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A woman was divorced by her Muslim hus-band after he discovered she owned a Bible, it was reported in August.

The husband of the 32-year-old mother of two children discovered that his wife was a Christian and owned a Bible. He demanded that she reveal who had given it to her.

On 14 November a judge in eastern Sudan ordered a Christian school, that had been taken over by government officials, to resume classes under the prior Christian administration, according to the headmaster.

The Appeal Court for Administrative Affairs in Madani, Al Jazirah state, thus cancelled an order by the Madani commissioner calling for the closure of the Evangelical Basic School, which armed police along with civilians from Khartoum and elsewhere had seized on 24 October, said the Revd Samuel Suleiman Anglo, headmaster at the school.

Authorities in southeastern Sudan arrested the headmaster of a Christian school on 5 September and took over its property.

Armed police and officials from the National Intelligence and Security Services arrested the Rev Samuel Suliman and 12 teachers at the school in Madani, capital of Al Jazirah state. The Christians were accused of supporting the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N), a rebel group fighting government forces.

On the evening of 5 May, Pastor Dang Ba Nham, his wife, and a church elder were praying on a roadside with a woman who had recently converted to Christianity in Vinh on the north central coast of Vietnam.

They stood in front of the property of the new Christian, Phan Thi Thanh Huyen, to ask God for his blessing in building a new house. As they were praying, a large pick-up truck with red military plates veered across the street and ploughed squarely into the small group.

Christians on the island of Mindanao believe insurgents with the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, were responsible for shooting Pastor Feliciano ‘Cris’ Lasawang (50) and his 24-year-old son Darwin as they bathed in the Culaman River north of Jose Abad Santos, Davao del Sur Province, early one morning in November.

Pastor Lasawang was shot three times in the body and his son once in the face. The two men died at the site. They had conducted baptisms in the same river where they died, according to US-based Christian Aid Mission, which assists native ministries around the world. NPA rebels are suspected because the guerrillas believe church growth dampens insurgent recruitment efforts, and the pastor had received reports that the Communist militants were monitoring his movements.

Amid ongoing dangers, Christian leaders in Nigeria in October recalled the exemplary faith of indigenous missionaries who gave their lives in areas overrun by Islamic extremist militants.

While President Muhammadu Buhari told an India-African summit in late October that Islamic extremist group Boko Haram has been contained to ‘sporadic’ attacks in remote areas, leaders of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) told how Nigerian missionaries sent to those areas have suffered.

On 7 March the Free Methodist Church USA announced the release of its kidnapped missionary in Nigeria, Phyllis Sortor.

In a statement signed on behalf of the Board of Bishops of the church, David W. Kendall said 71-year-old Sortor was released by her captors on Friday evening, 6 March. He said armed gunmen abducted Sortor on 23 February from Hope Academy school in Emi-Oworo village in the central Nigerian state of Kogi.

After seven years of harassment by hard-line Muslims, a Palestinian church in East Jerusalem has been forced out of their building, church leaders said in late August.

The congregation of Calvary Baptist Church, under Holy Land Missions, moved out of their building in the Shofat area of Jerusalem in July after Islamists threatened their landlord. They are looking for a safer, more permanent place to meet.

Opponents of a European initiative paving the way for governments to rule on the legitimacy of religious groups and reduce home schooling rights won a battle in mid April in the Council of Europe.

In Europe, where public education often includes teachings on morality at odds with churches and officially unrecognised religious groups are labelled sects, the stakes were high at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).