A car bomb has exploded in the north-eastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, killing at least 17 people.
The Islamist group Boko Haram said it carried out the attack. A suspect has been arrested, the military says.
The bomb went off near a market, sending up a large plume of smoke. People were seen fleeing the scene covered in blood.
For the past month, South Sudan has been engulfed in an expanding civil war. Unlike Sudan, where the Satellite Sentinel Project pioneered its work (and with a few exceptions) South Sudan’s government has been allowing both journalists and humanitarians to operate around the country, even as violence spreads.
As a result, harrowing videos, interviews, and photographs documenting the crisis have been emerging for weeks.
The United Nations estimates that over 395,000 people have been displaced by violence, 352,000 internally, of which 60,000 have sought shelter at UN compounds around the country. Another 43,000 are refugees in neighboring countries including Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, with an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people from South Sudan arriving daily in Uganda alone.
Global religious hostilities reached a six-year high in 2012 and affected more people than government curbs on religious freedom, according to the Pew Research Center’s latest report on religious restrictions around the world.
The report, released Tuesday (Jan. 14) ahead of National Religious Freedom Day on Thursday, shows that 74 percent of the world’s population experienced high levels of social hostility toward religion, up from 52 percent in 2011.
The sharp rise is due to hostilities in China, which for the first time in the survey’s six-year history, scored a “high” level of religious strife. Home to more than 1.3 billion people, China experienced an increase in religion-related terrorism, mob violence and sectarian conflict in 2012.
Church leaders are encouraging politicians to sustain the momentum and energy generated by the Haass talks.
In a joint statement from the leaders of the Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist Churches together with the Irish Council of Churches they applaud the ”˜strenuous and sincere efforts put in by all involved in seeking to find solutions to some of the most contentious issues we face’.
They also recognise the ”˜profoundly challenging’ nature of the issues to be addressed but firmly believe that ”˜a peaceful and reconciled society is possible’.
Britain and the US have warned they will rethink support for Syria’s main opposition group if it fails to take part in peace talks next week, a Syrian source has told the BBC.
The official from the Syrian National Coalition said the UK and the US were adamant the group must go to Geneva.
The coalition will hold a vote on Friday on whether or not to attend.
Syria’s opposition remains deeply divided nearly three years after the uprising began.
The Charleston Police Department is seeking to set up a family violence squad to combat often hidden crimes that scar families, turn children into tomorrow’s criminals and contribute to the state’s dubious distinction as the nation’s No. 1 place for women killed by men.
The 433-officer police department is applying for a nearly $150,000 federal grand to hire, train and equip a full-time investigator to handle criminal domestic dispute cases as the first step toward what Chief Greg Mullen envisions as establishing a special family violence squad.
Mullen said the plan is to focus exclusively on family violence so police can investigate better, prepare for more effective prosecutions, be more supportive of victims and possibly head off more violence.
Is the Central African Republic the world’s next Rwanda? That’s the question some are beginning to ask about a crisis that has been going on for most of this year but has only just burst through into the mainstream international mass media.
Warlords ruling the countryside by terror, a government that is almost toothless and the collapse of institutions have forced 0.4 million people to flee their homes and left a million dependent on aid.
And now reports of Muslim and Christian communities engaged in inter-communal violence have sparked concern about a slide into religious conflict. The “G-word” — genocide — has even been floated as a real risk by some observers.
South Sudan risks losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid if its government and rebel leaders do not end a wave of violence in the fledgling democracy formed with Washington’s strong support, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
Three weeks of fighting, often along ethnic lines, is ringing alarm bells in Washington over the prospect that the conflict could spiral into full-blown civil war, spawning atrocities or making South Sudan the world’s next failed state.
The Catholic priest was carrying an ultra-secret document that could mark a breakthrough in one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts. En route to deliver it, though, a humanitarian crisis forced him to stop: he tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent a mob from murdering an unarmed soldier. After giving the soldier last rites, he continued to carry his potent message””although he had to change the envelope, which had become soaked with blood.
Such a heroic story sounds almost as if it comes from a Catholic suspense novel, but it really did happen””in Belfast in 1988. The priest in question was Alec Reid of the Redemptorist Order, who died in November at the age of 82.
Although little known in North America, in Ireland itself he is lauded for his critical role in ending the decades-long struggle beÂtween the (CathoÂlic) ProÂvisional Irish RepubÂlican Army and the British government. His mighty example of Christian peacemaking cries out to be remembered.
ITV News has found evidence that children are being targeted in one of Africa’s bloodiest civil wars.
Many have suffered horrific injuries, as violence in the Central African Republic sinks to what the United Nations calls a “vicious new low”.
Read it all and note the many video links available.
Iraq’s Shiite-led government paused on Wednesday on the brink of a military assault against al Qaeda-linked Sunni militants that posed the risk of exacting a high civilian toll and plunging the country deeper into sectarian conflict.
Senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Joseph Biden, have urged Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to secure the support of local Sunni leaders before attacking to drive the extremists from Fallujah, which sits in the heartland of Iraq’s Sunni minority. Many Sunni tribal leaders, alienated and angered by Mr. Maliki, have refused.
The standoff tests the U.S.’s remaining leverage in Iraq, which has declined since American forces fought alongside Iraqis to subdue Islamist fighters in Fallujah in two large battles during the nearly decadelong U.S.-led occupation.
It was the small details which made the latest case of modern day slavery such uncomfortable reading.
Life has never been particularly kind to Craig Kinsella. Suffering from moderate learning difficulties and with an IQ of no more than 85, he has often struggled to keep the frayed edges of his world from unravelling. Even before last summer he bore the emotional scars of his own abusive childhood and of having watched his own two children being taken into care and his marriage break down.
Yet nothing could match the heartache inflicted on him by David and Donna Rooke and their son Jamie.
In what looks like another reprisal attack, Boko Haram insurgents yesterday attacked Kayamula village of Konduga local government area of Borno State. They killed nine people, while several residents received gunshot injuries.
Kayamula village is located on the outskirts of Maiduguri metropolis, a distance of about 10 kilometres away from Maiduguri Giwa military barracks where several members of the Boko Haram sect were arrested and detained by security operatives.
LEADERSHIP gathered from reliable sources that the insurgents invaded the village about 2am and opened fire on residents using AK-49 rifles and explosive devices, a situation that led to the killing of nine innocent people and injuring of several others.
Christianity is the largest and most widely spread faith in the world, with 2.2 billion followers, or 32 percent of the world population, according to a survey by the U.S.-based Pew Forum on religion and Public Life.
It faces restrictions and hostility in 111 countries, ahead of the 90 countries limiting or harassing the second-largest faith, Islam, another Pew survey has reported.
Michel Varton, head of Open Doors France, told journalists in Strasbourg that failing states with civil wars or persistent internal tensions were often the most dangerous for Christians.
“In Syria, another war is thriving in the shadow of the civil war — the war against the church,” he said while presenting the Open Doors report there.
In the fall of 2012, Wilmington resident Mike Moran said a ”˜see you soon’ goodbye to his son Brendan Moran as he stepped aboard a flight to Brazil to continue his work with a sex trafficking ministry there called Shores of Grace Ministries.
Brendan sent newsletters each month letting his friends and family know how he was doing in Recife, Brazil, producing music for Nic and Rachael Billman, a Pennsylvania couple who founded Shores of Grace. Brendan was working to record the work of the ministry there as one of their music directors.
The Billman’s moved to Brazil to work with the prostitute and street children populations there in late 2010, bringing their four children with them and building a ministry staff who speak Portuguese. The ministry holds church on the streets of Recife, organizes well water projects for communities in a desert region outside of Recife and hosts Father’s Love Banquets where they invite Brazilian prostitutes to a formal dinner. Another of the ministry’s goals was to open Project Bethany to house young girls who were leaving prostitution or trafficking situations. In the fall of 2013, Shores of Grace opened its first rescue house with 10 girls.
Now the Moran family is bringing the Billman’s to the Wilmington area to speak about their sex trafficking ministry.
Liza’s Lifeline, a Lowcountry nonprofit group advocating against domestic violence, has collaborated with other area organizations to launch a campaign aimed at raising awareness.
Liza’s Lifeline was created by Shirley and Doug Warner after their daughter, Liza, was killed in 2004 by her husband, who then turned the gun on himself. Their group provides support to victims of domestic violence, including financial assistance.
The group is collaborating with the marketing firm Trio Solutions, Medical University of South Carolina’s National Crime Victims Center and People Against Rape. The resulting campaign, “Combat the Silence,” aims to encourage dialogue about domestic violence by urging each citizen to speak with three people they know about “the silent epidemic.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged the Anglican Communion to pray and advocate for an end to the intense fighting which has overtaken large regions of South Sudan in recent days.
Over 500 people are feared dead in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, where fighting first broke out. The violence has since spread, particularly affecting Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile States.
Archbishop Justin wrote to Anglican primates and moderators… [yesterday] at the request of Archbishop Daniel Deng Yak, Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan.
Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul has written to the Archbishop of Canterbury and called on the Anglican Communion to help communities in South Sudan respond to those displaced by the widespread violence that is continuing in the nation.
With fighting continuing in South Sudan, Most Reverend Dr Daniel Deng, Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan has written a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
He calls for sustained prayer, for advocacy on an immediate peace process and for humanitarian support from across the Anglican Communion.
Priests and vicars have been subjected to hundreds of attacks over the past five years as they face assaults in their own churches and harassment from stalkers, research has shown.
Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that in the past five years more than 200 incidents of violence against religious leaders have been recorded by 25 police forces across the UK. Low-level assault was the most common form of violence reported, but a number of clergy have been beaten, stalked by violent individuals or bitten by dogs and even humans.
Read it all (subscription required).
For the second time in six weeks, New York City police have arrested a man in Brooklyn and charged him with assault as a hate crime in connection with the “knockout game.”
The arrest comes as a spate of attacks have focused national attention on the knockout game, in which an assailant tries to knock out an unsuspecting bystander with one punch. The attacks have stirred controversy over whether the game is part of a growing trend or whether national media coverage and social media have inflated isolated incidents.
South Sudanese government officials and representatives of rebel groups agreed to face-to-face talks on a monitored ceasefire, with artillery fire in Juba’s government district underlining the risk of all-out civil war.
The warring parties assured mediators they will strive to reach a political solution to the conflict that began in mid-December, Ethiopian envoy Seyoum Mesfin told reporters in Addis Ababa on Saturday.
There have been continued clashes between President Salva Kiir’s SPLA government forces and rebels loyal to former vice president Riek Machar centred around the strategically located town of Bor. As delegates smiled in a luxury hotel in Ethiopia, heavy explosions from artillery fire were heard in a Juba district where most ministries, the presidential palace and the parliament are located.
Face-to-face peace talks between warring parties in South Sudan were stalled Saturday, government officials and rebel delegations said, dashing hopes of a swift end to the bloodshed.
Representatives of President Salva Kiir’s government and rebels loyal to his former vice president, Riek Machar, began preliminary negotiations through mediators in neighboring Ethiopia on Friday. The talks are seen as a step toward ending the violence that has killed at least 1,000 people, driven tens of thousands from their homes and threatens to plunge the world’s newest country into civil war.
But a cease-fire appeared to be a long way off Saturday as government and rebel delegations in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, reported that direct talks in the Sheraton Hotel had been delayed as the two parties work through the mediators to set a negotiating agenda.
But Jesus was not a mere victim of this violence. Acting in his Jewish tradition, he confronted it, rejected it and proposed a new way to think of it. His followers knew at the outset, and ever after, that they failed to live up to the standard he set, but that very knowledge shows that the myth of what Crossan calls the normalcy of violence is broken.
Humans have an inbuilt tendency to find the solution of violence in yet more violence, with the result that it spirals on forever. The victory of coercive force is inevitably the cause of the next outbreak of coercive force.
Jesus proposed that the answer to violence is not more violence, but is forgiveness and righteousness – or, as we would put it, peace and justice. For 2,000 years, this program has been able to be dismissed as piety’s dream.
But something new is afoot. Since 1945, the normalcy of violence is armed with weapons that will surely render the human species extinct unless a different way of thinking of violence is found.
That is the promise of Christmas.
International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that twelve Christians were brutally murdered by suspected Boko Haram militants in northern Nigeria over the weekend. According to reports, these Christians were killed in two attacks on separate Christian villages in Nigeria’s Muslim majority state of Borno.
The first attack took place on Saturday, December 28, in the Christian village of Tashan-Alede where eight people attending a wedding celebration were killed when militants connected with Boko Haram opened fire on the Christians gathered. According to the Christian Broadcasting Network, “One attack took place at a pre-wedding bachelor party. Suspected fighters from Boko Haram opened fire on the group, killing eight people.”
You see, the researcher that they’re filming, a guy named Harry Harlow [in 1960], was trying to prove– and I know this is going to sound crazy. He was trying to prove that love is an important thing that happens between parents and children.
And the reason why he felt the need to prove this point was at the time– and again, I know this is going to sound kind of out there. The psychological establishment, pediatricians, even the federal government were all saying exactly the opposite of that to parents.
Deborah Blum: It’s actually one of those things that you say, how could they have thought that? But psychology just didn’t believe in love. And if you go back and you pull any of the psychology textbooks, really almost pre-1950, you don’t even find it in the index because it was not a word that was used.
Read it all or better Listen to it all.
As many participate in religious celebrations at this time of the year, our country, the Central African Republic, remains on the brink of religious warfare. In a place that most of the world struggles to find on a map, more than 2 million people, nearly half of the nation’s population, are in desperate need of aid. As we write, approximately 40,000 people without shelter or toilets are crammed into the airport compound in the capital, Bangui. In just the past week in Bangui, hundreds have been killed, including patients dragged out of hospitals and executed. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said that he is “gravely concerned about the imminent danger of mass atrocities.” We fear that without a wider international response, our country will succumb to darkness .
As the most senior faith leaders of our country’s Christian and Muslim communities, respectively, we recognize our responsibility to help define a path away from violence. Our colleagues, priests and imams alike, have paid the ultimate price for taking on their own part of this responsibility, and we fear the worst is yet to come.
Pope Francis addressed anti-Christian persecution today, on the day after attacks on two Christian churches in Baghdad left at least 38 dead. He called for a moment of silence in honor of victims of such violence and said it must be “denounced and eliminated.”
His remarks came in an Angelus address on the feast of St. Stephen, the day after Christmas, and they marked the latest reference to anti-Christian persecution in what has become an emerging theme for Francis.
In the abstract, it’s tempting to ask what any pope can do to affect anti-Christian persecution beyond issuing a cri de coeur. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI raised the issue, and their rhetoric didn’t seem to put a dent in a scourge that claims somewhere between 9,000 and 100,000 lives every year, depending on which set of estimates one chooses to trust, working out to somewhere between 1 and 11 new martyrs every hour.
Aside from President Rouhani’s occasional tweets wishing Jews and Christians well on Rosh Hashanah and Christmas, Iran’s track record on religious tolerance and freedom is dismal.
Last month, the president released a draft Charter of Citizens’ Rights. Nice title, but what’s inside leaves much to be desired according to Nazila Ghanea, who teaches international human rights law at the University of Oxford. Ghanea has studied Iran’s human rights record for nearly two decades with a particular focus on freedom of religion or belief and minority rights. I spoke with her about this new charter and more generally about religious freedom in Iran. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Speaking exclusively to PREMIUM TIMES at his Abeokuta residence on Wednesday morning, shortly before he headed out to church for Christmas service, the retired primate of the Anglican Church said the gunmen pounced on him and his driver as he was leaving this foundation’s office along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.
He said the four-men gang blocked his car, and pulled him and his driver out at gun point. One of the bandits then took over the steering wheel while another member pinned down the cleric and his driver at the back.
Two other gang members followed behind in a Toyota Primera car they brought for the operation.
The UN has renewed its call for rival forces in South Sudan to lay down their arms and says it expects the first UN reinforcements to arrive in 48 hours.
The plea came as South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir met the leaders of neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia in an effort to defuse the conflict.
Government officials say a number of oil wells are now in rebel hands.