The International Liaison Committee of Atheists and Freethinkers (ILCAF), meeting in Washington, DC on 4 June 2008, resolved to begin preparatory debate towards the proposed formation of an International Organization of Freethought in Norway in 2011.

Australian Humanists, meeting in national convention in Sydney, at Humanist House, 10 Shepherd St, Chippendale, resolved on 3rd May, 2008 as follows:

‘That CAHS requests the Australian Government to do its utmost to secure a total global ban on all cluster munitions.’

New IHEU member organization The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain was one year old on June 21. Maryam Namazie writes: In the short time since CEMB was launched in June 2007, it has achieved much with volunteers alone.

Australian Humanists, meeting in national convention in Sydney, at Humanist House, 10 Shepherd St, Chippendale, resolved on 3rd May as follows:

‘To express our dismay at recent events in the United Nations Human Rights Council, which seriously challenge the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights in this its sixtieth anniversary year.’

Australian Humanists, meeting in national convention in Sydney, presented the Australian Humanist of the Year 2008 Award to Senator Lyn Allison.

IHEU member organization Atheist Centre has held a two-day camp in Vijayawada, India for High School and college students and other young people on May 17-18, 2008. A highlight of the camp was a practical demonstration of conjuring tricks, to show how conmen deceive their audiences.

Fritanke.no, the newspaper of the Norwegian Humanist Association has announced that selected articles from its Norwegian edition will also be available in English. The English language articles can be found at http://www.fritanke.no/ENGLISH/ The first two articles on the site relate to the important developments and arrangements made by a joint National Assembly relating to the State-Church relation in Norway.

The Secular Coalition for America has announced a Lobby Day to follow the 2008 World Humanist Congress. The Lobby Day will be an ideal opportunity for U.S. citizens to influence their elected representatives.

Freethinkers in France will remember fondly the Easter weekend of 2008 for many years. On the allegedly Good Friday of 21 March about 50 banquets were organised by Freethinkers. This is a tradition that goes back to a grand anti-religious banquet organised in 1868 in Paris, at the behest of Sainte-Beuve, Ernest Renan, Prince Napoleon and other republicans of the time: it was to break a religious taboo as on this day it was traditionally forbidden to eat ‘flesh meat’.

In a shocking affront to freedom of expression, the Government of Punjab, India, has banned four rationalist books and threatened legal action against the authors and translators, Tarksheel Society of Punjab reports. The supposed grounds for the ban is that the books are "incorrect literature" about Hindu deities.