Mushfiq Mammadov, a conscientious objector to military service in Azerbaijan, has been detained for refusing to perform compulsory military service. Mammadov, who is a member of the Christian group Jehovah’s Witnesses, is reportedly being held in the Kurdakhani isolation center and has not been given a lawyer. Mammadov was once detained in 2006 and given [...]

Children are born believers in God, academic claims Children are “born believers” in God and do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination, according to an academic. By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent Published: 2:54PM GMT 24 Nov 2008  Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind, [...]

Armed German pensioner disrupts Jehovah’s Witnesses meeting Posted Fri Jul 31, 2009 9:00pm AEST An 82-year-old masked man wielding a machine gun, a knife and a samurai sword was overpowered as he marched towards a meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses, German police have said. One of the congregation noticed the heavily-armed man approaching and swiftly ushered [...]

Jehovah’s Witnesses jailed in Greece for ‘proselytism’ The Independent 26 August 2009   The longest of the sentences, 18 months, served in the 1940s, was for conscientious objection to service in the army. The rest have been for ‘proselytism’, a crime that appeared on the Greek statute book in 1938 and which no amount of [...]

Several of the Jackson children, including Michael, pulled away from the Kingdom Hall after they became adults. Yet as Jermaine Jackson told CNN’s Larry King over the July 4th weekend, the family has always wanted separate private and public services for him. “Well, my family felt that us being raised Jehovah’s Witnesses, it was very important to [...]

Will Prince be forced to choose between his faith and his health? As a Jehovah’s Witness, Prince has allegedly refused blood transfusions – making a double hip replacement operation impossible. Persistent hip problems are affecting the Purple One’s mobility, according to reports, and his religious beliefs are preventing surgery. “He’s in a lot of pain,” [...]

BAKU, Azerbaijan—The police again raided a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses, this time in the city of Gakh. The group met together for a religious meeting in the private home of Mrs. Tarana Khutsishvili, who is in the last month of her pregnancy and has two other children. Her husband, Elguja Khutsishvili, was deported from Azerbaijan on [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8137849.stm Pope calls for a UN ‘with teeth’   It is the Pope’s first encyclical on social issues The Pope has called for reform of the United Nations and financial bodies, giving them the “real teeth” needed to tackle economic and social injustice. Benedict XVI said the blind pursuit of profit and economic mismanagement had [...]

Now some surgeons and anesthetists are questioning whether every patient shouldn’t get the same treatment. Over the past decade a number of studies have found that, far from saving lives, blood transfusions can actually harm many patients. The problem is not the much publicized risk of blood-borne infectious agents, such as HIV, but the blood [...]

PLANT CITY – It was a weekend that offered hope and inspiration for hearing and visually impaired people and their families. More than 1,100 people united for songs and Scripture presented in sign language at the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Keep on the Watch! district convention. The denomination presented the event July 31 through Aug. 2 at [...]