A unique gathering of high level church leaders starting on Tuesday 6 November 2007 near Nairobi, Kenya, features the broadest range of Christian traditions ever represented at a global meeting, says its organisers.

Anglicans in Canada and the United States are pushing ahead with local procedures for blessing lesbian and gay people in the church. The US Episcopal Diocese of California has authorised the use of three trial rites for same-sex unions.

A second round of dialogue between World Council of Churches (WCC) members and Pentecostals has been inaugurated in Baar, Switzerland. A group of Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and Pentecostal Christians met to continue work begun in 2005.

Metropolitan Daniel of Moldavia and Bucovina, who studied in the West and taught at an ecumenical institute near Geneva while his country was under communist rule, has been elected Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Delegates at the Third European Ecumenical Assembly in Sibiu, Romania, concluded their weeklong gathering on 9 September 2007 with a call to the churches of Europe to deepen their support for migrants and other victimised minority groups.

Representatives of Europe's main Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches say they hope a six-day ecumenical assembly in the Romanian city of Sibiu will give a new impetus to the movement for Christian unity - and enable them to meet today's challenges.

Christian Aid emergency staff in South Asia are working with local partner organisations to co-ordinate its response, after the worst floods in years hit a large swathe of northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

In what is being seen as an indication of increasing government control of the Eritrean Orthodox Church (EOC), a renegade bishop has been declared its new Patriarch 16 months after the ordained pontiff was illegally removed from office.

The largest Christian gathering in Asia is taking place in India this week. The 112th Maramon Convention, which runs through to 18 February 2007 in Kerala, is organized annually by the Mar Thoma Evangelistic Association, the mission and evangelism wing of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar ‚Ä' which has roots in both the Anglican and Orthodox traditions.

When Russians celebrated the Julian calendar's New Year on 14 January 2007, they concluded an extended Christmas holiday with a particular significance for religion in their country - reports Sophia Kishkovsky from Moscow for Ecumenical News International.