Bread NEWS 16 -'Genetic testing raises an age-old question — are the Jews a people, or a religion?' and 'Egyptian Couple Shot by Muslim Extremists Undaunted in Ministry'

Report from Compass Direct NEWS: Rasha Samir was sure her husband, Ephraim Shehata, was dead. He was covered with blood, had two bullets inside him and was lying facedown in the dust of a dirt road. Seconds before, Samir could hear her husband mumbling Bible verses. But one bullet had pierced his neck, and now he wasn’t moving. In a blind terror, Samir tried desperately to stop her panicked breathing and convincingly lie still, hoping the gunmen would go away. Finally, the gunfire stopped and one of the men spoke. “Let’s go. They’re dead.” On Feb. 27, lay pastor Shehata and his wife Samir were ambushed on a desolate street by a group of Islamic gunmen, outside the village of Teleda in Upper Egypt. One of the attackers pushed him off his motorcycle and told him he was going to teach him a lesson about “running around”, or being an active Christian. The attack was meant to “break the hearts of the Christians” in the area, Samir said. --------------------------- Report from the New York Post: Two new genome studies of Jews worldwide prove that the Jewish people — are, indeed, a people after all. The first study, by researchers at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, found that Jews across the globe share distinct genetic traits that are different from other groups and that trace back to the ancient Middle East.  Researchers say the study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, puts to rest age-old questions about whether Jews are a group of unrelated people who share a religious ideology or a distinct ethnicity with common ancestry. “The debate is over,” said Dr. Edward R. Burns, one of the lead authors of the study. “The Jewish people are one people with a common genetic thread that evolved in the second or third century BC.”