Tens of thousands of people from a variety of religious traditions across the United States are preparing to fast on Monday 8 October 2007, as part of an initiative to pray and work for peace in Iraq. Non-religious persons will also join them.

The Israeli government is no longer granting routine re-entry visas to Arab Christian religious leaders who wish to travel in and out of occupied Palestinian territories - making their pastoral activities much more difficult to carry out.

Christians from a range of backgrounds held a service in London yesterday evening to thank God for a major success in campaigning against the arms trade - the shutting down of the government-backed DESO.

Christian students who held a public meeting in Harare to discuss the "Prospects of a Free and Fair Election in Zimbabwe" have resolved that such prospects do not exist in their country, which they say has repressive laws.

Christians in Europe have been urged to support human rights and religious freedom in Belarus, which is ruled by President Alexander Lukashenko, who some rights groups have described as one of the last hardline dictators in eastern Europe.

A Christian group in Hong Kong has appealed for churches to show solidarity with hundreds of ironworkers who have been on strike for more than three weeks in what is reported to be the territory's longest-running industrial dispute for 30 years.

The church-backed US National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) is speaking out against a new executive order from President George W. Bush that broadly outlines the limits of how suspects may be questioned in the CIA's terror interrogation programme.

Taliban militants in Afghanistan say they have freed two women from among the 21 South Korean hostages they are currently holding, claims a news report on the BBC. Two others have already been killed.

Christian women activists have expressed anger at what they say is an alarming crisis due to female feticide in India, after two dumps of illegally aborted female foetuses were found in the world's second most populous nation.