Residents of southern Israel were sent back into bomb shelters this weekend as Gaza’s terrorists stepped up their rocket launchings. Close to 20 were fired at Israeli civilians from Gaza over the past week – totaling 348 this year alone.
Rights activists and religious groups in Armenia say new legislation will increase intolerance towards the country’s evangelical Christians and other minorities, some of whom already face prosecution for their church activities.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the economy will face “calamity” if congressional Republicans and President Obama cannot reach an agreement to raise the legal limit on borrowing.
India’s home minister says authorities believe the back-to-back blasts that killed at least 20 people in Mumbai were a “coordinated attack by terrorists.”
The Iranian Supreme Court’s ruling on the appeal against the death sentence of Youcef Nadarkhani by a lower court was finally delivered to his attorney.
Two pastors arrested six months ago on charges of holding a “secret meeting” during a Christmas celebration without government approval languish in prison without a trial. Officials continue to offer them the option of renouncing their faith and walking free.
The United States has condemned reported plans by Iran to execute an Iranian pastor if he does not abandon his faith in Christ, Worthy News established Tuesday, July 12.
A leader in China’s growing underground church movement who disappeared last month was actually in police custody.
Held on “suspicion of using superstition to undermine national law enforcement,” Shi Enhaoi is one of 150 million Chinese Christians who refuse to join the Communist Party’s Three-Self Patriotic Movement: the only officially sanctioned Protestant church on the mainland.
Iraq’s first new church under the US occupation opened its doors in the northern city of Kirkuk, the region’s Chaldean archbishop told AFP.
Pastor Yerzhan Ushanov of New Life Protestant Church in Taraz is looking at two years’ imprisonment if criminal charges for injuring an individual’s health ever come to court, Christian rights investigators said.
Farshid Fathi was in solitary confinement for months before he was told that he could be free on $200,000 bail; with great difficulty, his family came up with the cash after selling his father-in-law’s home, but when Fathi was ready to to walk out the prison door, the chief interrogator from the Iranian public prosecutor’s office ordered him back for further questioning.
Christians in Iran have challenged news reports that the death penalty for Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani has been annulled pointing out that in reality the Supreme Court appears to have added a precondition requiring him to renounce his faith or face execution, according to an international Christian rights group.
Although organizers of the Gaza flotilla claim they have no connection to terror, IDF military intelligence has evidence that reveals flotilla organizers received significant funding from groups that support Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Iran’s secretive supreme court has reportedly overturned a death sentence handed down to an evangelical pastor for leaving Islam, surprising trial observers who were earlier informed about an execution ruling.
A hard-line Jewish ultra-Orthodox group in Israel has launched a campaign against Christian missionaries and Jewish Christians, known as Messianic Jews, who they view as a security threat.
Baptist Pastor Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso and his wife, Yoaxis, were part of the 23 Christians detained by Cuban police in Santa Clara, said Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), a major religious rights group.
Chinese authorities recently expelled yet another member of Beijing’s largest unregistered house churches.
Chuan Liang was the second member of the Shouwang “keeping watch” Church to be expelled from the city since authorities compelled the congregation to meet outdoors; the first expulsion came after Shouwang Church held its fifth consecutive outdoor Sunday worship service when 15 members were taken to 10 police stations across Beijing, but most were released within 24 hours.
An Iranian pastor, convicted of apostasy and sentenced to death, may have only hours or days to live, according to a US-based Christian ministry acquainted with the facts of his case.
Franklin Graham this past weekend held Spanish speaking meetings (Festival De Esperanza) – Festival of Hope – at The Home Depot Center, in Carson, California, where the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Trevor Freeze says hundreds of Hispanic hearts were warmed and changed forever by the saving power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
At least four incidents of Christian persecution were reported from the former Soviet country of Uzbekistan this week. According to an analysis and report researched and written by Fernando Perez for the World Evangelical Alliance – Religious Liberty Commission, a Christian woman was beaten into concussion, another woman was fined $1,465 by a court for giving the New Testament to a child, a Christian man was threatened with axe attack by a police official and another man was assaulted by police.