Today’s Headlines:

6TH-GRADER RAISES $3,000 TO BUILD HOME FOR POOR FAMILY

WELL-KNOWN CHRISTIAN LEAVES IRAQ, CALLING SITUATION ‘INTOLERABLE’

CHINESE BLIND CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER SENTENCED TO 4 YEARS, 3 MONTHS

SURVEY: 15 PERCENT OF NEW ZEALANDERS ATTEND CHURCH WEEKLY

Today’s Top Stories:

6TH-GRADER RAISES $3,000 TO BUILD HOME FOR POOR FAMILY

A sixth-grader from Vermont was so moved by the plight of the poor in the Caribbean and Latin America that she decided to chip in to help support the work of Food for the Poor (FFP) in those regions. Audrey Pekarik of Browns River Middle School in Underhill Center, Vt., set as her goal to raise the $2,000 necessary to build a house for a needy family as a tangible expression of God’s love. After a fox ended her egg-selling business, Pekarik began creating bracelets made of precious metals, semi-precious stones and crystals to raise the funds. Pekarik donated $5 from every sale to FFP. In the end, Pekarik exceeded her goal, raising $3,000. (Mission Network News)

WELL-KNOWN CHRISTIAN LEAVES IRAQ, CALLING SITUATION ‘INTOLERABLE’

Prominent Assyrian Christian Donny George, president of Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, was considered by many to be a barometer of how Iraq was progressing. George, well known for his directorship and work preserving the Baghdad Museum, has recently left Iraq, calling the situation “intolerable.” He cited the dramatic increase in a radical Muslim and anti-Western environment. Ken Joseph of AssyrianChristians.com has said that George’s experience can be traced back to the January 2006 elections that were “neither free nor fair.” Joseph said that up to 3 million false ballots were shipped across the border from Iran to skew election results, and the U.N.-designed electoral system was carefully designed to give small radical Muslim parties an advantage. Many Assyrian Christians and other northern minorities were denied voting access by either closed voting centers or intimidation. George is one of the nearly 100,000 Assyrian Christians in the city of Nineveh — descendants of the original people of Iraq. Christians comprised 20 percent of the Middle East’s population as late as the 1950s. That number has dropped to less than 2 percent today. (Assist News Service)

CHINESE BLIND CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER SENTENCED TO 4 YEARS, 3 MONTHS

Renowned Chinese blind civil rights activist, Chen Guancheng was sentenced in Shandong province on Thursday, Aug. 24, to four years and three months in prison on charges of willfully damaging property, organizing a mob and disrupting traffic. Chen and two others were tried secretly on Friday, Aug. 18, with only a public defender appointed to him because neither his wife or lawyers were allowed in the courtroom for the trial. Chen’s wife is currently under house arrest. In 2005 Chen exposed the local authorities’ harsh methods in enforcing the one-child policy in Linyi, Shandong province. Chen filed a class-action lawsuit on a woman’s behalf that was rejected by the court, yet drew worldwide attention because of an interview with Time magazine. Just three hours after the interview, Public Security Agents from his hometown abducted Chen. He remained under house arrest for months before being removed from his house in March and then formally detained in June. (China Aid Association)

* HCJB World Radio-Australia’s shortwave station in Kununurra broadcasts 16.5 hours of Mandarin and 14 hours of Cantonese programming each week.

SURVEY: 15 PERCENT OF NEW ZEALANDERS ATTEND CHURCH WEEKLY

A National Church Life Survey in New Zealand has revealed that more people attend church on any given Sunday than attend sporting events. Massey University historian Peter Lineham says that while overall churchgoing may be a minority activity, it’s one of the largest minorities in the country with about 15 percent attending weekly and 30 percent attending at least once a year. Lineham says the survey numbers are limited because most Pentecostal, fundamentalist and ethnic churches, which make up at least 50 percent of Auckland’s churches, were not surveyed. Recent research has put church attendance at between 10 and 28 percent of the population. Taking all the polls into consideration — along with reservations regarding interpretation of the results — an estimated 800,000 of the country’s 4.4 million people attend some form of church service. Additional statistics show that about 40 percent of New Zealanders have attended church in the past and dropped out. (Assist News Service)

Lawyers for the Texas-based Great News Network (GNN) which was accused of distributing a gospel tract that violates currency restrictions have filed an appeal with a federal court arguing the tract cannot be considered a counterfeit piece of money. In June, Secret Service agents confiscated thousands of the “million-dollar bill” gospel tracts, claiming they violated currency restrictions. Senior trial attorney Brian Fahling with the Center for Law and Policy who is representing GNN said, “They are fictitious bills. They have disqualifying marks such as a gospel message on the back. On the front it says things like, ‘This bill is not legal tender’ [and] ‘from the Department of Eternal Affairs.'” Fahling added that anyone “with a modicum of common sense — even without common sense” would recognize the bills are not actual currency. Demand for the tracts has skyrocketed since the controversy began. (AgapePress)