Free Republic

China and India are both planning to launch moon shots within a year in the latest sign of the two Asian powerhouses’ intensifying rivalry and growing technological prowess. Although both countries deny they are engaged in a 21st century re-run of the 1960s race to the moon between the cold war superpowers, their haste to launch suggests more than casual interest in the other’s progress. China said this month that it expected to launch its first unmanned lunar orbiter, the Chang’e-1 (named after China’s mythological “lady in the moon”) before the end of this year, while India this week announced...

CHINA'S secret plan to bring down capitalism, especially in America, has become a little less secret in the past week or so. One clue came with a brave piece of whistle-blowing; a second when China started deploying its huge arsenal of capital. Congress was right to worry, after all. Those cunning commies in Beijing have studied capitalism and found its Achilles' heel: corporate governance. One can only worry what the Chinese will do now to sway America’s institutional shareholders—who, let's face it, are a flock of sheep led easily astray. What heroes the bosses of corporate America were to oppose...

As the divorce rate plummets at the top of American society and rises at the bottom, the widening “marriage gap” is breeding inequality. There is a widening gulf between how the best- and least-educated Americans approach marriage and child-rearing. Among the elite (excluding film stars), the nuclear family is holding up quite well. Only 4% of the children of mothers with college degrees are born out of wedlock. And the divorce rate among college-educated women has plummeted. Of those who first tied the knot between 1975 and 1979, 29% were divorced within ten years. Among those who first married between...

BRUSSELS: German Chancellor Angela Merkel told European religious leaders on Tuesday there was no chance of including a mention of God in the European Union’s Constitution. Merkel, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, told reporters after interfaith talks that there was little support among EU governments to reopen negotiations on whether to include a reference to Christianity in the EU charter. “I would have liked to include such a reference,” she said, adding, that she would, however, fight to keep the reference to the value of religion in the community. Poland recently demanded that if the EU’s Constitution is...

A large cross depicting Christ with his penis hanging out, semen dripping from it into a commode. A nude woman with a baby attempting to push its way out of her vagina. The caption below the painting reads: "Durga Mata". These were two of the "works of art" made by Chandra Mohan, a student of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, who was arrested this past week on charges of hurting religious sentiments and posing a threat to public order. While Mohan's arrest may have been an extreme reaction and his release on bail would be welcomed...

Washington, May 15: Contending that the H-1B visa programme is being abused to displace qualified American workers, two US lawmakers have asked nine foreign-based firms, including some leading Indian companies that used 20,000 of such visas, to disclose details about their workforce and their use of the special programme. Advertisement As the US Senate gets ready to take up the comprehensive immigration reform legislation, the two top lawmakers - Republican Senator Charles Grassley and Democratic Senator Richard Durbin - said, "More and more it appears that companies are using H-1B visas to displace qualified American workers." "As we move closer...

JERUSALEM: Israel is facing a challenge it never expected when it captured East Jerusalem and reunited the city in the 1967 war: Each year, Jerusalem's population is becoming more Arab and less Jewish. For four decades, Israel has pushed to build and expand Jewish neighborhoods, while trying to restrict the growth in Arab parts of the city. Yet two trends are unchanged: Jews moving out of Jerusalem have outnumbered those moving in for 27 of the last 29 years. And the Palestinian growth rate has been high. In a 1967 census taken shortly after the war, the population of Jerusalem...

T MAY not be as certain as death and taxes, but, in the rich world, living to a ripe old age is an increasingly safe bet. Unfortunately, financing the long, leisurely retirement to which people aspire is a riskier proposition. Individuals worry that they have not saved enough, or that investments will go wrong. Or, perhaps worse, they give it too little thought. Governments struggle to muster the political support needed to keep pensions and healthcare for the elderly from ripping gaping holes in future budgets. And corporate pensions, once viewed as guaranteeing a prosperous and anxiety-free retirement, are starting...

QINGDAO, China: At an abortion clinic in this seaside city, a young woman sat in the recovery room with an intravenous drip stuck in one hand and a cellphone held in the other. She was 22 and a nurse. Her boyfriend, an information-technology specialist, sat nearby. They both knew the routine: It was her second abortion in 18 months. In the waiting room, a few other unmarried couples watched a DVD of a hit Chinese movie until they were called. The clinic, one of the few in China that focuses on reproductive health for single women, performed 65 abortions in...

Islamabad, May 10: Some Christians in northwestern Pakistan have received threat letters, asking them to convert to Islam and shut down their churches. Advertisement Two churches and some Christian residents in Charsadda, a northwest Pakistan town received handwritten letters which asked them to convert to Islam within ten days or quit the area, a police official said. Security has been increased in the churches and police are investigating the unsigned letters, the official said. The threat comes amid explosions by suspected Taliban militants in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province in which 4 music and video shops were blown up as...

FEW ideas in education are more controversial than vouchers—letting parents choose to educate their children wherever they wish at the taxpayer's expense. First suggested by Milton Friedman, an economist, in 1955, the principle is compellingly simple. The state pays; parents choose; schools compete; standards rise; everybody gains. Simple, perhaps, but it has aroused predictable—and often fatal—opposition from the educational establishment. Letting parents choose where to educate their children is a silly idea; professionals know best. Co-operation, not competition, is the way to improve education for all. Vouchers would increase inequality because children who are hardest to teach would be left...

A MUSLIM leader has told his students that it is "obligatory" for all Muslims to engage in jihad if an Islamic country is under attack, even if it means killing the enemy's children. Teachings Sheik Shady Suleiman, a youth leader at Lakemba Mosque in Sydney's southeast, told his students in a one-hour Arabic and English lecture that it would be "self defence" to kill children who were attacking them in battle. Muslim leaders yesterday attacked the 29-year-old cleric, who has a substantial following in Sydney and is deputy to leader Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali. They accused him of delivering a...

What is my crime? My crime is that I have found that Islam does not consider woman a separate human being. Man is the original creation and womankind was created secondarily for the pleasure of man. Islam considers woman a slave, a sexual object and a son-producing machine. The Hadith says that two prayers that never reach the heavens are: those of escaping slaves and of women who frustrate their husbands at night. Islam considers women psychologically inferior. In Islamic law, the testimony of two women is worth that of one man. In a case where a man suspects his...

Trying to rehabilitate the public image of skinheads is no easy task. Judging by Hollywood's take on the genre — see 1998's American History X or Russell Crowe in 1992's Romper Stomper — skinheads are popularly portrayed as neo-Nazi racists with a penchant for violent thuggery. Not so, contends Shane Meadows, the young British director whose new film, provocatively entitled This is England, is raising eyebrows in its exposé of this most controversial of subcultures. Meadows, who admits to once being a "skin" himself, argues that skinheads were amongst Britain's first anti-racists, mixing with newly arrived waves of West Indian...

PARIS: Riot squads fired tear gas Sunday at protesters throwing stones, bottles and, in one instance, acid at police in cities across France after right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential victory. In Paris, clashes erupted at the Place de la Bastille, where about 5,000 supporters of the defeated Socialist candidate Segolene Royal had gone to await the election results and stayed on after Sarkozy's triumph. Up to 300 rioters, some wearing scarves around their faces, used bottles and stones in running attacks on police, who responded with baton charges, tear gas and water cannon. "Police everywhere, justice nowhere," shouted some of the...

NEW YORK: The new school is the Khalil Gibran International Academy, named for the Lebanese Christian author of "The Prophet," which will have just 81 sixth graders to start and then expand from there. It will be the first publicly run place of learning in this city dedicated to Arab culture and the Arabic language. The plan is that after a few years, half of its classes will be taught in Arabic. The first group that raised objections to the school were parents at an elementary school in the borough of Brooklyn that was originally designated to house the new...

This week has been another terrible one for those of us who want a society in which all races, religions and cultures mix to their mutual advantage and enrichment. On Tuesday, five men were sentenced to life in prison for plotting to use a huge fertiliser bomb in what would have been the UK's largest mass murder. Omar Khyam, Waheed Mahmood, Salahuddin Amin, Anthony Garcia and Jawad Akbar - first and second generation immigrants - responded to the tolerance of the British people by trying to kill as many of them as possible. Is it absurd to hope that the...

GENEVA: Right-wing politicians from Switzerland’s largest political party on Thursday launched a campaign for a referendum to ban the construction of minarets on mosques, claiming they symbolised an Islamist bid for power. The group, including more than half of the Swiss People’s Party’s (SVP) parliamentarians, said in a statement that a ban would help stop “attempts by Islamist circles to impose a legal system based on the sharia in Switzerland”. Some of the politicians said they did not oppose mosques or Muslims’ right to worship. The Swiss constitution guarantees religious freedoms and the legality of the initiative was questioned by...

CHICAGO: Diabetes may be damaging men's sperm, which could affect their fertility, British researchers said on Wednesday. In one of the first studies to compare DNA in sperm from diabetic and non-diabetic men, the researchers found more DNA damage in sperm cells of men with diabetes — a possible sign of reduced fertility. Researchers at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, studied sperm from 27 men with type-1 diabetes, with an average age of 34, and 29 non-diabetic men of similar age. They found that while semen volume was lower in diabetic men, all other measures including sperm concentration, output,...

NEW YORK, APRIL 29: The last time the US dollar slid to a record low against the euro it quickly recovered, but this time may be different. The dollar slid to a new record low against the euro on Friday, with the euro quoted above $1.3680, the highest since the currency’s launch in 1999. US firm buys 15% of Vipul for Rs 234 crRanbaxy’s Q1 net jumps 79%ABB net up 69% to Rs 87 crCoca-Cola’s interest in US firm boosts Tata Tea scripRupee reaches 9-year high against US dollar When the euro climbed above $1.36 in 2004, it satyed at...