Free Republic

As some conservatives celebrate the repeal of Australia's carbon tax, a dose of caution is warranted: Australia still has carbon taxation on its agenda. This repealed legislation is apparently going to be replaced by the multi-billion dollar "Direct Action" climate change policy that Prime Minister Tony Abbott has long been promoting. Thus, one form of carbon pricing gets replaced by another form of carbon pricing, neither of which is acceptable. Many critical thinkers about climate science got excited over Abbott's public statement that the "science behind climate change was 'crap'"? A little -- more accurately, a lot -- premature that...

Chhattisgarh state department of archaeology and culture plans to seek help from Nasa and Isro for research on 10,000-year-old rock paintings depicting aliens and UFOs in Charama region in Kanker district in tribal Bastar region. According to archaeologist JR Bhagat, these paintings have depicted aliens like those shown in Hollywood and Bollywood flicks. Located about 130km from Raipur, the caves come under village Chandeli and Gotitola. "The findings suggest that humans in prehistoric times may have seen or imagined beings from other planets which still create curiosity among people and researchers. Extensive research is needed for further findings. Chhattisgarh presently...

Among the many tragic stories from the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 is the deaths of 68-year-old Nick Norris and his three young grandchildren. Norris was on the flight with 12-year-old Mo, 10-year-old Evie, and 8-year-old Otis Maslin, accompanying them back to their home in West Australia after a family vacation in Amsterdam. The siblings’ parents, Rin Norris and Anthony Maslin, planned to stay in Amsterdam for a few days, while the children had to return to school.

On Friday, we learned that among those killed on the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 plane that was shot down over Ukraine was top AIDS researcher Dr. Joep Lange. The doctor was en route to the International AIDS Conference, scheduled to begin this weekend in Melbourne, Australia, along with more than 100 other AIDS researchers and activists on the flight. Also scheduled to attend the conference is President Bill Clinton, who had met Dr. Lange and praised him in an interview with CNN from Hanoi, Vietnam Friday morning. “It’s awful,” he said. “I mean, those people are, they’re really, in a...

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott blamed Russia on Friday over the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine that killed all 298 people on board. Abbott appeared to go further than other Western leaders in apportioning blame over the crash, demanding that Moscow answer questions about the "Russian-backed rebels" that he said were behind the disaster. He also said the Russian ambassador to Australia has been officially summoned to discuss the issue.

Australia's Senate has voted to repeal the carbon tax, a levy on the biggest polluters passed by the previous Labor government. Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose Liberal-National coalition beat Labor in an election last year, had made the repeal a central aim of his government. Politicians have been locked in a fierce row about the tax for years. Labor says it helps to combat climate change, but the Liberals claim it penalises legitimate businesses. The Australian Senate voted by 39 to 32 votes to repeal the tax. Introduced in July 2012, it charges the 348 highest polluters A$23 (£13; $22.60)...

Noah Rothman wrote up Quinnipiac’s gubernatorial poll yesterday, prompting me to wonder over at Townhall whether the polling outfit was holding back its Senate numbers for separate release. We now have our answer. A virtual deadlock, and advantage Gardner: The closely-watched U.S. Senate race is tied with 44 percent for U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, the Republican challenger, and 42 percent for Sen. Mark Udall, the Democratic incumbent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Another 10 percent are undecided. This compares to the results of an April 24 survey by the independent Quinnipiac University showing Sen. Udall at...

SYDNEY (AP) — Australia's government repealed a much-maligned carbon tax on the nation's worst greenhouse gas polluters on Thursday, ending years of contention over a measure that became political poison for the lawmakers who imposed it. The Senate voted 39 to 32 to axe the 24.15 Australian dollar ($22.60) tax per metric ton of carbon dioxide that was introduced by the center-left Labor government in July 2012. Conservative lawmakers burst into applause as the final tally was announced. Prime Minister Tony Abbott's conservative coalition government rose to power last year on the promise of getting rid of the tax, assuring...

---snip--- Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines have been forming an alliance against China, as China has been moving to annex other countries' territories in the South and East China Seas. Relations between Vietnam and China have become particularly hostile since China deployed an oil rig in Vietnam's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). (See "China's neighbors react to new South China Sea claims" from last week.) Now Australia is signaling that it is also joining this alliance. The change in policy was indicated in a statement by Australia's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, during a visit by Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe to...

A judge has suggested that now that same-sex marriages and homosexuality have become more accepted the next logical step could be to legitimize incestuous relationships. “A jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now ‘available’, not having [a] sexual partner,” Judge Garry Neilson from Australia said. Neilson compared incest to homosexuality, saying that such relationships were once illegal. “If this was the 1950s and you had a jury of 12 men there, which is what you’d invariably have, they would...

Explanation: In this composite cityscape, dawn's first colors backdrop the lights along Brisbane's skyline at the southeastern corner of Queensland, Australia, planet Earth. Using a solar filter, additional exposures made every 3.5 minutes follow the winter sunrise on July 8 as planet-sized sunspots cross the visible solar disk. The sunspots mark solar active regions with convoluted magnetic fields. Even as the maximum in the solar activity cycle begins to fade, the active regions produce intense solar flares and eruptions launching coronal mass ejections (CMEs), enormous clouds of energetic particles, into our fair solar system.

Journalists and media organisations have warned that the jailing of three correspondents for Al-Jazeera English by the Cairo regime was intended to intimidate others from reporting freely on events in Egypt. The jail terms of between seven and ten years for Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were met with outrage from veteran correspondents who have reported on the Egyptian uprising and its aftermath. Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's Middle East editor, said the verdicts and sentencing were a blow to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. "This is also at least partly designed to intimidate other journalists, and...

Minya Misdemeanor Court sentenced an Egyptian correspondent who works for a US TV channel to five years and ordered him pay LE500 bail over charges of inciting sedition by broadcasting false news. […] Senior sources disclosed that the defendant was called Mohamed al-Sayyed Hegazy before converting to Christianity. …

Egypt's military-dominated government has delivered a humiliating, public slap in the face to John Kerry, the US secretary of state, by sentencing three al-Jazeera journalists to long prison terms only hours after Kerry personally expressed his deep concern about the case in high-level meetings in Cairo. The snub represents a disastrous beginning to Kerry's already fraught Middle East tour, which took him to Baghdad on Monday for crisis talks about the Islamist extremist uprising. The verdict, by a court responsive to government wishes, will also be seen as a deliberate, crude signal to President Barack Obama, who criticised Egypt's deteriorating...

In a revelation that is sure to raise worries in India's security establishment, the first-ever audio message of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the ISIS, has confirmed suspicions that Indians could well be part of his organisation's ranks. While enumerating the nationalities of fighters who constitute ISIS, Al-Baghdadi's 20-second-long audio titled 'A message to the Mujahideen and the Muslim Ummah in the month of Ramadan' that was released on Tuesday mentions that Indians, among a host of other nationalities including Chinese, American, French, German, Australian, etc. figure in the ISIS squad. According to intelligence sources, on January 22, a...

This is a tragic story, but child marriage is routine in the Muslim world. Islamic immigration means that little girls in Australia, America and through the West will be subject to Islamic norms.No amount of laws criminalizing child marriage can change that. Only immigration laws can. An Australian girl who was kidnapped, beaten and married off to her older cousin by her fatherÂ’s family in Syria at the age of 13 has spoken out about her horrific five-year ordeal for the first time.Ms Farrah, who grew up living in SydneyÂ’s southwest and is the daughter of a Syrian Muslim and...

Forced Marriage: An extraordinary story of kidnap, survival, escape and hiding [aka Islamic cultural pedophilia]"60 Minutes", the most extraordinary story of kidnap, survival, escape and hiding. An Australian program called “60 Minutes” on the Channel Nine Network (similar to US 60 minutes) aired a report on child brides (aka pedophilia) titled “Forced Marriage” (note the tempered semantic conceals the pedophile nature of child brides)Forced MarriageThis Sunday the most extraordinary story of kidnap, survival, escape and hiding. 13-year-old Rania Farrah was supposed to be on the trip of a lifetime, a tour of historic Egypt with her older brother. Instead, the...

Radio presenter Michael Smith dumped after comments about the Prophet Mohammed,” ABC News Australia, June 29, 2014 Sydney talkback radio host Michael Smith has been told he will no longer be filling in on 2GB after making controversial comments about the Prophet Mohammed. The former 2UE presenter made the comments on Thursday during his regular guest spot with 2GB host Ben Fordham. Smith was discussing the recent controversy over a talk the Festival of Dangerous Ideas had booked – and later cancelled – with a Muslim activist, titled Honour Killings Are Morally Justified. He compared the festival’s invitation to Uthman...

Imagine if in America there were a coal mining magnate as famous as Donald Trump who was the founder of a political party named after himself (Trump United Party?). In addition, this well known person would be strongly opposed to a carbon tax. Obviously such a person would be considered an enemy by environmentalists. Well, think of the shock if none other than Al Gore held a friendly joint press conference with such a person. Many would suspect that money was the motive for such a strange alliance. Guess what? Something like this happened last week in Australia where Al...

Ninety-nine years ago today, April 25, in the very early hours before dawn, some 1200 kilometers from Jerusalem, members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps – or ANZACs – landed on the western shore of the Gallipoli Peninsula, in modern-day Turkey, at a place we now call Anzac Cove. At roughly the same time, British forces landed at the southern tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula, at Cape Helles, whilst French forces went ashore at Kum Kale, on the Turkish mainland just opposite Cape Helles. Indian and Canadian troops later joined the campaign. This multinational invasion force was to...