The annual meeting of PBI Members and Directors will be held on Friday, July 19, at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The General Convention of Bible Students will begin on Saturday, July 20, at the same location and end the evening of July 25. Those who are interested in the Pastoral Bible Institute, whether members or not, are encouraged to attend this meeting. Contact the Institute's secretary for details concerning accommodations.

World News

Religious

The radical Islamic group, Laskar Jihad, has been attacking village after village, burning houses and destroying Christian churches. Laskar Jihad militants attacked and burned a half dozen villages in Central Sulawesi [Indonesia], bringing to at least 21 the number of Christian villages pillaged in recent weeks. The “Holy War Troops” are armed with AK-47s, grenades, bombs and homemade weapons. As many as 7,000 Laskar Jihad terrorists have gathered in Central Sulawesi and are now surrounding the predominantly Christian city of Tentena, inhabited by around 63,000 people, including many who fled from surrounding villages before the advancing Jihad troops. Before the Laskar Jihad attacked Ma­luku Province last year, the area was about 37 percent Christian and 57 percent Muslim. Some say the region was nearly 50 percent Christian before President Suharto began his “transmigration” program, subsidizing Muslims to move from Muslim-dominated areas to regions heavily populated by Christians. Now the area is virtually 100 percent Muslim because Christians have either been forced to flee for their lives, or have been forced to convert to Islam. In the violence in Maluku—and now Sula­wesi—an estimated 9,000 people have died.

—Crosswalk.com, 12/20/2001

Persecution Project Foundation (PPF) founder Brad Phillips returned from a relief outreach into the oil region of western Upper Nile. During an emergency food and medical distribution in the heart of Sudan's oil region PPF teams heard the sounds of heavy artillery shelling as Sudan Peoples Liberation Army rebels defended their ground against a National Islamic Front onslaught only a few miles away. “Two Government of Sudan Hind Helicopters chased and pursued a relief plane after it took off from an airstrip near Bentiu and in close proximity to where we were doing our food distribution,” said Phillips. “This is an unprecedented event, the first incidence of any air-to-air interference with relief groups by the Government of Sudan. When news of this event reached Loki on the morning of Dec. 13, all flights into the area were immediately suspended. It saddened us, because there were many more tons of relief supplies waiting in our stores ready to be flown in.” The Government of Sudan is now employing the use of sophisticated weaponry, such as the Hind helicopters purchased with oil revenues, in attempts to thwart the efforts by non-governmental organizations to assist the victims of state-sponsored terror in the region,” commented Phillips.

—Crosswalk.com, 12/24/2001

Social

Today leprosy is close to elimination. Until recent years, no treatments were known. Victims suffered ostracism, inability to work and forced separation from their families. They had virtually no hope of cure or of a return to normality. But the development of new antibiotics that target the leprosy bacterium changed the situation. In 1991, the World Health Organization set a goal of eliminating leprosy from the world within 15 years. The group recently announced that it had met the first major milestone in its quest, the elimination of 90% of all leprosy cases. The United States had 108 cases of leprosy in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With the newest antibiotic treatments, leprosy can be cured with a one-day treatment provided it is caught in its earliest stage.

—Los Angeles Times 12/24/2001

In the days of 19th-century eugenics, scientists who had supped at the table of social Darwinism would construct evolutionary trees that had twigs within the species Homo sapiens. Each twig was a racial group. The top twig was, of course, the white Caucasian one—since the scientists who did this work were themselves white Caucasians. Modern genetics has shown the error of their ways. Systematic genetic differences between people from different parts of the world, though they exist, are small compared with variations between people from the same place. The visible differences, such as skin color, are the result of a mere handful of genes. Under the skin, humanity is remarkably homogenous.

—The Economist.com, 12/13/2001

Medical experts from the World Health Organization flew to central Congo to investigate the deaths of 17 people with Ebola-like symptoms, state radio said. The deaths began Nov. 17 in Dekese, a village about 450 miles east of Kinshasa, the capital. It was the second feared outbreak of Ebola in one week. Six people died of a mysterious illness in Gabon, another Central African country. Ebola struck the town of Kikwit in 1995, killing 245 people. An Ebola outbreak in Uganda killed 173 people [in 2000]. The mortality rate is 90%. There is no known cure and no vaccine.

—Los Angeles Times, 12/7/2001

Scientists said they have deciphered the third human chromosome which contains a treasure trove of information about diseases ranging from obesity and eczema to dementia and cataracts. With more than 727 genes and nearly 60 million DNA letters, chromosome 20 is the largest human chromosome to be finished so far. Thirty-two of the genes are linked to genetic illnesses including the brain wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, severe immune disorders and illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes and dermatitis. Scientists from The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England, led by Dr. Panos Deloukas, completed the sequence which is reported in the science journal Nature. Chromosome 20 is the first chromosome to be deciphered since scientists from Britain, China, France, Germany, Japan and the United States working on the Human Genome Project sequenced all the estimated 40,000 or more genes in humans earlier this year. “In two years time we should see the sequence of the remaining chromosomes being finished,” Deloukas added. Any two humans are 99.9 percent similar. The 0.1 percent difference in DNA is what makes an individual unique.

—Reuters, 12/19/2001

1,118    Number of airplane occupants worldwide who died in multiengine-airliner crashes in 2001; the 30-year average is 1,451 fatalities.

—Time, 1/14/2002

Financial

Europeans said good-bye to their old currencies in history's most ambitious currency swap, one which the euro's architects hope will bolster ambitions of a united Europe. The euro takes physical form as notes and coins a decade after it was conceived with the Maastricht Treaty and three years after it began its ethereal life underpinning the exchange rates of the mark, peseta, drachma, lire, franc and other ­national currencies that it permanently displaces. Though continental Europe's vision of a tighter political union are bound with the euro, it first became legal tender at midnight on January 1, 2002. The 12-nation euro zone represents one-sixth of the world's economy, and is set to grow as the European Union expands eastward.

—Associated Press, 1/1/2002

According to a recent report by the U.N. Drug Control Program, the [Taliban's ban on poppy cultivation] brought raw opium production in Afghanistan to a virtual halt, dropping from 3,276 tons to only 185 tons in just one year. But now . . . there is eagerness among farmers . . . to plant poppy seeds that will be harvested next April, processed into heroin in neighboring Pakistan, and delivered to overseas markets. “We know we are creating addicts,” [a farmer] said. “The only reason we are doing this is because we are poor. If I could find another job, I would stop growing poppies.”

—Los Angeles Times, 11/23/2001

More than 600,000 Moldovans are working abroad. That is about one-third of the people of working age—the highest proportion in Europe. UNICEF, the United Nations children's organization, says growing numbers of children are abandoned by their parents and have to live with other relatives or even alone. Such problems exist throughout the former Communist bloc, but they are particularly acute in Moldova, a small country wedged between Ukraine and Romania. In Communist times it was reasonably prosperous, exporting food and wine to the rest of the Soviet Union. But in the past decade, exports have collapsed, reducing gross domestic product by two-thirds and leaving the average annual GDP per head at just over $300, less than 20 per cent of neighboring Romania's. The root cause of Moldo­va's difficulties is the political and economic disruption of the end of the Soviet Union. The country was divided by a civil war in the early 1990s which has left authority split between Chisinau in the west and a self-proclaimed Republic of Transdniestr centered on Tiraspol in the east. The division has undermined government functions, blocked economic reforms and allowed the flowering of one of Europe's most extensive black [market] economies.

—Financial Times, 12/19/2001

Civil

The sea level has risen from 12 to 20 inches along Maine's coast and as much as 2 feet in Nova Scotia during the last 250 years, according to a team of international researchers. It's the biggest rise in the last millennium, and global warming is to blame, said Roland Gehrels of the University of Plymouth in England. “Sea level today is rising faster than at any time in the past when it was subject to natural climate change,” the lead researcher said. The findings were presented at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting last week in Boston.

—Los Angeles Times, 11/13/2001

The Commonwealth signaled that it could suspend Zimbabwe's membership within weeks if the country continued its slide towards anarchy. Suspension would prevent Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mu­gabe, attending the Commonwealth heads of government summit in Australia in March. The group reiterated its deep concern about the ongoing situation in Zimbabwe especially the continued violence, occupation of property, actions against the freedom and independence of the media, and political intimidation. The statement came after repeated criticism that the Commonwealth had failed to act against Mr. Mugabe since his supporters invaded white-owned farms early in 2000. Over the past two years Mr. Mugabe's supporters have unleashed a campaign of violence against white farmers and the Movement for Democratic Change, the main opposition party.

—Financial Times, 12/21/2001

For the first time since 1990, Iraq has warned that it could launch a missile attack against Israel if the United States attacks the regime of President Saddam Hussein. “We always expect evil and aggression from the American administration,” Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told the Doha-based Al-Jazeera satellite television. “Our preparations are always in place. Any nation that has been attacked has the right to defend itself by any means. This is a legitimate right.” Ramadan did not mention Israel, but when asked whether Iraq would attack Israel, the vice president said Baghdad would not rule out any target.

—Middle East News Line, 11/30/2001

Israel

Israeli unemployment is nearing the ten-percent level and one in four Israeli children are now classified as living below the poverty line. This is happening at a time when the number of tourists to Israel has dropped by more than fifty percent, to levels last seen a quarter century ago. At the same time, it is clear that the Palestinians have been hurt economically much more than Israelis. For example, their unemployment is estimated at between 50-80 percent. The strains in Palestinian society have prompted some of Arafat's aides, according to American sources, to ask the United States to put greater diplomatic pressure on Arafat because of the damage his war is causing Palestinian society. At the beginning of this year, Government economists expected annual GNP growth of five to six percent, but it looks like Israel will be lucky to finish the year with more than two percent annual growth. The outlook for 2002, if present trends continue, is worse.

—BridgesforPeace.com, 12/11/2001

More than 60 new Palestinian Authority (PA) textbooks have been translated and excerpted by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, whose web site is located at www.edume.org The PA continues its policy of educating its students to liberate all of Palestine as its schools prepare their students for an independent Palestinian state. There is no mention of a two-state solution in the 60 new textbooks of the Palestinian Authority. They fail to teach the youth to see Israel as a neighbor with whom peaceful relations should be desired; the Jewish connection to the Holy Land is confined to antiquity. Jews' return to Palestine is described as “infiltration”; the State of Israel, a member state of the UN since 1949, is not recognized. By contrast, the State of Palestine is often referred to and its name appears with the official emblem of the Palestinian National Authority on the cover and the front page of many textbooks. Palestine stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and is exclusively Arab. The 5.5 million Jewish inhabitants are not counted; The maps that appear in the textbooks continue to disregard the existence of the State of Israel; Jerusalem is presented as belonging to the Palestinians alone, and as the capital of Palestine; there is no attempt to encourage reconciliation with Israel.

—Israel Resource News Agency, 11/23/2001

Dr. Zvi Zameret, director of the Ben-Zvi Foundation, presented a dismal view of the future of Israel. Zameret, an accomplished educator, headed a task force that spent nearly a year examining the state of national education in Israel. The findings show that within a few years the majority of children in Israel will be educated in non-Zionist institutions which are funded but not supervised, by the state. This year, 30 percent of first-grade children in Israel are enrolled in Arab schools. “Arab education is growing at a dizzying pace, and we're not asking ourselves enough to what extent we are educating for Israeliness,” said Zameret. . . . In other words, in a few years the majority of children in Israel will be getting a non-Zionist education.”

—Jerusalem Post, 12/24/2001

Israeli scientists have completed ten years of research and testing in a secret laboratory in the Nes Tziona Biological Center, and are about ready to begin mass-production of their newly-developed vaccine against anthrax. The vaccine has been tested and found to be effective, and unlike the American vaccine, causes no side effects. In addition, the American vaccine must be taken in six doses, while the new Israeli version takes effect after only one injection.

—Arutz-7, 12/20/2001

The military wing of the Islamic militant Hamas group said that poisonous chemicals planted on bombs its activists exploded recently have spread terror among Israelis even more effectively than its earlier attacks. Israel's Health Ministry revealed this week that nails and bolts packed into explosives detonated by a Hamas suicide bomber Dec. 1 in a Jerusalem pedestrian mall had been dipped in rat poison. The report unnerved many Israelis who already live with the fear of a biochemical attack from Iraq.

—Associated Press, 12/13/2001

Book Review

Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. John Cornwell, Penguin Books, New York NY, 1999. 411 pages.

It has been well reported that leading Jewish Nazi-hunters have been openly critical of the Catholic Church's intention to canonize Pope Pius XII who served as Pope from 1939 to 1958. Before WWII, the Pope condemned the Nazi glorification of race, nation, and state as a perversion of the divine order. During the war he remained silent about the mass murder of European Jews. In answer, those leading the effort for canonization of the Pope within the Catholic Church say they will not be stopped or delayed by the “unjustifiable and calumnious attacks against this great and saintly man.”

John Cornwell is a journalist and author with a lifelong interest in Vatican affairs. He profiled Pope John Paul II for Vanity Fair magazine and the London Sunday Times. His previous book on the Vatican, A Thief in the Night: The Death of Pope John Paul, became a bestseller around the world. In 1995 he won the Independent Television Authority award for services to religious journalism. From 1990 to 1996, Cornwell was a research fellow at Jesus College in Cambridge, England.

In Hitler's Pope, Cornwell documents the life and rise to the Papacy of Eugenio Pacelli, later to be known as Pius XII. Cornwell says that he began research for the book with the intention to portray a favorable picture of a remarkable man in church history who was now receiving his due. Given Cornwell's previous documents detailing favorably the work of the Catholic Church, he was given unprecedented access to Vatican and Jesuit archives. After researching documents in both Vatican City and Germany (where Pacelli spent a good part of his church career), Cornwell came to the conclusion that Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, was instrumental in negotiating an accord that helped the Nazis rise to unhindered power and sealed the fate of the Jews in Europe. He tells the full story of how political and spiritual ambition, combined with a long-standing hatred for the Jews, combined to make Pius the most dangerous Pope in history.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, Pacelli was a brilliant Vatican lawyer who helped shape a new ideology of unprecedented papal power. As papal nuncio in Munich and Berlin, in 1933 he negotiated a treaty with Hitler, the Reich Concordat. This created mutual support between Nazi Germany and the Holy See. At the time a cardinal and the Vatican Secretary of State, Pacelli was the chief architect of the agreement. Because of his efforts, the Vatican signed the agreement stating that German Catholics would “put themselves without reservation at the service of the new Nazi State.” Hitler, in return, agreed to tolerate Catholic organizations. The agreement ensured that the Nazis would rise unopposed by the most powerful Catholic community in the world, sealing, by Hitler's own admission, the fate of the Jews in Europe.

Most Bible students are familiar with the popes of the fifth through the twelfth centuries and the world power they controlled. Some hold the view that the Papacy of the near future may become as powerful as that of the past. This book documents how cooperation with the state led the Catholic Church to have such a powerful position with the most corrupt government known to the modern world. For those who may not hold this same view of future Papal power, the book still provides intriguing insights into what may arguably be the most important religious office in the world today.