US NATIONAL Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden delivered a Christmas message from his Russian sanctuary on British TV in which he said: “I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”

LAST week, through the windows of a TransPennine train in the north of England, I saw sheep grazing the hill slopes.

A 19th-century priest whose courageous work with leprosy patients in Hawaii was likened to the efforts of those battling the stigma of Aids, has been elevated to sainthood by Pope Benedict XVI, along with four other Catholics.