Free Republic

TEHRAN, Iran -- A top Iranian army commander said Monday that his troops would take "decisive" action if Islamic State group militants come within 40 kilometers (24 miles) of its borders with Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran, the major Shiite power in the Middle East, is heavily involved in conflicts in Syria and Iraq against the jihadists, primarily Sunni Muslims who denounce Shiites as apostates who must be killed. The comments from General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, who heads Iran's ground forces, came after Iraq's foreign minister said intelligence sources showed Iran was among countries IS had plans to attack.

The United States is poised to flood world markets with once-unthinkable quantities of liquefied natural gas as soon as this year, profoundly changing the geo-politics of global energy and posing a major threat to Russian gas dominance in Europe. "We anticipate becoming big players, and I think we'll have a big impact," said the Ernest Moniz, the US Energy Secretary. "We're going to influence the whole global LNG market." Mr Moniz said four LNG export terminals are under construction and the first wave of shipments may begin before the end of this year or in early 2016 at the latest....

If you are an American, then odds are you are spending some significant chunk of today [Black Friday] fighting your way through unpleasant, stressful, and chaotic shopping lines. There's a better kind of line. And it's in Japan. Watch this time-lapse video of patrons lining up at Comiket, a regular comic book festival in Tokyo, and just marvel at the order of it all. (They're lining up to enter the festival, one chunk of people at a time.) The experience looks easy, even downright pleasant, and most amazing of all appears entirely self-organized. I challenge you to find a single...

They are young, wild, free -- and very, very rich. These wealthy Chinese students go to school in the day and flaunt their social status during private meet-ups at night. These lavish gatherings feature posh venues, designer handbags and blinged out shoes, ladies in stiletto heels and sexy skirts and, of course, supercars -- plenty of them. Maserati, Ferrari, Bentley, Lamborghinis you name it -- they're all on display in neat rows. “I have three Ferraris, this is my newest one,” an interviewee told producer and host Kristie Hang at a supercar meet-up in the San Diego valley in California....

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The first Christian governor of Indonesia's capital in 50 years was sworn in Wednesday despite loud protests from Islamic hard-liners who insisted Jakarta's top political job should go to a Muslim. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Protestant who is also the first ethnic Chinese to become an Indonesian governor, gained a reputation as deputy governor of being outspoken and combating corruption and cutting red tape. He is better known by Chinese nickname "Ahok." Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, and 87 percent of its 250 million people are Muslim. Christians make up about 10 percent.

Large manufacturers are increasingly moving production back to the United States from China, according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group. After watching the US bleed jobs for years as manufacturers offshored production to China, "now we're watching a switchback," Harold Sirkin, a co-author of the BCG research, told AFP. More than 70 percent cited better access to skilled labor as a reason to move production to the US, more than four times as many who cited it for moving production away from the US. For goods that would be sold in the US, nearly 80 percent gave...

Money launderers will increasingly move away from the US dollar to the renminbi as US authorities continue to crack down on international banks’ AML systems [says] Freddie McMahon, director of strategy & innovation at Anomaly42, a specialist in AML and terrorist financing. “The dollar is becoming increasingly high risk and it’s a level of risk money launderers are proving less willing to take...the renminbi is off the beaten track and affords a new level of camouflage for criminal transactions." “The irony is that proactively countering the money launderers represents an unprecedented opportunity for the Chinese authorities to make the renminbi...

For years scientists have theorized about how large rocks — some weighing hundreds of pounds — zigzag across Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park, leaving long trails etched in the earth. Now two researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, have photographed these "sailing rocks" being blown by light winds across the former lake bed. Richard Norris and James Norris said the movement is made possible when ice sheets that form after rare overnight rains melt in the rising sun, making the hard ground muddy and slick. On Dec. 20, 2013, the...

Over 6,400 Christians dressed in white on Sunday afternoon to attend a special “family worship” service conducted by Singapore’s Faith Community Baptist Church (FCBC), according to organisers. The service was held at a full-house Suntec Convention Centre and led by FCBC founder and pastor Lawrence Khong, who earlier called on his followers to wear white over the weekend to protest the annual Pink Dot gay rights rally on Saturday. Khong, who supports keeping a Singapore law that criminalises sex between men, released a statement on Friday pointing to the Pink Dot movement as a “decline of moral and family values".

Two weeks before Christmas of 2004, Kandy Hildebrandt opened a letter addressed to her husband Russ, at his request. The letter revealed that her husband had a personal loan of $17,500. They sat down to talk about it: Russ also had 11 credit cards totaling $89,000 in debt. “He handled the personal finances,” she says. “I knew we had several credit cards, but I was unaware of the extent of our debt.” The finance charges on the credit cards alone were $1,593 a month – double their $750 monthly rent in New Richmond, Wis. The Hildebrandts knew they needed to...

Singapore has topped Tokyo to become the world's most expensive city, according to a cost of living survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). In its 2014 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, the EIU said the world's ten most expensive cities to live in are: Singapore, Paris, Oslo, Zurich, Sydney, Caracas, Geneva, Melbourne, Tokyo and Copenhagen, respectively. [NY doesn't even make the top twenty.] Singapore [is] significantly more expensive than any other location when it comes to running a car," the EIU said in its report. "As a result, transport costs in Singapore are almost three times higher than in...

[This is] what ISIS would like to happen, in their ideal world. Their ideas on this front are derived from late "al-Qaida in Iraq" founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's thoughts on creating "a vast war inside Islam" that would ultimately eradicate all Shiites: ...for Zarqawi and his network, savagery—particularly when directed at other Muslims—was the whole point. The break between ISIS and al-Qaida over the former's brutality is well-known; Wright's piece puts it in context of the two groups' views of history. Al-Qaida was fighting the West; ISIS is fighting Shiites, and a vengeance that goes back more than a thousand...

The Japanese government said Friday it was slashing Japan’s corporate tax rate, one of the world’s highest, as the country’s top central banker called for speedier reforms to unshackle an economy long mired in red tape. The cuts would bring the levy under 30% within a few years, resulting in a tax rate ranging from 20% to 29%, depending on the jurisdiction. Company taxes, including a rate of 35.6% in Tokyo, are the second-highest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) behind the United States, which some critics say has held back the world’s number three economy.

In what could quench the thirst of billions of people in the future, researchers have discovered our planet's largest water reservoir 640 km beneath our feet - bound up in rock deep in the earth's mantle. This water is not in a form familiar to us - it is not liquid, ice or vapour. This fourth form is water trapped inside the molecular structure of the minerals in the mantle rock. Scientists have been looking for this missing deep water for decades," explained geophysicist Steve Jacobsen from Northwestern University.

Selangor Barisan Nasional (BN)[a leading political party] is now eager to see hudud [a category of punishments under Sharia] roll out in Malaysia's most developed state [which surrounds the federal territory of the capital Kuala Lumpur]. Malay-Muslim activists in support of the idea have argued the enforcement of hudud is in line Article 3 in the Federal Constitution, which states that Islam is the religion of the federation. Opponents however argue that hudud cannot be carried out in Malaysia as Islamic law is applicable only on Muslims and if enforced, would run counter to other fundamental provisions in the constitution,...

Islamic authorities in Malaysia on Thursday seized 321 Bibles from a Christian group because they used the word Allah to refer to God, signaling growing intolerance that may inflame ethnic and religious tension in the Southeast Asian country. The raid comes after a Malaysian court in October ruled that the Arabic word was exclusive to Muslims, most of whom are ethnic Malays, the largest ethnic group in the country alongside sizeable Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities. Christians from Malaysia's rural states of Sabah and Sarawak in Borneo, who have used the word Allah for centuries, have moved in droves to...

Is political Islam dead? [The short answer is No.] The Myth: ... With the millions who protested against the Brotherhood regime on June 30 ..., it is safe to assume that we have seen the last of them. The Reality: ... Political Islam ... exists because it fills a great void.... [It] claims to provide alternatives .... in the absence of a viable political alternative, the prospects of political Islam vanishing are slim. The value proposition of political Islam ... is unparalleled; it mixes both faith and alternative social structures .... In a country with rampant poverty rates, political Islam...

[T]he object [was] an asteroid 17 to 20 metres across ... with a mass of 10,000 tones [and] exploded at an altitude of about 30 kilometres. The initial explosion carried an energy equivalent to about 500 kilotonnes of TNT. The explosion of the object caused] flying glass, which injured more than a thousand people and collapsed one building. Of 374 injured people who responded to an internet survey ..., the most common complaint related to eyes – 180 people said their eyes hurt and 70 were temporarily blinded. But 20 also reported sunburn; one was burned so badly that his...

Japan and Russia held their first joint defense and foreign ministers' meeting on Saturday and agreed to boost security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific as they both warily watch neighboring China's rising influence. To boost cooperation in the field of security, and not just in the field of economic and people exchanges, means that we are improving overall Japan-Russia ties," Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told a news conference. "This would also have a positive impact on the negotiations to sign a peace treaty."

BEIJING — Nineteen province-level governments in China collected a total of $2.7 billion in fines last year from parents who had violated family planning laws, which usually limit couples to one child, a lawyer who had requested the data said Thursday. The lawyer, Wu Youshui of Zhejiang Province, sent letters in July to 31 provincial governments asking officials to disclose how much they had collected in 2012 in family planning fines, referred to as “social support fees.” He said he suspected that the fines were a substantial source of revenue for governments in poor parts of China. Mr. Wu’s findings...