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Pastoral Bible Institute News
PBI Directors Elected The members of the Pastoral Bible Institute have elected these seven individuals to serve as directors for the next 12 months:
A special undated issue of The Herald has been produced detailing Bible Student history from the Reformation to the present time. It will be mailed as an “extra” to all subscribers this spring, perhaps as soon as May 15th. Those who would like an advanced look may read it on our web site: www.heraldmag.org
Religious Organizers of a fledgling coalition of evangelical, Catholic, mainline Protestant and Orthodox Christians said the group should be up and running by May 2005—the first time most U.S. Christians have come together around a common table. The new group, Christian Churches Together in the USA, will bring together Christian bodies that for a half-century have not been able to overcome deep theological and political differences. The group would be comprised of representatives from five church “families”—Roman Catholic, evangelical, mainline Protestant, ethnic churches and Orthodox. —Religion News Service, 1/26/2004 A survey commissioned on behalf of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy has reportedly concluded that more than 4,000 U.S. Roman Catholic priests stood accused of sexually abusing children over a five-decade period. The report, scheduled for official release on 27 February, found that 11,000 allegations of child sex abuse were made against 4,450 priests between 1950 and 2002. These figures are far higher than previously reported. —CNN.com, 2/25/2004 North Korea tops the Open Doors World Watch List of countries where Christians are persecuted. The ministry annually ranks countries according to the intensity of persecution Christians face for actively pursuing their faith. An estimated 200 million Christians worldwide suffer interrogation, arrest and even death for faith in Christ. Saudi Arabia retains the second spot, although the U.S. State Department chose not to add Saudi Arabia to its ranking of the world’s worst religious persecutors. According to International Christian Concern, “non-Muslims can be arrested, lashed, or deported for any religious activity that attracts the attention of the government.” Laos, Vietnam and Iran round out the top five. —Crosswalk.com, February 2004 The National Assembly in Paris voted to ban Muslim head scarves and other religious symbols from public schools, a move that underscores the broad public support for the French secular ideal but is certain to deepen resentment among France’s large Muslim population. The law also requires all students to accept what is taught on the Holocaust and human reproduction. The law bans religious signs, which have been defined by a government advisory commission as Islamic headscarves, Christian crosses that are too large in size and Jewish skullcaps. The law also says that questioning the veracity of the Holocaust would not be tolerated. In recent years, teachers have complained that some Muslim students have been so disruptive in rejecting the veracity of the Nazi slaughter of the Jews that it is impossible to teach the subject. —New York Times, 2/11/2004 Social
—Time, 1/21/2004 Hospital-acquired infections affect about 1 in 20 hospital patients, according to a report from the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences. Such infections add almost $5 billion a year to our nation’s health-care bill. More people die from such infections than from auto accidents and homicides combined. —Consumer Reports, February 2004 Haiti [is] home to 90% of all AIDS patients in the Caribbean; more than 100 people die of the disease every day, according to the Washington-based Academy for Educational Development. More than 100,000 are too sick to care for their children, leaving 200,000 minors abandoned, many of them living on the streets of Port-au-Prince, the overcrowded and staggeringly impoverished capital. (A table of statistics showed the percent of adults, ages 15 to 49, living with AIDS in 2003, was 7.5 to 8.5% for Sub-Saharan Africa and 1.9 to 3.1% for the Caribbean.) —Los Angeles Times, 1/29/2004 Nearly half the world’s population of 6.3 billion is malnourished and conditions may worsen over the next 50 years, according to U.S. ecologist David Pimentel of Cornell University. Pimentel, presenting his research at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference, raised concerns about a combination of recent trends. He said grains are being harvested at a faster rate, putting greater stress on land. In addition, humans are more susceptible to disease than ever before as a result of malnutrition. He said the world’s population is expected to reach 12 billion in 50 to 70 years, putting greater stress on resources for fresh water, renewable and fossil energy, fertilizers and pesticides. —UPI, 2/16/2004 A British molecular biologist has decided to earn much more money, and has begun studying to become a plumber. Dr. Karl Gensberg made the decision to leave his $43,000 per year job at Birmingham University after 13 years after he spoke with a plumber who came to repair a problem in his home. “He assumed I had loads of money as I had a Ph.D.,” Gensberg said. “I showed him my pay slip and he was [amazed]. He said he earned $60,000 and some colleagues took home $90,000.” The 41-year-old researcher is now training as a plumber two days a week at an area college and will go full-time when the university year is over. News of the career change came as thousands of university lecturers began a weeklong series of strikes over pay. —UPI, 2/24/2004 Civil Only 25 commercial airliners crashed in fatal accidents in 2003, by far the lowest number in modern aviation history. The United States had two: an Air Midwest flight that crashed on Jan. 8 in Charlotte, N.C., killing 21 people, and an Aug., 26 crash on Cape Cod, Mass., that killed two crew members. Overall, the world’s fatal airliner accidents last year killed 677 people, the third fewest since World War II. Because far more people are flying far more miles, however, fatalities per mile are the lowest in history. Until a Christmas Day crash killed 138 in the West African country of Benin, the world was on track for the fewest deaths. —Seattle Times, 1/3/2004 Syria has completed production of their chemical warheads for its arsenal of Scud-based missiles. U.S. officials said Syria, with help from North Korea, has succeeded in designing and installing CW warheads for the Scud B, Scud C and Scud D missiles. This provides Syria with warheads that can reach distances from 250 to nearly 700 kilometers (155 to 434 miles). The chemical agent deployed in the CW warheads is sarin, regarded as the most toxic of material. “Since the 1970s, Syria has pursued what is now one of the most advanced Arab state chemical weapons capabilities,” Undersecretary of State John Bolton said. “It has a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin that can be delivered by aircraft or ballistic missiles and has engaged in the research and development of more toxic and persistent nerve agents such as VX.” —Middle East News Line, 1/20/ 2004 In a move that pits national security concerns against academic freedom and the international flow of information, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control recently declared that American publishers cannot edit works authored in nations under trade embargoes. Although publishing the articles is legal, editing is a “service” and it is illegal to perform services for embargoed nations, the agency has ruled. This week [the American Chemical Society] decided to challenge the government and risk criminal prosecution by editing articles submitted from the five embargoed nations: Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba. Richard Newcomb, director of the office [of Foreign Assets Control says] the regulations are a technical interpretation of how Congress intended embargoes to be enforced. —Los Angeles Times, 2/21/2004 Thieves in western Ukraine have dismantled and stolen a one-ton steel bridge over the river Svalyavka. Police say it would have been impossible to take the bridge apart without a crane and a lorry, or to take it away unnoticed. Metal theft is a problem in Ukraine, where people steal statues, wires and sewage hatches to sell as scrap. —UPI, 2/23/2004 Some eight million protesters took to the streets throughout Spain to shout their horror and outrage at the brutal bomb blasts in Madrid that left 200 dead and over 1,400 injured in the worst terrorist attack the country has suffered. The dignitaries in Madrid were followed by an estimated 2.3 million people, the largest single demonstration ever against terrorism in a country that has suffered the bombs and bullets of ETA in flesh and soul since the independence-seeking Basque group took up arms over 35 years ago. —El Pais (Madrid), 3/13/2004 Financial The federal government’s safety net for corporate pension plans [reported] a deficit of more than $10 billion in its annual report. While it has no immediate effect on retired workers’ benefits, it has resulted in long-term concern over the protection of workers’ retirement funds. “This not only threatens the solvency of the agency, but raises the specter of a costly taxpayer bailout. Worse, millions of employees will face huge retirement benefit cuts if these plans are handed off to the PBGC (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation). The PBGC, which insures retirement plans that have a fixed payout, typically takes over payments when employers go into bankruptcy and shed their obligations to retirees. —Wall Street Journal, 1/13/2004 The dire state of Russia’s public health system has helped create what President Vladimir Putin calls a national emergency: Every year nearly a million more Russians die than are born. Even with surging immigration, mostly from former Soviet republics, Russia’s population has dropped from 147 million in 1989 to 145 million in 2003. Life expectancy among men—who have been hit especially hard by alcoholism and heart disease—has dropped by five years in that period to 58.5, the lowest level in the developed world. If current trends continue, many demographers predict Russia’s population could fall to as low as 100 million by 2050. These statistics have inescapable economic consequences. Economists say declining health will shrink the nation’s labor pool and reduce its productivity. The cost of treating the nation’s looming HIV crisis will shave 10% off the country’s Gross Domestic Product by 2010. —Wall Street Journal, 2/13/2004 The annual trade deficit reached $489.4 billion in 2003, a rise of about $70 billion. Even though most economists say many factors have contributed to job losses, trade is becoming the focus in the national political debate as Americans try to adjust to the quickening pace of globalization. The billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett warned last November that allowing the trade deficit to grow amounted to transferring America’s net worth abroad “at an alarming rate.” The effect of the trade deficit is further complicated by the weakening of the dollar against the euro, which is raising hopes that the United States can significantly increase exports to Europe. The United States has a $94.3 billion deficit with the European Union, a $12.1 billion increase from 2002 but smaller than the record $124 billion deficit with China. Indeed, the United States is the only major industrial power with a deficit with its major trading partners. —New York Times, 2/21/2004 Companies have paid out an estimated $70 billion on about 730,000 asbestos personal injury claims making them the most expensive type of litigation in U.S. history, according to the Rand Institute for Civil Justice. More than 8,400 companies have been named as defendants in the lawsuits dating to the 1970s, involving almost every kind of industry. The lawsuits had driven 66 companies into bankruptcy protection by the end of 2002. —Los Angeles Times, 2/7/2004 Israel For the first time in its 55-year history, Israel has registered a negative annual inflation rate. According to figures released on January 15, the month of December 2003 showed a drop of 1/5 of a percent in the price index, putting the final touches on the year’s price index drop of 1.9%. The year 2002 registered a 6.5% inflation rate, while in 2000 it was 0%. —Arutz 7, 1/16/2004 A sharp rise of 23 percent in tourist arrivals to 1.06 million in 2003 signaled resurgence in the tourism sector, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Tourism is still 11% lower than 2001 and 56% less than 2000, the record tourism year. In December, 119,000 tourists arrived—a number higher than both the previous year and 2000. After reaching an all-time high in mid-2000, tourist arrivals plunged following a resurgence of Palestinian terrorism that has lasted more than three years, dropping from a monthly level of 200,000 to a nadir of 32,500 in March 2003. A breakdown of the data on tourist arrival according to countries shows that the largest contributor was the U.S., with more than a quarter of all arrivals. Arrivals from the U.S. were up a third compared to 2002. Next in line was France, which made up 16% of arrivals, Britain with 10%, and Germany with a 5% share. —Jerusalem Post, 2/5/2004 At the end of January, the Galilee experienced one of the most bountiful storms, as far as rain and snow, in recorded history. More rain fell in one day in the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret) basin than at any other day in recorded history. Winds with gusts reached 75 mph and lasted for several days, bringing extensive damage in central and northern Israel. This year’s rainfall in Galilee has already reached its annual average in January, with the wettest months of February and March still ahead. Over a year ago, the Sea of Galilee was down to a point where pumping was nearly stopped for the safety of the sea’s ecosystem. The Sea of Galilee is Israel’s largest source of fresh water. With record snows on Mt. Hermon that won’t feed into the Sea until it melts, plus more winter rains to come, the Sea should reach its high water mark in 2004. There are now discussions about opening the Degania dam to let water flow into Lower Jordan into the Dead Sea, something that has not happened since 1992. —Bridges For Peace Newsletter, 1/31/2004 Yasser Arafat has amassed a fortune estimated by Forbes at $300 million, putting him in sixth place on the list of richest world leaders. Israel says his real net worth exceeds $1 billion. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has received $6.5 billion in foreign aid over six years, yet Josh Block of the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC says that the PA is broke. While nearly half the PA-area population is unemployed, Arafat’s wife and daughter live in Paris on a monthly allowance of $100,000. Arafat is said to own a $55 million cement firm that controls most of the PA cement market, to hold a 23% stake in a $28.5 million casino in Jericho, and to receive profits from all gasoline imported into the PA. His money is stored in several Swiss bank accounts. —Arutz 7, 1/15/2004 Between September 2000 and January of 2004, Palestinians attempted 466 terror attacks. Of these, 140 attacks were carried out, and 326 (70% of all planned attacks) were thwarted by Israeli security forces. —Israeli Defense Forces, 2/7/2004
Book Review War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. Edwin Black. Four Walls Eight Windows publishing, New York, 2003. 550 pp. In the Overland Monthly, Bro. Russell begins the article “Value of Ideals to Church and World” with Psalm 51:5, “Shapen in iniquity, in sin did my mother conceive me.” He says, “It is no longer natural to us to do right, but contrariwise … we are constitutionally defective because of mental disloyalty to God. Yet the mind can rise to loftier heights than it is able to lift the body and its functions.” He continues: “Many are grasping after this great truth, and attempting human uplift through eugenics” [italics added]. This is one of five references to eugenics in his writings. Many have read these passing references and never stopped to ask what he meant by this term. Eugenics was a pseudoscientific American movement of the early twentieth century. Based on selective breeding of human beings, eugenics began in laboratories in New York, but ended in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. In 1904 a small group of U.S. scientists launched an ambitious new race-based movement that was championed by America’s social, political, and academic elite, funded by the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation, and supported by such stalwart thinkers as Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Eugenicists sought to eliminate social “undesirables” through forced sterilization, human breeding programs, marriage prohibition and even passive euthanasia. Eugenics was sanctioned by the Supreme Court and written into the laws of twenty seven U.S. states. The victims were poor white people, immigrants from Europe, Blacks, Jews, Mexicans, Native Americans, epileptics, petty criminals, and the mentally ill (see Harvest Gleanings, p. 589). Eugenicists exported the movement worldwide through academic exchange. It eventually caught the fascination of Adolf Hitler. Well documented by over fifty researchers, this book spans a century and shows how after World War II, eugenics was reborn as human genetics. Bro. Russell evaluated the fruitless efforts of trying to improve fallen man through the newly created science of eugenics in light of the truth of man’s fall. He could not see at that time how it would play out—in the evil of Mengele’s heinous experiments at Auschwitz. Today, we attempt to evaluate the Human Genome Project and the implications of genetic engineering in view of the same knowledge of man’s fall. How will this science play out in ours or a future generation’s day? |
