Eva Habil has just become Egypt's first female mayor but already she seems relaxed in her pioneering role as she strolls around her community clad in jeans and a pink sweater.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders joined together to endorse a letter to president-elect Barack Obama, urging him to use U.S. leadership to promote Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace.

More than 100 Christians were killed in weeks of violence in eastern India and 10,000 remain in government camps a month after the unrest ended, a Christian advocacy group said Tuesday.

Coptic Pope Shenuda III has banned Egyptian Christians from praying in a church-owned building in Cairo after sectarian clashes there with Muslims, state news agency MENA reported on Tuesday.

Pope Benedict XVI reiterated his concern for Christian communities in the Middle East during an audience Monday with the Lebanon-based head of the Armenian church, Catholicos Aram I.

Gunmen killed two Christian sisters after breaking into a home in the volatile northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday and then leaving behind a booby-trap bomb for security forces, police said.

Iraq`s three-member presidency council on Saturday approved a controversial resolution that will reserve six local council seats for the nation`s minority groups.

`In order to fix the rights of the minority seats in the future, the presidency council decided to approve the decision voted on before by the parliament,` said Naseer al-Ani, chief of staff for the council.

Iraqi lawmakers decided on Monday that six local council seats would be reserved for minorities, only half the number proposed by the United Nations, a parliamentary source said.

Out of 150 MPs present in parliament, 106 voted in favour of a resolution to give three seats to Iraq`s Christians and three to other religious minorities, the source told AFP.

Pope Shenuda III, the elderly head of the Coptic church, returned to Egypt on Monday following four months of medical treatment in the United States, according to the official MENA news agency.

`His Holiness Shenuda III returned to the country early on Monday morning from the United States after having overcome the longest and most difficult crisis he has had to face,` it said.

Thousands of Christian pilgrims from around the globe took to the streets of Jerusalem on Wednesday, swaying to the tune of the hymns they sang, in a colourful show of support for Israel against Iran.