World News

WASHINGTON (ABP) — Abuses of religious freedom worsened last year in China and the Sudan, according to the second annual report of a government commission set up to monitor religious persecution abroad.

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA (ANS) – The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, made an impassioned plea for an end to inter-religious strife. Speaking at the official opening of the 11th General Assembly of the World Evangelical Fellowship in Kuala Lumpur on the evening of Friday, May 4, Dr Mahathir said that once started, religious disputes often lead to violence over several generations.

STOKE-ON-TRENT, UK (ANS) Tens of thousands of Christians are this week calling on the British Government to lift a ban on national religious broadcasting, in response to news that a Government forum on the future of religious broadcasting is set to exclude independent religious broadcasters.

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA (ANS) — More than 200 Salvationist from throughout Australia gathered for a National Prayer Summit in Canberra recently. The aim of the summit was to gather representatives of the Army together to submit to God, seek his heart, and to pray, expecting transformations in the life of the nation.

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel insisted on Tuesday that he has been on his best behavior during his visit to Israel, vigorously denying he had compared the plight of Palestinians to the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust.

Israelis today are remembering the country’s nearly 20,000 military personnel killed since late 1947 while defending the Jewish State.

The widely divergent approaches of American and European leaders to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been on display in recent days, with a visiting US Congressman blaming PLO chief Yasser Arafat for on-going violence, while a Belgian diplomat has come down hard on Israel.

FILADELFIA, AMAZONAS, BRAZIL (ANS) – Ticuna missionary Eli Leao, executive head of OMITTAS, the Ticuna tribal missionary organization, announced the formation of an agreement between OMITTAS and the Matses pastors of Peru, to launch a joint effort to evangelize all the “wild” Indians of the Javary Rover valley, the divide between Brazil and Peru in the remotest part of the Amazon jungles.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA (ANS) — Ben Jennings, PrayWORLD! International Coordinator with Campus Crusade for Christ has issued a statement thanking Christians worldwide for participating in PrayWORLD!2001 and outlining further prayer initiatives for 2001.

The South African government claimed a major victory after 39 of the worlds biggest pharmaceutical companies dropped their lawsuit challenging a 1997 law that provides cheap replicas of patent drugs.

Deadly cyclones are a way of life for the people of Bangladesh, a Muslim nation east of India. One of the worst natural disasters of the 20th Century was the 1970 cyclone that pounded the low-lying country, killing an estimated 500,000 people. Other storms since then have claimed another 200,000 lives.

BETHLEHEM (ANS) – Despite the turmoil in Palestinian territories, seventy people have accepted Christ through the ministry of a teacher at the Bethlehem Bible College (BBC), based in the birthplace of Jesus.

In his latest “consultation” with Middle East leaders, US President George W. Bush hosted Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House on Tuesday to discuss bilateral ties and how to keep the Palestinian uprising from spilling over into the Hashemite Kingdom.

This week’s talk of a possible peaceful end to the over half-year violent crisis rocking the Promised Land has quickly evaporated as the smoke of conflict rose to new levels overnight and this morning in the Gaza Strip.

Renewed high level contacts on Wednesday between Israeli and Palestinian political and security officials are being followed up today by fresh tensions and violence.

After nearly two weeks marred by some of the worst violence since the “Al-Aksa jihad” was launched on the Temple Mount last September, high-level contacts resumed today between Israeli and Palestinian officials.

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands (BP)–The Netherlands became the first country to legally recognize same-sex marriages on Sunday, April 1.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — Amid reports of worsening religious-freedom abuses in the Sudan, a United States commission is urging the Bush administration to mount a comprehensive and sustained campaign to pressure the Muslim-dominated government to improve its record on human rights.

ABUJA, Nigeria, March 2 (Compass) — In a nationwide broadcast Wednesday night, March 1, Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo called for reconciliation between Christians and Muslims following two weeks of bloody clashes that have left hundreds dead.

J Peter Wilson, Director of VOICE FM in the West Bromwich area of the British Midlands, and former Station Director of 97.2 Stray FM in Harrogate, Yorkshire, reports: “We have recently received the news that the Radio Authority has declined our application for the West Midlands FM License.