At least four people are dead and the toll is expected to rise after a 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck the Xinjang region of China.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake took place in one of the “most seismically hazardous regions on Earth” and centered the quake 59 miles southeast of Yilkiqi, China.
“If many people are gathered in one place during an earthquake, it can lead to a serious disaster, but in this case, there were relatively few people so it isn’t so serious,” China Earthquake Networks Center researcher Sun Shihong told state broadcaster China Central Television.
Dozens are reported injured by multiple sources and the government reported thousands of homes and buildings in the region were damaged or destroyed.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs put the number of damaged homes alone at 3,000.
Over 1,000 tents are being sent into the region to provide temporary shelter for families who have lost their homes.
The atheist government of China has been removing crosses from church buildings throughout the country for the last few years.
Now, the Christians are pushing back.
A group of protestant churches are putting their crosses back on the buildings in an act of civil disobedience to the government. Sixteen churches in the cities of Lishui and Fuyang are replacing the crosses. In some cases, elderly church members are replacing the churches three times a day after the government comes back to take the crosses back down.
Last month, government officials said all crosses in the nation need to come down. The move is believed to be in response to the exponential growth of the church despite the government’s efforts.
“The central goal of this campaign is to minimize Christianity and to limit its access to ordinary people,” says Bob Fu, director of ChinaAid.
“There’s an enormous struggle across China brought by the rise of worshipers that seem to really believe,” says Terence Halliday, a director of the Center for Law and Globalization in Chicago who has worked in China. “Christianity now makes up the largest single civil society grouping in China. The party sees that.”
A new survey shows that protestant Christians in the country number between 50 and 100 million with about 6 million Catholics. The ruling party has 70 million members.
The hack of government servers by a group of suspected Chinese hackers is significantly worse than initially reported.
The national president of the American Federation of Government Employees revealed that the hack released information for every federal employee to the unknown hackers.
“Based on the sketchy information OPM (Office of Personnel Management) has provided, we believe that the Central Personnel Data File was the targeted database, and that the hackers are now in possession of all personnel data for every federal employee, every federal retiree, and up to one million former federal employees,” J. David Cox said in the letter dated Thursday.
The government had admitted the breach was the largest in government history and reached as many as four million employees.
Now Cox has revealed that the Social Security numbers, military records, addresses, birth dates, pay histories, health insurance and pension information of all government employees were at the mercy of the hackers.
The White House has refused to name China as the source of the hacking but several senators including Senator Harry Reid and Senator Susan Collins have said the attack came from China.
As many as four million employees could have their personal information compromised in what some U.S. officials have called “the biggest breach ever of the government’s computer networks.”
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the breach saying that at the beginning of May hackers had violated the systems of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Interior Department.
“Protecting our Federal employee data from malicious cyber incidents is of the highest priority at OPM,” OPM Director Katherine Archuleta said in a statement. “We take very seriously our responsibility to secure the information stored in our systems, and in coordination with our agency partners, our experienced team is constantly identifying opportunities to further protect the data with which we are entrusted.”
Sen. Susan Collins told the Associated Press investigators believe the hack came from China.
Collins called the attack “yet another indication of a foreign power probing successfully and focusing on what appears to be data that would identify people with security clearances.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) intrusion system detected the hack, although many files were copied before the system alerted officials.
“DHS is continuing to monitor federal networks for any suspicious activity and is working aggressively with the affected agencies to conduct investigative analysis to assess the extent of this alleged intrusion,” A DHS statement read.
Disaster teams have recovered 77 bodies from a cruise ship that capsized in the Yangtze River during a storm. At least 360 other victims of the disaster are still missing.
Authorities say that only 14 people survived the ship’s capsizing on Monday night. They say some of those survivors jumped from the ship at the start of the storm and were able to swim to shore. Three survived in an air pocket in the capsized ship until rescuers were able to hear them yelling for help and sent in divers to save them.
Transport Ministry spokesman Xu Chengguang said that the mission has moved from rescue of survivors to recovery of bodies. The ship is going to be brought upright through steel bars under the ship and two 500 ton cranes.
Xu told reporters despite cutting holes in the ship to try and find survivors, the likelihood of anyone alive is “very slim.”
Xu said righting the vessel “will enable an audit of all the cabins to be carried out as quickly as possible and will be good for searching for the missing in the shortest period of time” and allow them to act to “preserve the dignity of the dead.”
The ship, the Eastern Star, reportedly contained mostly retirees who were viewing the vista along the river.
Government officials had previously cited the ship for safety infractions. At one point in 2013, it was held from operation because of safety issues according to the maritime bureau.
Police in Heilongjiang province, China, raided a church house gathering on April 29th, and demanded those in attendance go to a government-sanctioned church.
“When we were gathering on April 29, people from the domestic security protection squad (DSPS), the local police station and the religious affairs bureau entered our building and demanded that we stop the worship service,” said a female leader, Yu, from the Home of Bodani church in the city of Yichun.
“When they entered the room, one church member was delivering a sermon. I told them that we were worshiping and that they could tell us whatever they wanted after our gathering was over. A man said no and that he wanted to talk to the person in charge.”
“Our leader is an elderly man named Dong Shiyun. He couldn’t do anything but follow the officers out of the building in order to not disturb the gathering,” Yu said. “I followed, too, and heard them say that our gathering is illegal because we don’t have a ‘site registration permit.’”
Yu said that the church has been meeting in the house for over 20 years and that the majority of the 10 worshippers inside were elderly and lived close to the house.
Xilin District Religious Affairs Bureau of Yichun and the Xilin District Public Security Bureau issued a notice stating that the church was illegal because it did not have a permit and that all religious activity had to immediately stop.
The officials said if the church continued to meet, they would be classified as a cult and further legal action would be taken against them.
Chinese government officials have told a five-month pregnant woman to have an abortion or she will lose her job as a teacher.
Qin Yi had been given permission to have a child from authorities in hometown of Huangshan City but because she lives in Guizhou province, those authorities were the ones who had authority on whether she could have a child.
Qin and her husband both have a child from previous marriages, so the new child is a violation of the nation’s one child per family law.
Not only was Qin ordered to have an abortion but she is being investigated by authorities on whether she transferred her location of residency in an attempt to have a child with her new husband.
The Chinese policy of one child per family has been under growing criticism around the world as being a form of genocide.
“Even if all couples were allowed two children, there is no guarantee that the CCP will cease their appalling methods of enforcement. Regardless of the number of children allowed, women who get pregnant without permission will still be dragged out of their homes, strapped down to tables, and forced to abort babies that they want,” Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, stated to Congress about the Chinese policy.
Nobel Peace Prize nominee Chen Guangcheng said the government had “contempt for the lives of human beings.”
The chair of the council for Justice & Peace of the Irish Catholic Bishop’s conference is speaking out about Christian persecution around the world, saying that 11 Christians are killed every hour for their faith in Christ.
Bishop John McAreavey cited a Pew Research survey showing Christianity is the most prosecuted religion around the world with persecution against them reported in 110 countries.
“Many of these countries have significant trade links with Ireland. Persecution is increasing in China. In North Korea a quarter of the country’s Christians live in forced labour camps. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Maldives all feature in the 10 worst places to be Christian,” McAreavey said. “According to the International Society for Human Rights, a non-religious organization, 80 percent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed against Christians.”
McAreavey said that the persecution of Christians in the Middle East is “a threat to our common humanity” and that the stability of the entire planet is at risk because of the violence in the region. He also condemned Western leaders who are not taking steps to help persecuted Christians.
“Perhaps because of a fear of being seen as less than aggressively secular in their own country,” he said, many governments of majority Christian countries in the West seem reluctant to give direct aid to churches and religious minorities.”
McAreavey defined the loss of religious freedom and persecution as something that “can run from subtle cultural exclusion of the religious voice from the public square and refusal to accommodate reasonable differences of conscience to active discrimination, forced displacement, exploitation and loss of life.”
A new report from China Aid says that Christian persecution in China significantly climbed during 2014.
The Texas-based advocacy group said that China saw a 300 percent increase in instances of religious – mostly Christian – persecution in 2014 compared to 2013. The 572 confirmed cases of persecution impacted 17,884 people, a rise of over 10,000 from the previous year.
“In 2014, the scope, depth, and intensity of persecution against religious practitioners far surpassed that of 2013,” China Aid reported. “The increase in government-sanctioned persecution against religious practitioners and human rights lawyers and advocates reflects the overall political transformation that is occurring within the Communist Party in China (CPC), namely an orchestrated effort to consolidate power and suppress dissent and any perceived threats to the Chinese government, including the growth of religion in China.”
A significant rise was seen in the detention of church leadership. In 2013, 54 church leaders had been arrested or detained by government officials. In 2014, that number jumped to 449.
The Chinese government claimed that actions taken against Christian groups, which included the destruction of churches and the removal of crosses from church buildings, were attempts to eliminate “attacking cults.” They said the “cults” were attempting to “undermine law enforcement.”
The report from China Aid backs up the earlier report from Open Doors regarding religious freedom worldwide that showed China deteriorating in freedom. China fell from 37th to 29th in the most recent Open Doors report.
Seeking the Lord for a word for the new year is always a very serious pursuit and this year is even more crucial as we see the “red lights of prophecy” flashing all around us and God’s plan unfolding at breakneck speed. The Lord began to speak to me while we were in Israel, and the word that I give to you I sincerely pray will resonate with your spirit and cause you to be more prepared for these times we see looming on the horizon. Remember that in the midst of all the turmoil there is a promise of His Return and that is cause for great rejoicing! Continue reading →