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PBI Directors Elected

The members of the Pastoral Bible Institute have elected these seven individuals to serve as directors for the next twelve months:

World News

Religious

Once one of the nation’s most popular televangelists, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller is watching his life’s work crumble. His son and recent successor, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, has abruptly resigned as senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral. The shimmering, glass-walled mega church is home to the “Hour of Power” broadcast, an evangelism staple that’s been on the air for more than three decades. The church is in financial turmoil: It plans to sell more than $65 million worth of its Orange County property to pay off debt.

—Associated Press, 1/31/2009

Pakistan agreed to restore strict Islamist law in the Swat valley. The decision on Islamic law is likely to draw criticism from the United States and other Western powers fearful that Pakistan is playing into the hands of religious conservatives who sympathize with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Religious conservatives in Swat have long fought for sharia to ­replace Pakistan’s secular laws, which came into force after the former princely state was absorbed into the Pakistani federation in 1969.

—Reuters, 2/16/2009

Police raided a private evangelical seminar in central China and detained more than 60 worshippers. More than 30 police officers broke into the gathering Feb. 11 in Nanyang city in central Henan province, the China Aid Association said in a statement. China’s communist government allows worship only in state-supervised churches, which claim about 11 million members.

—Associated Press, 2/17/2009

In the United States, churches have been filling up as rapidly as its economy has been unwinding. The same seems to be true in Singapore. Of the 30 temples, mosques and churches, 19 said they have seen a jump in the number of worshippers showing up since the recession hit. In the last Census in 2000, Buddhists and Taoists made up 51 per cent of the population aged 15 years and over. Christians and Muslims made up 15 per cent of the population each while 4 per cent are Hindus.

—The Straits Times, 2/10/2009

Mormonism is growing in Latin America where new members are attracted by such factors as the church’s affluence and stability, as well as its family image and the belief that Jesus Christ visited the Americas after he was resurrected. The once-isolated group, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, is one of the fastest-growing and most affluent religions. More than half of its 13.5 million members live outside the United States. The Mormon flock is flourishing in Latin America, especially in Mexico and Brazil, with some 5.2 million members and 5,500 chapels.

—Reuters, 2/5/2009

A Tennessee judge declined to dismiss child neglect charges against a woman and her Universal Life Church minister for failing to get medical treatment for a 15-year-old girl who suffered from a rare form of bone cancer which eventually caused her death in 2002. There is a state law that allows faith healing, but it is silent on when or even if a parent must at some point abandon prayer in favor of medicine.

—Knox News, 1/12/2009

The American style of worship, like everything else in overloaded lives, is speeding up. Call it God on the go. This hurried search for the Almighty partly explains the rise of a niche industry of books, DVDs, podcasts, text messages and e-mail blasts that distill the essentials of faith. The materials offer bite-size spiritual morsels that can be digested in minutes, or even seconds, on the daily commute, aboard airplanes or at the dinner table.

—Los Angeles Times, 1/16/2009

Kerala’s (India) government is preparing to move a bill in the assembly ending caste discrimination at hundreds of Hindu temples in the southern state. Priests will be appointed from successful Hindu trainees irrespective of caste differences.

—Arab News, 1/10/2009

The number of Christian worshippers in Britain has clearly been in decline for generations. Regular worshippers were estimated at around 6 million in 1980, falling to 4.4 million in 2000 and 4 million in 2005. Yet recent research by Tearfund, a Christian charity, suggests the decline may be bottoming out. Tearfund says numbers are on the increase, though attendance may not be as regular as it once was. Its research found that 7.3 million attended church at least once a month in the year to September 2008, and 12.8 million attended once a year.

—The Christian Science Monitor, 2/26/2009

Papal indulgences have been emphasized more in the last few years, particularly under Pope Benedict XVI, in an effort to bring the church back to traditional practices. Indulgences allow Catholics who have been forgiven for their sins to avoid purgatory and go to heaven after death. The sale of indulgences to fund building projects was one of the protests Martin Luther had against the Catholic Church in 1517. There has been a resurgence that began under Pope John Paul II and picked up momentum under Pope Benedict XVI. Pope John Paul II declared indulgences for the church’s Jubilee Year in 2000 and for the Year of the Eucharist in 2004 and 2005. Pope Benedict XVI has continued the practice.

—Tribune Review, 2/25/2009

Social

Memory loss, cognitive impairment, brain cell degeneration and cell death were prevented or reversed in several animal models after treatment with a naturally occurring protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). The study by a University of California, San Diego-led team shows that BDNF treatment can potentially provide long-lasting protection by slowing, or even stopping the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in animal models. When compared with control groups not treated with BDNF, the treated animals demonstrated significant improvement in the performance of a variety of learning and memory tests. … [This suggests] that the protective and restorative effects of BDNF on damaged neurons and neuronal signaling may offer a new approach to treating Alzheimer’s disease.

— ScienceDaily.com, 2/9/2009

The percentage of people 65 and older who are in the work force rose to 16.8% at the end of 2008, from 11.9% a decade earlier. Among people 75 and older, the increase was even greater—to 7.3% from 4.7%. The motivation for many today is financial necessity, driven by outstanding mortgages, bank loans and high medical bills.

—Wall Street Journal, 2/23/2009

Foreclosure filings in the U.S. soared 81 percent last year to 2.3 million, the highest on record, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based seller of default data.

—Bloomberg.com, 2/24/2009

The number of first-time [unemployment] claims hit 667,000, the Labor Department said, the highest level since October 1982. And the number of people claiming benefits for more than one week reached 5.1 million, the highest total on records dating back to 1967 and the fifth straight week that continuing claims have reached a new high. A third report Thursday showed that new home sales tumbled 10.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 309,000 last month, the worst showing on government records going back to 1963.

—Associated Press, 2/26/2009

Revenue raked in by Italy’s mob surged 40 percent in 2008, turning crime into the nation’s No. 1 business, Eurispes said in its annual report. Eurispes and SOS Impresa are associations of businessmen protesting against extortion. Drug trafficking remains the primary source of revenue for the mob, bringing in about 59 billion euros. Arms sales reached 5.8 billion euros. Italy estimates that organized crime groups siphon 92 billion euros, about 6 percent of Italy’s gross domestic product, from Italian businesses a year through protection payments, usurious interest rates on loans and other forms of extortion.

—Bloomberg, 1/30/2009

As Ireland slides deeper into a recession, its workers are returning to the emigration trail that blighted the nation for 150 years until the economic boom of the 1990s. With the Dublin-based Economic and Social Research Institute forecasting that 50,000 people will leave in search of work, the country is facing mass exodus.

—Bloomberg News, 2/23/2009

Americans watched more TV than ever in the October-December 2008 time period. Average Americans age 2 and up watched an all-time high of more than 151 hours a month, up from 146 hours in the same period a year ago.

—Neilsen, 2/25/2009

Zimbabweans are facing a deepening humanitarian crisis and what appears to be a renewed security crackdown while President Robert Mugabe is setting up a new government. A cholera epidemic has claimed more than 2,000 lives and infected almost 40,000 since October 2008, the World Health Organization said. State services have collapsed. Most district hospitals and clinics have been closed because they have no drugs, materials or means to pay staff.

—Wall Street Journal, 1/14/2009

The air pollution in Mexico City was once so bad that birds dropped dead while flying. But in recent years, tough environmental standards and a push to mass transit have resulted in lead levels lowered by 95 percent, sulfur dioxide lowered by 86 percent, and carbon monoxide lowered by 74 percent.

—The Week, 1/23/2009

China said it had largely contained damage from its worst drought in decades, but warned that without rain the winter wheat harvest could be threatened. More than half of China’s provinces have been affected by the drought, and 3.46 million people still don’t have adequate drinking water.

—Wall Street Journal, 2/11/2009

The nation’s five largest railroads have put more than 30% of their boxcars—206,000—into storage according to the Association of American Railroads. Placed end-to-end, the cars would stretch from New York to Salt Lake City. According to a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, the railroad has every right to keep the cars on its tracks even though they may be in the middle of residential areas.

—Wall Street Journal, 2/23/2009

Political

Countries struggling to secure credit have resorted to barter and secretive government-to-government deals to buy food. High food prices have strained the finances of poor and middle-income nations, including Russia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Morocco. They are discussing inter-government and barter deals to import commodities. The revival of these trade practices is a result of the countries’ failure to secure trade financing as bank lending has dried up.

—Financial Times, 1/27/2009

The U.S.-China economic relationship has become arguably the world’s most important. China now has roughly $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves and has continued to buy U.S. government debt—surpassing Japan as the biggest foreign holder of Treasurys. China’s economy now is so closely intertwined with the U.S.’s that major, abrupt changes are unlikely. Leaders in China have been upset over how much the problems of the U.S. financial sector have hurt China’s holdings.

—Wall Street Journal, 1/29/2009

President Barack Obama’s first federal budget brought cries of class warfare. It would boost taxes on the wealthy, oil companies and other businesses while cutting Medicare and Medicaid payments to insurance companies and hospitals as a way to begin universal health care. It would also limit charitable and other tax deductions for the affluent and trim spending on government subsidies to big farms.

—Associated Press, 2/27/2009

Swiss law prohibits the disclosure of account information for banks located in Switzerland. This is causing a roadblock for the US Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service which has requested the identities of 52,000 private account holders in its first legal response to the demand in a massive U.S. tax-evasion inquiry.

—Wall Street Journal, 2/23/2009

Financial

In the last 82 years—the history of the Standard & Poor’s 500—the stock market has never seen a 10-year stretch as bad as the one that ended last month. Over the 10 years through January, an investor holding the stocks in the S.& P.’s 500-stock index, and reinvesting the dividends, would have lost about 5.1 percent a year after adjusting for inflation. Ignoring inflation, stocks over that decade returned half a percent a year, not a very good showing but not a loss. But with inflation taking off, the real, inflation-adjusted return was negative.

—New York Times, 2/6/2009

U.S. household debt, which has been growing steadily since the Federal Reserve began tracking it in 1952, declined for the first time in the third quarter of 2008. In the same quarter, U.S. consumer spending growth declined for the first time in 17 years.

—Wall Street Journal, 1/6/2009

Home prices fell 12.4% during the fourth quarter of 2008, the largest year-over-year decline since the National Association of Realtors began keeping comprehensive records in 1979. The median price for a U.S. home sold during the fourth quarter of 2008 fell to $180,100, down from $205,700 during the last quarter of 2007. In comparison, median home prices dipped a mere 1.6% between 2006 and 2007.

—CNNMoney.com, 2/12/2009

Kuwait is reeling from a banking crisis at the same time it and other Persian Gulf governments scramble to cope with falling oil prices and a softening real-estate market. Kuwait’s government announced a $5.4 billion package to prop up banks—the only bailout plan thus far among Persian Gulf states.

—Wall Street Journal, 2/11/2009

Defaults on adjustable rate mortgages are rising. Twenty-eight percent of the nearly $750 billion option arms were delinquent or in foreclosure as of December 2008.

—Wall Street Journal, 1/30/2009

2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street yet despite crippling losses employees at financial companies in New York collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year. Corporate governance experts, investors and lawmakers question why financial companies that have accepted taxpayer money paid any bonuses at all.

—New York Times, 1/28/2009

American International Group Inc. managed to lose $62 billion in just 92 days. The insurance giant’s quarterly loss reported Monday was the biggest in corporate history. AIG’s quarterly loss ... was more than half the $114.53 billion lost by nearly all other Standard & Poor’s 500 companies combined in the fourth quarter. This is the first quarter ever that the S&P 500 has tallied a loss.

—Associated Press, 3/2/2009

 Israel

Israel set a record for tourism in 2008, recording more than 3 million visitors, which was 13% higher than the previous record year in 2000, according to a Tourism Ministry press release. The 2008 total represented a 32% increase from the year before. While a record number of visitors came from the United States this past year, 2008 also saw huge gains from other countries, including an 84% increase in Russian tourists compared to 2007. Russia and the US alone combined for almost a million tourists.

—BFP Israel Mosaic Radio, 1/19/2009

A 78-year old retired farmer, named Alec Garrard, has dedicated a massive 33,000 hours to constructing a model of Herod’s ancient temple. The model measures a whopping 20-ft by 12-ft, and it is still not finished. Garrard has hand-baked and painted every clay brick and tile and even sculpted 4,000 tiny human figures to populate the courtyards. Gar­rard, from Norfolk, spent more than three years researching the temple, which was destroyed by the Romans 2,000 years ago and deemed to be one of the most remarkable buildings of ancient times.

—The Telegraph, 2/26/2009

A cancer sniffing nose developed by a Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researcher yielded promising results in a study conducted on some 100 people at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. The research showed that the electronic nose is capable of efficiently and accurately distinguishing between cancer patients and healthy people, and could even detect the location and nature of the tumor. The success rate for the detection of the type of tumor stood at 92%.

—Ynetnews.com, 2/17/2009

Rainfall in January 2009 was the worst in recorded history for Israel. “Israel is in the midst of the biggest water crisis it has ever known,” said Ben-Eliezer. The Israeli winter calendar has two months to go but experts do not predict any improvement.

—BFP Israel Mosaic Radio, 1/27/2009

New drug-delivery research from Israel based on nano- and micro-technology might provide much needed relief and more effective cancer treatment. The new drug delivery technology, developed at Tel Aviv University, enables drugs to specifically target cancer cells, leaving surrounding healthy cells intact and reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy. The science uses tiny bubbles, visible only through powerful microscopes, which contain payloads of therapeutic drugs. The surface of the bubbles contains an agent that allows them to distinguish which cells are cancerous and which healthy.

—ISRAEL21c, 2/24/2009

A new US–Israel agreement of cooperation in renewable energy was announced at the opening of the Second Eilat–Eilot International Renewable Energy Conference in February. The US–Israel Energy Cooperation Act is an international collaboration aimed at creating a renewable energy storage initiative to reduce the world’s oil dependence. The Cooperation Act will fund eligible joint ventures between United States and Israeli businesses. Two million dollars, or US$1 million from each country, has already been allocated for this year with a significant increase expected in future years.

—www.Israel21c.org, 2/2/2009