World News and Trends: Significant crime hike in England and Wales
A rash of newspaper articles in July reported that England and Wales top the Western world's crime tables.
Even more worrying, more- accurate methods of counting crime are expected to reveal in the coming months that the true level of crime is as much as 40 percent higher than official figures have previously shown.
Crime is not just traumatic for its victims. It affects other aspects of everyday life. It is a political issue that threatens the reputations of government leaders if crime figures are not brought under control. Crime is a significant design-and-engineering issue, with high-tech consumer items, from the mobile phone to the family car, incorporating several layers of security as deterrents against theft.
Society struggles with the anything-goes attitude towards morality as it comes to terms with new statistics showing that one in 20 women in England and Wales say they have been raped at least once since age 16. Most of the victims say the attack was carried out by someone they knew, and most incidents went unreported. (Sources: Independent on Sunday, Daily Mail [both London].)
An Article from:
Good News Magazine: September - October 2002
Course Content
John Ross Schroeder
John died on March 8, 2014, in Oxford, England, four days after suffering cardiac arrest while returning home from a press event in London. John was 77 and still going strong.
Some of John's work for The Good News appeared under his byline, but much didn't. He wrote more than a thousand articles over the years, but also wrote the Questions and Answers section of the magazine, compiled our Letters From Our Readers, and wrote many of the items in the Current Events and Trends section. He also contributed greatly to a number of our study guides and Bible Study Course lessons. His writing has touched the lives of literally millions of people over the years.
John traveled widely over the years as an accredited journalist, especially in Europe. His knowledge of European and Middle East history added a great deal to his articles on history and Bible prophecy.
In his later years he also pastored congregations in Northern Ireland and East Sussex, and that experience added another dimension to his writing. He and his wife Jan were an effective team in our British Isles office near their home.
John was a humble servant who dedicated his life to sharing the gospel—the good news—of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God to all the world, and his work was known to readers in nearly every country of the world.
Melvin Rhodes
Melvin Rhodes is a member of the United Church of God congregation in Lansing, Michigan.
Tom Robinson
Tom is an elder in the United Church of God who works from his home near St. Louis, Missouri as managing editor and senior writer for Beyond Today magazine, church study guides and the UCG Bible Commentary. He is a visiting instructor at Ambassador Bible College. And he serves as chairman of the church's Prophecy Advisory Committee and a member of the Fundamental Beliefs Amendment Committee.
Tom began attending God's Church at the age of 16 in 1985 and was baptized a year later. He attended Ambassador College in both Texas and California and served for a year as a history teacher at the college's overseas project in Sri Lanka. He graduated from the Texas campus in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in theology along with minors in English and mass communications. Since 1994, he has been employed as an editor and writer for church publications and has served in local congregations through regular preaching of sermons.
Tom was ordained to the ministry in 2012 and attends the Columbia-Fulton, Missouri congregation with his wife Donna and their two teen children.
