Charisma Magazine

Launched in 1999, the International Association of Healing Rooms (IAHR) now oversees some 1,300 rooms in 52 nations. Roughly 400 are in India, and IAHR founder Cal Pierce is commissioning 600 more healing rooms there this week.

"In India that will be nearly 1 million people each year receiving healing ministry," Pierce said.

Photo: Cal Pierce prays for visitors at the Spokane, Wash., healing room.

Some 4,200 selected participants from 198 nations are meeting for the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, the third such gathering in the last 36 years.

After four years of legal battle in a Turkish court, a judge acquitted two Christians of insulting Turkey and its people by spreading Christianity, but not without slapping them with a hefty fine for a spurious charge.

Four years ago this month, Turan Topal, 50, and Hakan Tastan, 41, started a legal battle after gendarmerie officers produced false witnesses to accuse them of spreading their faith and allegedly "insulting Turkishness, the military and Islam."

Ignited Church in Lakeland, a city roughly 35 miles east of Tampa, has united area churches, business leaders and school board members in opposition to Busch Gardens' Howl-O-Scream show, which they say makes light of criminal brutality in a letter being sent this week to officials at the African-themed park. Florida state Rep. Kelli Stargel also has signed the letter.

A court in predominantly Buddhist Bhutan has sentenced a Christian to three years in prison for "attempting to promote civil unrest" by screening films on Christianity.

A local court in Gelephu convicted Prem Singh Gurung, a 40-year-old ethnic Nepalese citizen from Sarpang district in south Bhutan, on Oct. 6, according to the government-run daily Kuensel.