Free Republic

The United Nations is holding climate talks in Lima, Peru, featuring delegates from 190 countries. To get their attention, the anti-science extremists of Greenpeace illegally entered a prohibited area adjacent to one of the most famous Nazca Lines. The activists trampled across the fragile, 1,500-year-old site to install large cloth letters reading: “Time for Change; The Future is Renewable.” To put it mildly, Peruvian officials are not amused.

When the stunt-planners at Greenpeace sent teams of activists to trespass this week at Peru's Nazca archeological site, they must have thought their bumper-sticker messaging would look good on a Facebook page next to the 2,000-year-old geodesic drawings. After all, the group is known for stringing banners from bridges and skyscrapers to draw attention to its environmental campaigns, and with U.N. climate talks taking place in Lima this week, the activists clearly wanted to make an impact. And so they have. The impact of their footprints on the fragile desert site, in fact, will last "hundreds or thousands of years,"...

Japanese researchers find new giant picture on Peru's Nazca Plateau The new Nazca Plateau image discovered by the research team from Yamagata University. (Photo courtesy of Yamagata University)A new giant picture on the Nazca Plateau in Peru, which is famous for giant patterns that can be seen from the air, has been discovered by a team of Japanese researchers. The image is 65 meters long, and appears to be an animal with horns. It is thought to have been drawn as a symbol of hopes for good crops, but there are no similar patterns elsewhere, and the type of the...

Castillo said no one, not even presidents and Cabinet ministers, is allowed without authorization where the activists trod, and those who do have permission must wear special shoes.The Nazca lines are huge figures depicting living creatures, stylized plants and imaginary figures scratched on the surface of the ground between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago. They are believed to have had ritual astronomical functions.

VATICAN CITY - Tackling the problem of climate change is a serious ethical and moral responsibility, Pope Francis told negotiators from around the world meeting for a climate summit in Lima, Peru. "The time to find global solutions is running out. We can find adequate solutions only if we act together and unanimously," he said in a written message to Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru's minister of the environment and host president of the 20th UN Climate Change Conference. Thousands of negotiators from 195 countries gathered for the meeting in Lima Dec. 1-12 to hammer out details of a new international agreement...

VATICAN CITY - Tackling the problem of climate change is a serious ethical and moral responsibility, Pope Francis told negotiators from around the world meeting for a climate summit in Lima, Peru. "The time to find global solutions is running out. We can find adequate solutions only if we act together and unanimously," he said in a written message to Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru's minister of the environment and host president of the 20th UN Climate Change Conference. Thousands of negotiators from 195 countries gathered for the meeting in Lima Dec. 1-12 to hammer out details of a new international agreement...

Will the United Nations wield its unproven claim that greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change to require each of its 193 member nations to measure and report GHG emissions — a prerequisite for a global carbon tax? Does it really matter whether next year’s meeting in Paris produces a treaty, or a “soft law” document, or both? Todd Stern, head of the American delegation at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Lima, Peru, said the U.S. is “perfectly happy to have an assessment process.” He said this would produce “clear and understandable” Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs)...

Representatives from the U.S. and 195 other countries are meeting in Lima, Peru for the 20th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, hoping to lay the foundation for a major treaty to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. But evidence shows this is the wrong approach to address climate change and negotiators would be better off focusing on market competition and innovation, which have proven able to reduce emissions intensity and promote economic growth. The U.S. is seeking an agreement based on voluntary reductions in carbon dioxide emissions by each nation. In an attempt...

Ditching fossil fuels as proposed in Lima, Peru by the environmental architects of gloom and doom alarmism and replacing them with renewables The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change met in Lima, Peru, December 1-12, 2014, determined to chisel a new treaty that would mandate a cap and trade on greenhouse gas emissions effective by 2020 and would “eliminate the use of fossil fuels entirely by 2050.” The hypothesis that rich nations caused climate change by burning fossil fuels to produce energy has never been proven by IPCC’s computer modeling. The fact that now the hypothesis changed its name...

The 65 page indictment unsealed Wednesday outlines a massive conspiracy to defraud employees, IHOP corporate, investors, the Internal Revenue Service and federal, state and local law enforcement. Background Prior to 2003, Tarek Elkafrawi owned and operated two IHOP franchises; one in Decatur, Illinois and the other in Evansville, Indiana. During his time in Decatur, the indictment alleges, Elkafrowi began a social friendship with Autumn Lee Tangas, an employee of IHOP Corporate in Decatur. Between 2003 and 2006 Elkafrawi purchased, either entirely or in partnership with other investors, 6 other IHOP franchises. Those stores are located in Toledo (2), Holland, Findlay,...

Lori Berenson's parents raged last night against a human rights court ruling that will keep their activist daughter in prison for the next 11 years. Mark and Rhoda Berenson, who live in Gramercy Park, said the ruling marked "a tragic day for human rights in the Western Hemisphere and in the world." They faulted the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Human Rights Court's decision to uphold a Peruvian court ruling that declared their activist daughter a Marxist terrorist who conspired in 1995 to overturn the Peruvian government. Berenson was originally tried by a tribunal of hooded judges. It was later found she...

Total Bus Anarchy: It’s a Beautiful Thing Posted on September 26, 2011 by methylethyl A lot of expats complain about the buses in Lima. They drive too fast. They are dangerous. They seem to be totally unregulated. But I love them. This might warrant a word of explanation. I don’t love that the bus drivers seem reckless, that the bus I am riding could break down at any time, or that there are no emissions standards, so on any busy street I eventually find myself holding my breath through a cloud of black bus exhaust, from some huge retired Bluebird...

LIMA, Peru -- After he was charged with first-degree murder by a Peruvian judge, Joran van der Sloot got an earful today from an angry mob of people who yelled and threw objects at him as cops hastily transported the Dutchman to jail. Lima Superior Court Judge Juan Buendia issued the order before dawn and the 22-year-old suspect was first taken with other prisoners in an armored truck to Lima's judicial palace, then alone to an eastern Lima prison where he will have his own cell in a segregated block. “The aggravating factors are having acted with ferocity and great...

LIMA, Peru — The lone suspect in the disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway was paraded — moist-eyed and looking stunned — before reporters today as Peruvians denounced him and detectives began interrogating him about the murder of a Lima student. Joran van der Sloot arrived at criminal police headquarters in a brown Interpol SUV and was escorted across an auditorium of shouting, shutter-snapping journalists three times. Wearing a green bulletproof vest, his hands handcuffed behind him, the husky 22-year-old stared straight ahead and didn't respond to reporters' questions or make eye contact. Outside, seven Indian shamans in brightly colored...

January 29, 2009 Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/January/09-nsd-071.html Imprisoned Spy and His Son Indicted on Charges of Acting as Russian Agents and Money Laundering WASHINGTON -- A federal indictment was unsealed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon charging Harold James Nicholson, 58, of Sheridan, Ore., and Nathaniel James Nicholson, 24, of Eugene, Ore., with two counts of Conspiracy, one count of Acting as Agents of a Foreign Government, and four counts of Money Laundering. Both defendants are scheduled to appear today at 1:30 p.m. before U.S. Magistrate Janice M. Stewart for arraignment on...

via translation - ALERT - Washington calls on American citizens to leave Bolivia WASHINGTON - The USA called Tuesday U.S. nationals to leave Bolivia, inviting them to take a flight between La Paz and Lima that the U.S. State Department proposes to affrêter Wednesday.

Barack Obama continued his campaign tour of battleground Ohio with a stop at a Lima church, where he quietly attended services at a Lutheran church. Obama's presence wasn't acknowledged at the 10 a.m. service on Sunday until the church's pastor, Lars Olson, referred to him as a special guest. Obama is the first Democratic presidential candidate to visit Allen County, a longtime Republican stronghold, in decades. Olson said he was first told of the visit at about 8:30 a.m. Lima police officers received a call at about the same time. After the service, Obama chatted outside with supporters for about...

5000-year-old anthropomorphic figures found in Huaura, Lima 5000-year-old anthropomorphic figures found in Huaura, Lima Lima, Jun. 08 (ANDINA).- In the last days, a team of archaeologists headed by Ruth Shady has discovered a number of anthropomorphic figures believed to be some five thousand years old near the district of Vegueta in the province of Huaura on the coast north of Lima. These relics have been unearthed in the archeological site of Vichama, or "hidden city", a place that belongs to the same civilization of Caral and which is located 159 kilometers north of Lima. Caral is considered the oldest city...

LIMA, Peru -- Ten Iraqi citizens with forged passports are in a Peruvian prison after an apparent bid to enter the United States on a flight to Los Angeles, officials here say...One of the men arrested is thought to have links to al Qaeda, said Peruvian National Police Col. Roberto Lujan...The plot unfolded June 21, when three Iraqis entered Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima attempting to board a flight to Los Angeles. Airline officials alerted police after two of the men holding Dutch passports could not speak Dutch. Citizens of the Netherlands are not required to hold a visa...

PISCO, Peru - The death toll rose to 450 on Thursday in the magnitude-8 earthquake that devastated cities of adobe and brick in Peru's southern desert. Survivors wearing blankets walked like ghosts through the ruins. Dust-covered dead were pulled out and laid in rows in the streets, or beneath bloodstained sheets at damaged hospitals and morgues. Doctors struggled to help more than 1,500 injured, including hundreds who waited on cots in the open air, fearing more aftershocks would send the structures crashing down. Destruction was centered in Peru's southern desert, at the oasis city of Ica and the nearby port...