Headlines:

• Christianity is Fading Away in Britain as Islam Surges and Agnosticism Spreads
• Assad Losing Syrian War, Russia Admits for First Time
• Pakistan 'Expanding Nuclear Arsenal to Deter US Attack'
• China's Economy to Outgrow America's by 2030 as World Faces 'Tectonic Shift'

Details:

Christianity is Fading Away in Britain as Islam Surges and Agnosticism Spreads:

New figures from the 2011 Census show the number of people who identify themselves as Christians in England and Wales has fallen by 4 million over the last 10 years. The data shows numbers fell from 37.3 million in 2001 to 33 million last year. The statistics came as the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams claimed that English cathedral congregations are growing dramatically, challenging the claim made by secularists that the Church of England is fading in Britain. Figures from the 2011 Census show the number of people declaring themselves to be atheists rose by more than 6 million, to 14.1 million. "It should serve as a warning to the churches that their increasingly conservative attitudes are not playing well with the public at large," said Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society. "It also calls into question the continued establishment of the Church of England, who claims to speak for the whole nation, are now very hard to take seriously." Other polls have detected similar shifts. The 2012 British Social Attitudes Survey showed only about half of Britons claim a religious affiliation, down sharply from 20 years ago when two out of three Britons did. Barely a quarter of young people identify themselves as religious. The new figures show that Islam is the U.K.'s second-largest religion, at 2.7 million. Hinduism is third, at 817,000. The number of self-identified Jews rose by 3,000, from 260,000 to 263,000.

Assad Losing Syrian War, Russia Admits for First Time:

One of Syria's key allies admitted for the first time on Thursday that the Assad regime was losing the ground war, as rebels told the Guardian of occupying more territory and besieging government troops in many parts of the country. Mikhail Bogdanov, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia - which has given Bashar al-Assad unstinting diplomatic and military support - said the regime faced possible defeat to the rebels, adding with unusual candour: "One must look facts in the face." Bogdanov said: "The tendency is that the regime and government of Syria is losing more and more control, as well as more and more territory. Unfortunately, the victory of the Syrian opposition cannot be ruled out." Rebels said they believed the 21-month conflict had reached a decisive tipping point, with Assad's military machine no longer capable of rolling them back. "The situation is excellent. We are winning. Not just in Aleppo but the whole of Syria," said Abu Saaed, a fighter in the northern rebel-held town of El Bab. Other key international players appear to have come to the same conclusion as Moscow. In Brussels, NATO's Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said: "I think the regime is approaching collapse." He said it was only a question of time before the Assad government imploded.

Others in the region, however, cautioned that the final unraveling could be prolonged and bloody. "Assad's situation is very difficult," said one senior Arab source in the region. "But he has a lot of strength. He is still getting arms and finance from Iran and his military capability is still robust." On the ground the Syrian war remains an asymmetric one. The rebels are short of ammunition and have mainly light weapons: machine guns, Kalashnikovs, and home-made rockets. The government, by contrast, has Scud missiles - fired for the first time this week at rebels in Aleppo - as well as Sukhoi jets and attack helicopters. It also has stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, dispersed at between 40 and 50 sites across the country - a source of growing western concern.

Pakistan 'Expanding Nuclear Arsenal to Deter US Attack':

Pakistan is expanding its nuclear arsenal to deter an American attack on its status as an atomic power, according to India's former Foreign Secretary. Asia's triangular arms race has traditionally reflected the rivalries between India and China and India and Pakistan, but according to an influential former adviser to Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, Pakistan now regards the United States as a potential threat. In an article for The Hindu Newspaper, Shyam Saran said Islamabad had invested in a new generation of plutonium-based warheads, increased the size range of its arsenal, and improved the accuracy of its missiles. Washington has voiced its concerns over the build-up in the region but believes it reflects Pakistan's long-standing fear of arch rival India's conventional force superiority. But according to Mr Saran, Islamabad's burgeoning nuclear arsenal is increasingly aimed at deterring its fractious ally in the war on terror, the United States. Its fear that Washington may strike to wipe out Pakistan's nuclear capability dates back to just after the 9/11 attacks when then President Musharraf said it had been warned to support the war on terror or face being "bombed back to the stone age." Despite his acquiescence, relations between the two countries have been strained ever since and reached their lowest point following the 2011 special forces raid which killed Osama bin Laden at his home in the centre of Pakistan's main garrison town Abbottabad.

China's Economy to Outgrow America's by 2030 as World Faces 'Tectonic Shift':

A US intelligence portrait of the world in 2030 predicts that China will be the largest economic power, climate change will create instability by contributing to water and food shortages, and there will be a "tectonic shift" with the rise of a global middle class. The National Intelligence Council's Global Trends Report, published every five years, says the world is "at a critical juncture in human history." The report, which draws in the opinion of foreign experts, including meetings on the initial draft in nearly 20 countries, paints a future in which US power will greatly diminish but no other individual state rises to supplant it. "There will not be any hegemonic power. Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multi-polar world," it says. The report offers a series of potential scenarios for 2030. It says the best outcome would be one in which "China and the US collaborate on a range of issues, leading to broader global co-operation." It says the worst is a world in which "the US draws inward and globalisation stalls." "A collapse or sudden retreat of US power probably would result in an extended period of global anarchy; no leading power would be likely to replace the United States as guarantor of the international order," it says, working on the assumption that the US is a force for stability - a premise open to challenge in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond. The NIC report draws a distinction between what it calls "megatrends" - things that are highly likely to occur - and "game-changers", which are far less certain. Among the megatrends is growing prosperity across the globe. "The growth of the global middle class constitutes a tectonic shift: for the first time, a majority of the world's population will not be impoverished, and the middle classes will be the most important social and economics sector in the vast majority of countries around the world," the report says.

Abu Hashim