A Russian court has dismissed a call to ban an edition of the Hindu holy book Bhagvad Gita, in a case that triggered protests in India.

Prosecutors in the Siberian city of Tomsk wanted the edition to be ruled “extremist”.

Swami Bhaktipada, a former leader of the American Hare Krishna movement who built a sprawling golden paradise for his followers in the hills of Appalachia but who later pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges that included conspiracy to commit the murders-for-hire of two devotees, died on Monday in a hospital near Mumbai, India. He was 74.

Britain’s pampered cattle, which wear garlands and are milked by hands to the sound of sacred mantras, are said to produce the most expensive milk in the land at 1.70 pounds per pint.

The cows are being reared on a farm run by Hare Krishna followers, and as per Hindu beliefs, none must come to harm or be slaughtered after they stop producing milk.

Firefighters have said that it was an “absolute miracle” no-one was killed in an explosion at a Hare Krishna temple.

The blast rocked the building after cylinders of gas powering a large cooker leaked during a festive meal.

About 30 people escaped from the temple in Leicester when the organiser raised the alarm just seconds before the explosion yesterday. A third of the building in Thoresby Street was destroyed in the blast.

Worshippers had been cooking in the kitchen area during the afternoon for a religious festival.

The festivities were organised by Iskcon Leicester – the International Society for Krishna Consciousness – to mark Lord Krishna’s “Appearance Day”.

The Hare Krishna movement has been stopped from seeking donations at the Los Angeles International Airport by a US court.

The court allowed the Los Angeles Police to enforce a 13-year-old municipal ordinance which would prevent members of the movement from seeking donations at the airport.

“From now on, the travelling public will not have to worry about solicitors asking for money,” Gina Marie Lindsay, executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, which operates the Los Angeles International Airport, said after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a preliminary injunction imposed in 1997, which stopped city police from enforcing solicitation ban against groups seeking donations, in particular the members of the ISKCON of California.

The ruling still allows groups and individuals to distribute literature and speak to willing travelers.

The president of a Hare Krishna temple in Letchmore Heath has been forced to resign after being found guilty of beating students in India.

The first wave of allegations against Gauri Das was investigated in May 1995 by ISKCON. At the time, it acknowledged the beatings but said they were not “serious”.

After the founding of the organisation’s child protection branch, based in Florida, the investigation into Gauri Das was reopened in 2006, resulting in Monday’s report.

The president of a Hare Krishna-affiliated aid organisation has been arrested from a guest house, allegedly in the company of two young girls in a state of undress, an anti-trafficking police chief said Thursday.

A row has broken out after the first state funded Hindu school in Britain revealed its admissions policy will give preferential treatment to certain pupils.

The Hare Krishna monk is in the middle of his third trek across Canada, a distance that totals about 7,800 kilometres.

What began as a property dispute between the Hare Krishna community and the local authorities has ballooned into an international controversy that threatens Kazakhstan’s ambition to chair the 56-country Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2009.

It was supposed to be a spiritual place free from anxiety, but the Hare Krishnas’ East Village Sanctuary has become the target of an ugly legal battle between two groups of devotees.

Police raided the Hare Krishna village near the financial capital Almaty in November and knocked down part of it.

A Norwegian-based religious-freedom group reported that authorities in southern Kazakhstan today began the demolition of the only Hare Krishna commune in the former Soviet Union.

The first state-funded Hindu school in England has hit yet another obstacle with the spiritual head of the school’s affairs accused of using corporal punishment against children.

Kazakhstan authorities and NGOs have started to intervene in a dispute between locals and followers of the Hare Krishna movement.