Free Republic

Port-au-Prince, Haiti — Desperate efforts continued on Tuesday to save a group of missionaries, most of them Americans, being held for ransom by a criminal gang in Haiti. FBI agents were working with local authorities in the tiny Caribbean nation to find the 16 U.S. nationals and one Canadian who were kidnapped on Saturday. The gang was asking for $1 million for each hostage — $17 million total — to release the missionaries, a high-ranking government source confirmed to CBS News. The dollar amount was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.... ,,,Gagliano said that if it became clear the...

  At the request of Japanese Christians, Samaritan's Purse has deployed a team to provide emergency aid to people affected by the deadly earthquake and massive tsunami that hit the northeastern coast of the country on March 11.Staff members are on their way to the affected area. We will be working with local churches to distribute food, water, blankets, hygiene supplies, and other aid to people who have lost virtually everything. “The people of Japan need help, and we are going to help them however we can,” said Ken Isaacs, Samaritan’s Purse International’s vice president of projects, who is...

'I am not a hero, I make mistakes'/ 01 April 2006 By MICHAEL FIELD As survivors of Baghdad's murky, dangerous world go, Harmeet Sooden is strikingly contemplative and calm, even when talking about the way his 118 days as a captive ended. British Army and Iraqi soldiers had just burst into the upmarket house in which he and two others from the Christian Peacemakers Team were being held. "I had the sense, `This is strange'," he said. "I didn't feel, I wasn't jumping for joy, I didn't have tears of emotion. I felt this was contrived, but that we were...

The launch of Christian Aid's 2004 Christmas campaign appeal once again highlights the biased political agenda of this powerful organization regarding the Middle East conflict. Drawing upon powerful Christian imagery and symbolism, Christian Aid headlined its appeal "Child of Bethlehem", concentrating on the story of a seven-year old Palestinian girl living in Bethlehem who was "hit in the eye by shrapnel from a bullet fired by Israeli soldiers." In keeping with previous reports, as analyzed by NGO Monitor, Christian Aid's focus on sympathy for this child in large subway advertisements and elsewhere erases the context and the dilemmas posed by...

A Tyneside business is working with the charity Christian Aid to help thousands of Iraqi civilians. AquAid North, based at the Premier Business Development Centre in Scotswood, Newcastle, is helping to send supplies out to Iraq. After weeks of war and the collapse of law and order many people are without adequate water supplies, food and medical care. AquAid is donating 40p from every 19-litre bottle of water sold to Christian Aid to fund overseas development work and to help Christian Aid respond to emergencies. With AquAid's financial assistance Christian Aid is funding a mobile water treatment unit being operated...