Free Republic

UN hides naked male sculpture to please Iranians A relief carving of a naked man at the UN's Geneva headquarters was covered up on Monday, apparently to spare the blushes of Iranian diplomats ahead of fresh talks on the country's nuclear drive. UN officials would not comment on why the wall relief, inspired by Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam", had been masked by a large white screen, referring questions to the Swiss authorities. But Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve claimed that the aim was to avoid offending the Islamic republic's delegation for the talks taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday. Iranian...

A senior Muslim cleric denounced on Monday the incident in which Jews prayed and sang Israel’s national anthem “Hatikva” on the Temple Mount, and warned that this incident was further proof that Israel was planning to “destroy” the Al-Aqsa mosque. … Sheikh Yusuf Adeis said in an interview on a Palestinian Authority-based news website that the entrance of “extremist” Jews to the Temple Mount and their waving the Israeli flag was a “heinous crime”. Speaking to shfanews, Adeis said that Jewish entry to the Temple Mount was “a violation of all treaties” and was part of the “occupation forces'” plan...

Anas al-Libi, the alleged al Qaeda member snatched off the streets of Tripoli by an American special operations team, has been brought to the U.S. to face terrorism charges, but has been hospitalized due to a severe case of hepatitis C, U.S. officials told ABC News today. Al-Libi, whose real name is Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, had been on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list for more than a decade for his alleged involvement in the dual bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 which claimed more than 200 lives, 12 of them American. The U.S. Army's famed...

A crowd of demonstrators converge upon U.S. government property closed to the public. The demonstrators know that they are prohibited from entering the property. Nonetheless, they push through the metal barricades, chanting, “Tear down these walls.” That incident occurred yesterday at the World War II Memorial on the National Mall. Not confining their protest to the World War II Memorial, some of the protesters then picked up the government’s metal barricades and carried them blocks away to the White House, where the barricades were deposited outside the gates. Television recorded police struggling to keep the protesters away from the White...

South Sudan Implements Major Diplomatic Reforms Planned by FM Barnaba BenjaminBy Joe Odaby South Sudan NewsJuba, South Sudan — October 14, 2013 (SSN) … South Sudan’s Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister Dr. Barnaba Marial Benjamin has announced that a major diplomatic reform is underway in the South Sudan Foreign Ministry. The move comes after national legislative assembly lawmakers from the south-governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) expressed concerns over the manner in which its embassies handle the country’s foreign affairs matters. “There remains a lot of work to be done and it is imperative that the ministry devise policies...

(Reuters) - Sayed Gul walked into a small mud brick room in eastern Afghanistan, a bundle wrapped in a shawl on his back. With a flick, he plonked the package onto a threadbare carpet and hundreds of voter cards spilled out. "How many do you want to buy?" he asked with a grin. Like many others, Gul left a routine job - in his case, repairing cars in Marco, a small town in the east - to join a thriving industry selling the outcome of next year's presidential elections. Gul, who had a long, black beard and was dressed in...

The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

An American citizen who was arrested by Egyptian security forces in August in El Arish, in the Sinai Peninsula, has died in jail after apparently committing suicide. James Henry Lunn, a former US Army officer, was detained in the north of the restive Sinai Peninsula on 27th August. He was one of nine foreign citizens detained that month, as security forces cracked down on violent protests by supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi. The circumstances of his arrest are somewhat murky. At the time, Egyptian authorities said he was arrested for breaking the curfew imposed by the interim government as...

During a phone interview with Al Jazeera, Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi attacked the Egyptian military over the scores of pro-Morsi protesters killed or denied medical attention by the armed forces, declaring that the army was “worse than Israel.” … This was all too much for Egyptian actor Hassan Yousef, who found a creative way to “exonerate” his long-time friend on Egypt’s Dream 2 TV. … “That [the man who condemned the army] is a double,” he said, dramatically, insisting that “what we just heard could not have been said by the Sheikh Al Qaradawi I knew.” To the obvious amusement...

October 14, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Viewers all over the globe appreciate the beauty of Miss World, Megan Lynn Young, but the reigning Miss Philippines recently told an interviewer that she appreciates the beauty of the unborn. In August, Young told a Philippines-based broadcaster that she opposes abortion-on-demand, believes in abstinence before marriage, and sees marriage as a lifelong and unbreakable union. “I'm against abortion,” Young told her interviewer flatly.

CHANTING socialists and feminists on Saturday stormed up to Parliament House to confront 3000 anti-abortion activists gathered there. Now, remember what socialists claim: they are kinder and more moral. More sharing and caring. Remember what feminists claim: they want women treated equally. Want mutual respect. But here is what I saw. ..... We saw that in Melbourne on Saturday. They call themselves progressives. They are instead barbarians, so sure of their goodness they feel licensed to do evil.

An alleged senior al Qaeda figure captured in Libya by U.S. special forces this month has been transferred to the United States and will face charges in court in New York, U.S. officials said on Monday. He was seized by a U.S. Army Delta Force squad on the streets of Tripoli on October 5 and whisked onto a Navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea where he was questioned by a team of interrogators. He was handed over to U.S. civilian law enforcement over the weekend and brought directly to the New York area, said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, the chief...

TRIPOLI, LIBYA – A car bomb exploded outside a building housing the Swedish and Finnish consulates in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on Friday, badly damaging it but causing no casualties, Libyan and Swedish officials said. The blast reflected the deep insecurity in the North African nation, where multiple armed militias run rampant -- many of them dominated by Islamic militants -- and the central government is too weak to rein them in.

...On September 27, Obama answered Woods with a five-paragraph letter. Four of the paragraphs are devoted to presidential boilerplate: “prayers,” “challenges,” “courage,” “security,” “justice,” “commitment,” and “service.” One paragraph pertains to Woods’ questions about Benghazi. Obama writes: "On that tragic day, I directed my national security team to do everything possible to respond to the attacks against our people and facilities in Benghazi. The United States Government considered a range of options and deployed additional military capabilities, but as our military leaders have said, the military forces needed to carry out the type of operation you describe were not close...

We have a minor earthquake in France. A party committed to withdrawal from the euro, the restoration of French franc, and the complete destruction of monetary union has just defeated the establishment in the Brignoles run-off election. It is threatening Frexit as well, which rather alters the political chemistry of Britain's EU referendum. Marine Le Pen's Front National won 54pc of the vote. It was a bad defeat for the Gaulliste UMP, a party at risk of disintegration unless it can find a leader in short order. President Hollande's Socialists were knocked out in the first round, due to mass...

(Vatican Radio) Thousands of pilgrims were in Saint Peter’s Square Saturday evening to join Pope Francis in venerating the original statue of Our Lady of Fatima. The statue made its journey to Rome as the celebrations for the Feast of Our Lady Fatima, which is October 13. Pope Francis will preside over Mass on Sunday morning, and the recitation of the Rosary before the statue. He will then consecrate the world to Mary’s Immaculate Heart. During the evening’s event, the Pope welcomed the statue, which was processed through Saint Peter’s Square, and led the faithful in reciting the Seven Sorrows...

Dramatic video shows a Brazilian biker being held up at gunpoint before an undercover cop shoots his attacker down so he can't escape. The terrifying scene reportedly went down in Sao Paulo at 3 p.m. Saturday - caught on the victim's helmet cam - and starts with him driving his Honda Hornet down the street.

AFP - France's mainstream political parties were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the Front National (FN) after a breakthrough by-election win for the far-right party. The ruling Socialist party and the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, face humiliating reverses in municipal and European elections next year if the FN can sustain its current standing in the eyes of an electorate thoroughly fed-up with record unemployment, rising taxes and a perceived increase in crime and insecurity. A poll published last week suggested the FN could...

In 1992 the Treaty of Maastricht turned the European Common Market on its head, and replaced the free association of sovereign nations cooperating to achieve their mutual interest—as envisioned in the Treaty of Rome of 1957, signed by France’s Schumann, Italy’s De Gasperi, and Germany’s Konrad Adenauer, Catholics all—with a European Union whose unlimited norms take precedence over national laws.  Today, after a gradual and meticulous 20-year-long build-up, the nations of Europe find themselves chained to a convoluted document that goes by the name of the Lisbon Treaty. Premised less on its loosely defined common heritage than on its...

According to Paul Magnette, the social pillar of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) must be strengthened with a proposal for a European minimum wage, “even though we are not going to set the same minimum wage level across Europe”. Paul Magnette is a Belgian politician (Socialist) who began his career as a professor of political science at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). He was Federal Minister for Climate, Energy and Environment (2007-2011) and Minister of Public Enterprises (2011-2013). He is now mayor of Charleroi. …

Eight out of 10 British manufacturers would choose to stay in the European Union if a referendum on membership of the 28-nation bloc were held today, says a survey released today (14 October). The poll, for the EEF, the manufacturing sector’s biggest trade body, found that 85% of those asked would choose to stay in the EU, if given a say in a referendum. … EEF Chief Executive Terry Scuoler said the results suggested manufacturers wanted to stay in a reformed EU and feared the economic fallout of leaving. “Britain must not gamble on its future in Europe. The stakes...

The Pentagon acknowledges that patriotic "arrival ceremonies" for US war dead recovered from Vietnam, Korea and Second World War battlefields do not involve newly returned remains of the missing By Philip Sherwell, New York4:38PM BST 12 Oct 2013 The Pentagon has for years staged emotional but phony "arrivals ceremonies" for missing American war dead when tearful families and veterans were led to believe flag-draped cases on cargo planes contained the remains of service personnel returned home that day. The defence department has now acknowledged that the ceremonies did not involve newly-repatriated victims from foreign battlefields and that the planes involved...

Having public candidates for the Commission presidency during the next EU elections is not the panacea for Europe’s credibility woes, says European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. While European parties look for figureheads for their EU election campaigns, the president of the European Council feels this will not resolve Europe’s democratic deficit. “You don’t have to look for solutions to things that aren’t a problem. To go and look for ‘faces’ to guide the EU: that’s not a solution,” Van Rompuy said at a debate last Thursday (10 October). … Giving his predictions for the upcoming May 2014 elections at...

The chief of the International Monetary Fund [IMF] says the U.S. government’s stalemate over spending and its debt limit is “very, very concerning” and could roll back economic progress around the world. Christine Lagarde, who took over the financial watchdog-and-rescue organization in 2011, said global finance ministers assembled for meetings in Washington last week feeling like Japan had finally turned the corner and that economies in the U.S. and Europe were on the upswing. “And then they found out that the debt ceiling was the issue,” she said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They found out that the government...

Hundreds of outraged Muscovites -- blaming a migrant for the fatal stabbing of a local -- attacked businesses in a southern district of Moscow run by natives of the Caucasus. Police detained over three hundred people during the unrest on Sunday

Moscow is in a state of maximum alert for the risk of more ethnic riots, after at least 29 people were injured yesterday in clashes between ultra-nationalists, who had gone on a real hunt for immigrants, and police that moved in to stop vandalism in the city's south-western suburb of Biryulevo. Anonymous medical sources told Interfax that 23 protesters were injured, eight of them requiring hospitalisation, as well as six officers from OMON, the Russian Interior Ministry's Special Purpose Mobile Unit.The demonstration began as a protest against the murder of a 25-year-old ethnic Russian, allegedly by a man with the...

Moscow (AFP) - Moscow police were on Monday holding almost 400 people under arrest after the Russian capital was rocked by some of its worst ethnically-fuelled rioting in years, sparked by the killing of an ethnic Russian allegedly by a Muslim migrant from the Caucasus. An initially peaceful protest in the Biryulyovo district of Moscow to protest the killing of Yegor Shcherbakov, 25, rapidly descended into bloody clashes with the police that left the glass doors of a shopping centre smashed and cars upturned. The crowd chanted "Russia for Russians!" and other nationalist slogans during a protest that swelled to...

J-10 fighter not yet approved for export BEIJING, October 10 (ChinaMil) --As global attention has been drawn to when China's in-service top-grade home-made J-10 fighter aircraft enters the international market, Ma Zhiping, vice president of the China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC), disclosed recently that many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America had already enquired about price of J-10. According to Ma Zhiping, many clients have contacted to enquire the price of J-10 series fighters. These clients came from various countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America and include those traditional users of Chinese military aircraft as...

Exclusive glimpse behind the scenes of the Royal Navy's gruelling submarine command course known as Perisher 12 Oct 2013 11:53 THE RECORD is the first paper to go behind the scenes as officers are put through their paces to test their talent and nerve in the exhausting and body-aching submarine command course nicknamed Perisher. Dan Simmonds is put through his paces Brad Wakefield LIEUTENANT Commander Dan Simmonds gave the order to raise hunter killer HMS Talent to periscope depth before launching his torpedo attack. This was his most dangerous mission yet. Admiral Corder was standing feet away, his eyes flicking...

The Xuzhou, one of China's Type 054A frigates. (Internet Photo) Staff Reporter China would have to sacrifice up to 40% of its People's Liberation Army Navy fleet in an attempt to sink a super aircraft carrier like the USS Gerald R Ford in a campaign, according to a report from the Moscow-based Military-Industrial Courier. China currently possesses several effective weapons systems that could be used against a US carrier battle group, including its DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles and 12 guided-missile destroyers. The country's two Type 051C and six Type 052C destroyers are all equipped with anti-ship missiles such as the...

The United States is just “days away” from causing a global economic disaster unless politicians devise a plan to raise the nation’s debt limit and avoid defaulting, the president of the World Bank has warned. … “We're now five days away from a very dangerous moment,” Jim Yong Kim said in a briefing on Saturday, then the 11th day of the crisis, following a meeting of the bank’s Development Committee in the US capital Washington DC. …

Greece and Israel signed a joint declaration last week that further enhances their cooperation in the energy sector and acts as a guide for the development of relations of wider geopolitical significance for the two Mediterranean countries. It also makes clear that the two sides with proceed with a series of actions for the joint extraction and exploitation of hydrocarbons. The two states “will examine ways and means for the better development of natural resources in the Eastern Mediterranean and their transfer to the energy market,” reads the confidential agreement, which has been seen by Kathimerini. This phrase refers to...

Though Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani women's education advocate who survived the Taliban's attempt to kill her with a shot to the head last year, did not win the Nobel Peace Prize this week, her ongoing tour of the United States is still getting plenty of well-deserved attention. After making Jon Stewart's jaw drop on The Daily Show, she paid a visit to the White House so the First Family could "thank her for her inspiring and passionate work on behalf of girls education in Pakistan." In the above photo taken by White House photographer Pete Souza, Yousafzai appears to be...

In some poor Indian villages, girls are trained from birth for a life of sexual servitude in order to feed their families.Like many Indian girls, Suchitra was taught her future profession by her mother. In her village, there was only one path. Even before she’d reached puberty, Suchitra had learned different sexual positions and other ways to please a customer. At age 14, a man she had never seen before showed up one day at the family’s house near Bharatpur in northern India. At her mother’s urging, Suchitra got into his car. Six hours later they reached their destination. It...

Meem, 9, works 12-hour shifts at a factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She dreams of becoming a sewing operator, buying more hair clips and helping her family.Some days are good for Meem, others she likes to forget as quickly as possible. The first time I saw Meem, which was also my first day at work at a sweatshop, she was having a good day despite the wretched heat. She sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, a tiny, frail figure among piles of collars, cuffs and other parts of unstitched shirts. She had a pair of cutters in her hands, much like...

As our divided government attempts to resolve the partial shutdown and debt ceiling fights, there is renewed talk of some type of “grand bargain” that could involve significant cuts to federal spending and entitlements. Resolving America’s fiscal crisis requires hard choices, but any “grand bargain” must ensure that we continue to fulfill our promises to the men and women who served. During the worst days of World War II, Winston Churchill famously said, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Don’t these same words apply today to the “few” who...

Military bases see Pokemon X/Y copies delayed due to government shutdown Certainly not the worst part of the government shutdown here in the states, but a very annoying one! At least there's still an eShop option.

We assume it is a coincidence that on the day in which we demonstrate China's relentless appetite for gold, driven by what we and many others believe is the country's desire to have a call option on a gold-backed reserve currency when the time comes, just posted in China's official press agency, Xinhua, is an op-ed by writer Liu Chang in which he decries the "US fiscal failure which warrants a de-Americanized world" and flatly states that the world should consider a new reserve currency "that is to be created to replace the dominant U.S. dollar, so that the international...

China has just one thing to say to all those who engage in the now daily slamdowns of gold just around the time of the London fixing, after 8 am Eastern, which lately have gotten so vicious they have resulted in "stop logic" market halts not on one but at least two occasions, keeping the price of gold delightfully low for all those who instead of selling, are looking to buy: "thanks." As the chart below shows, in the past two years since September 2011 (ironically the same month we wrote "Wikileaks Discloses The Reason(s) Behind China's Shadow Gold Buying...

China’s official news agency is calling for a “de-Americanized world,” in a blistering editorial characterizing the United States as a “meddling” and “hypocritical” nation that introduces chaos into the world for its own ends. “As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world,” writes the Xinhua News Agency.

A U.S. citizen detained in Egypt for violating curfew in August was found dead Sunday in his jail cell, the second foreigner to die in detention in recent weeks. ... Security officials identified the man as James Henry, 66, a retired U.S. Army officer who arrived in Cairo from the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain on Aug. 25. Henry was detained by army troops in the turbulent region of northern Sinai three days later while making his way to the border crossing with Gaza in the town of Rafah

(Reuters) - Demonstrators, some chanting racist slogans, vandalized a shopping center and scuffled with police in a Moscow neighborhood on Sunday after the killing of a young man that residents blamed on a migrant from the Caucasus. Protests over the death in the southern Biryulyovo district began peacefully until a group of young men began smashing windows in the shopping center. The crowd grew to number several thousand and demonstrators scuffled with police when they tried to make arrests, a Reuters witness said. Pictures showed at least one policeman with minor injuries and video footage showed a car and rubbish...

After Islamic gunmen attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, the collective reaction from the US media was to speculate whether such terror could happen here, as if a jihadist assault on a mall inside America had never before been tried. CNN was typical: “Can it happen here? Yes, say security experts, but it hasn’t.” News flash: it did. On the evening of Feb. 12, 2007, a young Muslim man walked into the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City with a pistol-grip, 12-gauge shotgun and a 38-caliber revolver and opened fire on shoppers, killing five and wounding four others,...

Whenever I write about homophobia in Russia, several readers invariably leave comments defending the country's approach to gay rights... Elsewhere, like when my articles about opposition figures are translated and posted on Russian news sites, the comments get downright personal and anti-Semitic... It's of course impossible to tell whose vitriol is genuine and whose is being bankrolled, but at least some anti-Western comments appear to come from staffers the Russian government pays to sit in a room, surf the Internet, and leave sometimes hundreds of postings a day that criticize the country's opposition and promote Kremlin-backed policymakers....

(excerpt) Al-Qaida has come roaring back in Iraq since U.S. troops left in late 2011 and now looks stronger than it has in years. The terror group has shown it is capable of carrying out mass-casualty attacks several times a month, driving the death toll in Iraq to the highest level in half a decade.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Annual inflation in Venezuela hit 49.4 percent in September, up from 18 percent a year ago, and basic goods became harder to find, the Central Bank reported Thursday. The soaring consumer price index gives Venezuela the highest inflation in the hemisphere. In September alone, inflation spiked 4.4 percent, driven by agricultural goods, transportation, education expenses and a 19.3 percent hike in electricity prices, the government said. The new figures are ammunition for an opposition that is trying to turn December’s municipal election into a referendum on the six-month administration of President Nicolás Maduro. Inflation is a pocketbook...

Beijing (AFP) - While US politicians grapple with how to reopen their shuttered government and avoid a potentially disastrous default on their debt, the world should consider 'de-Americanising', a commentary on China's official news agency said Sunday. "As US politicians of both political parties (fail to find a) viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanised world," the commentary on state news agency Xinhua said.

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Police arrested 67 people after a fight broke out between gay rights activists and their opponents at a demonstration in the Russian city of St Petersburg on Saturday. Gay rights campaigners in Russia have held several small protests since the adoption of a law in June banning homosexual "propaganda" directed at minors. Critics say the law curtails homosexuals' rights to free speech and assembly. The issue has attracted growing international attention ahead of Russia's hosting of the Winter Olympics in Sochi next year. Gay rights activists have called for participants and sponsors to boycott the...