World News

Hungary’s new parliament has adopted a controversial law that will grant citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring nations nearly nine decades after the country lost two-thirds of its territory. The law came Wednesday, May 26, despite a major diplomatic row with neighboring Slovakia immediately retaliated with legislation banning double citizenship.

A U.S. based mission group said Thursday, May 20, that its employees in Thailand have taken “increased precautions” as anti-government violence in Bangkok has spread to areas where missionaries work.

Saudi Arabia’s security forces freed two German Christian girls kidnapped nearly a year ago in neighboring Yemen but the fate of their abducted parents, their infant brother and a British engineer remained unknown, officials and Christians said Tuesday, May 18.

A heavy rainstorm overshadowing his concert in downtown Budapest didn’t bother the young Roma singer and special ambassador of the European Union. Ferenc “Caramel” Molnar, seemed more concerned about clouds hanging over the future of fellow Gypsies, also known as Roma. They are suffering of a new wave of fire bombings, following attacks that killed nine people, the rise of the far right and poverty.

Officials in Serbia say they have uncovered a mass grave containing the bodies of hundreds of ethic Albanians who were killed during the war of the 1990s in nearby Kosovo. It is one of the largest mass graves discovered in Serbia since 2001.

Hungary commemorated Wednesday, May 5, Scottish missionary Jane Haining, who was killed by Nazis during World War Two because she refused to abandon 400 mainly Jewish orphans under her care.

The main Hungarian center-right party – the Fidesz Hungarian Civic Alliance – has declared victory in the country’s parliamentary elections. Fidesz defeated the ruling Socialists by winning a super majority of seats.

The polls opend in Hungary Sunday, April 25, for the second round of legislative elections. Hungarians have made the center-right party Fidesz the favorite as they try to recover from the deepest recession in years.

A major Christian rights group has urged Indonesia’s Constitutional Court to repeal blasphemy laws that it claims have been “widely misused to persecute religious minorities” in the Islamic country.

Christians in Kyrgyzstan continued praying and caring for injured survivors of their Central Asian nation’s bloody uprising that killed at least 84 people, as gunfire interrupted a rally Thursday, April 15, of ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, witnesses and Christians said.

Poland’s president Lech Kaczynski has died along with all other 95 people on board an air plane that crashed in Western Russia, Polish and Russian officials confirmed Saturday, April 10.

Hungary’s outgoing Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai has condemned his country’s political climate ahead of upcoming parliamentary elections Sunday, April 11, as opinion polls show a far right political party will receive many votes. There is also international concern about the favorite to win the ballot, the main center right opposition party Fidesz, after its leader criticized a European Union deal on foreign landownership.

Serbia’s parliament has apologized for the massacre of 8,000 Muslims by Bosnian-Serb forces in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995. But, the declaration does not directly call the crime “genocide”, as survivors had demanded.

At least 37 people died when two female suicide bombers attacked two different locations at Moscow’s underground metro system, including near the Kremlin, Russian officials and witnesses said Monday, March 29.

Somalia’s feared Islamic militant group al-Shabab has warned Christians and other residents that it will crackdown on “non-Islamic culture” across the country, after its fighters reportedly killed another Christian leader and destroyed a tomb of a apparently moderate Muslim cleric.

Hundreds of people attended the funeral Wednesday, March 24, of a young Christian man who was allegedly burned by Muslim extremists and police officers for refusing to convert to Islam.

Christian rights activists on Wednesday, March 16, welcomed the early release by Vietnam of a prominent Catholic priest from prison after he served just three of an-eight year sentence, but they expressed concerns over his health.

The opposition in Georgia has condemned a fake television report about the invasion of the former Soviet Republic by forces from neighboring Russia. Georgia President Mikheil Saakhasvili has defended the report, following widespread panic caused by the broadcast.

The US-based Christian charity World Vision said Wednesday, March 10, it has suspended operations in Pakistan after militants stormed its offices, killing six staff members and injuring several others.

Hungary’s President László Sólyom signed a law Wednesday, March 10, making denial, or playing down, of the Holocaust a criminal offense punishable by up to three years imprisonment.