1. USA: MAN ADMITS TO BURNING INDIANA CHURCH

Donald Puckett has been sentenced to 27 months in prison, serve three years of probation, pay a $1,500 fine and perform 450 hours of community service for his conviction on an arson charge. Puckett, 38, admitted to helping Jay Scott Ballinger and Ballinger's girlfriend, Angela Wood, burn the Concord Church of Christ in Lebanon, Indiana in January 1994.

Puckett admitted Thursday that he sprayed a flammable mixture of gasoline, kerosene and paint thinner while Wood wrote satanic symbols on the porch and Ballinger lit the fire.

Wood, 24, also has been charged with arson.

Ballinger, 37, how is scheduled to stand trial February 7, 2000, is accused of burning a total of 33 churches in California, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky,  Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee since 1994.

2. USA: MAN SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR MURDERING CHURCH VOLUNTEER

A man who raped and killed a church volunteer after she brought a box of free food to his family was sentenced to death Thursday by a judge who called the crime "shockingly evil."

John Sansing, 31, had pleaded guilty to murder, in order to ensure that his wife, Kara, 29, would not also face the death penalty. Sansing, a former warehouse stocker with a long criminal history, admitted to murdering Trudy Calabrese, in February 1998. Mrs. Sansing, who admitted helping her husband in the attack, was sentenced to life in prison.

Ms. Calabrese, 41, had come to the Sansings' home after the Living Springs Assembly of God Church in Glendale got a call for emergency food from a man who identified himself as John Sansing. Reports indicate that Sansing struck the women from behind repeatedly with a stick and both Sansings who have four children tied her with electrical cords and gagged her with a sock.

Police said Calabrese was blindfolded, her head was covered with a plastic bag and she was beaten, raped and stabbed. Her body was then dragged into the back yard and partially covered with cardboard boxes.

3. JORDAN: MUSLIM WOMEN MURDERED BY FAMILY FOR MARRING CHRISTIAN MAN

A Jordanian women died in the latest incidents of alleged honor killings in the past week, bringing the total number of women killed for the same reason to 16 this year, the semi-official Jordan Times reported Tuesday. A 34-year-old married woman died Monday after she was shot three times in the head by her brother, who killed the Muslim women because she was married to a Christian, the Jordan Times said.

Honor killers receive semi-governmental support from article 340 of the penal code which either pardons or hands down lenient prison terms ranging from two months to two years for men who killed their wives or female relatives for illicit relationship with men out of the wedlock. While human rights organizations, such as Christian Persecution Report, continue to campaigned to abolish article 340 the practice has receive little attention from the government. The Jordanian cabinet headed by prime minister Abdel Raouf al-Rawabdeh is expected to propose an amendment to the lower house of parliament to abolish article 340 during its next ordinary session in November.

4. YUGOSLAVIA: CHURCHES BEING DESTROYED IN KOSOVO

While the Christian Persecution Report categorically opposed the Serbian atrocities in Kosovo and continues to have doctrinal concerns for the Serbian Orthodox Church, we additionally oppose the wholesale destruction of culturally significant buildings and places of worship now raging in Kosovo, just as it did in Croatia and Bosnia. Since the international KFOR troops entered the southern Yugoslav province on June 13, Albanian extremists, have destroyed 53 churches, monasteries and other buildings belonging to the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The official Yugoslav news agency, Tanjug, has put the number as high as 70 destroyed culturally and historically significant sites. "This vandalism cannot simply be dismissed as individual acts of blind revenge," the Orthodox Patriarch, Pavle, says regarding the reports, insisting this is a "systematic strategy to extinguish the light of Serb and Christian culture in Kosovo once and for all".

"Can the world stand by and watch as a European nation and its venerable culture are mercilessly destroyed," he asks. KFOR troops were unable to prevent the Holy Trinity monastery near Suva Reka, which dates from the 14th century, from being plundered, set alight and subsequently destroyed by explosives.

The St. Nicholas church and its 16th century frescoes at Drsnik near Pec, a 14th century church at Kijevo near Klina, the 14th century Archangel Gabriel monastery at Vitina and the 16th century St Nicholas church in the village of Slovinje near Lipljan all suffered a similar fate.

There are more than 1,400 Orthodox places of worship, churches, monasteries, chapels and memorials in Kosovo, for this province formed the heart of mediaeval Serbia.

KFOR has implemented special security measures for the most important churches to protect them from damage by Albanian fundamentalists. This is the case with the monastic churches in Decani and Gracanica. Some 70 soldiers guard the churches and monastery of the Serb Patriarchate in Pec,  but this did not prevent an armed attack at the beginning of September.

According to Deutsche Presse-Agentur, there have been many previous examples of this kind of vicious cultural genocide. Serbs and Montenegrins fired on Dubrovnik's famous old town center in the winter of 1991, and Catholic churches were regular targets of Serb destruction during the war with Croatia.

For their part, the Croatians destroyed the historic Ottoman Bridge over the Neretva in Mostar in an attack on the Moslem cultural heritage. The Serbs destroyed all the mosques in the Bosnian town of Banjaluka, the most beautiful of them, the Ferhadija mosque being blown up in the summer of  1993.

Official Bosnian sources say that 90 percent of the 4,000 registered historical buildings, mosques and churches were badly damaged or destroyed.

For the most part these historically significant sites were specifically targeted to strike at the cultural heart of the people.

The Croatian cities of Dubrovnik, Osijek, Vukovar and Split have seen around 2,000 cultural monuments badly damaged or completely demolished. Zagreb puts  the cost of restoration at 150 million dollars.