World

DEAD SEA, Israel (BP) -- The Dead Sea has been receding for decades, with some experts predicting its total demise by 2050. But a $1.5 billion plan to resurrect the biblically prominent sea is nearing fruition, NBC News reported Nov. 29.

ASHKELON, Israel (RNS) — The moment Judy Spanglet heard the words “Color Red" come over Israel’s incoming-rocket alert system, she rushed into her apartment’s concrete-reinforced “safe room" and bolted the heavy door.

Moments later her building shuddered as a Grad rocket landed in a park across the street.

Most of the world’s children (93 percent) live in areas where air pollution levels exceed air quality guidelines, according to a recent World Health Organization report.

TORONTO (RNS) — Donald Trump isn’t at the Parliament of World Religions in Toronto, but his influence is widely felt here.

Speakers from around the world — and especially the U.S. — often refer to the situation in that country, expressing disappointment at the anger dividing Americans.

CÚCUTA, Colombia (BP) -- When Nelson Martínez' father died this summer, Martínez inherited a piece of property half a day up the mountain from his hometown of Cúcuta, Colombia. The property sits at 10,000 feet at the top of a cold, often rainy mountain pass. Every day several hundred ill-prepared Venezuelans walk over it on their way to try to find food, work and medicine in a new land.

Some have died of hypothermia. All are desperate.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — Andrew Brunson, the American pastor recently released after two years of confinement in Turkey said Friday that he suffered a breakdown during his time in prison and was put on anti-anxiety medication.

But the worst of it, he said, was the uncertainty.

(RNS) — The number of Christian refugees coming to the United States from the countries where Christians are most persecuted has dropped dramatically under President Trump's administration.

BEIJING (AP) — China is saving Muslim ethnic minorities from the lure of religious extremism by teaching them to speak Mandarin and accept modern science, a senior Chinese official said in a report Tuesday, Beijing's latest propaganda effort to defend its internment of Muslims against mounting criticism.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Freed American pastor Andrew Brunson fell to one knee in the Oval Office and placed his hand on President Donald Trump’s shoulder in prayer on Saturday, asking God to provide the president “supernatural wisdom to accomplish all the plans you have for this country and for him.”

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) – Dr. Evan Atar Adaha knows that faith matters to many of his patients at the Maban Referral Hospital in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State.

So, before administering the anesthetic for surgery, he recites verses from the Bible or the Quran with patients. Then the 52-year-old surgeon, who is Roman Catholic, follows with a short prayer — according to the patient’s faith — before taking up his surgical knife.