World Vision’s relief staff in East Africa fears that at least five countries in the region may be heading for a catastrophic famine not seen since the mid-1980s. The most affected countries include Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi. Six additional nearby countries are also suffering from a long-term food crisis that has been complicated by drought. Reports from the region suggest that 37 million people are already suffering from critical hunger and another 162 million are malnourished. World Vision U.S. Africa Director David Scheiman said that although the world has yet to see the horrific scenes witnessed in Ethiopia in 1984, millions are on the verge of starvation. “A lot of people are malnourished and weak. They have already lost or sold their animals. They don’t have a coping mechanism,” he said. Lack of media interest in the tragedy has made it difficult to raise funds for relief efforts. “The press is not engaged because as yet there are no images of extreme starvation,” Scheiman explained. “But if we don’t deal with it now, it could happen.” (World Vision)

NORTHERN NIGERIAN STATE SEEKING FOREIGN SUPPORT TO TRAIN JIHADISTS

The Nigerian government recently said intelligence agents had found that the northern state of Kano was seeking foreign support to train 100 jihadists among vigilante enforcers of sharia (Islamic law) called Hisbah. The state sought to train the militants in “intelligence” and the “practice of jihad” with the help of foreign Islamic governments, said Nigerian Information and National Orientation Minister Frank Nweke Jr. Christians in Nigeria’s northern states where sharia has been implemented often complain of assault, harassment, intimidation and flagrant violation of the religious rights of Christians by the Hisbah. One Christian leader called this a “terror machine” in the hands of fanatical Islamic governments aimed at strangulating Christianity in northern Nigeria. (Compass)

* HCJB World Radio, together with partners In Touch Ministries, SIM and the Evangelical Church of West Africa, began airing weekly half-hour programs to Nigeria in the Igbo language in 2000. In 2003 weekly broadcasts were added in two additional languages, Yoruba and Hausa. HCJB World Radio also has helped with radio ministries in six cities with more in the planning stages.

U.S. CONGRESS QUESTIONS LIMITS ON RELIGIOUS GROUPS TRAVELING TO CUBA

More than 100 members of the U.S. Congress have signed a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow questioning changes in his department’s rules that have halted the ability of some religious organizations to travel to Cuba. “We understand the complicated political reality that exists between the United States and Cuban governments,” states the March 3 letter. “However, we believe it is inappropriate and unacceptable for politics and government to serve as a hurdle and now as a barrier to faith-based connections between individuals.” The concerns addressed in the three-page letter are also scheduled to be the subject of a Capitol Hill meeting Wednesday, March 15, involving politicians, administration officials and religious leaders. The growing reaction to regulation changes comes after the policy was modified in September 2004. Since then, some mainstream religious organizations have found that their requests to the Office of Foreign Assets Control for license renewal were denied. (WorldWide Religious News/Washington Post)

* HCJB World Radio continues to air Spanish programs to Cuba via shortwave from South America. Hundreds of listeners have enrolled in the ministry’s Bible Institute of the Air, a Spanish correspondence program incorporating radio broadcasts. In addition, numerous pastors’ workshops sponsored by Apoyo, a joint training ministry with Leadership Resources International, have been held in Cuba since the mid-1990s.

MEDICAL AMBASSADORS WORK FOR LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS, WITNESS

In times of natural disasters, human catastrophe and other emergencies, people tend to throw money, aid and assistance at the problem, but Medical Ambassadors International’s Bob Paul says that causes problems of its own. “When help is given in such a way that it encourages people to become passive and have their hand out and expect others to simply do things for them, it breeds an attitude of dependency,” he said. Instead, Medical Ambassadors uses a program called Community Health Evangelism (CHE). “We send in a very small team of two or three people who build a long-term relationship and begin to work with the people in that village to come up with solutions to problems on their own,” Paul says. CHE workers often share their faith during the process. “What you also get are not people who may make a short-term decision for Christ because they think they have to do that to get something, but instead you get a discipleship process that really allows people to develop a meaningful and lasting relationship with the Lord,” he said. (Mission Network News)

APPLICATIONS UP MORE THAN 8% AT CHRISTIAN COLLEGES ACROSS U.S.

Evangelical Christian colleges are attracting record numbers of applications this year in a trend that bodes well for schools that were struggling to survive just a generation ago, reported The Chicago Tribune. Applications have jumped between 8 percent and 10 percent at the 238 colleges that belong to the North American Association of Christian Admissions Professionals. Twenty-five percent of those schools are barely breaking even financially, so the news is good even though the enhanced competition for spots means disappointment for some high school seniors who thought their credentials were good enough to get in. “On Jan. 15 we had thousands and thousands of applications from students who in prior years would have been admissible, but we had to wait-list them,” said James Steen, assistant vice president of admission and enrollment services at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Standards also appear to be rising as average SAT scores among Baylor applicants is 1,225, up from 1,198 last year. Enrollment at the 102 evangelical schools belonging to the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities increased 70 percent since 1990, moving to 230,000 from 135,000. This marks a turnaround from the 1960s and 1970s when religious colleges struggled to attract enough students. (Religion Today)

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