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Pastoral
Bible Institute News World News Religious Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, according to the Vatican’s newly released 2008 yearbook of statistics. Muslims make up 19.2% of the world’s population and Catholics 17.4% —Reuters, 5/20/2009 Moldova continues to refuse legal status to religious communities of a variety of faiths. Despite seeking state registration for the past decade and a judgment against the Moldovan government in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, no Muslim communities have yet gained legal status. Since the adoption of a controversial Religion Law which came into force on 17 August 2007, no Pentecostal Union or Baptist Union congregations have been able to gain registration either. —Forum 18, 6/16/2009 Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s repressive religious policies remain unchanged. “Legal” restrictions include: requiring all religious activity by groups to have state permission and be limited to one geographical area; barring meetings for worship or other religious activity in private homes that are either regular or large scale; requiring all places of worship to be state-approved; and routinely expelling both Catholic and Protestant foreign religious workers. —Forum 18, 6/11/2009 Pope Benedict XVI has raised the alarm over the decline in confessions. A survey in La Repubblica of practicing Italian Catholics said that only 2 per cent went to confession more than once a month. 10 per cent went once a month, 58 per cent “once or twice a year,” and 30 per cent “never.” —Times Online, 6/18/2009 Fully 79% of Christians in the U.S. say they believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth someday. A 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found less agreement among Christians, however, on the timing and circumstances of his return. One in five American Christians, 20%, believes the Second Coming will occur in their lifetime, a larger number than the 17% who do not believe in the Second Coming at all. —Deseret News, 6/17/2009 Social Parental doubts about the safety of childhood vaccinations are leading to outbreaks of largely eradicated diseases like measles and whooping cough, according to a report from Emory University published in the New England Journal of Medicine. About 20 states allow exemptions from vaccinations because of personal beliefs. —Dow Jones, 5/7/2009 Few prevention efforts actually save the health care system money overall, despite claims by the president and some in Congress. No one really knows how much of the U.S. health care dollar goes toward prevention. The most commonly cited number—3 cents of every health care dollar—is based on 20-year-old data. An updated number—nearly 9 cents of every health care dollar—represents about $194 billion, said George Miller, who led the research for the Altarum Institute, a nonprofit consulting group. —Associated Press, 6/24/2009 More than 35% of U.S. teens admit to using their cell phones to cheat in school, says a study by nonprofit organization Common Sense Media. The teens text each other during tests and access notes sorted on their cell phones during exams. Teens with cell phones send 440 texts a week on average. —Associated Press, 6/21/2009 8% The amount of consumers in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany that admit to illegally downloading video from the Internet. —Futuresource Consulting, 6/20/2009 From January to March, Fort Campbell Army base averaged one suicide a week, said Brig. Gen. Stephen Townsend. The Army has started a program to help soldiers who are struggling with the stress of war and are most at risk for killing themselves. —Associated Press, 5/28/2009 Twelve people were indicted for luring hundreds of illegal immigrants to the U.S. to work as modern-day slaves in 14 states. —Associated Press, 5/28/2009 Recent concept cars have embraced Apple’s popular iPhone as a device not only for making phone calls or playing music, but as the key to starting the car. This fall the car-sharing service Zipcar will launch a free iPhone application that will let its customers locate available cars in their vicinity, reserve the one they want, and pay for it. Zipcar is able to do this because of the specialized electronic controller the company installs in its shared cars that lets customers unlock and drive away cars without concern about them being stolen. —MSNBC, 6/24/2009 Nearly one-third of U.S. adults have been approached with fake-check scams, usually involving fraudsters sending checks and then asking that some money be wired back, according to a survey by the Consumer Federation of America. The survey found that an estimated 1.3 million Americans lost an average of $3,000 to $4,000 when they wired the money, only to find out the checks were phony. The scam artists relied on the false belief by many that a check is valid when a bank allows funds from it to be withdrawn. In reality it can take several weeks for a check to be confirmed as fake ... [in which case] the bank wants its money back. —Los Angeles Times, 5/31/2009 As people become disillusioned from financial woes and a downtrodden economy and look to put new purpose in their lives, everyday folks are taking on new personas to perform community service, help the homeless and even fight crime. “The movement is growing,” said Ben Goldman, a real-life superhero historian. The real-life superheroes apply themselves to a broadly defined ethos of simply doing good works. —CNN, 6/4/2009 Political Civilian air traffic computer networks have been penetrated multiple times in recent years, according to a government report. The increasing reliance of modernized systems on the Internet is “especially worrisome at a time when the nation is facing increased threats from sophisticated nation-state sponsored cyber attacks,” wrote Assistant Inspector General Rebecca Lang. The report warned that the FAA isn’t well-equipped to address the breaches quickly enough. —Dow Jones, 5/7/2009 India’s government has launched one of the biggest bureaucratic exercises in the country’s history—the issue of a single identity card for each of its 1.1 billion citizens. The chairman of the planning commission said the cards would be part of a program aimed at penetrating India’s notorious red tape to deliver social services more directly to citizens. —Financial Times, 6/26/2009 Russia’s armed forces are facing their most ambitious reform since 1856 when it adopted universal conscription. Russia’s leaders have decided its military of 1.4 million people is too big and too focused on the wrong sort of war. The new doctrine will allow Russia to fight three local or regional conflicts simultaneously. The total number of soldiers would be cut to one million. At the end of the Soviet era in 1991, the total armed forces were 3.4 million. —Financial Times, 6/26/2009 Members of the lower house of the British parliament have, for the first time, elected a Jewish speaker. John Bercow, 46, a Conservative parliamentarian, was elected in a secret ballot to head the House of Commons. The son of a taxi driver, Bercow finished first in all three rounds of voting by the 646 members of parliament, defeating nine other candidates. —World Jewish Congress, 6/24/2009 After several meetings with Syrian officials, the United States has decided to return an ambassador to Syria, following a four-year absence as the Barack Obama administration continues their outreach in the Middle East. Ha’aretz is reporting that the United States is laying the groundwork to possibly restart Israel-Syria peace talks, only this time under the leadership of the United States. —Israel Mosaic Radio, 6/25/2009 Iran has stepped up its production of nuclear fuel, according to a report by the United Nations nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency. According to the IAEA report, released on June 5, the Islamic Republic now has 7,200 installed centrifuges at its underground bunker in Natanz, which could generate enough material for two nuclear weapons a year. The UN Security Council has ordered Iran to stop enriching uranium but IAEA inspectors have been blocked from visiting an Iranian nuclear reactor. —World Jewish Congress, 6/9/2009 Only 6.3% of eligible voters cast ballots in what officials said was the U.S.’s first all-digital election in Hawaii. —Associated Press, 5/28/2009 There has always been tension between public safety and individual liberty. But the debate has been rekindled in recent years following the adoption of the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Following the outbreak of the A/H1N1 flu, the push to bolster the government’s public-health powers has spawned alarm among constitutional scholars. Some legislators have sought to pass a law that would allow officials to detain or quarantine someone even when there is uncertainty over the person’s exposure to a contagious disease. —Wall Street Journal, 5/7/2009 California governor Schwarzenegger proposed legalizing marijuana and taxing its sale to create an additional estimated $1.3 billion in revenue for the state. —Associated Press, 5/4/2009 Financial Last week, Moody’s Investors Services said U.S. monthly credit card charge off rate—the percentage of debt it does not expect to be repaid—surpassed 10 percent and hit a sixth straight record high in May. Credit card companies enjoyed hefty gains during the credit boom, but are now losing billions as debt-burdened Americans lose jobs and default on credit card payments. —Reuters, 7/1/2009 One in eight U.S. households at the end of March had entered foreclosure or was delinquent on payments, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said last month. The number of homes in foreclosure in the first quarter jumped to a record 3.85 percent of outstanding U.S. mortgages, MBA said. The bulk of recent foreclosures was on prime, fixed-rate loans, extended to the most credit-worthy borrowers and the bedrock of home ownership in America. The foreclosure rate is getting worse and will likely rise to about 4.5 percent, said Patrick Newport, an economist at IHS in Lexington, Massachusetts. —Reuters, 6/25/2009 General Motors Corp filed for bankruptcy on Monday, forcing the 100-year-old automaker once seen as a symbol of American economic might and dynamism into a new and uncertain era of government ownership. The bankruptcy filing is the third-largest in U.S. history and the largest ever in U.S. manufacturing. Following the bankruptcy filing, GM shares were removed from the Dow Jones industrial average and delisted by the New York Stock Exchange as “no longer suitable for listing.” GM employs 92,000 in the United States and is indirectly responsible for 500,000 retirees. —Reuters, 6/1/2009 Households pushed their savings rate to the highest level in more than 15 years in May as a big boost in incomes from the government’s stimulus program was devoted more to bolstering nest eggs than increased spending. The higher savings rate is healthy in the long term, economists said. The savings rate, which was hovering near zero in early 2008, surged to 6.9 percent, the highest level since December 1993. —Associated Press, 6/26/2009 Deflation is clawing its way back in Japan, and that’s not good news for an economy trying to recover from its worst recession since World War II. Japan’s key consumer price index tumbled at a record pace of 1.1 percent in May, in the third straight month of decline. The result marked the biggest fall since the government began releasing comparable data in 1971. —Associated Press, 6/26/2009 Despite the global economic downturn, world governments spent $1.46 trillion, on defense in 2008—a new record, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The U.S. continued to top the list, spending $607 billion to upgrade its armed forces—more than seven times the amount spent by China, which beat out the U.K. for the No. 2 spot for the first time. —TIME, 6/22/2009
3,800—the
tonnage of gold sold by Europe’s central banks over the past 10 years; —Financial Times, 5/7/2009 Russia passed De Beers this year as the world’s largest diamond producer, but the global market is so dismal that the Alrosa diamond company, headquartered in Moscow, has not sold a rough stone on the open market since December. Russia’s mounting stockpile of diamonds has made it the arbiter of global diamond prices. The market for wholesale polished diamonds, now worth about $21.5 billion, is expected to fall to about $12 billion in 2009, according to industry analysts. —New York Times, 5/15/2009 Without action, interest on the national debt, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will together consume 18.5% of the country’s total economic output by 2025. —Rep. Steny Hoyer (D.), U.S. Congress, 5/6/09 Israel Israel remains in the top tier of healthiest countries in the world to live in, according to the 2009 World Health Organization Statistics. Life expectancy in Israel reached 81 in 2007, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That was only 2 years short of Japan’s 83 and put Israel among the top 14 countries in the world, longevity-wise. —Arutz 7, 5/29/2009 Despite the poor US economy, American investors see the down market as a business opportunity, and Israeli clean technology companies in renewables, water and energy are on their radar. Among the participants in the clean tech mission to Israel are some of the biggest names in the California investment community. —www.israel21c.org, 5/20/2009 The Obama administration is considering reducing American support for Israel in the United Nations in an effort to symbolically pressure the Jewish state to stop settlement growth. The United States would not condition loans to Israel in order to pressure them, as was done by former President Bush. Obama met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last week, during which time Obama again reiterated the US support for a two-state solution and the end to Israeli settlement construction, according to a White House press release. —New York Times, 5/30/2009 The price and quantity of natural gas exported from Egypt to Israel by the East Mediterranean Gas Company [EMG] are likely to increase following EMG’s amendment of its Gas Sales & Purchase Agreement with its upstream supplier. The export of Egyptian gas to Israel is highly controversial in Egypt. The initial deal was signed in 2005 between EMG and the Israeli Electrical Company, but the gas did not begin to flow until 2008. Almost immediately, the deal came in for harsh criticism from the Egyptian opposition, which said it regarded the sale as a sign of normalization of relations, something that many in Egyptian society oppose, despite the peace deal signed in 1979. —The Media Line, 6/2/2009 41% Percentage of Israel’s Arab citizens who say the Holocaust never happened, up from 28% in 2006. —TIME, 6/1/2009 Special American envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell said that the US commitment to Israel’s security was unquestionable. Mitchell, who met with President Shimon Peres, added that the recent disagreement noted between Jerusalem and Washington was not a disparity between rivals, stressing that the United States and Israel were friends and allies and would stay as such. —Ynetnews.com 6/9/2009 Palestinians strapped explosives to horses in an attempt to breach the fence between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip on June 8. A horse was killed when the explosives it was carrying detonated. The Israeli military said afterwards that the purpose of the raid was to use the payload on the horses to make a hole in the fence, enter Israel and capture Israeli soldiers. —The Media Line, 6/10/2009 Israel began building a pipeline in June that would provide diesel and cooking oil to the Gaza Strip. Palestinian construction crews were to also take part in building the line. The report said that it was suggested by the Israeli political echelon. Israel transferred 30,000 vaccine units for foot-and-mouth disease—as well as 140 truckloads of humanitarian aid—to Gaza on June 8, in spite of a massive attempted terror attack on the border fence earlier that morning. In a space of three months, more than 100,000 vaccine units were allowed into the Strip. —Jerusalem Post, 6/9/2009 The American National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] will be launching its first Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in its Vision for Space Exploration plan on June 17, using technology that was developed by an Israeli company, Sital. There is already talk of using the new technology in many other NASA projects, including a manned telescope set to be launched to space. Sital is currently involved in 15 different development projects for NASA. —Ynetnews.com, 6/17/2009 United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Miliband “expressed dismay” about proposals for boycotts of Israel by trade union congresses and conferences. “Such boycotts would, I believe, obstruct opportunities for cooperation and dialogue and serve only to polarize debate further. Boycotts would only make it harder to achieve the peace that both Palestinians and Israelis deserve and desire.” —BFP Israel Mosaic Radio, 6/23/2009 |
