People-smuggling networks in migrant camps are slick and organised. It took little more than a week for Hamid to find a people-smuggler in Calais. Within a couple of days, he was hiding near the beach with 75 others, waiting to cross the Channel in a small inflatable boat. Over 18,000 people so far this year have crossed the twenty miles of sea between Britain and France in small boats. Despite significant investment on both sides of the Channel, that's more than double the number last year. France's northern coastline is covered with dunes, foliage and hundreds of old WW2 bunkers where migrants can hide. High-security fencing and surveillance cameras now successfully protect the ports and Eurotunnel terminal, but surveillance is difficult among forested dunes. Hamid’s crossing cost £2,500, on top of the £7,275 he had paid to leave Afghanistan and cross Europe to France.

Unfortunately, there has been no change in activity in the Canary Islands volcano; the eruption continues to feed the growing lava flow field at high effusion rates. Its northern margins continue to be active and advancing south into areas already buried under lava flows. Consequently the government has had to evacuate another adjacent area.

After a decade of civil war, Syria has at last begun to reconnect with its neighbouring countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, and the UAE. President Assad’s grip on the country is tenuous as areas near the Turkish and Iraqi borders are controlled by rebel groups. Fighting has left Syria in economic ruins; families which used to have more than enough income to provide for themselves are now in poverty because of hyperinflation. A man with cancer did not continue with expensive treatment; it was better that one dies rather than all of them dying. Families without enough food for all their children give lunch to some children lunch and dinner to the others. But God is working. The story of Jesus is reaching new populations; there is a budding movement of the Holy Spirit and churches are forming among the Druze in the south and the Kurds in the north.

On 16 October a group of 17 Christian missionaries, including five children, were abducted by an armed gang in Haiti while returning from a visit to build an orphanage. Having travelled there with the US-based Christian Aid Ministries, they were seized when the gang set up roadblocks east of Port-au-Prince. The island has the worst global record for kidnapping, with gangs active in many areas. The notorious 400 Mawozo gang, known for kidnappings and killings, abducted the 16 Americans and one Canadian, as they were travelling to the airport where some were due to fly home. One of the abducted Americans sent a WhatsApp message calling for help as the kidnapping took place. It read, ‘Please pray for us! We are being held hostage; they kidnapped our driver. Pray pray pray. We don’t know where they are taking us.’ Among those kidnapped is an 8-month-old baby: see