Pastoral Bible Institute News
World News Religious For the first time, North Korea has replaced Saudi Arabia as the country where Christians are most severely persecuted, according to the “World Watch List” released on Aug. 12 by Open Doors. The semi-annual World Watch List ranks countries according to the level of persecution Christians face for following Jesus Christ. Growing evidence of severe oppression in North Korea has confirmed what many observers have believed for years, that the communist dictatorship of Kim Jong Il stops at nothing to eradicate all belief systems other than the worship of Kim himself and his deceased father, Kim Il Sung. Both father and son have made every attempt to purge the land of Christians. Ranked third on the list is the Southeast Asian nation of Laos, where government authorities accuse Christians of causing religious division. Vietnam, Turkmenistan, Maldives, Bhutan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia round out the top ten, listed respectively in order of their ranking. Six of the top ten countries are governed by Islamic regimes. One —Bhutan—is predominately Buddhist, and three—Laos, Vietnam and Turkmenistan—are communist-ruled. —Christian
News Service, 8/26/2002 A joint parliamentary committee has been formed of members of the House of Commons, an elected body, and the House of Lords, an appointed body. Its task is to determine the future of the House of Lords. Because the Church of England is the official church of Britain, some of the peers who serve in the House of Lords are bishops of the church. In the selection of the seats on the joint committee, none of the 26 bishops who serve in the House were chosen. The bishops are outraged. The Bishop of Guildford told his peers: “Composition of this house touches on two crucial aspects of our constitution—the nature of our parliamentary democracy and the establishment of the church.” There is speculation that the ruling labor (socialist) party is planning to disestablish the Church. —Guardian
Newspaper, 7/5/2002 Dr. Rowan Williams, a former theological professor, was named as the next Archbishop of Canterbury—head of the Anglican Church worldwide —signaling the potential for a shift in the relationship between Church and state. Tony Blair, UK prime minister approved the appointment. Dr. Williams is the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times to be chosen from outside the Church of England to be Primate of All England and head of the Anglican Communion. Dr. Williams has said he favors cutting the links between Church and State, and the relaxation of the rules on divorcees who remarry. His biggest challenge is to reverse the decline in church going that has made baptized Anglicans a minority in England for the first time since the Reformation. —Financial
Times, 7/24/2002 In Nukus, Uzbekistan on August 9, police without a search warrant searched an apartment, seized religious literature including a Bible, and claimed that Uzbek citizens were not allowed to have Bibles. The 13 Protestants present were subsequently fined between five and 10 per cent of the minimum wage. The Karakalpakstan authorities have adopted a harsh attitude toward Christians in the Protestant churches. According to Keston, it is all but impossible for communities to register, and many Protestant leaders have been subjected to fines. —Crosswalk.com,
8/25/2002 Less than a third of seminary students intend to minister in congregations, according to a study by Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. It’s common to hear people confess to being afraid that if they answer a call to ministry, God might send them to Africa as a missionary. But, as jarring as it sounds, more and more spiritually sensitive and creative young Christians are now more frightened that God will ask them to be pastor of the church on the suburban corner. The result, say researchers and seminary leaders, is an impending pastor shortage. The impact is already being felt. For all denominations surveyed by the Alban Institute, the number of ministers under 35 has fallen precipitously since the 1970s—dropping by at least half and for some two thirds. Seminaries and other organizations concerned for the future of the church are studying and discussing these trends. They cite a litany of negatives—the prospect of low pay, exhausting job demands and dwindling social respect—that make the pastorate so unattractive to young adults. Some highly publicized scandals involving ministers only make matters worse. —Associated
Baptist Press, 8/25/2002 Social The AIDS epidemic, which experts thought had begun to level off, seems to be accelerating. According to the latest estimates from the U.N., AIDS will claim 68 million lives by 2020—roughly the number of people killed in all the wars of the 20th century combined. In the hardest-hit countries, the public health systems have utterly failed. In the first survey of how widely anti-HIV treatments are used, researchers found that less than 4% of those infected have access to appropriate medications. —TIME,
7/15/2002 Air pollutants trapped inside homes from stoves that burn coal, wood or cow dung have been linked to the premature deaths of 2.1 million women and children each year. Officials at the international [World Health] summit readily agreed that indoor air pollution is a global threat. More than half of the world’s households cook or heat using unprocessed solid fuels such as wood and agricultural waste. In India about 75% of households use these fuels. Half a million children and women die each year from indoor air pollution in India. China accounts for another heavy concentration of smoke-related illness and death. But such cooking practices also are wide-spread in sub-Saharan Africa and in many poor and rural areas of Latin America. —Los
Angeles Times, 8/29/2002 One in every 32 adults in the United States was behind bars or on probation or parole by the end of last year, according to a government report that found a record 6.6 million people in the nation’s correctional system. The number of adults under supervision by the criminal justice system rose by 147,700, or 2.3 percent, between 2000 and 2001, the Justice Department reported. In 1990, almost 4.4 million adults were incarcerated or being supervised. “The overall figures suggest that we’ve come to rely on the criminal justice system as a way of responding to social problems in a way that’s unprecedented,” said Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, an advocacy and research group that favors alternatives to incarceration. “We’re setting a new record every day.” —Associated
Press, 8/26/2002 There are 1.1 billion people without reliable access to fresh water. There are 10 million people who die of water-borne diseases, such as cholera and dysentery, every year. Others have good reason to worry about the future, as country after country around the world becomes water stressed. In every corner of the globe, the indications of the impending crisis become more obvious: Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Cyprus, Malta, and the Arabian Peninsula currently use all of their fresh-water resources; Saudi Arabia faces depletion of its fresh water within 50 years; in the Gaza Strip, seawater is leaking into underground aquifers, which are being depleted three times faster than they can be replenished; Egypt’s population is expected to increase by one million people per year until 2010—now it gets barely enough water from the Nile to meet demand. Egypt has announced that it will go to war if any of the eight countries to the south diverts more than its share of the Nile. The Aral Sea in Central Asia, once the world’s largest lake, has lost 80 percent of its volume since the Soviet union decided to divert the rivers that fed it in order to irrigate the cotton crop. Groundwater in India and Bangladesh is contaminated with arsenic. Eighty percent of China’s rivers are too polluted for fish to survive. Mexico City could go completely dry in the next decade as it uses groundwater 50 to 80 percent faster than it can be regenerated, sinking the city by about 20 inches per year. —Across The
Board magazine, July/August 2002 The newspapers and television call it Jahrhundertflut—the once-in-a-century flood. It has cost at least 16 German lives, swept away houses and cars, torn up roads, buckled railway lines and forced more than 100,000 to leave their homes, the biggest such evacuation of Germans since the second world war. The damage it has wrought in the former East Germany, still struggling to its feet a dozen years after the end of communism, has caused talk about a “second rebuilding” of the east and how to pay for it. In the state capital, Dresden, the Elbe reached a record high on August 17th. People battled to save the baroque city center. As the Elbe’s floodwaters headed north, they left a terrible mess. More than 530km of railway lines in Saxony and 740km of roads were rendered useless and 180 bridges destroyed. The main rail lines connecting Dresden with Berlin, Leipzig and Prague were broken. Swiss Re, a reinsurer, has estimated euro15 billion ($14.7 billion) for the total damage done by the floods in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Vladimir Spidla, the Czech prime minister, says the cost of cleaning up his country may exceed $2 billion. In Germany, the finance minister of Saxony on August 21st estimated the damage in his state alone would cost up to euro16 billion ($15.7 billion) to put right. —The
Economist, 8/22/2002 Civil During the 1990s, the UN reports, 2.4 percent of the world’s forests were destroyed, almost all in tropical regions in Africa and Latin America. The estimated total area destroyed—220 million acres —is larger than the size of Venezuela. Nearly one-third of coral reefs were seriously degraded and 60 percent of the world’s oceans have been overfished. Fresh water demand is doubling worldwide every 21 years, and agriculture represents 70 percent of this consumption. By 2025, half the world’s projected 8 billion population is expected to be thirsty. But 60 million people have been infected with AIDS, with 20 million deaths. An additional 45 million infections are predicted in the next 8 years, largely in Africa. According to the World Health Organization, 2.7 million people die from malaria each year. Most of the victims are young and live in sub-Saharan Africa, but the mosquito-borne disease is surging again in South America and parts of Asia, too. More than 3 million people die every year from the effects of air pollution, and 2.2 million people die from contaminated water, the United Nations found. According to the World Bank, 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 per day. Most of them are the same people who do not have access to clean water, sanitation or adequate food. The environmental group Worldwatch calculates the richest 1 billion people on Earth receive 78 percent of the annual income, while child mortality is 19 times greater in low-income nations. —Associated
Press, 8/25/2002 A new report on immigration from the Middle East finds that the Mideast immigrant population in the US has grown nearly eightfold from 1970 to 2000. The report projects the same population will almost double again by 2010. With children born in the US, the Mideast immigrant community will grow to 3.4 million by 2010 from 2 million in 2000. Such growth could make securing the homeland a whole lot harder, says the report’s author, Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies. It could also alter US support for Israel, he says. The immigration system “has a logic and a momentum all its own, creating social forces and trends that really would have been entirely unexpected a generation ago,” Camarota said. “One of the consequences is that we’re likely to see increased political pressure for changes in US foreign policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict,” he said. With the growth has come a dramatic shift in the religious makeup of Mideast immigrants. In 1970 just 15% of Mideast immigrants were Muslim. In 2000, 73% were. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum is concerned about the possible threat the increase in Muslim population poses. “Militant Islam is a threat, is a challenge to the United States. Its ambitions are very great. They’re not limited to foreign policy, but seek also to change the very nature of the United States.” —Investors
Business Daily, 8/21/2002 Israel and the United States are said to have detected a significant acceleration in Russia’s effort to build a nuclear reactor in Iran. An Egyptian report said that Russia and Iran have increased the number of personnel working on the Bushehr nuclear reactor. So far, the report said, more than 20,000 people are at the site. The report, published in the monthly journal by the United Arab Emirates military, said Israel and the United States have determined that the number of personnel at Bushehr has significantly increased over the last few months. The increase consists of scientists and technicians, and the activity in the area has been described as ‘unusual.’ —Middle
East Newsline, 8/21/2002 Financial Disgruntled Saudis have pulled tens of billions of dollars out of the US, signaling a growing disenchantment with America. One analyst said the total funds withdrawn by individual investors amounted to $200 billion. Accusations that Saudi Arabia’s austere brand of Islam breeds terrorism have been perceived in the kingdom as attacks on Saudi society and its religion. Details of Saudi investments in the US are sketchy but financial analysts believe they range from $400 billion to $600 billion. The Saudi money shifts may have contributed to the recent downward pressure on the dollar. Despite statements by both the US and Saudi governments that ties remain strong, tensions are also exacerbated by the apparent US determination to seek regime change in Iraq through possible military action, a policy opposed by the oil-rich kingdom. —Financial
Times, 8/21/2002 The latest sign of a shifting balance of oil power came when Russia’s largest petroleum company, Lukoil, got government permission to ship up to 12 million metric tons of oil and oil products yearly through a new Baltic terminal. Earlier, the number two Russian oil company, Yukos, sent its first shipment of crude to the U.S. Another Russian firm, Transneft is planning to build an oil pipeline across the Bering Strait into North America. Russia has already been able to increase production by about a million barrels a day in the past two years. With an average output of 7.1 million barrels per day for the first four months of 2002, it is close to passing Saudi Arabia (7.3 million barrels) as the world’s largest oil producer. Saudi Arabia still has much larger reserves than Russia and it can produce oil more cheaply than Russia can. However, Russia may be largely immune to the Saudis’ chief weapon: its ability to arrange oil gluts and sink prices. With a diversified industrial economy, Russia is not solely dependent on oil exports to prop up its economy, and can profit from cheap oil if prices drop, just as it can profit from oil exports if prices rise. The Saudis however, are as dependent on oil money as anyone. So their own weapon is looking more and more like a suicide bomb. —Investors’
Business Daily, 7/25/2002 The early 21st century may be turning into one of those periods in American history, like the populist and progressive eras at the turn of the last century, where the exposure of excesses creates a political consensus for new government control over business. Political indignation against big business seems to be spilling out in various directions, even where fraud isn’t an issue. Just how far the reforms go will depend on how badly financial markets and the economy perform. —Wall Street Journal, 7/10/2002
On August 5 some 500 new immigrants from the Ukraine arrived at Haifa Harbor. In all some 620 immigrants are expected to arrive in one day, making August 5th the largest Aliyah day of the current year. In addition to the 500 immigrants from the Ukraine, 60 immigrants are expected to arrive from France, 30 from the southern Caucasus, 10 from the UK, 6 from the USA and 7 from Canada, and individual immigrants from other countries. Over 1,150 immigrants are expected to arrive this week, which will be the week with the largest number of immigrants to arrive this year. Some 18,000 immigrants have come to Israel from January 1, 2002, to July 31, 2002. —The Jewish
Agency For Israel, 8/4/2002 “It’s Not as Bad as It Looks—It’s Worse,” read a front-page headline for a story on joblessness in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. Nagging security fears are scaring away foreign and domestic investors, overseas business partners, sports teams, even arts groups, adding to the country’s sense of isolation. Per capita gross domestic product, a measure of economic growth, shrank 3.2% last year and is slated to contract 3% more this year, unprecedented slippage in the nation’s history. Unemployment rests stubbornly above 10%, exports are down 11.7%, the fiscal deficit is widening, and annual inflation is pegged at about 8%. —Los
Angeles Times, 8/25/2002 The Heritage Foundation, a conservative private research group, is urging the European Union leaders to stop funding the Palestinian Authority in light of its “overwhelming anti-Israel bias,” and allegations that the EU-aid funds Palestinian terror. In a report, the foundation asked the Bush administration, which circumvents the Palestinian Authority in its assistance program, to press for an independent investigation into whether European Union funds are misused. Direct aid to the Authority, which is headed by Yasser Arafat, should be halted until elections are held and the leadership changed, said a Heritage report. The European Union gave the Palestinian Authority an estimated $3.36 billion between 1994 and 2000. They continue to give the Authority about $10 million a month. —Ha’Aretz,
AP, 8/21/2002 Russian President Vladimir Putin has invited Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to visit Moscow for the second time, but no date has yet been set for a meeting, Sharon’s spokesman Ra’anan Gissin said on Wednesday (21st). A visit could take place as early as next month, but much depends on developments in the region including the security situation in Israel and a possible U.S. offensive against Iraq. Sharon and Putin have forged warm personal ties despite Russia’s continued support for Iran’s nuclear program and Moscow’s announcement this week that it will sign a $40 billion trade deal with Iraq. —Jerusalem
Post, 8/22/2002 U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer announced this week that a delegation from his division plan to travel to Israel in October to learn how to prevent and respond to suicide bombings, Israel Radio reported. Gainer said he and other officers plan to meet Israeli police officials and try to gauge how the public reacted to various security measures. Gainer is concerned about the potential for such a bombing, because “we see what a powerful, destructive tool it can be” in Israel and other countries. —Israel Radio, JP, 8/23/2002 |
