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Pastoral
Bible Institute News Date of Annual PBI Meeting The annual meeting of PBI Members and Directors will be held on Friday, July 18, at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The General Convention of Bible Students will begin on Saturday, July 19, at the same location and end the evening of July 24. Those who are interested in the Pastoral Bible Institute, whether members or not, are welcome to attend this meeting. Contact the Institute’s secretary for accommodation details. World News Religious The Dead Sea scrolls, the most potent source of our knowledge of Judaism and early Christianity, are to be digitized for the internet in a project that could take up to five years. It will involve the manipulation of some 15,000 scraps of leather or papyrus, some no bigger than a speck of dust. —Financial Times, 12/22/2007 Christians are fleeing Iraq and Christianity risks disappearing from the country, says a senior Baghdad archbishop. Archbishop Avak V. Asadourian of the Armenian Church of Iraq said the four years since the US-led invasion had been “the most difficult by far” of his 28-year ministry in Iraq. “We are faced with the problem of the lack of hope. Unless the churches in Iraq can open small windows of hope, then I am afraid that Christianity will face a slow demise not only in Iraq but in the entire region where Jesus Christ lived and worked.” —Ecumenical News International, 12/10/2007 Religious repression in the Chinese ruled Himalayan region of Tibet is tightening, with authorities intensifying pressure on monks to denounce the exiled Dalai Lama. The government had started building police stations close to, or even in, monasteries, limiting the number of monks or nuns and making them take exams to prove their loyalty to China, the London-based Tibet Watch said. China has ruled Tibet with an iron hand since its troops took control in 1950. —Reuters, 12/9/2007 According to figures compiled by the American Religious Identification Survey, almost 30 million Americans claimed “no religion” in 2001, a doubling from 1991. Catholicism, the country’s largest Christian denomination, boasts 51 million followers. —The Economist, 12/11/2007 The Vatican published a limited edition of its documents concerning the 14th century heresy trial of the Knights Templar, an ancient order brought to life recently in the popular book, The DaVinci Code. The price per copy for the 799 300-page volumes of Processus Contra Templarios (“Trial against the Templars”): $8,377. —Associated Press, 10/13/2007 213 women and 210 men were ordained as priests by the Church of England in 2006. This was the first time women outnumbered men since the church began ordaining females in 1994. —Time, 12/3/2007 Pope Benedict XVI and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah will hold talks, the first meeting of a pontiff with a leader of the kingdom and a step toward establishing diplomatic ties between the two states. The visit comes less than a month after 138 Muslim scholars wrote an open letter to 28 Christian leaders, inviting them to find the “common essentials of our two religions.” Saudi Arabia is one of nine majority-Muslim countries with which the Holy See doesn’t have diplomatic relations. In Saudi Arabia, Christians aren’t allowed to worship in public, churches are outlawed, and crucifixes and copies of the Bible can’t be brought into the country. —Bloomberg, 11/6/2007 Social Mexican authorities cautiously opened a canal through an enormous landslide that blocked a major river in southern Mexico in November and swept away an entire community. The Grijalva River, the second-largest by volume in Mexico, flowed without incident through an 875-yard-long canal, dug through the middle of an enormous mountain of earth that collapsed Nov. 4 during heavy rains. The landslide buried the town of San Juan de Grijalva, blocked a section of the river and kicked up a huge wave of water, killing 19 people. —Associated Press, 12/18/2007 In 2007, more than 150 probiotic and prebiotic commercial food products have been introduced in the U.S. These products contain “friendly” bacteria similar to those found in the human digestive system. While many probiotic products haven’t been put to a rigorous scientific test, there is emerging evidence that in huge amounts, some kinds of “friendly” bacteria are helpful. Small studies have suggested that certain probiotics might help treat or prevent some gastroenteritis, diarrhea and allergic skin reactions, and the bugs are being investigated for many other ailments. —Associated Press, 12/23/2007 A wealthy widow repaid the kindness shown to her by a family that runs a Chinese restaurant she frequented by leaving them $21 million. Golda Bechal’s 1994 will said she wanted Kim Sing Man and his wife, Bee Lian, the owners of a Chinese restaurant northeast of London, to inherit her money. She died at age 88 in January 2004. Kim Sing Man remembered Bechal as a classy woman who “always enjoyed her Chinese pickled leeks and bean sprouts.” —Associated Press, 12/7/2007 In the 1980s, scientists said the Amazon was burning and would be gone by the end of the century. Two decades later, the dire predictions have not come to pass. Around 80 percent of the world’s largest remaining tropical wilderness is still standing—a vast carpet of green crisscrossed by the Amazon River and its 1,100 tributaries. The reasons for the rain forest’s survival have more to do with economics and a political change of fortune than because of the worldwide environmental campaign to save the Amazon. In the 1980s, Brazil was under a military dictatorship with ambitious plans to develop Brazil’s portion of the rain forest—1.6 million square miles. Had the country not suffered in a massive debt crisis in the late 80s, “everything would be gone by now,” says Philip Fearnside, an American scientist at the Brazilian government’s National Institute for Amazon Research. —Associated Press, 12/8/2007 215,951,442: Number of records containing sensitive personal information that have been involved in security breaches in the U.S. since 2005. —www.privacyrights.org, November 2007 The Northern Hemisphere is the warmest (in 2007) since record-keeping started 127 years ago, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Temperatures for January through October averaged 1.3 degrees above the norm. —USA Today, 11/26/2007 Political Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed in a suicide attack after a campaign rally here, dashing hopes for a smooth transition to democracy in this troubled country. —USA Today, 12/27/2007 Nine mostly eastern European countries will join the European Union’s passport-free travel zone beginning in December, 2007, in the bloc’s latest step to overcome the continent’s divisions. Car, train and boat passengers between the eastern countries and most of Western Europe will no longer need to show passports as of Dec. 21, the EU said. Passport checks on air passengers will cease when the summer flight schedule takes effect in March. The move expands the freedom to travel for 75 million citizens in eight former communist countries—Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia—which all joined the EU in 2004. Travelers will still need to show passports when entering and leaving Britain, Ireland, Bulgaria and Romania. —Bloomberg, 11/6/2007 The government is pulling the plug on the incandescent light bulb. The landmark energy bill President George W. Bush signed into law will require lighting to use up to 30 percent less energy, which will basically phase out the traditional light bulb because it won’t be able to meet the new efficiency standards. The higher efficiency requirements under the new energy law kick in for the 100-watt bulb beginning in 2012, followed by the 75-watt bulb a year later and then 40- and 60-watt bulbs will be phased out in 2014. Australia, Ireland and other countries are already getting rid of the incandescent bulb. —Reuters, 12/19/2007 Saudi Arabia is on a building binge. In the works are new seaports, an extended railroad system, a series of new industrial cities and a score of refineries, power stations and smelters. Over the next dozen years, such Saudi investments are expected to consume $600 billion. But they’ll also consume large quantities of Saudi oil. Much as China leveraged its asset of cheap labor to make an industrial leap, the Saudis and their oil-rich neighbors are tapping their own prime asset to fuel development. The problem is that with output slumping in places like the North Sea and Mexico, the world is counting on increased oil supplies from the Middle East, above all Saudi Arabia. Global oil demand is expected to increase from 85 million barrels a day to over 100 million barrels a day within 10 years. —Wall Street Journal, 12/12/2007 Japan has revived the practice of fingerprinting all foreign residents as they enter the country. The move is designed to match US immigration procedures instituted after the terrorist attacks of 2001. The plan has drawn criticism from long-time foreign residents, especially those whose business takes them out of the country frequently for international trips. The Japanese justice ministry home page states the purpose as “To revive the title Japan: The safest country in the world.” In Japan, crime is almost always associated with foreigners. —Financial Times, 11/20/2007 Japan embarked on its largest whaling expedition in decades, targeting protected humpbacks for the first time since a 1963 moratorium protecting the species. The whalers plan to kill up to 50 humpbacks, as many as 935 minke whales and up to 50 fin whales. Japan says it needs to kill the animals in order to conduct research on their reproductive and feeding patterns. —Associated Press, 11/16/2007 The first commercial liquid biofuel plant in the U.S. is going to produce energy from wood scraps by mid-2009. Canadian biofuel developer Dynamotive Energy plans to build a plant south of St. Louis, Missouri to generate up to 12 million gallons of fuel a year from 73,000 tons of wood byproducts from nearby sawmills. Industrial users could use the fuel to replace conventional oil to operate their boilers. The company said its fuel produces less polluting nitrous oxide and sulfur oxide gases. —Company press release, 12/7/2007 Because of rising demand for ethanol, American farmers are growing more corn than at any time since World War II. The nation’s corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. And when that nitrogen runs off fields in Corn Belt states, it makes its way to the Mississippi River and eventually pours into the Gulf of Mexico, where it contributes to a growing “dead zone” —a 7,900 square mile patch so depleted of oxygen that fish, crabs and shrimp suffocate. —Associated Press, 12/18/2007 Financial
The losses [in Billions] from sub prime mortgages could surpass those of past
debt crises: —Wall Street Journal, 12/10/2007 China’s central bank said suspected cases of money laundering jumped 12-fold to 387 billion yuan ($52 billion) in 2006 as measures to monitor currency flows in the booming economy were tightened. Ten foreign lenders were among 662 banks fined a total of 40.5 million yuan for violating money laundering rules last year, the bank said, without identifying them. —Bloomberg, 11/6/2007 Wall Street’s year-end bonuses climbed 14 percent in a year when shareholders suffered their biggest declines since 2002 and fourth-quarter earnings slumped the most in at least a decade. Payouts rose at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and fell at Bear Stearns Cos. The four New York-based firms are paying $49.7 billion in salaries, benefits and bonuses this year. —Bloomberg, 12/20/2007 State treasurers from Florida to Maine to Montana have found themselves in the awkward position of having to explain why they parked taxpayer money in some of the most opaque investments on Wall Street. More than a dozen state-run cash pools that manage money for local governments have exposure to mortgage-related and other high-risk holdings that roiled credit markets, according to rating agency Standard & Poor’s. The fear now is that the same subprime-mortgage turmoil that triggered multi-billion dollar write downs for banks might trickle down to teachers, civil servants and even the vendors delivering supplies to schools because of the way public funds were invested. —Associated Press, 12/10/2007 China’s financial industry has struggled to process an inflow of money from as many as 100,000 new trading accounts a day, a surge in demand that broke local trading records and made the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges among the world’s busiest. —Wall Street Journal, 11/13/2007 The list of the world’s fastest 500 computers, published twice a year by academic researchers, once again was topped by the BlueGene/L system, which was recently upgraded and showed the ability to perform at 478 teraflops—478 trillion calculations per second. That’s tens of thousands of times faster than your average desktop PC today. For the first time, India placed a machine in the top 10: a 118-teraflop Hewlett-Packard Co. system in Pune, India. —Associated Press, 11/12/2007 Israel Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she felt a moral duty to protect Israel and would stand firm in the face of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its threats to wipe the country off the map. After receiving the prestigious Leo Baeck award from the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Merkel said the prize gave her a responsibility to fight racism and to foster close ties between Germans and the Jewish community. —World Jewish Congress, 11/7/2007 Israel’s unemployment rate in October stood at 6.9%, down by 1% since January, and is the lowest in a decade, Army Radio reported. —Jersusalem Post, 12/20/2007 Jewish immigration into Israel dropped 6% in 2007, reaching a 20-year low of just under 19,700 immigrants, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption announced. The best years for aliya were just after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Over 400,000 Jews arrived in Israel between 1989 and 1991. The most significant drop this year was in immigration from the former Soviet Union, with 15% fewer arriving in Israel than in 2006. —Jerusalem Post, 12/24/2007 Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the United States, over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its workforce employed in technical professions, Israel places first in this category as well. The Weizmann Institute of Science has been voted “the best university in the world for life scientists to conduct research.” —United Christian Broadcasters, 11/5/2007 Dr. Moshe Flugelman, a cardiologist and the CEO of MultiGene Vascular Systems, developed a new kind of cell therapy that harnesses cells taken from a patient’s body, activates them with the insertion of specific genes in a lab, and injects them back into the patient’s artery. These new empowered cells trigger angiogenesis, improving blood flow to the leg, arm, or heart by causing small blood arteries to expand and grow, bypassing blocked arteries. Unlike traditional therapies, this is less invasive and the cells are taken while in outpatient surgery. Recovery is longer, but the patient can go home the same day after treatment. —www.Israel21c.org, 12/18/2007 Israel launched its most advanced spy satellite in September. The Tecsar spy satellite was put into orbit by an Indian rocket. Tescar uses advanced radar technology to produce very high resolution images. Israel has several spy and communication satellites currently in orbit. —BFP Israel Mosaic Radio, 11/2007 The Tourism Ministry reported that during October 2007, over 2 million rooms were occupied in hotels throughout the country. This marks a 20% increased compared to 2006, and a 21% increase over 2005. —ynet.news, 12/2/2007 The year 2007 is on track to become the safest year in Israel since before the second Palestinian uprising more than seven years ago. There has been only one suicide bombing in Israel this year, a bumbled attack in January that killed three people in the Red Sea resort of Eilat. —McClatchy Newspapers, 12/10/2007 Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in attendance at the Persian Gulf Security Conference, was pressed on whether the U.S. had a double standard in organizing the world community to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but not working to disarm Israel. “Israel is not training terrorists to subvert its neighbors, it has not shipped weapons to a place like Iraq to kill thousands of civilians, it has not threatened to destroy any of its neighbors, it is not trying to destabilize the government of Lebanon,” Gates said. —New York Times, 12/10/2007 The UN General Assembly’s Second Committee adopted an Israeli-initiated draft resolution dealing with agricultural technology for development. The resolution calls on developed countries to make their knowledge and know-how in the field of agricultural technology more accessible to the developing world, in particular the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger. The resolution is the culmination of an unprecedented process in which Israel for the first time initiated a socio-economic resolution at the UN General Assembly. The resolution gives expression to Israeli know-how in the areas of agriculture, fighting desertification, rural development, irrigation, medical development, computers and the empowerment of women, as reflected for many years in Israel’s contribution to developing nations, particularly in Africa. —Israel MFA Spokesman, 12/11/2007 |
