Syria’s disappearing Christian villages

SYRIA: Tel Tal and other villages along the Khabur River once had about 10,000 Assyrian Christian residents but now approximately 900 live there—a 90 percent decline, paralleling what’s happening to ancient Christian communities across the region.

VENEZUELA: In a hospital in the capital, restrooms are closed and water turned off, as once-prosperous Venezuelans endure the fifth year of an economic crisis brought on by a socialist dictatorship.

ZIMBABWE: The opposition will get its day in court next week, as the Constitutional Court hears its challenge to July elections, which saw the party of long-ruling Robert Mugabe once again dominate.

CHINA: Beijing’s house churches are fighting back, demanding that the Chinese government abide by its own constitution.

NIGERIA: When reports of sexual and financial abuse persisted in a Nigerian-run center for victims of persecution, could its U.S. backer, the longstanding advocacy group Voice of the Martyrs, have done more?

WEEKEND LISTEN AND READ: Podcast host Daniel Darling, vice president for communications at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, let me ramble with him about human dignity and war reporting, and I’m reading his new book, The Dignity Revolution.

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