FYI, LGBTQ history lessons will soon be mandatory in NJ classrooms

Twelve New Jersey schools will begin piloting a new LGBTQ-focused curriculum this month, the first wave of a requirement that will soon be mandated across the state.

• Continue here

FYI, Transgender students secure unrestricted locker room access

A more than four year fight to secure equal access to locker rooms for transgender students in a north suburban Chicago school district ended Tuesday when a new policy allowing them unrestricted access took effect.

• Continue here

Jehovah’s Witnesses hold international meet in PHL

It is the message of love as interpreted in 67 countries. This was how Jehovah’s Witnesses Assistant Local Media Spokesman Melchor R. Basalo described their three-day 2019 International Convention in Pasay City.

• Continue here

Delegates from 67 countries attend Jehovah’s Witnesses event

The 5,500 overseas delegates join the 25,000 local members in the three-day international convention held at the Mall of Asia Arena and the SMX Convention Center

• Continue here

Authorities Raid Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses

Authorities raided homes of Jehovah’s Witnesses in northern Russia as part of a criminal probe into extremism against the banned religious organization, investigators said in a statement Monday.

• Continue here

Montenegro's parliament approves religion law despite protests

Under the law, religious communities in the tiny Adriatic state would need to prove property ownership from before 1918, when predominantly Orthodox Christian Montenegro joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the predecessor of the now-defunct Yugoslavia.

• Continue here

Russia Detains 2 Jehovah’s Witnesses on Christmas

Authorities in northwestern Russia have detained what they say are two branch leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious group, investigators said Wednesday. They accused the unnamed 45-year-old and 67-year-old of “organizing extremist activity” in the form of religious services in the city of Vologda.

• Continue here

Online, audio Bible Study.

Study the Bible, your Bible, in the privacy of your own home.
Learn the answers to the following subjects and many more.

• Are We Living in “the Last Days”?
• Why Does God Allow Suffering?
• How to Make Your Family Life Happy
• Jesus Christ​—The Promised Messiah

• Continue here

US Bill Accuses Russia Of Religious Freedom Violations In Crimea

The legislation accuses Russia of religious freedom violations that target Muslim Crimean Tatars, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, as well as Protestant Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses sect in Donbas.

• Continue here

Putin’s directive on Jehovah's Witnesses imminent

Russian President Vladimir Putin will soon give instructions after the December meeting with members of the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights and one of them concerns Jehovah's Witnesses, a religious organization outlawed in Russia.

• Continue here

Russia Is Stepping Up Its Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses

In a drab apartment building in outer Moscow, seven adults and two small children crowded around a computer screen and sang a hymn as quietly as they could.

• Continue here

Russia : Jehovah's Witnesses, in particular, have been targeted

In the past, you've suggested that you didn't support how the Jehovah's Witnesses were being targeted. And yet, just this week, a Jehovah's Witness in Penza was sentenced to six years in prison under the law. Why are law enforcement agencies targeting religious groups like this?

• Continue here

Tajikistan : Imprisonment of Conscientious Objectors

TIER 1 | USCIRF-RECOMMENDED COUNTRIES OF PARTICULAR CONCERN (CPC) Tajikistan provides no exemptions for conscientious objection. In April 2018, Daniil Islamov—a Jehovah’s Witness—was released from prison after serving out a six-month sentence for refusing military service

• Continue here

Christmas pagan celebration: Jehovah Witnesses

A Christian sect, the Jehovah’s Witnesses is shunning worldwide frenetic preparations for Christmas, meant to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The group banned in Russia dismisses Christmas as a pagan celebration.

• Continue here

TAJIKISTAN: Jehovah's Witness prisoner denied Bible

Despite Tajikistan's binding international obligations under the United Nations (UN) Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, no arrests or prosecutions appear to have taken place against officials who tortured Jehovah's Witnesses, Protestants, or followers of other beliefs.

• Continue here

How Russia Is Stepping Up Its Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses

A chilly November weeknight in a drab apartment building in outer Moscow, seven adults and two small children crowded around a computer screen and sang a hymn as quietly as they could.

• Continue here

Jehovah Witness Building Must Pay NYC Water And Sewer Charges

Some organizations within the City of New York have a unusual benefit – they are exempted from having to pay for water and sewer charges. Religious organizations are entitled to the benefit if the water and sewerage they use is in real estate used in a public place of worship.

• Continue here

Persecution Against Jehovah’s Witnesses Escalates in China

For the first time, the article of the Criminal Code against xie jiao (“heterodox teachings”) is used in Xinjiang to indict 18 Jehovah’s Witnesses.

• Continue here

Russia moves to ban Jehovah‘s Witnesses as extremists like Al-Qaida, ISIS

A dedicated pacifist who has never even held a gun, Andrei Sivak discovered that his government considered him a dangerous extremist when he tried to change some money and the teller “suddenly looked up at me with a face full of fear.”

• Continue here

Russian court sends Jehovah’s Witness to prison for 6 years

The court in Oryol on Wednesday found Dennis Christensen, who was leading the local Bible reading, guilty of extremism, making him the first Jehovah’s Witness in Russia to have been sent to prison.

• Continue here