Jericho Mayor Hassan Saleh handed over a certificate of ownership for three plots in the Holy Land to Russian Audit Chamber Chairman Sergey Stepashin on Monday.

"The Palestinian National Authority chairman ruled that all lands related to the Russian Orthodox Church and Russia should be returned to their legal owners," Saleh told Stepashin in the Russian Audit Chamber.

One of the land plots covering 12,000 square meters was handed over to the Russian government. This piece of land has a sanctuary for all Christians in the world, as well as a fig-tree of tax collector Zacchaeus.

Interfax, June 9, 2008

For the members of First Baptist Church in Palestine (Texas), sharing names with a Middle Eastern territory of Palestine has led to a connection with Christians on the West Bank.

Pastor Jay Abernathy said a BBC news team taking a Sunday detour from President Bush’s ranch in Crawford gave him the idea to capitalize on the shared name.

By Carrie Joynton, The Baptist Standard, June 24, 2008

Safety pins and screws are still lodged in 15-year-old Ami Ortiz's body three months after he opened a booby-trapped gift basket sent to his family. The explosion severed two toes, damaged his hearing and harmed a promising basketball career.

Police say they are still searching for the assailants. But to the Ortiz family the motive of the attackers is clear: The Ortizes are Jews who believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

By The Associated Press, June 20, 2008

Yossi Sarid, Israel’s Education minister in the early 1990-s writes about Jewish morality in modern days, on the eve of Shavuot.

“The negotiations between Moses and God were not easy. That is the only explanation for the long stay on the mountain, 40 days and 40 nights, before the Torah was given. According to stubborn rumors that found their way through the concealing cloud, God insisted on more than Ten Commandments, and Moses begged him not to go too far: Even those 10 would be a tough burden to meet”…”Quite a few politicians stick to the ritual commandments while disparaging the Ten Commandments - to hell with morality, long live ritual”.

Yossi Sarid, Haaretz, June 7, 2008

Bishop Botrus Mualem is a prolific Palestinian Christian author. He has written almost three dozens of books and many articles. In his latest book titled “Min Wahi Asa‘ah” Mualem reveals his life-long wisdom through interacting with important Palestinian sociopolitical and/or religious concerns. The title of his book literally means: inspired by the hour. It is mainly a compilation of short essays that appeared in Arab Israeli newspapers and/or were presented on special occasions. In these essays, Mualem brings recent events and contemporary concerns in an interesting dialogue with the biblical text as well as the wisdom of the church. Contemporary events are the source of his inspiration or writing.

Mualem, Botrus. Min Wahi Asa‘ah. 2nd ed. Nazareth: Mualem, 2008.

By Yohanna Katanacho, Special For "Come and See"

Eileen is the Reporter and Editor of "We are wide awake" writes about an encounter with a Christian Zionist in the location where Jesus preached the sermon on the mount:

“The oppressed have become the oppressors. In the 21st century good people are unaware, ignoring or are in total denial of the injustice in the Holy Land. And what about all the Hebrew prophets, such as Micah who reminded the people of what the Lord requires: To be just, to be merciful and to walk humbly with your God!”

"Nobody else spoke to me the rest of the evening or the next day. That was fine with me, for I was listening to the voice within and what I kept hearing was Luke 23:34: “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

Eileen Fleming, OPED News, June 4, 2008

ALGIERS, May 31 (Reuters) - Algeria hit back on Saturday at foreign accusations minority Christians are harassed, saying Protestant evangelicals were secretly trying to divide Algerians to colonise the mainly Muslim north African country.

Abu Amrane Chikh, head of the government-appointed Higher Islamic Council, said uproar in the West over a recent prosecution of an Algerian woman on a charge of practising Christianity was being fomented for the benefit of foreigners.

"There are some church evangelists and reformist journalists who want to sow discord among brothers, and their long-term political goal is to create a Christian minority coupled with some foreign institutions," he said in an interview with the website of the El Khabar daily newspaper.

By Hamid Ould Ahmed, Reuters, May 31, 2008

Archaeologists in Jordan have unearthed what they claim is the world's first church, dating back almost 2,000 years, The Jordan Times reported on Tuesday.

"We have uncovered what we believe to be the first church in the world, dating from 33 AD to 70 AD," the head of Jordan's Rihab Centre for Archaeological Studies, Abdul Qader al-Husan, said.

Larry King is not known as a tough interviewer. Yet with smooth-talking pastor and author Joel Osteen, he went for the jugular, asking whether Jews and Muslims must believe in Christ to go to heaven. And Osteen blinked: "I'm very careful about saying who would and wouldn't go to heaven. I don't know."

While Osteen later apologized for seemingly downplaying the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation, the pluralistic pressure to waffle on this issue is intense. Several mainline denominations support a two-covenant theology, which holds that Judaism and Christianity are parallel, divinely guided paths to God. In addition, in 2002 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a document, "Reflections on Covenant and Mission," affirming that "Jews already dwell in a saving covenant with God."

Stan Guthrie, CT Website, March 25, 2008