| Church in crisis: Stay or leave?
Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church in Mt. Lebanon will hold a congregational meeting Sunday night to vote on whether to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA), with the intention of affiliating with the more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The reason is a belief that the denomination no longer fully upholds key doctrines of the Trinity or salvation through Christ alone, said the Rev. Rick Wolling, pastor of the 400-member congregation. Since the 1920s, "this denomination has followed a path of divergence from orthodoxy, to the point where that divergence is a violation of our conscience," he said. Separation requires a 51 percent vote of all active members. The 6 p.m. meeting will be closed to all but active members and invited representatives of Pittsburgh Presbytery, who will present the case to stay.
AA to build Bt12-bn paper plant
Advance Agro will spend Bt12 billion to construct a third paper-making plant with an annual capacity of 420,000 tonnes, increasing the company's production to one million tonnes per year - enough to respond to growing demand in both the local and international markets. The new plant will be run by the company's 99-per cent-owned subsidiary, Double A Paper. The secretary of Advance Agro's board of directors, Kampon Chayasunthorn, yesterday said the investment had been approved on Wednesday. The plant will be built on 16.16 hectares of land near the company's existing plant at Prachin Buri. "Double A Paper expects to start the project later this year. Building and equipping the plant will take about two years and we expect to begin production in 2009," he said in a statement to the Stock Exchange of Thailand.
Zimbabwe Mediator Mbeki: No Regime Change, But Transition Ahead
South African President Thabo Mbeki, appointed mediator in the Zimbabwe crisis last week by Southern African Development Community leaders, said his first concern is to ensure that the next elections that are held in Zimbabwe be free and fair. In an an interview published in the Financial Times of London on Tuesday, Mbeki said that although “regime change" does not figure on his agenda, he does expect that President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe will eventually stand down. "We don't have a big stick," Mbeki told Financial Times reporters, meaning that he did not intend to force a change in Harare through intervention, military or otherwise. He told the newspaper that he would try to restart informal discussions between Mr. Mugabe's ruling party and the opposition, hoping to pave the way for presidential and parliamentary elections less than a year from now in March 2008.
Ugandans Should Give Peace a Chance
It will be do or die tomorrow as the government of Uganda and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army/Movement (LRA/M) meet the U.N. Special Envoy to northern Uganda, Joaquim Chissano, to thrash out differences that led to LRA/M's walkout on the peace talks at Juba, Southern Sudan, in January. Ugandans, their neighbors and the international community want peace to prevail in the country after more than twenty years of a bloody civil war in which thousands were killed and 1.7 million people displaced.
The onus is on the parties to the conflict to honor the ceasefire agreement signed in July 2006 and give peace a chance. Whereas both parties appeared to show remorse at the beginning of the peace talks last year, the positions they have adopted currently do not augur well for the sustenance of the ceasefire and eventual signing of a peace agreement.
Minimum wage policy review
ALTHOUGH a minimum wage policy can be used to reduce poverty it should never be at the heart of any poverty alleviation programme. This was one of the points made by Professor Andrew Downes as he tackled the controversial labour market issue of a minimum wage policy. Currently in Barbados there exists minimum wage legislation that covers both shop assistants and domestics, however an actual minimum wage has only been set for shop assistants. Professor Downes, who is Director at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus lent his voice to the debate through his research paper on the impact of a minimum wage policy on the economy of Barbados. Pointing out that one of the objectives of minimum wage legislation was poverty reduction, an objective the results of his paper proved could be met, Professor Downes noted causes of poverty were too myriad to rely solely on minimum wage legislation as a remedy.
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