At least 13 foreign Christians have been arrested since mid July in Jeddah, where Saudi Arabia’s religious police are apparently trying to track down Saudi nationals thought to have contact with expatriate house churches in the city.
Right now in approximately 40 countries throughout the world, Christians are being persecuted, tortured and killed for their faith. One Christian is martyred every three minutes.
The liberal Lebanese intellectual Hazem Saghiya, who resides in London, wrote a column in the Al-Hayat daily placing some responsibility for the attacks in the US on the Arab world, and calling for the extradition of the terrorists:
It was a brutal start to the Israeli work week, as two suicide bombings and a drive-by shooting left 5 Israelis dead and 110 injured on Sunday. The spate of attacks hit the nation hard, as one of the suicide bombers is believed to be the first recruited from the Israeli Arab community, while pressure is growing to cancel a pending meeting between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO chief Yasser Arafat this week.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has affirmed that Israel’s use of American-supplied weapons in pre-emptive strikes against Palestinian terrorists is not a breach of the contractual terms of sale, while other Bush administration officials continue to stand behind Israel’s dogged fight against Palestinian terrorism. Yet the question remains whether US President George W. Bush is about to cave in and finally hold his first meeting with PLO chief Yasser Arafat.
Iran and Syria are preparing to upgrade their strategic relations in face of the prospect of war with Israel.
raq is claiming that eight civilians were killed and three others injured when US and British warplanes attacked targets in southern Iraq on Sunday.
More than 50 foreign staff members of the US based Christian aid organizations International Assistance Mission (IAM) and Serve began leaving Afghanistan Saturday, September 1, after the Islamic Taliban regime closed their offices Friday.
Taliban authorities arrested 35 more Afghan aid workers over the weekend, bringing the total to more than 50 Afghans jailed by the strict Islamist regime since early August on suspicion of aiding covert Christian missionary work.
Parents of two American women have seen their daughters for the first time since they and 22 other aid workers were arrested August 5th on charges of spreading Christianity in Islamic Afghanistan. The Bakhtar News Agency (BNA) described the visit as an “emotional reunion” between the mother of Dana Curry, and the father of the other woman, Heather Mercy.
A high rank military official here who spoke on condition of anonymity told ASSIST News Service that American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Bunrham will have a white Christmas as they will have their freedom from their captors before Christmas.
ORANGE, CA (ANS) – When Darrel Fritts, 68, worked on the Space Shuttle program, he never dreamed that, when he retired, it would result in putting his high-flying experience to work helping Bible translation around the world.
MANILA, PHILIPPINES (ANS) — Tribes and Nations Outreach (TNO), a mission organization committed to build the “Body of Christ” in Asia, and based in Manila, Philippines, has launched an ambitious five-year church-planting program in Vietnam.
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (BP)–Gridlock struck Asheville, N.C., when thousands gathered for a “We Still Pray” rally — and thousands more were stuck in traffic trying to reach the high school football stadium.
AgapePress) – The underground church in Vietnam is planning to plant some 10,000 new churches in the next five years.
Joseph Lee is founder of Tribes and Nations Outreach based in Manila, Philippines. He tells Assist Communications that the underground church in Vietnam is composed of 21 major groups, and their leaders have requested his outreach to print 20,000 sets of worker training books in Vietnamese.
MONTPELIER, Vt. (BP)–Vermont lawmakers gave their approval April 25 to a bill that would make the state the first in the nation to legally recognize homosexual marriage-like “civil unions.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–A Vatican document issued Sept. 5 won’t set well with Southern Baptists and other evangelicals and Protestants. As described in the lead paragraph of a Washington Post story, it “declares that individuals can attain full salvation from earthly sin only through the spiritual grace of the Catholic Church and that other faiths — including Protestant Christian ones — have defects that place their followers in a ‘gravely deficient situation’ in seeking salvation.”
Vatican City — In a declaration carrying the full authority of an infallible teaching, the Vatican said Sept. 5 the Roman Catholic Church is the only “instrument for the salvation of all humanity.”
PORT VILA, VANAUTU (ANS) — An urgent appeal has been made for broadcasting equipment for a new Christian radio and television station on Vanuatu, an independent republic consisting of more than 80 islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, located about 3,500 miles southwest of Hawaii and about 1,500 miles northeast of Australia.
NORFOLK, Va. (BP)–Six U.S. sailors are dead, 36 injured and 12 missing after an apparent terrorist attack on a U.S. Navy destroyer today in the Middle Eastern port city of Aden, Pentagon officials said. Meanwhile, local Southern Baptist churches are mobilizing relief efforts to minister to the families of the sailors aboard the USS Cole.