world

A pastor was shot and wounded by hardline Muslims on Sunday evening (Sept. 3) in Jaranwala, Pakistan a week after Islamist slogans were written on the walls of his church building, sources said.

Church and rights leaders in Pakistan are demanding an investigation into anti-Christian rioting in Jaranwala amid illegal arrests of area Christians and a police claim of a “foreign conspiracy” to create religious strife, sources said.

At least 74 people were killed and 50 were injured when a five-story building in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, caught fire.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Tuesday (Aug. 29) ordered the government to respond to a petition to stop courts from allowing forced conversion and marriage of minority girls in verdicts that act as covers for child rape, sources said.

Two Christians were kidnapped on Friday (Aug. 25) in Kaduna state, Nigeria, two days after gunmen described as terrorists killed a Baptist pastor in another area of the state, sources said.

Two years have passed since the United States’ harrowing withdrawal from Afghanistan. While the world witnessed the Taliban’s shocking insurgency against Kabul, The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as we once knew it, was no more.

Hundreds of firefighters are battling wildfires spreading across Greece.

Officials in Greece say that four people died and 18 have been rescued after a boat carrying migrants sank just northeast of the Greek island of Lesbos.

For the last year and a half, Ukrainians have witnessed suffering first-hand, perhaps like no other Western country in modern times. They have seen explosions, heard gunfire, escaped as buildings collapsed around them, lost their jobs and livelihoods, and watched as their friends and family have given their lives for their country.

As a Ukrainian and the area director of Young Life Western Ukraine, an organization devoted to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with adolescents, I have witnessed both suffering and celebration, peace and turmoil, and heartbreak and courage in the teenagers my team and I minister to each week.

Police in India have issued questionnaires to at least 40 churches in Indore, Madhya Pradesh state seeking information that Christians fear will be used by Hindu extremists to attack them, sources said.