Free Republic

A Ugandan legislator who proposed the highly contested Anti-Homosexuality Bill insists the measure is being misconstrued. "There has been a distortion in the media that we are providing death for gays. That is not true," ruling party MP David Bahati said on BBC. "When a homosexual defiles a kid of less than 18 years old, we are providing a penalty for this." The bill, which is currently being debated by a parliamentary committee, has drawn global attention from gay rights advocates and religious leaders alike, many of whom are condemning the legislation for promoting hatred and handing down severe penalties...

For the first time, three Al-Qaeda operatives have been arrested and charged with drug trafficking as a means of raising funds to support their terrorist activities. The international terror group has increasingly been turning to this form of activity, although its spread to Africa is a new twist in the pattern, according to evidence gathered by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The agency has long been concerned about the group’s ties to the heroin trade in Afghanistan – but according to DEA director Michele Leonhart, the current case reveals a “direct link” between the terror group and drug traffickers...

While huge segments of Christendom go apostate by baptizing practicing homosexuality as divinely blessed, Christianity based upon the Bible as divine revelation not to be tampered with is flourishing in Africa.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed narcotics and terrorism charges on Friday against three West Africans they identified as associates of Al Qaeda and a related terrorist group. While the United States Drug Enforcement Administration has long maintained that Al Qaeda has been involved in drug trafficking, officials at the agency said the case represented the first time such charges had been brought against people linked with the group. The three men — identified as Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman — were arrested on Wednesday in Ghana and flown to the United States on Thursday night, law enforcement officials...

On this, the last day of the climate change summit in Copenhagen, reports about Africa inadvertently reveal more about the conference's real purpose than dire predictions of future calamity. When it was proposed that $10 billion be allocated to Africa, which boasts about 14% of the world's population and produces only 2% (some say 4%) of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, African delegates raised hell. They even staged a walk-out, which was an empty gesture. The $10 billion verged on the insulting, and speaking for others, Ethiopia's PM Meles Zenawi said $50 billion should be paid by way of compensation...

Copenhagen - Africa has demanded a start-up fund of $10 billion per annum for the next three years to help curb the effects of climate change.Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who is leading the African delegation at the climate change summit in Denmark, on Wednesday said the money would be used to fund, among other things, forestry projects and other ambitious adaptation and mitigation needs. He made it clear to the thousands of delegates attending the meeting that this was not a request but a demand.

Entire Eritrean national football team has gone missing after failing to board a flight home following a match in Kenya. Only the squad's coach and one other official arrived back in Eritrea after the team was knocked out in the quarter finals of the CECAFA tournament for east and central Africa. The Eritrean national football team pose for a group photo before the start of the match against Tanzania, at the Nyayo National stadium in Nairobi The twelve players are believed to be hiding somewhere in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where there are tens of thousands who have fled Eritrea's...

LESBIANS in South Africa are being dragged off the street and raped to "correct" them, it has been claimed. ky News has found evidence of widespread abuse against the lesbian community, resulting in a new trend of so-called "corrective rape." In the the township of Khayelitsha on the outskirts of Cape Town, a group of women said they live in fear for their lives. All of them claim to know someone who has been violently dragged off the street and raped because she had come out as a lesbian. " There is always that threat that you are going to...

Obesity is becoming more common among poor city dwellers in Africa because of easier access to cheap, high fat, high sugar foods, scientists said on Tuesday. Researchers looking at data from seven African countries found the number of people overweight or obese increased by nearly 35 percent between the early 1990s and early 2000s and the rate of increase in obesity was higher among poor people. "Given the chronic nature of most diseases associated with obesity and by extension the huge cost of treatment, the prospects look grim for the already under-funded and ill-equipped African health care systems unless urgent...

Copenhagen Climate Talks Suspended after Africa Walk Out2009-12-14 15:01:17 Negotiations at the UN climate summit have been suspended after the African group withdrew co-operation. African delegations were angry at what they saw as moves by the Danish host government to sideline talks on more emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol. As news spread around the conference centre, about 200 activists responded with chants of "We stand with Africa - Kyoto targets now". It is unclear how matters will proceed now, though informal talks are likely, the BBC reported. Blocs representing poor countries vulnerable to climate change have been adamant that...

SIRAKANO, Uganda — At age 45, after giving birth to 13 children in her village of thatch roofs and bare feet, Beatrice Adongo made a discovery that startled her: birth control. "I delivered all these children because I didn't know there was another way," said Adongo, who started on a free quarterly contraceptive injection last year. Surrounded by her weary-faced brood, her 21-month-old boy clutching at her faded blue dress, she added glumly: "I fear we are already too many in this family." (snip) Under President George W. Bush, the United States withdrew from its decades-long role as a global...

One Muslim male was put in a pit, dirt up to his chin, then stoned in the head till dead. Stone sizes are stipulated by the Koran—not too big as to bring quick end. Allah be praised.

Call it a stimulus, paying off a debt, but it's time to call it a work in progress. If the Federal Government is going to prop up the richest of the rich, isn't it time to add up the losses that Blacks have incurred during their time in America? Supporters of slave reparations argue that there is no equal opportunity for African Americans nor has there ever been. Systematic discrimination deprived African Americans of equal chances and deserved justice and parity. The clear lack of parity is seen in the recent instances of bailouts for the rich and distain for...

I have read the media in the past week with splashes like “Uganda puts case at climate change summit” and columnists saying “What do scientists mean when they talk about global warming?” Specifically, one article with such a message as “it’s grassroots activists and not politicians who will influence change” got me thinking about what politicians are doing in Copenhagen. Developing countries, especially the African ones, are seeking inter alia, reparations by developed nations to poor nations, but I can’t help thinking that this entire environmental arena is a grand political theatre. Sound science has been thoroughly corrupted with petty...

Note: The following text is a quote: December 11, 2009 286 arrested in ICE's largest ever enforcement surge targeting criminal aliens 2 convicted rapists and armed robber among those captured in 3-day California operation LOS ANGELES - Nearly 300 foreign nationals with criminal records have been removed from the United States or are facing deportation following a three-day enforcement surge in California, making it the biggest operation targeting at large criminal aliens ever carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During the operation, which concluded late Thursday, ICE officers located and arrested a total of 280 criminal aliens...

BEIJING: Six Chinese traders who exported fake anti-malaria drugs to Nigeria under the "Made in India" label have been sentenced to death, the ministry of commerce in Beijing has said. But the ministry gave no further details about the identity of the traders. The issue became a major controversy last June when Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control said it had seized a large consignment of spurious anti-malaria drugs worth $210,000. The drugs came from China and were distributed in Nigeria tagged "Made in India". The Chinese government apologized to Nigeria and promised a thorough investigation...

Last night I was invited to attend a Christmas get together sponsored by the Illinois Policy Institute. This year's theme was feeding the hungry in Africa and bringing economic freedom to developing nations. We heard some interesting presentations from Paul Wormley of the One Acre Fund as well as Tim Probasco of Opportunity International, both involved with helping subsistence farmers in Africa and India to become self-sufficient and to work toward creating financial success by selling their products at market. Both organizations take different approaches toward the same market oriented goals and both are efforts worthy of support. Best of...

ENUGU, Nigeria, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Doctors at a Nigerian hospital say they are being overwhelmed with corpses of young men brought in by police, the BBC reported Tuesday. The chief medical director of the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital in Enugu, Dr. Anthony Mbah, told the British broadcaster his staff were forced to carry out a mass burial of between 70 and 80 bodies in recent weeks, adding that another mass burial has been scheduled. The BBC said its visit to the morgue revealed piles of corpses of young men, stacked four or five deep in some places, scattered...

Richard Phillips, the ship captain toasted as a hero after he was taken captive by Somali pirates, ignored repeated warnings last spring to keep his freighter at least 600 miles off the African coast because of the heightened risk of attack, some members of his crew now allege. Records obtained by The Associated Press show that maritime safety groups issued at least seven such warnings in the days before outlaws boarded the Maersk Alabama about 380 miles off the shore of Somalia. A piracy expert and the captain's second-in-command say Phillips had the prerogative to heed the warnings or not....

RABAT // One week it was Biskra, the next Annaba, and, simultaneously, Algiers: in towns and cities across Algeria, crowds of the poor and unemployed are hitting the streets in rough-and-tumble demonstrations demanding change from a government they feel is not listening.

It is now obvious to keen observers that the hysteria over climate change and global warming, was nothing more than a big fat hoax, intended to extort billions of dollars from the American people. But this is not the only big scam being peddled in America. A South African Afrikaner journalist, Rian Malan, revealed a few years ago that the statistics on HIV and AIDS are pure lies. The corrupt UN organization, UNAIDS, has been claiming that Aids is wiping out the African population. Yet, population statistics show that the nations that are supposedly being wiped out by Aids, are...

While huge segments of Christendom go apostate by baptizing practicing homosexuality as divinely blessed, Christianity based upon the Bible as divine revelation not to be tampered with is flourishing in Africa.

As a gay Ugandan, Frank Mugisha has endured insults from strangers, hate messages on his phone, police harassment and being outed in a tabloid as one of the country's "top homos". That may soon seem like the good old days. Life imprisonment is the minimum punishment for anyone convicted of having gay sex, under an anti-homosexuality bill currently before Uganda's parliament. If the accused person is HIV positive or a serial offender, or a "person of authority" over the other partner, or if the "victim" is under 18, a conviction will result in the death penalty. Members of the public...

African pirates attacked an oil tanker Tuesday in the oil-rich waters off the continent's west coast, Agence France Presse reported. The pirates reportedly killed a Ukranian crewman, believed to be the chief engineer of the 750-foot vessel, AFP reported.

A neat video of about four minutes on what pirates can expect if they attack a vessel outfitted by this new security technology.The water walls may be new technology, but the armed snipers are almost as old as piracy itself.

Africa is poised to experience a surge in civil wars, causing nearly 400,000 additional battle deaths by 2030 – all as a direct result of rising temperatures. This bold prediction is one of the most alarming results yet to emerge from attempts to discover how climate change will affect patterns of human conflict. It is already proving controversial. Previous attempts to model the effects of climate on patterns of conflict in Africa have mostly concentrated on rainfall. But now researchers led by Marshall Burke at the University of California, Berkeley, and David Lobell of Stanford University have studied both rainfall...

The Great Rift Valley extends some 4,000 miles southward from Syria north of Israel, through the Gulf of Aqaba, through Ethiopia, and all the way to Mozambique in southeast Africa. It harbors a giant fault, which has been under investigation as a model for sea floor spreading. A recent geologic event rent a gaping crack through the desert of Ethiopia, causing safety concerns for locals. These crustal plate motions may foreshadow rifting events further north in the Great Rift Valley...

Nairobi (dpa) -- Dozens of witchcraft-related murders of albinos in Tanzania and Burundi have left the albino populations of both nations living in fear, a report released Thursday said. The report, Through Albino Eyes, by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), found that around 300 children were hiding in schools for the disabled or emergency shelters in Tanzania. The children are afraid that hunters employed by witchdoctors could murder them for their body parts. "It has been a crisis for over two years, 56 albinos have lost their lives as a result of killings done...

A Boeing plane that used to transport cocaine from Venezuela to West Africa crashed in northern Mali earlier this month after a failed take-off, the representative of the UN's regional office on drugs and crime said Monday.

Volcanic activity in 2005 accompanied the formation of a deep, wide rift in Ethiopia on part of the 4,000-mile-long north-to-south trending Great Rift Valley fault. Studies show that the injection of mantle material that “unzipped” the earth along the fault operated the same way as similar material does in less-accessible undersea rifts. Scientists knew that rifts were formed in this manner, but the suddenness of this one’s formation astonished them...

Monday, November 16, 2009 Islamic Extremists Kill Somali Church Leader Thirteenth Christian Assassinated This Year By Jeremy Reynalds Correspondent for ASSIST News Service WASHINGTON, D.C. (ANS) -- A human rights group has learned that members of al-Shabab (a Somali Islamic extremist group) have killed yet another leader of an underground church in the Somalia capital of Mogadishu. Washington-based International Christian Concern (ICC), reported that on Oct. 10, Pastor Ali Hussein Weheliye was returning home from a worship service when two masked members of al-Shabab ambushed and shot him. He was later taken to Darful Shifa Hospital where he died of...

New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland are among the top five least corrupt nations, according to a new survey released by Transparency International. Canada is in the top ten. Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan are the most corrupt. Canada ranks amongst the top ten least corrupt countries in the world while conflict-torn states such as Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq are labelled as nations rife with bribery and corruption, according to a new 2009 corruption perception index revealed Tuesday by Transparency International. New Zealand rates as the least corrupt nation followed by Denmark, Singapore and Sweden. Others on the...

ROME – Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe used the U.N. summit on world hunger Tuesday to lash out at the West and defend land reforms blamed for plunging his people into starvation. Addressing the summit hosted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Mugabe said the policy under which thousands of white-owned commercial farms were seized in 2000 was a quest for "equity and justice." He blamed the subsequent meltdown of Zimbabwe's economy on "hostile interventions" by "neocolonialist enemies" that have imposed sanctions on his regime. Western countries have slapped travel bans and asset freezes on Mugabe and his...

Ethiopia Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says failures in the U.S. financial system are largely to blame for Africa's economic crisis in a keynote address to the annual African Economic Conference.Speaking to an audience of academics and policymakers, Ethiopia Prime Minister Meles Zenawi painted a gloomy picture of Africa's economic outlook.Mr. Meles, a former Marxist rebel leader, launched a blistering attack on what he called "discredited neo-liberal economic policies" imposed on Africa from outside. He said unsustainable consumption by the United States when times were good had condemned Africa to a protracted period of low growth ahead."The United States has hitherto...

Deputy police minister yesterday called on police to "shoot the bastards" as the country tries to bring its fearsome crime rates under control. Despite outrage over the killing by police of a three-year-old boy at the weekend, Fikile Mbalula said innocent deaths were unavoidable. Atlegang Phalane was hit in the chest when an officer who thought he saw a weapon opened fire. According to reports his family were not allowed access to his body for several hours after the incident outside his home in Klipfontein, north of Johannesburg. But Mr Mbalula told reporters at the parliament in Cape Town: "In...

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Gunmen have killed a top Somali judge who had sentenced many pirates and human traffickers to long jail terms, the security minister for northern Somalia said Thursday. Mohamed Said Samatar said three men were arrested Thursday over the killing of High Court Judge Mohamed Abdi Aware. In addition to jailing suspected pirates, Aware also recently jailed four members of Somalia's Islamic insurgency. Eyewitness Mohamud Dahir said masked men with pistols shot the judge in the head and chest several times as he left a mosque Wednesday evening in the port city of Bossaso. "These gangs hate him...

SNIPPET: "An al Qaeda leader wanted by the US for a string of deadly attacks has been named the new leader of terror group's network in East Africa. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of several al Qaeda leaders charged with carrying out the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was appointed the leader of al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa. Fazul was "inaugurated" during an open ceremony in the southern city of Kismayo, according to a translation received by The Long War Journal of an article posted Waaga Cusub, a website operated by the Hawiye clan,...

On November 9, 2009, TV5, the international French TV channel, featured a panel of journalists on the theme of "Barack Obama, and a new vision of the United States in Africa". The Africa's correspondant of the French national newspaper Le Figaro gave a surprising comment : "despite what one can think of George W. Bush's policies, we have to admit that he helped Africa enormously. He had a real plan and vision for this continent. This is not the case anymore with Obama. Obama as no vision for Africa. His speeches are only words." Even the Sudanese journalist agreed :...

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt — China's premier on Sunday pledged $10 billion in new low interest loans to African nations over three years, offering the beleaguered continent sorely needed cash while dismissing criticism that Beijing's motives in Africa are far from altruistic. Wen Jiabao's promise at the start of a two-day China-Africa summit was warmly received by African leaders and officials, most of whose nations confront a miasma of despair further accentuated by a global financial crisis that is only now showing signs of abating. "The Chinese people cherish sincere friendship toward the African people, and China's support to Africa's development...

Where is the hardest place in the world to be a Christian citizen? North Korea, perhaps? Saudi Arabia? According to Lars Widerberg of Intercessor's Network, it is the nation of Somalia. There are thought to be no more than a thousand Christians in a resident population of 8 million people, with perhaps a few thousand more in the diaspora. The Islamist Shabab militia, which controls most of southern Somalia, is dedicated to hunting these remaining Christians down and eliminating every one of them. Christian men attend mosques on Fridays, so as not to arouse suspicion. Bibles are kept hidden. There...

Here's how to pitch this (true) story to Hollywood: Ordinary guy named John, ordinary Sunday, cycling home into a setting sun. Monster roars out of the bushes! John abandons his bike, flees in terror. The creature smashes the bicycle, catches him in a few short strides, grabs him by the shirt. But he slides out of his shirt and falls to the ground. It picks him up again and he slips out of his trousers. Naked, too afraid to even to scream, he scrambles away. But he doesn't get far. The shrieking monster smashes him against a tree. Camera pans...

Following up on my posting of Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin's speech at University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, PEU Report/State of the Division has done yeoman's work in digging deeper into what the power elite are up to in Africa. Here's some of what he has discovered, most of which originally appeared as comments by PEU Report to my original post: Alice Albright, formerly of the Carlyle Group & JP Morgan and daughter of Madeleine Albright, joined the Ex-Im Bank. Their October report is clearly focused on Africa. Here's their blurb: EX-IM BANK WELCOMES ALICE ALBRIGHT We welcome...

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will eventually become a new ocean or sea, researchers now confirm. The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005. Some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied.

Ardipithecus ramidus is an extinct primate whose fossilized remains were first found along the Awash River in Ethiopia about fifteen years ago. Many fragments were collected, including shattered bones from a four-foot-tall female nicknamed "Ardi." She was chosen to represent her kind, apparently because of the comparative completeness of her remains. Now Ardi's discoverers believe they have collected enough data to reconstruct her history--but what does their data actually reveal? ...

Four Tanzanians have been sentenced to death by hanging for killing an albino man last year - one of a spate of such murders in the country. The court, in the northern town of Shinyanga, convicted them of murdering the man and removing his head and legs. In September three men were sentenced to death for murdering an albino boy - the first such ruling in Tanzania. Witchdoctors sell good-luck potions made from the body parts of albino people for thousands of dollars. More than 50 albino people are thought to have been murdered in the past two years in...

"This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln," gushed Rocco Landesman, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Landesman was referring, of course, to Barack Obama, specifically for Obama's presumed role as author of the acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father. As evidence that Obama did not exactly write Dreams mounts, Landesman gives us a good indication of how America's cultural honchos will react. For a century, in fact, they have been heaping uncritical praise on undeserving artists of...

Ghana’s first Catholic Cardinal, Peter Appiah Turkson is closer to becoming the first black pope ever of the Catholic Church. Saturday October 24, 2009, Pope Benedict appointed Cardinal Turkson to head the Vatican’s justice and peace office. This position is a high-profile one that cements his reputation as a possible future candidate for the papal office, according to the Associated Press. The justice and peace office is responsible for promoting the church’s social teachings on justice issues, such as war, the death penalty and human rights. Turkson told reporters three weeks ago there was no reason there couldn’t be a...

Bill Gates took on the Famine Lobby while addressing a forum on the world food supply in Iowa. Speaking at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines, Gates took aim at the chorus of environmental leftists and organic food advocates who believe Africans should starve rather than eat genetically modified (GM) foods. “Some voices are instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity. They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity,” he said.The opposition is significant, because Gates is left-of-center himself. The Bill and Melinda...

Does HIV mean certain death? In the quarter century since the world was introduced to the idea that a new sexually transmitted virus was the cause of Aids, HIV has been generally regarded as one of the biggest killers of our time. HIV/Aids has not been the mass disease in Britain that people were led to believe in the 1980s, but the death toll from immune deficiency diseases ascribed to HIV in Africa has been staggering. The scale of death there is an ongoing tragedy that tests the moral resolve of the rich world. How much do we care? Enough...

A mob in central Kenya has beheaded two suspected members of the Mungiki, a gang itself famous for decapitating its victims, police say. The two young men were beheaded and had their fingers chopped off... Twenty-one men who had been charged over the April violence were freed on Friday alongside former Mungiki leader Maina Njenga. Once a pseudo-religious group of dreadlocked youths who worshipped spirits in Mount Kenya and embraced rituals such as female circumcision, the Mungiki has evolved into an extortionist gang notorious for beheading its victims.