U.S. Treasury bonds with a face value of $116 billion seized in Italy in August are fake and were destined for U.S. investors, according to the prosecutor running the probe.

A woman from the Philippines, who was to receive the bonds taken in August, and the sender, her brother, who later traveled to Italy, were arrested by local police, the prosecutor said.

Had the notes been genuine, the pair would have been the U.S. government’s sixth-biggest creditor, behind Russia, which is owed $118 billion.

The Philippine nationals claimed to be Jehovah’s Witnesses and wanted to sell the bonds to finance their religious missions, the prosecutor said.

A dying Jehovah’s Witness has been granted the right to refuse life-saving medical treatment on the grounds of his religious beliefs.

Mr A’s guardians produced two Jehovah’s Witness “worksheets” indicating his attitude to various forms of medical treatment. Justice Robert McDougall found Mr A’s directives should be followed “even if the likely consequence of giving effect to Mr A’s wishes … is that he will die”.

The father of a girl who died after refusing blood transfusions, on the basis of un-biblical teachings by the Jehovah’s Witnesses — continues to battle the cult in court.

Some legal scholars observing the case see what could be worrying setbacks for this legally aggressive sect accustomed to mobilizing the courts to block members from receiving life-saving transfusions

Today’s Religion News Roundup includes stories about elves, a ship operated by a religious sect, mosques facing the wrong direction, and mosques possibly spied upon by the FBI.

Also: “I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed.” Yes, it’s about Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Further, the definitive book on the Columbine High School massacre. Germany’s main Neo-Nazi party faces collapse, and according to the Vatican the Knights Templar hid the Shroud of Turin.

Today’s Religion News Roundup: • Why the word should worry about Iran • A 666 license plate exchange • What could be worse than the Taliban? • Law aimed at hate group used to silence veteran instead

Also: • Germany bans Neo-Nazi youth organization, and • Jews in Brooklyn take the Amish on a walking tour…

A 12-year-old Jehovah’s Witness girl has received a life-saving blood transfusion that she did not want after a Johannesburg High Court order gave doctors the go-ahead.

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that it’s against God’s will to take other people’s blood, or one’s own blood that has been stored, into one’s body.

A High Court judge has directed that a Dublin, Ireland hospital can, provided it is absolutely necessary, give a possible life-saving blood transfusion to a four-year-old girl despite the religious objections of her Jehovah’s Witness parents.

The hospital made an emergency application to Ms Justice Mary Laffoy on Tuesday seeking an order allowing it to administer a transfusion after the parents refused to give consent.

Two women who were sexually abused in their adolescence by a trusted older relative say elders of the small-town Jehovah’s Witness church in which they were raised did not report the situation to police after he admitted touching them inappropriately during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Instead, the man received a lecture from the elders, and many in the community rallied around him because he regularly attended church meetings – while the girls were “treated like troublemakers” and encouraged to let the whole thing go, one of the victims wrote.

People should be able to refuse in advance medical treatment in the event of their becoming incapacitated by serious accident or illness, according to the Law Reform Commission in Ireland.

The commission also provisionally recommends that refusal of treatment on religious grounds in advance care directives be permitted. This issue has been explored by the courts recently in relation to Jehovah’s Witnesses, who, on religious grounds, do not accept blood transfusions.

The devout Jehovah’s Witness was sentenced at Bristol Crown Court in March last year after a four-week trial when it was heard that she had forced sticks down the children’s throats and made them eat their own vomit and rat excrement.

Mr Justice Burnett, detailing what he called a “catalogue of abuse”, said as punishment for misbehaving, Spry would beat the children on the soles of their feet and force them to drink washing-up liquid and bleach.

Two twisted Jehovah’s Witnesses have been arrested as suspected serial killers, accused of murdering 13 people during a nine-month killing spree in Russia.

Claiming to be on a mission from God, Vladimir Gurianov, 44, and Elvira Egorycheva 46, hacked, shot and bludgeoned their victims in a case that left even hardened Russian detectives shocked.

A 23-year-old man is under police guard in hospital after his girlfriend’s father was shot dead and her mother severely wounded at their home in a Cornish hamlet.

It is believed the parents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, had forced their daughter to end the relationship due to their strict religious views.

A businessman has been murdered and his wife was in a critical condition in hospital last night following a double shooting at their £500,000 luxury home in Cornwall.

Jehovah’s Witness Adam Hustler and his wife Amanda were allegedly gunned down by their daughter’s jilted lover who is believed to have been forced to end the relationship because of their strict religious views.

Prosecutors Russian city of Murmansk say that a planned series of Jehovah’s Witnesses services in a stadium cannot go ahead, as they contravene a law on the use of sports facilities.

Meanwhile the Public Prosecutor of the small asbestos-mining town of Asbest in Sverdlovsk Region is pressing for a ban on Jehovah’s Witness literature, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. If Asbest Town Court – or any other Russian court – finds Jehovah’s Witness publications extremist, their addition to the Federal List of Extremist Materials would extend a ban on their distribution to the whole of Russia.

Jehovah’s Witnesses continuing to hand out the texts would risk a four-year prison term under Article 282 of the Criminal Code.

Antonie Dixon told so many stories since the evening he attacked two women and shot a man that he is struggling to keep track of all his lies, the Crown told the High Court at Auckland today.

Crown prosecutor Simon Moore today challenged evidence Dixon gave yesterday, including that God had commanded him to decapitate the women, that he saw snipers at the back of an ambulance and he saw a man with horns.

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