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ADRA Marks 20 Years of Emergency Response Readiness

The initiative supports early humanitarian action in disaster-affected areas
News

January 13, 2026


8 January 2026 | St Albans, UK [Joe Philpott]

The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) is marking 20 years since the establishment of its organised Emergency Response Teams, highlighting two decades of rapid humanitarian action in response to disasters and complex emergencies worldwide.

Established in the mid-2000s, ADRA’s Emergency Response Teams were created to ensure faster, more coordinated assistance in the immediate aftermath of crises, including natural disasters, conflicts and public health emergencies. The teams are trained to deploy quickly, assess needs on the ground and coordinate life-saving support with local authorities and humanitarian partners.

Over the past two decades, the teams have been involved in responses to earthquakes, floods, armed conflict and displacement crises across multiple regions. Their work has focused on emergency shelter, food assistance, water and sanitation, protection services and early recovery support, often in highly complex and insecure environments.

“Preparedness is choosing to be ready to serve,” said João Martins, ADRA Europe director. “With disasters increasing across Europe, this commitment matters more than ever. As we look ahead, our priority is to strengthen ADRA teams and empower local churches to be disaster-ready.”

Martins said preparedness enables local and regional responders to act quickly and responsibly when crises occur. “Together, we can bring care, calm and hope into the hardest moments,” he added.

The scale of ADRA’s emergency response work is reflected in two decades of training activity. Over that period, 54 Emergency Response Team trainings have been delivered, with 764 people trained. A total of 121 trainers from across ADRA and partner organisations have contributed to the programme, with trainings hosted in 34 countries and participation from 101 ADRA country offices.

Alongside this growth, ADRA has adapted its emergency response approach to the evolving humanitarian standards and operating environments. This has included stronger coordination practices, clearer professional standards and greater attention to community feedback. Emergency Response Team training covers areas such as security management, humanitarian principles, safeguarding and coordination with national and international partners.

More information on ADRA Europe’s Emergency Response Teams is available on the ADRA Europe website.



[Photo: Nikolay Stoykov, courtesy of ADRA Europe]

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Biden pardons his son Hunter despite previous pledges not to

ZEKE MILLER, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and COLLEEN LONG
Sun, December 1, 2024 at 7:37 PM EST


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FILE - President Joe Biden, wearing a Team USA jacket and walking with his son Hunter Biden, heads toward Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden walk in downtown Nantucket Mass., Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Joe Biden speaks on the South Lawn of the White House during a ceremony to commemorate World AIDS Day with survivors, their families and advocates, Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, on Sunday night, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions and reversing his past promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency for the benefit of his family members.

The Democratic president had previously said he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence after his convictions in the two cases in Delaware and California. The move comes weeks before Hunter Biden was set to receive his punishment after his trial conviction in the gun case and guilty plea on tax charges, and less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House.

It caps a long-running legal saga for the younger Biden, who publicly disclosed he was under federal investigation in December 2020 — a month after his father’s 2020 victory — and casts a pall over the elder Biden's legacy. Biden, who time and again pledged to Americans that he would restore norms and respect for the rule of law after Trump's first term in office, ultimately used his position to help his son, breaking his public pledge to Americans that he would do no such thing.

In June, Biden categorically ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling reporters as his son faced trial in the Delware gun case, “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”

As recently as Nov. 8, days after Trump's victory, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ruled out a pardon or clemency for the younger Biden, saying, “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no.”

In a statement released Sunday evening, Biden said, “Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” alleging that the prosecution of his son was politically motivated and a “miscarriage of justice.”

“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden said. “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son.”

“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” Biden added, claiming he made the decision this weekend. The president had spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Massachusetts with Hunter and his family, and was set to depart later Sunday on what may be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Hunter Biden was convicted in June in Delaware federal court of three felonies for purchasing a gun in 2018 when, prosecutors said, he lied on a federal form by claiming he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.

He was set to stand trial in September in the California case accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. But he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges in a surprise move hours after jury selection was set to begin.

Hunter Biden said he was pleading guilty in that case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after the gun trial aired salacious details about his struggles with a crack cocaine addiction.

The tax charges carry up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible he would avoid prison time entirely.

The sweeping pardon covers not just those offenses, but also any other “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024."

Biden is hardly the first president to deploy his pardon powers to benefit those close to him.

In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump this week announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the U.S. envoy to France in his next administration.

Hunter Biden said in an emailed statement that he will never take for granted the relief granted to him and vowed to devote the life he has rebuilt “to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”

“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” the younger Biden said.

A spokesperson for special counsel David Weiss, who brought the cases, did not respond to messages seeking comment Sunday night.

___

Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Nantucket, Massachusetts contributed to this report.

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⚠️ IMPORTANT BREAKING NEWS HEADLINES SEPT 4, 2017 ⚠️

News Briefs from America Magazine (Jesuit Publication)

THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC REVIEW


News Briefs


SIGNS OF THE TIMES
November 7, 2016 Issue
From CNS, Staff and other sources

The Florida Supreme Court ruled on Oct. 14 that the death penalty cannot be imposedunless the jury is unanimous in the decision, aligning Florida with sentencing standards in most other states. 

• As Catholics and Lutherans mark the 500th anniversaryof the start of the Protestant Reformation on Oct. 31, Pope Francis said they should feel “pain for the division that still exists among us but also joy for the brotherhood we have already rediscovered.” 

• Vatican officials announced on Oct. 20 that Pope Francis, who spends his summers in Rome, is throwing open the doors to the summer papal aprtment in the apostolic palace at Castel Gandolfoto visitors. 

• Representatives from the Holy See’soffice of interreligious affairs traveled to Cairo, Egypt, on Oct. 21 to lay the groundwork for the official restart of talks between the Holy See and the prestigious Sunni Muslim center of learning, Al-Azhar, after a five-year lull. 

• After chaos broke out at Holy Trinity Church in Johannesburg, South Africa, while it hosted a meeting to resolve the nation’s university tuition-hike crisis, South Africa’s Jesuits said on Oct. 20 that the church could no longer be used for such dialogue.

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Jesuits elect first Latin-American general

Austen Ivereigh
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

October 14, 2016



Father Arturo Sosa, 68, the new Venezuelan general of the Society of Jesus
The Jesuits' new general is a Venezuelan whose past curiously mirrors that of the first Jesuit pope


The Society of Jesus has elected its first Latin-American leader since its foundation in 1540, a Rome-based Venezuelan whose past curiously parallels that of the first Jesuit pope.

Like Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who steered his divided province through the 1970s Argentine dictatorship, Father Arturo Sosa SJ, 67, was Venezuelan provincial between 1996 and 2004, when there were tensions within his province over the dictatorship of Hugo Chávez.

Prior to his appointment as provincial, he was in charge of the social apostolate of the Jesuits in Venezuela, which includes the massive poor-school Jesuit network, Fe y Alegría. He was also head of the Centro Gumilla, the Jesuit-run social and action research center.

In an interview in 2014 he described the authoritarian regime of Chávez’s successor Nicolás Maduro as a “popular tyranny”.

As an expert in political science and political theory, who has taught and researched widely and who knows the Maduro regime at first hand, his election seems designed, in part, to bolster the Vatican’s mediation in the fast-deteriorating situation there.

Sosa, becomes the 31st superior general of the Jesuits, was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on November 12, 1948. He has a doctorate in Political Sciences from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, and speaks Spanish, Italian, and English.

Among his distinguished academic posts, he has served as member of the founding board of the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas and rector of the Catholic University of Táchira. He has taught and researched political science in many different institutes and colleges, and in 2004 was a visiting professor at the Latin-American Studies Center of Georgetown University.

He has been serving since 2014 as the Delegate of the General for the International houses and Works of the Society of Jesus in Rome, meaning he has had responsibility for Jesuit formation and other houses, including the Jesuit headquarters, or General Curia and the Gregorian University.

Some 212 Jesuit electors from across the world, mostly delegated by the nearly 17,000 Jesuits worldwide, who this morning voted for Sosa following the resignation of Father Adolfo Nicolás.

It is not yet clear how many ballots it took to elect him, but the result was known after just a couple of hours. The Jesuit electors have spent this week in the murmuratio, discussing the merits of possible generals with each other.

Sosa is thought to the first Jesuit general to sport a moustache.

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Security Council Backs António Guterres to Be Next U.N. Secretary General

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

OCT. 5, 2016

António Guterres, then the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, in 2014. Mr. Guterres won a straw poll to become the next secretary general. 

Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations Security Council reached a surprisingly swift consensus Wednesday on its choice for the next secretary general of the United Nations: António Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal.

Mr. Guterres, who ran the United Nations refugee agency for 10 years, had been the clear front-runner, and was apparently the choice of the otherwise deeply divided Security Council.

“We have a clear favorite and his name is António Guterres,” said Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations who is presiding over the Security Council this month.

Mr. Churkin made the announcement outside the Council chamber Wednesday, flanked by his American counterpart, Samantha Power, and the other ambassadors representing the 15 countries on the Council.

Mr. Guterres, who will face a formal Council vote on Thursday morning, will have his name submitted to the 193-member General Assembly for approval. If elected, he will succeed the current secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, whose second five-year term expires at the end of this year. He would preside over the United Nations at a time when it has faltered in carrying out its chief mandate — to stop the scourge of war — and confronts an ever-widening rift between Russia and the West.

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