Sudanese security agents raided a house in the city of Nyala, and arrested 13 people when they admitted to being Christians. Two believers were released, but ten converts from Islam and their pastor, Tajdeen Yousif, were detained. The pastor refused to deny Christ despite being beaten by the agents, and the ten were later released after reportedly being tortured into recanting their faith. Pastor Tajdeen, also a convert from Islam,was held for several more days before being released. All eleven have now gone into hiding for their safety. Under sharia law, Muslims who abandon their religion face severe punishment. Sudan’s constitution gives judicial discretion to courts in the application of sharia.

Five Christian families in eastern India were at a service in October when they received a phone call telling them to return to their homes immediately. They rushed back, but found that the villagers had been incited by a tribal group (themselves influenced by Hindu extremists) to destroy one of their houses. The villagers were also told that they must drive out all the families. Threatened with expulsion from the village and with seizure of their farmland, three of the five families converted back to the tribal religion. This is just a sample of persecution in Hindu strongholds in India. Police appear to do little or nothing when Christians make a report.

Radical Muslims left a 12-year-old Christian boy unconscious recently, after threatening to strangle him unless he converted to Islam. Emmanuel Nyaiti was walking to his grandmother’s house 200 metres from his home in Moru village when four men ambushed him and took him to a plantation less than a mile away. The boy said he was able to identify two of the attackers. ‘Ali Lukuman tried to persuade me to become a Muslim, which I refused, and he slapped me and I started screaming’, Emmanuel said from his bed at Budaka Health Centre, his speech made difficult from strangulation. He was told, ‘If you want to stay with us in our village, then you have to become a Muslim. If not, then you have to leave.’ The assault was the latest of many which have been reported in eastern Uganda in the past six years. The country’s constitution and other laws provide for religious freedom, including the right to propagate one’s faith and convert from one faith to another. Muslims make up no more than 12 percent of the population.

On 13 November Clare Bonser, a make-up artist with ABC News Breakfast, was driving when she casually bit into her pear. She happened to look down before taking the next bite and spotted a needle, so that she avoided injury. Two days earlier, a Vietnamese woman was arrested and charged with seven incidents of contaminating strawberries with needles in Queensland. She had acted out of ‘spite or revenge’ against her Australian ex-boss at a Woolworths store. This was a massive hit to Australia’s strawberry industry, as many brands had to get rid of their stock way before the end of season due to reports of needles being found in the red fruits. Up to 230 incidents have been reported nationwide.