The U.S. government is reportedly preparing to ban the sale of wireless routers and other networking gear from TP-Link Systems, a tech company that currently enjoys an estimated 50% market share among home users and small businesses. Experts say while the proposed ban may have more to do with TP-Link’s ties to China than any specific technical threats, much of the rest of the industry serving this market also sources hardware from China and ships products that are insecure fresh out of the box. A TP-Link WiFi 6 AX1800 Smart WiFi Router (Archer AX20). The Washington Post recently reported that more than a half-dozen federal departments and agencies were backing a proposed ban on future sales of TP-Link devices in the United States. The story said U.S. Department of Commerce officials concluded TP-Link Systems products pose a risk because the U.S.-based company’s products handle sensitive American data and because the officials believe it remains subject to jurisdiction or influence by the Chinese government. TP-Link Systems denies that, saying that it fully split from the Chinese TP-Link Technologies over the past three years, and that its critics have vastly overstated the company’s market share (TP-Link puts it at around 30 percent). TP-Link says it has headquarters in California, with a branch in Singapore, and that it manufactures in Vietnam. The company says it researches, designs, develops and manufactures everything except its chipsets in-house. TP-Link Systems told The Post it has sole ownership of some engineering, design and manufacturing capabilities in China that were once part of China-based TP-Link Technologies, and that it operates them without Chinese government supervision. “TP-Link vigorously disputes any allegation that its products present national security risks to the United States,” Ricca Silverio, a spokeswoman for TP-Link Systems, said in a statement. “TP-Link is a U.S. company committed to supplying high-quality and secure products to the U.S. market and beyond.” Cost is a big reason TP-Link devices are so prevalent in the consumer and small business market: As this February 2025 story from Wired observed regarding the proposed ban, TP-Link has long had a reputation for flooding the market with devices that are considerably cheaper than comparable models from other vendors. That price point (and consistently excellent performance ratings) has made TP-Link a favorite among Internet service providers (ISPs) that provide routers to their customers. In August 2024, the chairman and the ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party called for an investigation into TP-Link devices, which they said were found on U.S. military bases and for sale at exchanges that sell them to members of the military and their families. “TP-Link’s unusual degree of vulnerabilities and required compliance with PRC law are in and of themselves disconcerting,” the House lawmakers warned in a letter (PDF) to the director of the Commerce Department. “When combined with the PRC government’s common use of SOHO [small office/home office] routers like TP-Link to perpetrate extensive cyberattacks in the United States, it becomes significantly alarming.” The letter cited a May 2023 blog post by Check Point Research about a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group dubbed “Camaro Dragon” that used a malicious firmware implant for some TP-Link routers to carry out a sequence of targeted cyberattacks against European foreign affairs entities. Check Point said while it only found the malicious firmware on TP-Link devices, “the firmware-agnostic nature of the implanted components indicates that a wide range of devices and vendors may be at risk.” In a report published in October 2024, Microsoft said it was tracking a network of compromised TP-Link small office and home office routers that has been abused by multiple distinct Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups since 2021. Microsoft found the hacker groups were leveraging the compromised TP-Link systems to conduct “password spraying” attacks against Microsoft accounts. Password spraying involves rapidly attempting to access a large number of accounts (usernames/email addresses) with a relatively small number of commonly used passwords. TP-Link rightly points out that most of its competitors likewise source components from China. The company also correctly notes that advanced persistent threat (APT) groups from China and other nations have leveraged vulnerabilities in products from their competitors, such as Cisco and Netgear. But that may be cold comfort for TP-Link customers who are now wondering if it’s smart to continue using these products, or whether it makes sense to buy more costly networking gear that might only be marginally less vulnerable to compromise. Almost without exception, the hardware and software that ships with most consumer-grade routers includes a number of default settings that need to be changed before the devices can be safely connected to the Internet. For example, bring a new router online without changing the default username and password and chances are it will only take a few minutes before it is probed and possibly compromised by some type of Internet-of-Things botnet. Also, it is incredibly common for the firmware in a brand new router to be dangerously out of date by the time it is purchased and unboxed. Until quite recently, the idea that router manufacturers should make it easier for their customers to use these products safely was something of an anathema to this industry. Consumers were largely left to figure that out on their own, with predictably disastrous results. But over the past few years, many manufacturers of popular consumer routers have begun forcing users to perform basic hygiene — such as changing the default password and updating the internal firmware — before the devices can be used as a router. For example, most brands of “mesh” wireless routers — like Amazon’s Eero, Netgear’s Orbi series, or Asus’s ZenWifi — require online registration that automates these critical steps going forward (or at least through their stated support lifecycle). For better or worse, less expensive, traditional consumer routers like those from Belkin and Linksys also now automate this setup by heavily steering customers toward installing a mobile app to complete the installation (this often comes as a shock to people more accustomed to manually configuring a router). Still, these products tend to put the onus on users to check for and install available updates periodically. Also, they’re often powered by underwhelming or else bloated firmware, and a dearth of configurable options. Of course, not everyone wants to fiddle with mobile apps or is comfortable with registering their router so that it can be managed or monitored remotely in the cloud. For those hands-on folks — and for power users seeking more advanced router features like VPNs, ad blockers and network monitoring — the best advice is to check if your router’s stock firmware can be replaced with open-source alternatives, such as OpenWrt or DD-WRT. These open-source firmware options are compatible with a wide range of devices, and they generally offer more features and configurability. Open-source firmware can even help extend the life of routers years after the vendor stops supporting the underlying hardware, but it still requires users to manually check for and install any available updates. Happily, TP-Link users spooked by the proposed ban may have an alternative to outright junking these devices, as many TP-Link routers also support open-source firmware options like OpenWRT. While this approach may not eliminate any potential hardware-specific security flaws, it could serve as an effective hedge against more common vendor-specific vulnerabilities, such as undocumented user accounts, hard-coded credentials, and weaknesses that allow attackers to bypass authentication. Regardless of the brand, if your router is more than four or five years old it may be worth upgrading for performance reasons alone — particularly if your home or office is primarily accessing the Internet through WiFi. NB: The Post’s story notes that a substantial portion of TP-Link routers and those of its competitors are purchased or leased through ISPs. In these cases, the devices are typically managed and updated remotely by your ISP, and equipped with custom profiles responsible for authenticating your device to the ISP’s network. If this describes your setup, please do not attempt to modify or replace these devices without first consulting with your Internet provider. View the full article

We may not be on a battlefield today, but we still live in what CS Lewis called ‘enemy-occupied territory’.View the full article

Churches across the country are joining in Remembrance Sunday commemorations in honour of all those who have served and sacrificed on behalf of the nation in both World Wars and subsequent conflicts.View the full article

A church leader was apparently warned by a police officer that a Bible verse displayed on the back of his campervan could be considered "hate speech" in certain contexts.View the full article

After years of steady decline, Americans are rediscovering the Bible — and young adults are leading the way.View the full article

The danger we run into when we read the public reports of the misdeeds of some person who has become the object of public disgrace is that we become tempted to entertain the idea that we are somehow better in the eyes of God than that personView the full article

More than a fifth of the world's currently enslaved population are believed to live in India.View the full article

Britain already has the most extreme abortion laws in Europe.View the full article

Some 287 amendments will be examined in just three sessions.View the full article