Free Republic

A Racist Turn in India JAN. 24, 2014 African students demonstrated against discrimination at a protest in New Delhi last June. Deepak Malik/Demotix via Corbis Contributing Op-Ed Writer By NILANJANA S. ROY NEW DELHI — The Africans — Nigerians, Ghanaians, Ugandans — began leaving my neighborhood in New Delhi around December. Each week, more and more families exited. Some went to parts of Delhi considered more accepting of Africans; others to areas where the residents were thought to be less interfering in general. I have heard that some of the Ghanaian families had gone back to Africa, but I don’t...

House Republicans are preparing to unveil their own broad template for overhauling the nation’s immigration system this week, potentially offering a small opening for President Obama and congressional Democrats to pass bipartisan legislation before the end of the year. Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders are expected to release a one-page statement of immigration principles this week at their annual retreat in Cambridge, Md., according to aides with knowledge of the plan. The document is expected to call for border security and enforcement measures, as well as providing a path to legal status — but not...

NEW DELHI: Injecting some much-needed thrust to its rapidly expanding strategic partnership with Japan, India has invited the Japanese forces to take part in this year's edition of the Indo-US Malabar naval war games that have riled China in the past. India and Japan on Saturday also decided to hold another joint working group meeting in March to discuss the sale of Japanese US-2i ShinMayva amphibious aircraft to Indian Navy, apart from ramping up defence ties through regular joint combat exercises and military exchanges as well as cooperation in anti-piracy, maritime security and counter-terrorism. Both the Malabar war games and...

It's a big surprise for scientists, who had never really looked for evidence of grass in dinosaur diets before. After all, grass fossils aside, those sauropods -- the behemoths with the long necks and tails and small heads -- didn't have the special kind of teeth needed to grind up abrasive blades. "Most people would not have fathomed that they would eat grasses," noted lead researcher Caroline Stromberg of the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

Dinosaur discoveries wow Boston Sensational fossil discoveries were unveiled on Monday, including the most primitive wishbone yet found in a dinosaur. Also presented was an exquisite skull from a tiny crocodile that could help provide vital new evidence on when the landmasses of Africa and South America split to take up their current positions on the planet's surface. The finds were described by Paul Sereno, one of the world's leading dino hunters, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. Dr Sereno, from the University of Chicago, told the meeting that science was ...

Impact didn't lead to mass extinction 65 million years ago, geologists findThe enduringly popular theory that the Chicxulub crater holds the clue to the demise of the dinosaurs, along with some 65 percent of all species 65 million years ago, is challenged in a paper to be published in the Journal of the Geological Society on April 27, 2009. The crater, discovered in 1978 in northern Yucutan and measuring about 180 kilometers (112 miles) in diameter, records a massive extra-terrestrial impact. When spherules from the impact were found just below the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary, it was quickly identified as the...

Scientists have discovered a macabre death scene that took place 67 million years ago. The setting was a nest, in which a baby dinosaur had just hatched from an egg, only to face an 11-foot-long snake waiting to devour it. The moment was frozen forever when, apparently, the nest was buried in a sudden avalanche of mud or sand and everything was fossilized. Scientists have discovered a macabre death scene that took place 67 million years ago. The setting was a nest, in which a baby dinosaur had just hatched from an egg, only to face an 11-foot-long snake waiting...

CHENNAI, India (Reuters) – Geologists have found a cluster of fossilized dinosaur eggs, said to be about 65 million years old, in a village in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, according to media reports. > The clusters were under ash from volcanic eruptions on the Deccan plateau, which geologists said could have caused the dinosaurs to become extinct. >

Washington, Nov 18 : Fossilized dinosaur droppings found in central India show sauropod dinosaurs may have fed on grass between 65 million and 71 million years ago, refuting the theory that grasses emerged long after the dinosaur era, a study said Friday. An international team of researchers, including Vandana Prasad of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in Lucknow, India, studied the dinosaur coprolites, or fossilized droppings, of 65 million years ago. The researchers sent some photographs and samples to Caroline Stromberg of the Swedish Museum of Natural History, who spotted tiny particles of silica called phytoliths that have come...

Indian engineering education is draped in a cloth that needs a proper wash! While scanning the list of alumni of IIT recently, I came across a few names that have peppered the leaves of successful men’s list but their contributions are far away in foreign lands. While combing through the facts I found that most of these elite men do not reside in their own land, and a major chunk is holding high profiles in the Unites States of America.

Russia’s new T-50 stealth fighter is fast, maneuverable, heavily-armed and hard to detect on radar. In theory. But according to Indian air force officials, in practice the Sukhoi-made stealth jet is also too expensive, poorly engineered and powered by old and unreliable engines. The Indians’ complaints illustrate the yawning gulf between stealth warplane design and the actual production of radar-evading jets. In other words, it’s one thing to sketch an advanced warplane on paper. It’s quite another to build one and get it to work.

ID theorists say that information is the foundation of the universe. Others say matter is. Our choice of who to believe will shape our future. First, suppose the materialists are right. If materialism (naturalism) is simply true, because everything comes down to matter in the end, what future might we expect? Stephen Hawking insists in a recent interview that "Science will win." If we take his current non-realist views seriously, science as we have known it is finished and there is nothing to win. That doesn't mean, of course, that everything shuts down. Some projects will continue as if immortal...

The Nirbheek is a six shot .32 that weighs only 500 grams (18 ounces).   The frame is made of titanium, though it is not clear if the barrel or other parts are made of steel.  The design derivations from Webley are clear.  As seen in some Webley civilian versions, it appears to have a square push cross bolt safety located just above the grips. Here is the anouncement from the Field Gun Factory, Kanpar, where the gun is produced by the Indian government.  It is proclaimed as the "Indian Ordinance Factories valuable contribution to women's security".   A top break...

Lost Danish tourist ‘gang-raped’ in Delhi: police January 16, 2014 NEW DELHI: Indian police rounded up a group of homeless men on Wednesday over the alleged gang-rape of a 51-year-old Danish tourist who lost her way near the main backpacker’s area of the capital, officers said. The woman approached the suspects for directions early on Tuesday evening while trying to return to her hotel in the bustling Paharganj district of New Delhi, reportedly after visiting a city museum. Up to six “youngsters” allegedly assaulted and robbed the victim, who was travelling alone and had been in New Delhi since Monday...

Indian minister’s wife found dead amid adultery row January 18, 2014 NEW DELHI: The wife of prominent Indian minister Shashi Tharoor was found dead Friday in a five-star hotel room after she exposed his alleged adultery with a Pakistani journalist on Twitter. The minister’s private secretary, Abhinav Kumar, told reporters that Tharoor and Pushkar had been staying at the luxury hotel since Thursday as painting work was being done at their home. The minister had been away during the day at a conference, Kumar said. When he returned in the evening, he found the door of Pushkar’s suite locked from...

Named after the 23-year-old who was raped and killed in Delhi in 2012, the Nirbheek pistol has been designed for women. But it has drawn fierce criticism from women's groups and anti-gun campaigners. The Nirbheek gun designed for women: comes in a bejewelled maroon case.It weighs barely 500g, is slim enough to slip into a purse, features an attractive darkwood handle on a black titanium-alloy body and comes in a bejewelled maroon case. Engraved on its barrel is the name Nirbheek: Hindi for fearless, and a synonym for Nirbhaya, the name given to the unnamed 23-year-old Delhi woman whose torture,...

How expensive is the healthcare in India? This question paddled in my head when I saw someone close doing some out-of-pocket spending of his income to protect his 12 weeks premature baby boy. After I received a call of this unprecedented happening in their life, I went to the hospital and was completely wacked by the state of affairs of health in my country. I am not exactly aware of the amount of money spent by the Indian Government for such unexpected happenings but I could sense the mounting cost of diagnosis, medicines and hospitalisation. I came to know when...

MUMBAI: It is a rite of passage for many young journalists and filmmakers in Mumbai. You enter the Irani cafe, take in the atmosphere of peeling walls, old calendars and dusty cabinets, the bentwood chairs and glass-topped tables, the screened-off sections that no one seems to have entered in years and the few people sipping tea or bun-maska. Then you pluck up courage, approach the aging owner at the counter and ask if you can speak to him for a story on vanishing Irani cafes. It is some measure of the kindness usually lurking under the owners' gruff exteriors that,...

The Navy’s plans to procure weapons for future warships are at risk of running aground. The force urgently needs 127mm guns, but its tender for 13 guns estimated at Rs 1,500 crore finds itself in rough waters. To start with, there were only two vendors for the guns globally. Now, while one has walked out of the tender, the other is facing uncertainty due to its parent company’s woes. Sources said this could delay two key shipbuilding projects—the seven follow-on Shivalik-class frigates and six Delhi-class destroyers—that are in various stages of construction in domestic shipyards. While the UK’s BAE Systems...

One piece of the jigsaw puzzle is missing to complete the deflation landscape across the West: a slide in oil prices. This is becoming more likely each month. Turmoil across the Middle East and parts of Africa has choked supply over the past two years, keeping Brent crude near $110 a barrel despite a broader commodity slump. Cotton and corn prices have halved, as has the UBS index of industrial metals. Such anomalies rarely last. "We estimate that crude oil is now the mostly richly priced commodity in the world," says Deutsche Bank in a fresh report. Michael Lewis, the...