Free Republic

Actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would make a great president of the United States in recent comments. “I feel like I would make a great president,” Schwarzenegger said in a recent interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). “But I feel that, at the same time, everything I’ve accomplished was because of America.”

More than 260,000 people in Austria have signed a petition urging the Austrian government to leave the European Union (EU). According to reports on Thursday, as many as 261,159 Austrians signed the petition. The number in total represents 4.12 percent of the country's electorate. Since under the country's regulations the threshold for calling a debate on a potential referendum is 100,000 people, the Austrian parliament must discuss a referendum on leaving the EU. The call for leaving the EU was most popular in the regions of Lower Austria and in Carinthia where 5.18 percent and 4.85 percent of potential voters,...

Igniting fresh controversy, Austria's parliament has approved significant changes to the country's "Law on Islam" — a revamping of a 103-year-old law to expand certain legal protections while also placing new restrictions on Muslim organizations and how adherents practice their faith. While the changes were proposed years ago — long before attacks in France and Denmark by homegrown terrorists with extremist views — the reforms passed Wednesday are intended to "clearly combat" the influence of radical Islam, according to Austria's conservative foreign affairs minister Sebastian Kurz, Agence France-Presse reported.