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NEW YORK - The Bible was first introduced in China some 1,500 years ago. Now the historical pieces presenting the growth of the Christian church in China have journeyed across the United States to have its final national exhibit at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, what the church's dean called a "young Cathedral" by Chinese standards.

The red ribbon was cut Monday for the opening of the Bible Ministry Exhibition of the Church in China in New York and the unfolding of a ''friendship'' between America and China, as the Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski stated at the opening ceremony.

The Rev. Gao Feng, vice chairperson of the co-sponsoring group National Three-Self Patriotic Movement, said he expects the New York City exhibit to be even more successful than the previous showings in Los Angeles and Atlanta. more >>

UNITED NATIONS - The world meets the 25th anniversary of the first reported cases of AIDS today. To date, more than 65 million people worldwide have been infected by HIV, according to UNAIDS, 25 million of whom have died.

When the Centers for Disease Control published a report 25 years ago on five homosexual men in Los Angeles, little was known about the cause and transmission, but knowledge about the disease was quickly changing. In just a few months, the world became aware of the contagion that could infect non-homosexuals when similar cases were reported in injecting drug users and in the United Kingdom.

Today, international commitments to fight HIV and AIDS have gained momentum and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – set up in the landmark year (2001) of global commitment to the AIDS battle – has collected $4.9 billion in 131 countries to date. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated in his Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS: Five Years Later, "For the first time ever the world possesses the means to begin to reverse the epidemic." more >>

WASHINGTON – A symposium discussing the newly released report Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance brought together a panel of experts and scholars who concluded that the official Saudi set of textbooks used by more than 5 million students of Islam is an ‘‘incubator for terrorism.’’

“One of the things that is absolutely manifested – looking back at the events that have already happened – is that there is an incubator for the ideas of terrorism,” said Danielle Pletka, the symposium moderator and vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at American Enterprise Institute. “An incubator that is filled with hatred of the West, with ‘can’ts’ about Christian and Jews, with [the sense] of separateness…”

“While I don’t think that is necessarily what Islam is all about, it is certainly what a lot of the textbooks propagated by the Saudi government contain.” more >>

NEW YORK - Human rights is not a "dirty word" nor is it a bomb, said a specialist in human rights and humanitarian issues at a panel discussion concerning North Korea Wednesday.

"It has to be seen as a legitimate subject," stated Roberta Cohen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Human rights activists, church leaders and individuals concerned with the atrocious human rights situation in the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) sat in on a half-day discussion that tackled urgent issues of food security, religious persecution, refugees and the currently stalled six-party talks. more >>

VANCOUVER – While Canada claims one of the highest standards of living in the world, with a prosperous and growing economy, the issue of poverty and homelessness remains a subject of major concern that non-governmental organizations and the evangelical Christian community across the country continue to raise.

On Monday, a report from the United Nations committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights claimed that Canada has not been adhering to recommendations from the U.N.’s International Covenant, responsible for upholding these areas of human rights, to improve the lives of Canadians who are poor.

“Poverty rates remain very high among disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and groups such as Aboriginal peoples, African-Canadians, immigrants, persons with disabilities, youth, low-income women and single mothers,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported the committee as saying. more >>

CHICAGO (AP) – President Bush on Monday embraced the new leadership in Iraq as a turning point in the war but claimed only gradual progress in years of fighting and acknowledged that Americans are uneasy about the outcome.

"I can understand why people are concerned about whether or not our strategy can succeed because our progress is incremental," Bush said in his first speech since the swearing in of a new government over the weekend. "Freedom is moving but it's in incremental steps, and the enemy's progress is almost instant on their TV screens."

The president acknowledged the American lives lost in Iraq, past mistakes and tough days to come. He repeatedly returned to the word "incremental" to describe progress there. more >>