CAR: UN probing alleged killings
The UN is investigating the death of people in the Central African Republic (CAR) by government forces and mercenaries with the Russian private military company Wagner. Over thirty civilians were killed, some by stray bullets, in the 16-17 January operation which targeted the Union for Peace rebel group. The UN mission known as MINUSCA received reports of the incident involving CAR troops and ‘other security personnel’. They sent a human rights team and security personnel there to assess the situation and take necessary measures to protect civilians. A military source, declining to be identified, suggested that the fighting is continuing, with forces and Russians committing massacres. ‘There have been summary executions and about fifty deaths.’ UN experts expressed concerns over ‘grave human rights abuses’ by the Wagner group, who take orders from the Russian defence ministry.
Global: masks in airlines
Airlines reported nearly 6,000 incidents involving unruly passengers last year and 151 in the first two weeks of this year. Most incidents involved passengers refusing to wear masks. The latest incident, on 20 January, involved an American Airlines passenger who refused to wear a mask on a flight to Heathrow from Miami, which forced the Boeing 777 carrying 129 passengers to return to Florida. The American Airlines statement said the diversion was ‘due to a disruptive customer refusing to comply with the federal mask requirement’. See also
‘The Chosen’ TV series
Why would an online television series about Jesus be breaking popularity records? It has no big-name stars or producers. The stories are ancient. Are viewers looking for hope amid pandemic uncertainty? Are they bored with working from home and turning to diversions their bosses cannot monitor? Maybe personal connection is driving all this. The episodes portray Jesus’ life with believable dialogue and characters whose genuine, heartfelt emotions - pain, confusion, fear, exhilaration, contentment, awe - help viewers relate these stories to their own struggles and joys. The producers also selected a unique distribution method: free of charge via online streaming. As of now, over 300 million people in over 190 countries have viewed it, and there are translations into fifty languages. A special Christmas 2021 episode was put on in a theatre to run for two days: it ran for 23 days!
North Korean parallel Bible
A Bible using the idioms of North Korea in a side-by-side display with the form of Korean spoken in the south is ministering to the hearts of defectors and may be a tool God uses for the eventual reunification between north and south. It has been developed by Cornerstone Ministries, which spent eight years on the New Testament and 15 years on the entire Bible. The project began with a simple request: ‘North Korean believers who received and read the Korean Bible requested that we publish the Bible in Korean using idioms and phraseology they could easily understand.’ Cornerstone delivered the Bibles to 3,500 defectors in the South during the Christmas season. After one defector received a Bible and read it slowly he said, ‘The text was very nice and familiar. There are some parts of the revised Bible that we defectors had difficulty understanding. However, for me as a North Korean reading this translation the words “Yes” came out of my mouth.’
