When the RSPCA decided yesterday to ignore the protestations of her devotee carers and “put down” the ailing Gangotri (a 13 year-old cow living at Bhaktivedanta Manor) they were moved by compassionate considerations. Their spokesperson said, "We do understand and respect religious beliefs but at the heart of our organization is the belief that animals should not suffer." In their view the pain she felt from “infected sores” was such that the only answer was to kill her by lethal injection, which they duly administered as the horrified devotees looked on.

A court in Kazakhstan decided on 23 October to hand a confiscated Hare Krishna farm near the commercial capital Almaty from the regional authority's ownership into the hands of the man who originally sold it in 1999. But since the court decision, Forum 18 News Service has learnt, a battle has emerged between the state and the new "owner".

On November 4, 2007, the practitioners of the Society for Krishna Consciousness were informed by Mr. Ermek Abdykalykov, previous owner of the property, that they have one week to vacate their farm.

The British government is being urged to speak to the Kazakhstan President to stop the harassment and human rights abuse against minority Hindu communities in that country. British MP's this week said they would pressure the Foreign Secretary to act after attending an event organized by the Hindu Forum of Europe at the House of Commons.

LIVINGSTON, N.J. - They used to be everywhere there were Jews. Mikvahs, ritual purification pools used by observant Jewish women, have been considered so important to Jewish communities that even a sacred Torah could be sold to build one.

Only three religious communities - the Seventh-day Adventist and United Methodist churches and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) - appear to have been given legal status under Serbia's controversial Religion Law, Forum 18 News Service has found.

Richard Dawkins is not pleased with God:The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction. Jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic-cleanser; a misogynistic homophobic racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal....

MUMBAI: Buoyed by a strong economy, India’s finance minister called on Wednesday for billions of dollars in investment in agriculture and education to spread the benefits of growth more evenly.

When it comes to lowering cholesterol levels, garlic stinks, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine.