Three Samaritan’s Purse Workers Missing in Darfur, Sudan

Assist News | Three Samaritan’s Purse employees have been abducted in Sudan.

The Samaritan’s Purse team, two Sudanese men and one 36-year-old American woman from California, was traveling in a two-vehicle convoy and stopped by a group of armed men 25 miles southwest of Nyala in Sudan’s Darfur region at approximately 5:30 p.m. (GMT+3), Tuesday, May 18.

On the Front Line of Faith and Freedom:

Former British Politician Gives Whirlwind Report on the Front Lines of the Persecuted Church Around the World

Assist News | It is a long way from a tent in a war zone in Sudan, to a five-star hotel in Beverly Hills -- but that's the transition that Baroness Caroline Cox, a former deputy speaker of the British House of Lords, made recently when she met with international journalist and broadcaster Dan Wooding before speaking about the persecuted church at this top hotel.

Baroness Cox told Wooding her organization, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), works with people who are on the front lines of faith around the world.

Chocolate: The Bitter Truth

Four Corners: Watch Full Episode on ABCs iView | Cocoa beans are the basic ingredients of chocolate. They are one of the most heavily traded commodities in the world. In Europe, major chocolate makers have signed up to Fairtrade programs, claiming some of their products are made without abusive labour practices. Now the BBC's Paul Kenyon, posing as a cocoa bean buyer, puts those claims to the test, revealing that despite Fairtrade's best efforts unscrupulous cocoa suppliers still try and cheat the system.

His name is Fatao. He is just 12 years old and each day he works with a machete harvesting cocoa beans on a farm in Ghana. The hours are long, the work is dirty and exhausting and he is paid no money. But the beans he harvests underpin a massive industry that nets companies, in the developed world, millions and millions of dollars.

His situation is not unique. Across parts of Africa thousands of children, some less than ten years of age, are forced to work for little or no pay to harvest cocoa beans. Some are trafficked and moved from country to country to work illegally. Their treatment breaks international labour laws and yet in many cases very little is done to stop this modern day slavery.

Major chocolate makers acknowledge there are problems involving the use of children. In the United States, after a major political campaign, companies including Mars and Nestle agreed to sign up to a six point plan to protect children in the chocolate industry. Nine years on though there is still no logo on U.S. chocolate stating which brands are free of child labour.

For some activists, including Terry Collingsworth from International Rights Advocates, this is a completely unacceptable situation

WATCH FULL EPISODE

Training tomorrow's leaders

There is a great need in this nation to assist those students and recent graduates who demonstrate a high potential to become influential leaders for Christ across strategic areas of our nation including politics, law, media, science, education, arts and philosophy.
The Compass program, an eight-day course in Christian worldview, aims to address this need.

The inaugural program kicks off this Sunday with 40 students at the University of Queensland. For more information and to register interest for 2009, please go to www.compass.org.au .

Lyle Shelton
National Chief of Staff , Australian Christian Lobby