Free Republic

While many of his fans, particularly in the US, appear disappointed, I, for one, believe that Mr Obama has had an extraordinarily successful first year as president. The immediate order of business when he took charge was, of course, the global financial crisis. Disregarding the Chicken Littles, who were preparing for the end of the world, Mr Obama’s team, in coordination with fiscal and monetary teams all over the world, turned on the Big Tap, and the results are there for all to see. Clearly, the worst is behind us, although there is still much to be done in creating...

President Barack Obama has refused to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington this week in a move to curry favour with the Chinese. The decision came after China stepped up a campaign urging nations to shun the Tibetan spiritual leader. It means Mr Obama will become the first president not to welcome the Nobel peace prize winner to the White House since the Dalai Lama began visiting Washington in 1991.

The 2008 election barely ended before the GOP began touting the presidential prospects of Louisiana Gov. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants. Tuesday, Jindal becomes the new face of his party when he delivers the official Republican response to President Obama's speech to Congress. Whether or not he actually runs for president in 2012, Jindal symbolizes a remarkable but rarely discussed phenomenon--the amazing success of Indian Americans in general, and what that success says about our immigration policy. ... When statistical adjustments are used to convert the backward digit span results to full-scale IQ scores, Indian Americans place...

The kidnappers of an American U.N. workers seized in Pakistan have threatened to kill him within 72 hours unless more than 100 prisoners are released. The threat was contained in a letter delivered with a grainy video of the hostage, John Solecki, to a Pakistani news agency on Friday. Solecki appears blindfolded in the short clip and appeals to the world body to act quickly to secure his release.

The automotive world is abuzz about what might be the next Model T Ford or Volkswagen Beetle—an entry-level sedan to be built in India by Tata Motors Ltd. for about $2,500. That would be about half the cost of the low­est-priced car now available in India—the bare-bones Maruti 800, which is essentially unchanged from its introduction in 1983. If Tata pulls this off, it would be one of the cheapest cars ever built, and it could have a huge impact not only on India’s growing car market but also all over the semideveloped world. Tata hopes to begin selling the...

What kind of cape would an Islamic superhero wear? A Kuwaiti publishing house answers that question, and others, with ‘The 99’, touted as “the world’s first superheroes based on Islamic culture and society”. The concept behind the comic books, recently launched in the US, is based on the 99 attributes of God — the names of Allah as revealed in the Quran and the Sunnah. Naif al-Mutawa, who created the series for Kuwait’s Teshkeel comics, believes that in the post 9/11 climate, it’s important to “bring heroes to the Islamic world”. He has carefully avoided including overt religious references, so...

SWAT, Oct 26: Militants on Friday publicly executed four law-enforcement personnel in a village, 16km west of Mingora, the district headquarters, and exchanged heavy gunfire with security forces in a nearby sub-district. “It was gruesome,” was how a resident of Shakkardarra described the scene of beheading of the law-enforcement personnel.Requesting anonymity, he told Dawn on phone that masked militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles brought the four men to the village at around 5pm, fires a few shots in the air and then beheaded them. The men, said to be in their mid-20s, had their hands tied together....

JERUSALEM: To many she is a traitor, a coward and a parasite. But 17-year-old Israeli "draft dodger" Saar Vardi says if more people thought like her, the Middle East would be a more peaceful place. Vardi is part of a growing group of young Israelis who are refusing to sign up for mandatory military service, often in protest over the Jewish state's occupation of Palestinian territory or because of last year's unpopular war in Lebanon. Army statistics show the number of young people who do not enlist for military service has crept up in recent years to more than one...

Pondicherry, India —- After three years of caring for his increasingly ailing mother and father in their Florida retirement home, Steve Herzfeld was exhausted and faced with spending his family's last resources to put the couple in a cheap nursing home. So he made what he saw as the only sensible decision: He outsourced his parents to India. Today his 89-year-old mother, Frances, who suffers from advanced Parkinson's disease, gets daily massages, physical therapy and 24-hour help getting to the bathroom, all for about $15 a day. His father, Ernest, 93, an Alzheimer's patient, has a full-time personal assistant and...

LUCKNOW: A 14-year-old Dalit boy, born and brought up in a remote village of western Uttar Pradesh, has suddenly turned angrez . Rajesh, without any evident help, has started speaking fluently in English and does so with a proper American drawl. And that’s not all: He seems to have forgotten how to speak Hindi. Wonders do not cease with this: His knowledge of physics and mathematics has left engineering students baffled. Having already penned three books, Rajesh is now looking forward to some research work. All of this may sound like a Bollywood script on one of its favourite themes,...

LONDON: Some 35,000 Pakistanis living in Glasgow face a threat of a violent backlash from the white British community amid overnight wall-chalking urging people to “kill all the Pakis”, after two apparently Asian men tried to blow up the city airport on Saturday. This is the first time that any such terrorist activity has taken place in Glasgow where around 50,000 Muslims, including 35,000 Pakistanis, live. The Pakistanis now feeling under siege after this incident. The first minister of the British government was rushing to Glasgow to hold urgent meetings with intelligence agencies, police departments and the local community leaders...

Wounded, tetchy and less effective than it should be, America is still the power that counts. EVEN the greatest empires hurt when they lose wars. It is not surprising then that Iraq weighs so heavily on the American psyche. Most Americans want to get out as soon as possible, surge or no surge; many more wish they had never invaded the country in the first place. But for a growing number of Americans the superpower's inability to impose its will on Mesopotamia is symptomatic of a deeper malaise. Nearly six years after September 11th, nervousness about the state of America's...

Lawyers in Pakistan are investigating a report that up to 30 men tortured and gang-raped a young Christian man for refusing to convert to Islam. The victim is seriously injured and unable to move, Release International’s partner in Pakistan has reported. However, according to the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS) the police are keeping him locked up and have denied him medical treatment. The police are also refusing to register the rape following a counter-claim made by his principal attacker – “a man of influence”, Release International has told Christian Today. According to CLAAS, the Christian was...

SUJATPUR, Bangladesh — Everyone knew it was out there somewhere, an invisible line that cut through a cow pasture and, at least in theory, divided one nation from another. But no one saw it as a border — it was just a lumpy field of grass, uneven from the hooves of generations of cattle, and villagers crossed back and forth without even thinking about it. Today, no one can ignore the line. In a construction project that will eventually reach across 2,050 miles, hundreds of rivers and long stretches of forests and fields, India has been quietly sealing itself off...

JERUSALEM: Renowned British scientist Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics and astronomy, predicted the world would end in 2060. He made the prediction in a 1704 letter that went on show in Jerusalem on Sunday. A famed rationalist, who secured a royal exemption from the ordination in the Church of England that was normally expected of academics of his day so he would not have to follow its teachings, Newton nonetheless based his prediction on a Biblical text. Working from verses in the Book of Daniel, the elaborator of the classical laws of gravity, motion and optics argued...

England leads Europe in illiteracy, obesity, divorce, drug use, crime and STDs. Bloody hell There used to be a time when taking on the Royal Navy was a bad idea. The force that policed the high seas through two world wars and protected the largest empire ever seen was for years the emblem of British national pride and pugnacity. Which is why it was particularly humiliating for many Britons to witness the spectacle of the navy's finest peddling stories about their capture a couple of months ago by the Iranian Republican Guard to the newspapers. The British had already watched...

A top cleric of the Lal Masjid in Islamabad has claimed that more than one lakh suicide bombers, including 10,000 in the two madrassas controlled by him, were present in Pakistan and were ready to explode at the command of their superiors. These suicide attackers are ready to operate anywhere and anytime in Pakistan, Red Mosque's head cleric Abdul Aziz said. "We consider suicide attacks are right in Pakistan under a few circumstances while we consider them as absolutely justified in the context of Afghanistan and Iraq," he was quoted by The News as saying. "We favoured the Taliban not...