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Food for the Poor is reaching out to the impoverished people of a Jamaican slum after a fire destroyed more than 30 homes Wednesday, Jan. 21, leaving at least 100 people homeless. A child playing with a cigarette lighter apparently started the fire. The blaze swept through a tenement yard at Rose Hall Lane in Kingston. Rose Hall Lane is a thickly populated inner-city community where many of the local residents lost everything in the fire. Food for the Poor is helping with emergency housing. The agency has reached out to needy people worldwide, providing $281 million in food, hospital supplies, vocational training equipment, school furniture and other aid. Ministries in Jamaica have included vocational skills training, school and church repair, school and clinic construction, medical supplies, water pumps, hospitals, orphanages, educational supplies, handicapped children's homes, feeding programs, home building, educational projects and self-help programs. (Mission Network News)

* Staff members from the HCJB World Radio Engineering Center in Elkhart, Ind., worked with Tarrant Baptist Church in Kingston to install a 500-watt FM transmitter, antenna and studio.

HINDU VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL INDIA 'PREMEDITATED,' SAYS CARDINAL

Cardinal Telesphore Toppo says that recent incidents of Hindu fundamentalist violence against Christians in the diocese of Jhabua, India, were planned by extremists to deliberately "keep tensions high." Hindu fundamentalists belonging to nationalist movements have been "looking for an excuse" to instigate riots and attack Christian communities the central state of Madhya Pradesh, he says. Tensions reached a peak earlier this month when Hindu extremists accused the headmaster of a Catholic school in Jhabua for being responsible for the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl on Jan. 11. Police arrested a suspect, but not before extremists carried out acts of violence. Eyewitnesses said most of the Hindu extremists involved in the attack were not local people. Two days after the death of the girl, Hindu fundamentalists organized protests in the city, distributing anti-Christian leaflets and posters. Rioting crowds then attacked Catholic places of worship and institutions. On Jan. 14 more than 1,000 people attacked the Jhabua school. Police arrested a suspect in the girl's murder, but this did not stop the violence. "The defamatory anti-Christian campaign continues," said Bishop Thottumarickal. "Shameful anti-Christian posters have been put on walls all over the city, throwing mud on the church. There is a danger of fresh outbreaks of violence." (Religion Today/Voice of the Martyrs)

4 CHRISTIAN WOMEN KILLED IN IRAQ ON THEIR WAY TO WORK

Four Christian women were killed and another five were injured Wednesday, Jan. 21, as militants from a passing car raked their minibus with automatic gunfire. The women were part of a group of nine on their way to work in the laundry at the U.S. military base in Habaniyah, 50 miles west of Baghdad. Four masked men in a white car shot at their minibus with a machinegun, said Maggi Aziz, 49, one of five injured passengers who survived the attack. Ashkik Varojan boarded the minibus that morning, having decided to hand in her resignation rather than live in fear of reprisals for "cooperating with the coalition." Necessity had driven her to work to support her paralyzed husband and four children. On hearing the news of her death, her 20-year-old daughter fainted with grief. Vera Ibrahim, another of the survivors, added, "I won't continue this work. I am afraid. They wanted to kill us all." It's unclear if the assailants were targeting Christians or simply fighting against the coalition forces. (Barnabas Fund)

SECRECY SURROUNDS NEW RELIGION DECREE IN TURKMENISTAN

Turkmenistan President Saparmurat Niyazov issued a decree last week approving new regulations that govern how religious organizations gain registration, but the text of the decree and regulations still hasn't been published. The new regulations will, in practice, apply only to the Sunni Muslim and Russian Orthodox religious communities since all other faiths are banned from registering and remain illegal. The new decree was issued to amplify the religion law adopted last October. The decree confirmed the rules on the registration of religious organizations and established new registration fees. Under the 1996 registration decree, religious organizations had to pay between one and three times the basic monthly wage. The new registration fee is reportedly 10 times the basic monthly wage. It specifically declared all unregistered religious activity illegal while a new amendment to the criminal code prescribed penalties of up to one year of "corrective labor" for breaking the law. Believers have been fined, detained, beaten, threatened, fired, had their homes confiscated, and banished to remote parts of the country or deported for unregistered religious activity. Murad Karriyev, deputy chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs, insisted that "believers have complete freedom of conscience in Turkmenistan. You can pray at home, whether to God or the devil. But if you meet for services, then you must register as a religious organization." (Forum 18 News)

* HCJB World Radio works in partnership with Back to the Bible to air Christian Turkmen programs. Twice-weekly broadcasts began airing from an undisclosed site outside of Turkmenistan in 2001 and moved to daily programming in 2003.

BAPTIST HOUSE CHURCHES MULTIPLY IN CUBA AS REVIVAL SPREADS

Cuba is now home to more than 200,000 Baptists -- up from 80,000 in 1995 -- who meet in 4,500 places of worship, often in people's homes, said Denton Lotz, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance. He gave the encouraging statistics in a report released after his trip to Cuba earlier this month. In the last eight years more than 2,500 Baptist house churches have been started in Cuba. The Cuban government has few restrictions on Christians meeting in homes for worship. "In a very remarkable way, the government has unwittingly been an instrument in allowing Christians in Cuba to practice one of the most successful church planting methods in the world," Lotz said. He added that it was a "joy to witness the movement of the Holy Spirit in growing new believers and churches. It was a beautiful experience to visit three of the house churches." Lotz gave the example of one middle-aged couple who recently accepted Christ. "They were so overjoyed at the hope and peace that Christ gives that they wanted all their neighbors to know," he said. "They have opened their home, and now more than 60 come to worship. . . . As we met outside, dogs and cats were running around during the service as well as chickens, not to speak of the two pigs tied to a fence occasionally letting us know they were there! The people were happy and sang along with recorded music. Scripture was read, prayers offered and sermons preached." Lotz said the Cuban Baptists have "very strict requirements for baptism. Most new believers must wait for at least a year of discipleship training before being baptized. There are some churches which even require a three-year waiting period." (Baptist World Alliance)

MINISTRY LAUNCHES 7-YEAR PROGRAM TO TRAIN PHILIPPINE LEADERS

Despite the sociopolitical turmoil taking place in the Philippines, Joseph Lee, founder and president of Tribes and Nations Outreach (TNO), says the country continues to be a "mission launching pad to Asia and beyond." With this vision in mind, TNO has launched Philippine Destiny 2010, a seven-year movement designed to train and mobilize church leaders, workers and professionals to be catalysts in the spiritual and natural transformation of their community and eventually of the entire country. For more than 18 years, TNO has developed a strategy that continues to have an impact on people groups and communities in Asia. The outreaches couples the School of Workers (SOW) training program with the Food Always in the Home (FAITH) gardening and natural farming program to reap a physical and spiritual harvest. Since the end of 2002, 141 local church-based SOW training centers have been equipping workers in ministry nationwide. Through FAITH, workers have started to enjoy a bountiful harvest of vegetables from 61 model gardens in different provinces. (Assist News Service)

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