World News

NEW YORK (BP)–Nearly 2,000 religious and spiritual leaders from throughout the world gathered for the Aug. 28 opening of a United Nations-affiliated conference on world peace amid controversy over the nature of the meeting and the exclusion of a prominent international figure.

WASHINGTON (BP)–Congress’ annual review of China’s human rights record before granting the Beijing government favored trade status came to an end Sept. 19 when the Senate resoundingly approved permanent relations with the communist giant.

ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP)–North American Mission Board (NAMB) officials have announced plans next year to conclude a series of talks with representatives of the Roman Catholic Church about the Bible’s role in the Christian faith.

Islam is exploding across sub-Saharan Africa at a rate even statisticians are having difficulty quantifying, and its growth, fueled by seemingly limitless funding from petroleum sales, is impacting the economy of the region, the political outlook, and other faiths.

COLOMBO, SRI LANKA (July 29, 2000) (Assist) – A London-based pastor who has churches in Sri Lanka has issued an urgent prayer plea for Sri Lanka’s embattled evangelical Christian community.

GWERU, Zimbabwe (BP)–Screams pierced the air as invaders forced their way onto the farm just outside Gweru, Zimbabwe.

The attackers forcibly marched frightened farm workers to the workers’ living compound, where they beat the workers with axes, picks and heavy sticks. Others they forced to strip to their underclothes in the middle of the Zimbabwe winter and then sing and dance by the firelight.

Following is the official statement by Rabbi Michael Melchior, deputy Foreign Minister of Israel, delivered by Ambassador Mordecai Yedid on Monday at the Durban conference on racism.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is back on everyone’s radar screen again, after his forces reportedly ventured into Saudi territory and killed a soldier, while a recent training exercise using chemical weapons turned deadly for at least 20 elite Iraqi commandos.

LAGOS, Nigeria (Compass) — The head of the Nigerian Bible Society recently released the casualty figures of Christians killed and churches destroyed during the February and May religious clashes between Muslims and Christians in Kaduna, the capital city of northern Nigeria’s Kaduna state.

LIMA,PERU (ANS) — “We’re praying for the liberation of my husband,” Chely Heredia de Vinatea told a Christian leader who visited her husband David, an evangelical imprisoned six years for narco-trafficking crimes he did not commit. “Maybe the Lord has us praying for the liberation of a country.”

Earlier this week the president of the Nuclear Control Institute testified before the Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Subcommittee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “important questions about Iraq’s nulear-weapons program remain unanswered.” He further charged that “Key nuclear-bomb components and weapons designs that were known to exist were never surrendered by Iraq to UN inspectors.”

I am in the Israeli coastal town of Ashkelon tonight, where I have been listening for several hours to the sound of Israeli fire striking at Yasser Arafat’s “Force 17” security headquarters in the nearby Gaza Strip. Other Palestinian sites in Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, have also been hit by Israeli fire this evening.

WCC General Secretary Konrad Raiser welcomes Kofi Annan’s efforts to bring civil society into a closer relationship with UN’s Work

Rev. Dr Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), will give one of the addresses at the international gathering of world religious and spiritual leaders that opens at the United Nations (UN) in New York 28 August. He will be accompanied by Dr Hans Ucko, executive secretary of the WCC’s team on Interreligious Relations and Dialogue. Some representatives of WCC member churches will also attend at the invitation of the UN.

“…all of us, including the ‘owners’, must be subjected to a large degree of social control… The major function of the school is the social orientation of the individual. It must seek to give him understanding of the transition to a new social order.”1 (Willard Givens, Executive Secretary, National Education Association, 1934)

Antonio Manuel Chilaule had just returned to his parked vehicle after participating in a church service in Maputo when gunmen who demanded keys to the vehicle accosted him. Chilaule turned over the keys, but because he saw the faces of his assailants they shot and killed him on the spot. An assistant, Mrs. Mafalda Cossa, who accompanied him also was mortally wounded and died later in a Maputo hospital.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan opened the controversial Durban conference on racism on Friday, receiving his longest and loudest applause for remarks critical of Israel, an omen of the gathering’s festering antisemitic agenda that threatens to quickly drive away Jewish attendees and anyone else with their moral compass still intact.

In the Balkans, fear and tension fill the hearts of those who see a flare-up of the ongoing conflict between ethnic Albanians and the other peoples of the region. Rebels making almost daily mortar attacks and shootings surround Macedonia’s second largest city. Foreign workers have fled the tension-filled areas. The local population is scared and unsure of what the future holds. Yet a light is burning bright in the lives of many!

A German member of the European Parliament said on Sunday that European Union funding for the Palestinian Authority’s education system should be frozen after he was confronted with proof of “anti-Semitic” schoolbooks in Palestinian classrooms.

In yet another twist in the troubling “pardon-gate” saga, Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Barak has changed his story regarding the number of times he spoke to US President Bill Clinton about pardoning fugitive billionaire Marc Rich.

US President George W. Bush is hosting his first Arab leader, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, at the White House on Monday for frank discussions on some sore points between Washington and Cairo, especially regarding who is responsible for the current flare-up in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.