Decreased financial and political commitment was blamed recently for the rash of measles outbreaks in 30 African countries.

If the trend continues, by 2012 some 500,000 may die from measles, reversing the gains of the last 18 years that were made against the disease, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Severe measles can incur complications such as blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhea and dehydration, ear infections or severe respiratory infections such as pneumonia.

Measles deaths among children under five years old fell to 118,000 in 2008 from 733,000 in 2000.

The disease tends to occur among poorly nourished young children with the most severe complications, according to Reuters.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the African countries that had the largest outbreaks are Zimbabwe, Chad and Nigeria.

Some 8,000 migrant children in Bulgaria also had the highly-contagious disease during the period,

WHO expert Peter Strebel said the World Health Assembly’s 193 member states, in their annual meeting in Geneva last Thursday, decided to aim for at least 90 percent measles vaccination coverage nationally by 2015, Reuters reported.

However these goals, while achievable, require a long and determined commitment by the states themselves.

Strebel said the assembly will also aim for 80 percent coverage in every district, and to reduce measles to less than five per million population, Voice of America said.

They also strive to reduce measles mortality by 95 percent compared to 2000 levels.  It costs less than $1 to vaccinate a child against measles, but two doses are required for full protection, according to Voice of America.

Meanwhile large cases of measles have also erupted in the UK, the USA and parts of Europe due to a flawed study that linked measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination to autism.

In Britain vaccination rates dropped below 90 percent last year following the autism scare, Strebel said.  However, after the study was proven to be flawed, in the U.K. in fact there have more recently been improvements in vaccination levels and disease spread has fallen to very low levels, Reuters reported.

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The Catholic Church issued recently a cautionary warning on the first synthetic cell, noting that correctly used, it could be a positive development—but only God can create life.

The Vatican issued the warning after an announcement from the United States that researchers had produced a living cell containing manmade DNA.

The scientist, genome-mapping pioneer J. Craig Venter, said this opens a path for designing organisms that may work differently from how nature intended, according to The Herald, Scotland.

The Church warned scientists of the ethical responsibility of scientific progress and said that the manner in which the innovation is applied in the future will be crucial, according to the Associated Press.

“If …it is for the good of all, of the environment and man..we’ll keep the same judgment (that it is a great scientific discovery),” said Monsignor Rino Fisichella.

“If, on the other hand, the use of this discovery should turn against the dignity of and respect for human life, then our judgment would change,” the AP reported.

Fisichella, who heads Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, stressed there is no necessary clash between science and faith.  “But we think above all about the meaning that must be given to life,” Fisichella said.  “We need God, the origin of life,” the AP reported.

Venter’s synthetic cell is actually Mycoplasma mycoides, a type of living bacteria that is commonly associated with mastitis in goats, according to The Herald, Scotland.

Venter’s Mycoplasma mycoides are synthetic because it was made with synthetic chemicals, transplanted and activated into a cell with manmade genetic instructions.  Venter’s team is now considering creating algae that can capture carbon dioxide from the air and produce hydrocarbon fuels, according to SiliconIndia.

Naysayers however doubt that making Mycoplasma mycoides is tantamount to the creation of “artificial life.”

On the other hand, Julian Savulescu, Professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford, said “We need new standards of safety evaluation for this kind of radical research, and protection from military or terrorist misuse and abuse,” according to SiliconIndia.

The Catholic Church teaching holds that human life is God’s gift, created through natural procreation between a man and woman.  The Vatican said the first synthetic cell “must have rules, like all the things that touch on the heart of life,” according to the AP.

U.S. President Barack Obama asked that the commission develop recommendations about any actions the government should take “to ensure that America reaps the benefits of this developing field of science while identifying appropriate ethical boundaries and minimizing identified risks,” SiliconIndia reported.

Meanwhile Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, said “Any form of intelligence and any scientific acquisition must always be measured against the ethical dimension, which has at its heart the true dignity of every person.”

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The fastest death rate of churches in America is happening in the Bible belt, said a southern US pastor at a 3-day convention that was held recently, according to Christian Today (CT).

Churches are dying fastest in the so-called Bible Belt/Credit: klsmith77/sxc.hu

At Advance10: Contextualizing the Gospel in the New South, Pastor Tyler Jones of Vintage21 Church in Raleigh, North Carolina said churches are dying rapidly in the Bible belt. He and several other pastors blamed the churches themselves for the decline, CT reported.

According to Jones, churches don’t understand the gospel and how it applies to people’s lives. They are being taught “quaint moralism over the Gospel.” Jones said, adding “Moralism is the greatest form of self worship. It robs us of our need for God,” CT reported.

Jerome Gay, lead pastor of Vision International Church in Raleigh agreed, saying, “Christianity has been presented as a list of don’ts. Don’t go to the club, don’t join the frat, don’t do this, don’t do that.” As a result, people leave the church, disillusioned, without actually knowing Christ as he is presented in the Bible, CT said.

The conference was held by Advance the Church, and co-sponsored by The Summit Church and Vintage21 Church. They seek to help local churches become more responsive to the changing culture without watering down God’s Word, according to the Christian Post (CP).

CP quoted Pastor David Platt of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama, who said many churches need clarity on the Gospel. “A lot of people who [grew] up in the church need to hear the Gospel as it’s presented biblically,” said Platt.

Other scheduled speakers were Matt Carter of The Austin Stone; Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle; J.D. Grear of The Summit Church in the Raleigh-Durham area; Johnny Hunt, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention; and Tullian Tchividjian, grandson of evangelist Billy Graham and pastor at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla, according to CP.

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On April 6, Christian human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng thought he could return to a normal life after 13 months of imprisonment.  But his “release” was a farce to please the international media, and on April 20 Gao disappeared again, last seen with four policemen, Compass Direct News (CDN) reported.

Gao, a self-taught lawyer and Communist Party member until 2005 was once viewed by China’s Ministry of Justice as among their top 10 lawyers, according to CDN.

Gao defended some of China’s most vulnerable people, including workers seeking redress, underground Christians and the banned Falungong spiritual movement, according to Telegraph.co.uk.

In a press conference held shortly after his April 6 release, Gao said he wanted to be reunited with his family, who fled to the United States in January 2009 over his daughter’s attempted suicides when she was blocked from entering school.

Meanwhile, Gao hoped to visit his in-laws in Urumqi, according to CDN.  Gao would no longer continue his legal work, he said, and he could not comment on his treatment while in captivity.  Now, no one knows where Gao is.

On Feb. 4 last year Gao was taken from his Shaanxi home and held incommunicado for 13 months.  Chinese authorities filed no formal charges and issued no arrest warrant while he was jailed, Telegraph.co.uk reported.

A demonstration in Hong Kong to demand information about Gao Zhisheng's whereabouts on 4 Feb 2010/Credit: Voice of America

The Telegraph quoted friends and colleagues who said that when he was released on April 6 he was still being tailed by police.  On April 30 Gao visited his father-in-law in the company of four police officers.  He just spent one night there before the police took him out again.

Gao’s brief release from jail is believed to be in response to demands by western governments and international rights groups who repeatedly demanded to know his whereabouts and sought his release.  It is believed the police feared Gao would talk of his treatment while he was incarcerated, according to the Telegraph and CDN.

In 2005 Gao wrote open letters to President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao accusing the government of torturing Falungong members.  As a result his law license was revoked and his law firm shut down.

In 2007 Gao was detained, tortured and threatened with death.  His captors also threatened to harm and torture his wife and children if he spoke of his treatment in jail.  Under duress, Gao “confessed” and was under house arrest, the CDN said.

An AFP report said human rights lawyers in China are constantly harassed and threatened.  For example:

• Tang Jitian, 41, lost his livelihood, rarely sees his family, and must constantly change homes because authorities pressure his landlords.  He has defended the Falungong, people who were displaced from their lands, and hepatitis B carriers who are subject to discrimination.
• Authorities once set up video cameras outside Tang’s home in Jilin, filming through the windows.
• Tang and colleague Liu Wei, in her 30s, have had their licenses revoked while defending Falungong.  In April last year they walked out of court due to constant interruption of their defense by the judge.
• A legal research center for human rights was shut down on July 2009, and the Beijing Justice Bureau suspended the licenses of 53 lawyers.
• Authorities set restrictions on lawyers taking up cases related to the 2009 protests in Urumqi.
• New rules will be enforced in June this year stipulating punishments for lawyers and their firms that are so vaguely written that they can be arbitrarily interlpreted in terms of disciplinary measures.

China foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said last week that attorneys are free to work as they please.  “Chinese citizens enjoy their lawful rights and interests, which are also guaranteed by the laws and the Constitution,” Yu said, according to the AFP.

In the past few years, the number of rights lawyers in China has soared — from about 10 in 2007 to around 100 today in Beijing alone.

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The Concerned Women for America (CWA) expressed recently concern that President Barak Obama’s newest Supreme Court appointee, Elena Kagan, is unfit for the job, according to Christian NewsWire (CNW).

The report said when Kagan was formerly dean of the Harvard Law School, Kagan banned military recruiters from the campus.  “In her disdain for the military, Elena Kagan considers her own views and opinions as more important than obeying the law and equipping the country with the best fighting force in the world. We need justices who put national security over the feelings or demands of special interest groups,” the CWA said.

Elena Kagan as Dean of Harvard Law School/Credit:Doc Searls

The CWA also urged the US Senate to oppose Kagan’s nomination and to give precedence to a justice who will defend the Constitution, uphold the right to life and traditional marriage.

Other concerns raised by Christian NewsWire are that Kagan will not uphold restrictions on abortion, nor overturn Roe v. Wade.  Kagan upholds a “woman’s right to choose” view on abortion related issues.

Christian NewsWire also mentioned issues raised by the Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF), among them:

• Does she view opposition to abortion as a form of female discrimination?

• Would she support exclusion of abortion from funding sources such as Medicaid, state assistance programs, or insurance coverage?  Or would she see such exclusion as deprivation of equal protection?

• Does she believe the First Amendment applies equally to public sidewalks outside “reproductive health facilities” or would she believe the government may enact special speech restrictions in these areas?

Dana Cody, LLDF president said she hoped pro-life senators would examine kagan’s record and bear in mind the interests of the pro-life movement for the protection of unborn children and their mothers.

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post’s Micheal Kieschnick raised other concerns, specifically:

What are Kagan’s views on executive power and whether corporations deserve the rights of a person.  Kieschnick expressed hope that her legal views were that Obama has limited power and that corporations should have none of the rights of individuals, particularly that of free speech.

While Kieschnick expressed reservations he overall felt Kagan was qualified for the job and expressed hope that the senate would confirm her very quickly.

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Human trafficking. Sex slaves. Child slavery.

It’s something Americans associate with a few European or third world countries. But the U.S. State Department’s 2009 “Trafficking in Humans” Report documents problems in 175 nations.

Girls, women, children and even teen boys are being deceived, kidnapped, trapped and shipped everywhere from America to Africa.

And it could be happening at our neighborhood mini-market.

The wholesale trafficking of humans

From California to New England, the problem is spreading within the United States. It’s becoming as uncontrollable as the drug war that has raged for decades, despite the government’s best efforts.

The estimated FBI numbers from sources as varied as ABC Primetime in 2006 to Christianity Today in 2010 show 100,000-300,000 teens and children under the age of 18 have been trafficked within the states per year.

It is harder to obtain statistics for adult victims, because of a finer line between “voluntary” and forced prostitution or sexual slavery.

In April 2010, the U.S. Attorney’s office brought sex trafficking charges against the Gambino family, notoriously reputed to be part of the elusive “mob” in America.

With the arrest of 14 people, the charges include trapping girls to sell for sex at high stakes poker games in the middle of busy Manhattan.

Engaging in human trafficking is a new low even for the mob, U.S. Attorney’s office representatives stated in a press conference covered by MSNBC.

Also in April, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported that human trafficking has become the biggest “invisible” crime in the state. Florida House Bill 633 and Senate Bill 966 are currently being proposed to help law enforcement push back against the sex slavery trade.

How can this happen in America?
The massive amounts of money to be made through human trafficking is a powerful aphrodisiac that has enticed more people, even women, to deal in such crimes. In the Gambino case, one of the people arrested was a woman known to be involved in luring the victims.

The process of obtaining victims for human trafficking:
For most teen girls and women, if they are not outright kidnapped, they’re being enticed by the possibility of modeling or acting jobs. The Hollywood dream of obtaining fame and fortune at a young age through television and movies has become an obsession.

When they get to their destination, they are thrown into vehicles or locked in back bedrooms and sold to countless customers for sex acts, sexual abuse, and to appear in pornographic movies against their will.

They may be starved, drugged, verbally abused to the point of having no self-esteem, and threatened with death if they attempt to escape.

For girls and boys who do run away from home, criminals recognize their vulnerability, hunger and brokenness and are able to entice them into prostitution and porn films with the promise of money. The victim may receive tiny payments to keep them involved.

For children, it often starts with simple nabbing from neighborhoods.

A U.S. Government grant helped reveal the child trafficking problem:
In 2008, an organization called Shared Hope International (SHI) applied for and received a government grant to study the suspected nationwide crisis of child trafficking between states. Their resulting survey revealed that many of the children were often being misidentified as delinquents, and  punished for crimes when they were actually victims.

Since then, the FBI and agencies such as the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children & Families have started training personnel to recognize when a person is a human trafficking victim instead of a runaway or criminal themselves (HHS Fact Sheet here).

See the Underground’s previous report, “Sex + Money,” about the ongoing production of a new movie aimed at exposing the U.S. sex slave industry.

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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) failed to find mutual ground at a recently held meeting in Chicago regarding ELCA’s stand on ordaining partnered gays.

ELCA’s Rev. Marcus R. Kunz denied they have abandoned scriptural authority in so doing.

Rather, he said “We seek to be faithful to the evangelical purpose that God intends with the Scriptures” according to Christian Today.

LCMS President Dr. Gerald B. Kieschnick called it a difference in understanding of scriptural authority and interpretation.

Last month the LCMS presented ELCA with the document, “Theological Implications of the 2009 ELCA Decisions” which stated, “A church body‘s acceptance of homosexual activity promotes a false security about behavior and conduct which God has forbidden and from which He longs to redeem us.”

ELCA is the largest Lutheran church body, seconded by the LCMS.  According to ELCA’s website, they are a 20 year old assembly with 4.8 million members and some 10,500 congregations across the US and the Caribbean.

Because of this theological point of disagreement, LCMS expressed the possibility of severance from mutual projects the two groups are engaged in.

ELCA Rev. Mark Hanson however expressed hopes that relationships would not be severed but rather that they could engage in deeper conversation, according to Christian Today.

Christian Today also reported that hundreds of ELCA congregations have already taken steps to leave the denomination, with some forming a new Lutheran body, and others joining LCMS.

ELCA’s Rev. Rebecca Larson complained that the LCMS document gave the false impression that ELCA’s recognition of same gender relationships is the sole position of the whole church.

Larson said that same gender relationships are not central to determining salvation, hence ELCA believes they can live together with different practices, respecting the bound consciences of each other.

LCMS President Dr. Gerald B. Kieschnick/Credit: lcms.org

ELCA’s website cites, for example, how Paul felt it was okay to eat meat that was sacrificed to idols.  Paul also felt that rituals of holy days were issues where salvation was not at stake.

“This social statement draws upon this rich understanding of the role of conscience and calls upon this church, when in disagreement concerning matters around which salvation is not at stake, including human sexuality, to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), honor the conscience, and seek the well-being of the neighbor,”  according to ELCA’s website.

In the LCMS document they stated that they will not encourage discord in ELCA, but neither will they turn their backs on ELCA members who choose to leave their denomination to join the LCMS, Christian Today reported.

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Despite a judge’s ruling that declared the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional, special observations were held across the nation and in several places in the capital city including the Pentagon, the Cannon House Office Building and the steps of the US Capitol, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Rev. Franklin Graham, who had been disinvited to the Pentagon because of comments he had made regarding the Islamic faith after 911 nonetheless prayed on a sidewalk outside the building.  Graham is honorary chairman of the private National Day of Prayer Task Force.

However, President Brack Obama, whose administration on April 22 appealed the judge’s ruling and issued a National Day of Prayer proclamation, did not hold an interfaith observance at the White House, according to the SunGazette.

On April 15, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment.  However in her decision, Crabb said ceremonies could still be held pending appeals.

In observances at Williamsport-Lycoming County, Pennsylvania keynote speaker state Superior Court Judge Cheryl Allen challenged Crabb’s argument centered on the separation of church and state, and alleged violation of the First Amendment, the SunGazette said.

Allen said, “I couldn’t find separation of church and state in the Constitution.” Regarding the First Amendment she cited the first part which says, “Congress shall make no laws establishing a religion” and said the founding fathers came to America to escape England, which had established a church and persecuted those who would not attend.  Allen then noted the second portion of the First Amendment clause which states: “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

James Dobson, who founded Focus on the Family and whose wife chairs the National Day of Prayer said the event puts a prayer covering over the nation and noted that since 1775 the first Continental Congress called for a national day of prayer.

Dobson noted that 34 out of 44 Presidents have called for a national day of prayer including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush, the New York News Today reported.

Dobson said, “How can something be unconstitutional when it was passed by both houses of Congress unanimously and signed by Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman and implemented by all those Presidents back through the years?”

Charles Haynes, a First Amendment scholar who specializes in religious liberty expects President Obama to succeed with his appeal.  He said a  judge could possibly cite a 1983 Supreme Court decision that upheld the right to legislative prayer on grounds that “the offering of prayer is a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

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Political conservative pundit S.E. Cupp’s newest book, “Losing Our Religion:  The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity” has further polarized conservative and liberal media, even as its title and subject matter drew claims of irony.

Cupp’s book polarizes conservatives, liberals, raises claims of irony

Newsweek, which reviewed Cupp’s book, extensively quoted her and indicated page numbers; said it was melodramatic, patronizing to her readers, and inspired fear mongering.

Newsweek also denied that they are a mainstream publication, and said they are not attacking Christians or even religious freedom.

Media Matters for America focused on what Cupp wrote about evolution, and said that she does violence to the science of evolution and to the public’s expectations of science journalists and science teachers.

Cupp’s book has also raised a sense of irony that an atheist should write a book that strongly defends Christianity.  Cupp however says that political conservatives like herself would benefit if Christians worked harder to protect their turf, as mainstream liberal media shoots two birds with one stone when they attack Christianity.

Cupp said Christianity is a target so that mainstream media can also attack conservatism.  “If they can effectively paint Christians as dangerous fanatics, it’s just a skip away from painting conservatives as dangerous fanatics,” she said in an interview with Mediaite.

In that same report she said that her being an atheist gave her the needed objectivity to write the book.  “I would hope it gives a little more credibility to the project than having some fundamentalist Christian write about attacks on Christianity,” she said.

Christian Today noted that other studies have also documented Cupp’s viewpoints, including The Media Elite by Lichter, Rothman and Lichter (1986), and Bias by Bernard Goldberg (2001).

Bill Muehlenberg, who authored the Christian Today review wrote, “Western Christians are sleeping through their own execution.They seem oblivious [that] the surrounding culture has declared war on the Christian faith.”

In her book Cupp wrote, according to Newsweek, that:

1. Secular media has turned religious worship into a “subculture” and reacted to presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s 2007 Christmas commercial by focusing on a “strategically placed” cross in the background.  (She cites The Washington Post and CNN).
2. Major media did not cover Obama’s snub of the National Day of Prayer.
3. Newsweek’s review of the Christian bestseller “Left Behind” said, “Sociologists tell us that the United States is experiencing a religious revival, but if the bestseller lists are any guide, the revival looks more like a collective leaving of the senses.”
4. Reviews of the Christian story “Narnia” were lukewarm despite its being a box office hit.  Reviews for The Golden Compass, which attacks Christianity, were positive although the movie did not do well at the tills.

Cupp also noted that the liberal press downplays Obama’s discomfort with religious America and barely wrote about his covering up of religious imagery in the backdrop when he gave a speech at Georgetown University.

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The Catholic League aligned recently with several Jewish organizations against a bill which would allow the government a stronger hand on what to do with human organs after a person has died.

Catholics, Jews decry bill to ‘harvest’ human organs

The bill, which is sponsored by Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, would in effect disable the next of kin from challenging decisions of their dead or dying relatives regarding the donation of their organs, the New York Times said.

This becomes contentious when the government has the right to presume that a person is willing to donate their organs unless they specifically state “no” in official documents, most commonly their driver’s license.

Under current law, a donor must indicate permission on their driver’s licenses with two witnesses present.  Or, a donor may fill a donor card.  If the bill is passed, the government may presume the person is willing to donate body organs if the box on the driver’s license indicating “no” is left blank, the Eurasia Review noted.

It is potentially possible under this bill that a person may be dying and incapable of communicating.  If the driver’s license does not indicate otherwise, the government will presume the person’s organs are up for donation, and the next of kin would not be able to challenge this.

Brodsky’s bill is being challenged by Assemblyman Dov Hikind who has launched a campaign against it, with the support of the Rabbinical Alliance of America (with over 800 members nationwide), The National Council of Young Israel (with 146 branches nationwide) and The Catholic League, the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Under Jewish tradition, people are discouraged from donating their organs except when it is urgently needed.

While Hikind expressed support for voluntary organ donation, he expressly disagrees with the government having the power of presumed consent.  If the bill is passed, New York will be the first state to implement it.

William Donohue wrote, in the Eurasia Review, “It is one thing for someone to exercise informed consent and voluntarily donate his or her organs, quite another for the state to assume it has a right to them unless stipulated otherwise. The state does not have a lien on our bodies. Indeed, to assume it does is morally obscene.

“Have we not seen enough evidence in the past one hundred years of what happens when agents of government assume a mantle of authority over the life and limbs of innocent persons? This kind of utilitarian calculus always winds up punishing the least among us while rewarding the stronger.”

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