125 Christian Meeting Halls in China Shut - AP
Authorities in an east China province have sealed off 125 Christian gathering places since July, cutting off 3,000 believers from their places of worship, a human rights organization said Thursday.

Ukraine moves to tighten control of Internet - AFP
The Ukrainian parliament passed the first reading of a bill banning publication -- including on the Internet -- of anything that promotes terrorism, the overthrow of the state or damages an individual's reputation.

Encryption revolution: the tantalizing promise of 'unbreakable' codes - AP
Code-makers could be on the verge of winning their ancient arms race with code-breakers. After 20 years of research, an encryption process is emerging that is considered unbreakable because it employs the mind-blowing laws of quantum physics. This month, a small startup called MagiQ Technologies Inc. began selling what appears to be the first commercially available system that uses individual photons to transfer the numeric keys that are widely used to encode and read secret documents. Photons, discrete particles of energy, are so sensitive that if anyone tries to spy on their travel from one point to another, their behavior will change, tipping off the sender and recipient and invalidating the stolen code.

Lifeway & 'Left Behind' boost evangelism with end-times aids - BP News
LifeWay Christian Resources is partnering with the creators of the popular "Left Behind" series to help individuals and churches use the apocalyptic thrillers as tools to share the Gospel. The evangelistic strategy, called "Share Eternity with Someone Today," is available to download for free at LifeWay.com.

Religion Journal Focuses on International Missions
ReligionJournal, a Christian Internet news service, focuses on international missions news as it reports the latest in evangelism and world missions. Read the "Evangelism & Missions Report" about missionaries in Africa, anticipating a renewed Gospel interest following President Bush's visit there. Learn how evangelicals are "on the move" in Romania and about prayer-walking in Chicago. Enjoy a Christian Aid report from India, Bible League news around the world, news on the International Charismatic Catholic Renewal Services and a highlighted story on Top Chretien's major French Christian presence on the Internet. Subscribe to receive Religion Journal's weekly headlines news and keep updated on what God is doing in His world today!

International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church Day
There are many Christians being persecuted all over the world in places like Egypt, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Latin America, Cuba and France. Join with millions of Christians all over the world on November 9th, 2003 in celebrating the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

Startup Says Quantum Crypto Is Real - Light Reading
Light Reading yesterday announced it's shipping what appears to be the first security system based on quantum cryptography. Quantum cryptography goes a step further than electronic cryptography through its employment of a stream of photons, the quantum properties of which determine the key. The fun part is that if an intruder observes or intercepts the transmission, those properties get changed -- an unavoidable principle of quantum mechanics -- meaning the sender and receiver can tell if anyone is eavesdropping. Perhaps more important, the key can't be copied or faked.

American Tract Society - BOTCW
American Tract publishes attention arresting evangelistic literature and interactive Christian cd-roms, as well as growth, discipleship and witnessing resources for the local church.

Priests to train on Temple Model - Isreal Today
For several months, Jewish experts have been working on a replica of the Third Temple in the blazing heat near the Dead Sea. The Jewish community of Mitzpe Yericho, between Jerusalem and Jericho, is home to the model, which is built on a 1:1 scale. Covering an area of 25,000 square meters (269,000 square feet), it will function as a training site to prepare priests (kohanim) for service in the Third Temple in Jerusalem.

Group lobbies for domain buyers' privacy - ZDNet
Individuals and small-business owners should be able to buy domain names without being required to divulge their mailing address, phone number and e-mail address, an international coalition plans to say in a letter Tuesday evening. Currently, the Internet Coalition for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) broadly requires that such details be made publicly available through the "Whois" directories. That policy enables spammers, direct marketers and identity thieves to loot the directory for personal information about domain name owners, the coalition's draft letter to ICANN charges.

Take A Whirlwind Tour of the Bible
Does the prospect of ever becoming familiar with the history and characters of the Bible seem daunting? Whirlwind Bible Tours(WBT) understands--and they've taken it upon themselves to give Internet visitors a fast-paced, humorous tour of the major people and events of the Bible. You will receive "a whimsically humorous and brief overview of the Bible" with these intriguing learning categories: "Earth: The Early Years"; "My World's Fallen and I Can't Get Up"; "Moses: the Great Escape"; "War and Peace (Repeat)"; "Decline and Fall of the Israeli Empire" and "Jesus People: The Early Years." If you're the sort of person who doesn't know his Jeremiah from his Jehoshaphat, WBT's light-hearted overview of Bible basics may be right up your alley! Parents will want to check out Discovering the Bible [Microsoft Word document], a coordinating Bible quiz developed for a 7th grade class by Geoff Roberts-Thomson of "Community and Religious Education" in Melbourne, Australia.

Defeating Fascism, Again - National Review Online
"Fascism, the subject of my first 15 years' professional study, is used so often as a term of general opprobrium that it has been gutted of all serious content in popular usage. More's the pity, since fascism is back, big-time, and it would be worthwhile to try to understand it in order to drive it back under the slimy rocks where it was hidden for much of the last half-century."

Audio Treasure - BOTCW
Free download site for the Bible narrated in mp3 audio format. World English Bible and King James Version.

The Needs of Europe - Gospelcom
'Modern' 'advanced' Europe is often overlooked as a mission field. Yet as a continent, it is largely secular, post-modern, post-Christian. At least 14 countries in Europe contain less than 1% evangelicals, with many under 0.5%. These are figures we normally associate with Islamic 10-40 countries.They are achingly bad. Numbers of Christian young people within these countries are even worse. Of course we are not suggesting that the Internet is an instant solution. But the high level of Internet usage and penetration, especially by the young, suggests that we should be specifically looking at ways to use the Internet in the languages of Europe for cutting edge evangelism, including specific outreach to young people.

China Christian Church Activist Detained
AP reports, "An activist for China's unofficial Christian church has been detained after investigating the destruction of churches by authorities in eastern China, human rights groups say."

Search Engineering - Gospelcom
Although a search on Google for 'Jesus' will bring up mainly good material, it is sad to note that a search on 'Jesus resurrection' gives a number of skeptic pages in the top 10. Christians need to learn more about 'SEO' - Search Engine Optimization - and how to get pages into the vital top 10. A good page ranking is the result of lots of hard work. It does not just happen.

Growing Internet prayer site 'adopts' 140,000 U.S. troops
In response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, retired Baptist minister Cornell Haan and businessman Bill Hunter, founded the Presidential Prayer Team as an Internet venue to pray for the president, his Cabinet and the nation. Since then, it has broadened its focus to the military and their families as well as members of Congress and issues. They are among the 140,000 troops "adopted" for daily prayers by the Presidential Prayer Team. With a reported 1.6 million daily hits, the Web site is one of the biggest efforts merging technology with traditional prayer, religion experts say.

China Arrests Church Leader's Adviser
AP reports, "The legal adviser to an imprisoned leader of China's unofficial Christian church has been arrested along with a prominent church activist and his wife, international human rights groups reported Friday."

India Blocks Almost All Yahoo! Forums
AP reports, "A government ban on an Internet discussion group run by an obscure separatist movement has ended up blocking access to popular, unrelated Yahoo forums in nearly all of India...But for technical reasons, Indian Internet service providers were unable to block just the Kynhun site - and had to shut down every Yahoo discussion group...The Indian government occasionally blocks Web sites it finds objectionable, including one for a Pakistani newspaper during India-Pakistan fighting in 1999." :: It is worth noting how vulnerable to Internet is to national control. I wonder how realistic it was to imagine Buck's underground webzine or Zion's website would be immune to GC censorship when the web of today is so easily controlled by governmental authorities?

Southern Baptists Applaud Mel Gibson "Passion"
The Jesus Journal reports, "Mel Gibson's representation of the sufferings of Jesus Christ in the upcoming movie "The Passion" surpasses all earlier efforts by cinematographers, according to Southern Baptists who were invited to view a rough cut of the film in Dallas."