WORLD NEWS BREIFS

ORISSA, India — After several delays in the trials of 12 people accused of murdering an Australian missionary, an Indian court has ordered the trial process sped up. In January 1999, missionary Graham Stains and his two young sons were killed after the Jeep they were sleeping in was set on fire by a mob led by radical Hindus. According to investigators, the mob was led by Rabindra Kumar Pal, widely known as Dara Singh, a leader of radical Hindus in the area. Singh was arrested for the crime over a year after it occurred. Several delays have led the Orissa High Court to set specific dates for the continuation of the trial against Singh, reports Baptist Press. According to police transcripts, Singh admitted that he wanted to “teach [Staines] a lesson” but not kill the missionary. In the transcripts Singh also expressed regret that Staines’ two sons, Phillip and Timothy, died in such a violent way. “It will be interesting to see how the case ends,” human rights activist Raj Kumar told Baptist Press. “More than being a killing of a missionary, what is [abhorrent] is the way the mob killed a man and his two small sons. The guilty have to be punished.” Prosecutors were concerned that the case against Singh might be dismissed due to a lack of evidence. However, two witnesses have come forward to testify that Singh admitted his role in the murders, reports Compass Direct.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Aramaic, a language that scholars say was the language Jesus spoke, is quickly disappearing from the earth. Once the common tongue of the Middle East, daily use of the language is now limited to three small Syrian villages 40 miles north of Damascus, reports the Associated Press. Residents of the villages, most of them Catholics, say they are committed to passing down the language to the next generation. George Razkallah, a retired English teacher, has made it his personal mission to preserve the Aramaic language. He provides many tourist shops in city of Maaloula with Aramaic translations of the Lord Prayer and Bible verses. “I try to remind the people of our past, how our fathers and grandfathers lived,’’ Razkallah told AP. “I ask them not to forget the tongue, the Aramaic tongue, because it is very, very precious.’’

SYDNEY, Australia — Census officials in Australia are warning science fiction fans to ignore a recent e-mail rumor circulating in Australia. A widely circulated e-mail suggested that fans of the “Star Wars” movies list “Jedi” as their religion on census forms that will be circulated this August. According to the e-mail, if a minimum of 10,000 people list “Jedi” as their faith it will become an official religion recognized by the Australian government. Census and government officials insist that the rumor is false; the government does not recognize religions in this manner. They also warned that falsifying data on a census form comes with a stiff fine. “We are not without a sense of humor,” said Paul Williams, director of field operations for the census department. “In the end we appreciate this joke, but we would like to point out how important the census is.”

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Over 800 evangelical leaders from around the world gathered in Kuala Lumpur for the 11th General Assembly of the World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF) May 4-10. The WEF represents 116 national and regional evangelical fellowships with memberships of about 160 million Christians worldwide. Topics of discussion for the assembly included domestic abuse, youth, globalization and ecclesiology. Among the leaders who attended the conference were Dr. Clive Calver, president of World Relief, and Stuart McAllister, former general secretary of the European Evangelical Alliance. The goal of the assembly, said Dr. Agustin B. Vencer, international director of WEF, was “to strategically prepare evangelicals to respond to the challenges of the third Christian millennium.”

NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyan Anglicans are concerned for the fate of Bishop Samuel Musabyimana. He was arrested by unknown parties on April 26. According to eyewitnesses, a group of men who refused to identify themselves burst into Musabyimana’s home, ransacked his office, then left with the bishop and some of his personal belongings. Anglican Archbishop David Gitari has written to the Nairobi police commissioner as to where Musabyimana was taken, but has not received a response. Musabyimana is a citizen of nearby Rwanda, a nation currently torn by civil war. Sources close to the bishop fear that he has been smuggled out of Kenya.

BEIJING, China — Chinese police arrested 79-year-old bishop Shi Enxiang, a leader of the underground Chinese Roman Catholic Church. According to the Washington Post, Shi had been in hiding from authorities for the past five years. He was arrested April 13 while on a visit to Beijing. Shi has already spent almost 30 years in prison for his religious beliefs and activities. The state-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Church does not recognize the authority of the Vatican or the Pope, and is instead controlled by the government. The Post also reports that several Catholic priests across China have been recently arrested by authorities in an apparent crackdown on underground activity.

STRASBOURG, France — An agreement for unity and cooperation between Europe’s Christian churches has not received support from Evangelical and Orthodox Church leadership, reports Idea News Agency. The “Charta Oecumenica,” an ecumenical charter document that contains guidelines for church cooperation, has yet to be embraced by over 126 European churches. It has been signed by Catholic European Bishops’ Conference and the Conference of European Churches, but Orthodox Church leaders have objected to the charter’s wording, saying that there is no need to publicize existing church unity. Evangelical leaders disapprove of the charter’s guidelines that require missionaries to make agreements with established churches before engaging in evangelism. No church should lay claim to a religious “monopoly” in any region, Wolfgang Buesing, executive director of the Association of Evangelical Missions in Germany, told Idea.

— E.P. News