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Pastoral Bible Institute News World News Religious Turkish religious authorities are purging the hadiths of statements that treat women as inferior to men. The hadiths, traditional sayings that form much of Islamic sharia law, are filled with misogynistic dictates. “The best of women are those who are like sheep,” reads one. Ali Bardkoglu, the president of the Diyanet, Turkey’s Islamic authority, said a revised collection would be distributed in 2008. Bardakloglu also plans to send moderate imams to Turkey’s rural regions to preach against backward practices such as honor killings. —The Week, 7/28/2006 On a continent where belief in black magic and evil spirits is common, witch hunts are nothing new. But in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there’s a new twist to this ancient inquisition. A majority of those said to be involved in witchcraft and sorcery are children, and such allegations against them are the No. 1 cause of homelessness among youths. Of the estimated 25,000 children living on the streets of Kinshasa, the capital, more than 60% had been thrown out of their homes by relatives accusing them of witchcraft, child-welfare advocates say. The practice is so rampant that Congo’s new constitution, adopted in December, includes a provision outlawing allegations of sorcery against children. —Los Angeles Times, 8/19/2006 An Orthodox Jew who runs a business is supposed to close it on Saturday, the Sabbath. But one who operates a business on the Internet doesn’t need to close his Web business on Saturday. First he isn’t doing anything, and thus isn’t violating the Sabbath, and second, on the Internet, it is not Sabbath for everyone in every place. If you are an Orthodox Jew, you aren’t supposed to open your computer on the Sabbath. But you can leave it running because you are not doing anything on it and thus not violating the atmosphere of the special day. You have no permission to look at it, however. —Rabbi Yosef Carmel, in an interview on the website www.eretzhemdah.org China released a bishop of the underground Roman Catholic Church after more than 10 years in prison. The bishop, An Shuxin, was given permission to work as a priest. Beijing and the Vatican ended diplomatic relations in the 1950s. Since then, two Catholic churches have co-existed in China—an underground one loyal to the pope and the state-approved church that does not recognize the Vatican’s authority. —Agence France Presse, 8/26/2006 Social A paralyzed man using a new brain sensor has been able to move a computer cursor, open e-mail and control a robotic device simply by thinking about doing it, a team of scientists said. They believe the BrainGate sensor, which involves implanting electrodes in the brain, could offer new hope to people paralyzed by injuries or illnesses. The scientists implanted a tiny silicon chip with 100 electrodes into an area of the brain responsible for movement. The activity of the cells was recorded and sent to a computer which translated the commands and enabled the patient to move and control the external device. —Reuters, 7/12/2006 Working children number an estimated 122 million in Asia, or 64 percent of the worldwide total, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). South Asia, which includes Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, remains a child labor hotspot, according to World Bank statistics contained in the ILO report. In Nepal nearly 40 percent of children aged 10-14 were working, sometimes for long hours and in jobs requiring strenuous physical labor such as in mines, quarries and carpet factories. —Associated Press, 8/31/2006 At least 67 people, including dozens of looters siphoning gasoline from a government pipeline, were killed in an explosion after fuel vapor was accidentally ignited by a cigarette lighter, Iraqi police and government officials said. Despite Iraq’s huge oil reserves, corruption, mismanagement and the lack of security have created a severe gasoline shortage that has sent prices to $3.20 per gallon and forced drivers to wait in gasoline lines for as long as 24 hours. Diwaniya residents punctured the pipeline. “They were filling their jerrycans until one of the looters lit a lighter to smoke his cigarette, and that resulted in the explosion,” an official said. —New York Times, 8/30/2006 The number of Americans without health insurance probably rose to a record in 2005 as medical costs increased three times as fast as wages, according to forecasts for a Census Bureau report. Almost 46 million people don’t have insurance. Eight million of those don’t have access, while 15 million of those qualify for state-federal Medicaid for the poor. Others are illegal immigrants. —Bloomberg News, 8/29/2006 A severe drought has slowly sizzled a large swath of the Plains States, leaving farmers and ranchers with conditions that they compare to those of the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. Shrunken sunflower plants, normally valuable for seeds and oil, are being used as a makeshift feed for livestock. Gov. Michael Rounds of South Dakota, who has requested that 51 of the state’s 66 counties be designated a federal agricultural disaster area, recently sought unusual help from his constituents: he issued a proclamation declaring a week to pray for rain. —New York Times, 8/29/2006 Leading astronomers issued new guidelines that for the first time would define what is and isn’t a planet. Under the new guidelines, Pluto is demoted to a “dwarf”—a step below Earth and the seven other “classical” planets. The 2,500 astronomers from 75 nations meeting in Prague voted to officially shrink to eight planets from the traditional nine. The International Astronomers’ Union new definition of a planet is that it must: orbit the sun; be big enough for its own gravity to compact it into a ball; not be surrounded by objects of similar size and characteristics. —Fox News, 8/25/2006 British police arrested 24 people suspected of plotting to bomb as many as 10 passenger airplanes bound for the U.S. from Britain. The planned operation called for suicide bombers to board planes while carrying liquid explosives disguised in soft-drink bottles. If successful, the bombers could have killed more than 3,000 people. —The Week, 8/25/2006 There are some 650,000 HIV sufferers living in China, according to the World Health Organization. The country has been hit by outbreaks of both avian flu and SARS in recent years. About 300 million Chinese drink contaminated water with some 190 million being sickened by it each year. Experts estimate that around 400,000 Chinese annually die from breathing polluted air. Five of the 10 most polluted cities in the world are in China. —Barron’s, 7/31/2006 Sudan’s Islamist government is refusing to reverse its opposition to the entry of U.N. peacekeepers in the Darfur region. African church leaders and analysts are urging the international community, including the Africa Union, to increase the pressure on President Omar al-Bashir’s government to stop the carnage in Darfur. The U.N. World Food Program said the poor security situation had made it too dangerous for truck convoys to drive through large areas in north and south Darfur, where fresh outbreaks of fighting have occurred. More than 200,000 people are reported to have been killed and over two million have fled their homes since early 2003, when fighting erupted between African rebel groups and militias backed by the Arab-led Khartoum government. —CNS News, 8/25/2006 Scientists in the US have created human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, a discovery that appears to get around a basic ethical objection to stem cell research. —Wall Street Journal, 8/23/2006 Political One-third of China’s vast landmass is suffering from acid rain caused by its rapid industrial growth. China’s factories spewed out 25.5 million tons of sulphur dioxide—the chemical that causes acid rain —last year, up 27 percent from 2000, said Sheng Huaren, deputy chairman of the Standing Committee of parliament. Environmental protection has become a prominent issue in China following a string of industrial accidents that poisoned major rivers, forcing several cities to shut down their water systems. Chinese cities are among the world’s smoggiest following two decades of breakneck economic growth. The government says all of China’s major rivers are dangerously polluted. Millions of people lack access to clean drinking water. —The Associated Press, 8/27/2006 More than 100 government investigators have descended on Shanghai to probe possible abuses in the Chinese commercial capital’s $1.2 billion pension system, in a widening scandal that is reverberating throughout China because of its possible political and economic ramifications. The central government in Beijing has struggled to get a handle on official corruption that has accompanied the country’s rapid economic growth. Shanghai holds a significant share of China’s pension assets. While much of China’s retirement system is poorly developed, Shanghai’s is one of four with a modern, centralized organizational structure. —Wall Street Journal, 8/29/2006 Afghanistan is set to produce its largest ever opium crop in 2006. The one billion dollar campaign to eradicate the crop had been “an absolute disaster” a top western counter-narcotics official said. The booming poppy crop has opened up divisions within the international community, which had given Afghan farmers an ultimatum to switch to viable alternatives to opium. —Financial Times, 7/5/2006 A Chinese court issued a four-year prison sentence to an activist who has stood up against the state for its mandated family planning. Chen Guangcheng—a blind self-taught legal advocate—was named as one of the world’s 100 most influential people last spring. China’s strict population-control policies limit most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two. Government authorities routinely force women to have abortions and sterilizations in order to carry out its policy. The case is a setback for efforts at legal reform in China.
Richard Lugar, chairman of the US Senate foreign relations committee, has urged the U.S. to adopt specific contingency plans for a potential disruption to oil supplies from Venezuela. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has several times warned that he would cut off oil supplies to the US if it persisted in allegedly plotting his overthrow. Mr. Lugar wrote in a letter to President Bush that “Venezuela’s leverage over global oil prices and its direct supply lines and refining capacity in the US give Venezuela undue ability to impact US security and our economy.” Venezuela ships two-thirds of its oil to the US and oil accounts for about half of fiscal revenue. —Financial Times, 7/24/2006 One of the greatest crimes of the 20th century has gone unpunished for 30 years. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge systematically tortured, starved and smashed approximately 2.2 million fellow Cambodians, or between one-fourth and one-third of the entire population. Thirty years later, the country is still lost and broken. All the country’s flaws—from trafficking in persons to the rampant corruption that pervades every level of government —have been exacerbated by the failure to bring the leaders of the Khmer Rouge to justice. There will remain severe limitations on how far Cambodia can reform until some degree of justice is rendered. —Wall Street Journal editorial by Joseph A.
Mussomeli, Financial NASA has handed the multi-billion dollar contract for the building of the Orion [manned spacecraft] to Lockheed Martin. The first prototype will carry up to six astronauts to the International Space Station, while a later version could take four astronauts to the moon where they would use a separate lander ship to reach the surface. Orion is scheduled to make its first human flight by 2014. —[London] Times Online, 9/1/2006 Health-care spending increases over the past 40 years are extending U.S. life expectancy according to a new study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of Michigan. Government figures show health-care outlays have risen at more than twice the inflation rate and account for 16 percent of gross domestic product. The authors examined life expectancy figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as government surveys. They found that, on average, a person born in 1960 could expect to live 70 years, whereas someone born in 2000 has a life expectancy of 77 years. —Wall Street Journal, 8/31/2006 So many super-rich Americans evade taxes using offshore accounts that law enforcement cannot control the growing misconduct, according to a Senate report that provides the most detailed look ever at high-level tax schemes. Cheating now equals about 7 cents out of each dollar paid by honest taxpayers, as much as $70 billion a year, the report estimated. —New York Times, 8/1/2006 U.S. President Bush recently signed into law a comprehensive bill aimed at rehabilitating the traditional pension plans still operated by many American companies. The irony is that many companies whose pensions are in fine form probably will limit benefits anyway. The costs of maintaining so-called defined benefit plans are simply still too great. These plans guarantee retirees set monthly payments for life. The Pension Reform Bill compels many companies to fully fund their defined-benefit plans over a period of years and pay additional premiums to shore up the U.S.’s pension-insurance fund. But the bill has had the effect of adding incentives to freeze benefits. —Wall Street Journal, 8/29/2006 The financial noose is tightening around North Korea as international banks sever ties with the nation. The United States has accused Pyongyang of spreading weapons and missile technology to other countries, counterfeiting U.S. currency and trafficking drugs. It wants to see the reclusive, communist-led regime financially incapacitated. Banks in Singapore, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong and Mongolia are opting not to do business with North Korea. Some analysts worry that the financial restrictions are only deepening the North’s isolation. —The Associated Press, 8/29/2006 An unprecedented infestation of tiny flying beetles has put the great forests of the Mountain West under siege. Tens of millions of Colorado’s mature pine trees will die within the next few years. Millions more are falling in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, and into Canada. Federal and state forest managers have conceded defeat: There is no way to stop the hungry swarm. Millions of acres in treasured national lands, including vast swaths of wilderness in and around Yellowstone National Park, will be affected. The deaths of so many millions of trees will create an enormous fire risk across the West. —Los Angeles Times, 8/27/2006 Efforts to strike a global free-trade deal aimed at boosting economic growth and reducing poverty in the developing world broke down, falling victim to flawed negotiating strategies and overblown promises made when the talks were launched in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. The gulf separating negotiators was so wide that World Trade Organization chief Pawcal Lamy proposed no timetable for restarting or concluding the talks. —Wall Street Journal, 7/25/2006 Israel Israel’s economy is in good shape to weather the cost of its offensive against the Lebanese Hizbollah movement, but the costs of compensation to the rocket-hit north, loss of tourism receipts and the blow to consumption have led analysts to downgrade this year’s growth forecasts. Before the conflict erupted, Israel’s budget was in surplus. There was even talk of cuts in the country’s defense spending, previously a sacred cow. —Financial Times, 8/2/2007 There are increasing signs from Gaza and Ramallah that the Palestinian Authority will soon be disbanded. The ongoing rift between the Hamas-led government and the Fatah-backed leader of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, means nothing is being done for the people, particularly in Gaza. —The Media Line, 8/11/2006 “The clash we are witnessing around the world … is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century …The Jews have come from the tragedy of the Holocaust and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists … We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people.”—Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan, on Al-Jazeera TV. —Middle East Media Research Institute, Hebrew University’s [HU] Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality discovered a new drug treatment for halting the growth and spread of cancer cells. The approach has been shown to inhibit malignant cells without affecting normal ones, and without the severe side effects of traditional treatments. The HU researchers’ approach is based on the actions of actibbind, a protein produced by the black mold Aspergillus nigher, a well-known microorganism used in biotech and food technology. —Financial Times, 8/28/2006 In the face of Iran’s race to obtain nuclear power, Israel signed a contract with Germany last month to buy two Dolphin-class submarines that will, according to foreign reports, provide superior second-strike nuclear capabilities. The submarines will be assembled in Germany and provided with a propulsion system allowing them to remain underwater for far longer than the submarines currently in the Israel Navy’s fleet. According to sources close to the deal, the submarines will be operational in the near future. —The Jerusalem Post, 8/22/2006 |
