News

This just announced by the BBC...

I feel rather distrubed to hear that Norman, Harmeet Singh Sooden and James Loney were freed in a military operation. I know that the three men would not have wanted anyone to have been harmed or killed in the process of freeing them. Nonetheless, I am delighted to hear that they are free and in reasonable health.

I am also deeply sad that Tom Fox will no be returning home with them. Tom was killed by his captors, and his body was found in Bagdhad on 12 March 2006. May the peace of God be with Tom's family.

Only just noticed this, but on the 27 February the Board of the UK Evangelical Alliance issued a statement on the Atonement. The statement was issued as a subsequence of the joint Evangelical Alliance/London School of Theology Symposium on the Atonement held at the London School of Theology from 6-8 July 2005. The symposium was called as a result of the furore that surrounded the publishing of The Lost Message of Jesus by Steve Chalke and Alan Mann.

The EA Board's statment explicitly asserts that penal substitution is affirmed in the EA Basis of Faith and requires that members of the Alliance 'should assent to the Basis of Faith annually, and should do so with integrity.'

Such a draconian demand may cause some current members of the Alliance with concerns about the centrality and significance of penal substitution to question whether they can indeed assent to the Basis of Faith.

Listening to the posturing and denunciations over the supposed global threat posed by Iran that we're hearing almost daily from the US and UK governments, I feel like I'm listening to a re-run of old TV and radio shows from 2003. The language being used is almost identical - threats to national/global security, the need for Iraq/Iran to clarify its intentions and so on - and yet again the power and might of the big Western nations is being exerted on a nation far smaller and far weaker, isolating and persecuting it on the grounds of military security and masking the real agenda of political security for precious oil reserves.

I received this email yesterday regarding a new citizens' peace initiative focussed on the rising tensions over Iran called Negotiate Peace - www.negotiate-peace.org.

News networks are reporting this morning that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the State Department in the USA confirmed that the body of an American citizen found dead in Iraq yesterday is that of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) worker Tom Fox, one of four CPT peace activists kidnapped on 26 November 2005.

Corporal Gordon Alexander Pritchard, 31, a soldier from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards became the 100th UK soldier to die in Iraq since the conflict began in 2003 when he was killed in a blast in Umm Qasr, Basra province.

Yesterday, members of the Stop the War Coalition, including Respect MP George Galloway and former Labour MP Tony Benn, were in Parliament Square to mark the 100th death. The names of the dead were read out and wooden crosses with red poppies were placed in the turf.

Further vigils are planned nationwide this evening. The vigils will coincide with further vigils for Norman Kember, Tom Fox, Harmeet Singh Sooden and James Loney, the four Christian Peacemaker Teams workers abducted in Iraq in November 2005.

Just caught this on BBC News Online...
Widow of Martin Luther King dies

Body of BBC News Online article...
Coretta Scott King, the widow of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, has died aged 78, US media reports say. Mrs King, who carried on her husband's work after he was assassinated in 1968, had reportedly suffered poor health.

Speaking in 2003 on the 40th anniversary of her husband's best known speech, Mrs King urged the crowds to follow the peaceful path he preached.

News of the mother-of-four's death was reported by former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young to US network NBC television.

The UK government has announced that it is to sell its majority stake in defence firm Qinetiq and float the business on the stock exchange.

The UK Defence Secretary, Dr John Reid, said an initial public offering for Qinetiq shares would take place in February.

Controversy over the sale of Qinetiq focusses on the value of the business and the revenue for the current shareholders. The flotation is expected to raise £1.1bn, but the government said it would retain a major stake in the firm. Currently, the Ministry of Defence holds a 56% share in the business, with 13% owned by managers and staff of the business. The other 31% is owned by the US private equity firm The Carlyle Group, whose European Chairman is former Prime Minister John Major, making the sale worth around £340 million to The Carlyle Group. The government said The Carlyle Group would also 'continue to retain a significant stake in the company.'

Controversy has surrounded Carlyle's involvement, partly because it holds its stake through special-purpose vehicles in Guernsey, which is outside the jurisdiction of the British tax authorities.

Controversy also arises as floatation would result in the interests of shareholders determining business decisions for the defence research and technology company.

The Turkish man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II nearly 25 years ago was released from a Turkish prison on Thursday.

Agca, 48, shot the Pope in St Peter's Square in 1981 hitting him four times, but has never explained why. The pontiff later visited him in jail and publicly forgave him.

BBC News Online reports that the Palestinian group Hamas is launching a TV station to spread the organisation's message. Broadcasting from Gaza, the group aims to expand the TV operation significantly and hopes to enter satellite broadcasting.

The station is named al-Aqsa after the mosque in Jerusalem, and the channel plans to air programmes on political and social ideas drawn from the Qura'n.

This development is another milestone in the rise of Hamas as a political force, not just a militant one. The group is now strong enough to pose a major challenge to the ruling Fatah political party in the parliamentary election campaign.

I've just received an email forwarded to me from the Fellowship of Reconcilliation, regarding upcoming prayer vigils for the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) workers taken hostage in Iraq in November.

The email reads as follows...

Whilst there is no direct news at this time there will be more interfaith prayer vigils for the release of Norman Kember, Tom Fox, Harmeet Singh Sooden and James Loney taking place on Saturday 7th January in central London and in central Birmingham. The London vigil will take place in Trafalgar Square between 3pm and 4pm and will be opposite St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, outside the National Gallery. For more details contact 01865 748968. The Birmingham vigil will take place in Chamberlain Square between 11.30am - 12.30pm and will be by the Central Library and Museum. For more details contact 01905 767366.