Free Republic

Polls in the world’s largest democracy India will open on April 19, the country’s election commissioner announced on Saturday, setting the stage for a nationwide election expected to see Prime Minister Narendra Modi clinch a rare third consecutive term. An estimated 960 million people in a country of 1.4 billion are eligible to vote in the widely anticipated polls that will take a month to complete. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to secure another five years in power, ruling an India that has become increasingly polarized along religious lines. Polling will unfold over seven phases around the country...

Being in the late evening of life we learn to reflect, to meditate on things lost and gained, to contemplate a society alien to the one we once knew. But ageing does not mean retreating from the world. A young male writer turned 60 recently and complained about getting old. Please, I thought, I’ve unwound nine-tenths of my mortal coil, don’t tell me about getting old, young whippersnapper ...As I slide towards my ninth decade there are many things I regret. I regret that I did not stop and breathe more often; that I was not kinder more often; that...

Lahore (Agenzia Fides) - The sacrifice of Akash Bashir is an example that is bearing fruit in the Church in Pakistan: it ended with a solemn mass of thanksgiving celebrated this morning, March 15, in the Cathedral of Lahore filled with over 500 faithful the diocesan phase of the beatification process of Akash Bashir, the young 20-year-old Pakistani who sacrificed himself on March 15, 2015 in Lahore to stop a terrorist who wanted to carry out a massacre at the Church of St. John in the Youhanabad district of Lahore. "I will die, but I won't let you into the...

SAINT EPHRAEM, MONK AND DEACON, the contemporary of St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, was with them one of the glories of the Christian East so rich in testimonies to faith and sanctity during the first centuries. He takes his place in the liturgical cycle among the doctors of the Universal Church. It is only fitting that the ancient piety of Edessa and Nisibis should be represented in the Roman calendar by him who was always held to be tht most illustrious of her sons. St. Ehpraem was honored by the whole Church...

Archaeologists have unearthed a 3,300-year-old clay tablet depicting a catastrophic foreign invasion of the Hittite Empire in Büklükale, about 100 km from Turkey’s capital Ankara. A translation of the tablet’s cuneiform text indicates that the invasion occurred during a Hittite civil war, presumably in an attempt to support one of the fighting factions. Previously, only broken clay tablets had been found in the excavations at Büklükale, but this one is in almost perfect condition. Based on the typology and distribution of the collected pottery shards, Büklükale is thought to be a single-period city belonging to the Hittite Empire Period and...

Russia's once-potent arms export industry is collapsing amid the pressures of its war on Ukraine and a struggling economy, according to new data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Sunday. The organization's annual update of the arms industry saw Russia fall to third place—behind France and the U.S.—among the globe's largest weapons exporter. Overall, Russia's arms exports fell by 53 percent from 2014–18 to 2019–23. "The decline has been rapid over the course of the past five years," SIPRI's release noted, adding that Russia's number of significant customers has fallen from 31 to 12 nations over...

Russia went to war in Ukraine in February 2022 with no more than nine flyable Beriev A-50U/M radar planes, which extend sensor coverage over the front line. The four-engine A-50s and the 10 or 15 experienced officers who crew each of them are critical and hard-to-replace assets. Which is why the Ukrainians have devoted scarce resources to finding and striking the $300-million planes. A Ukrainian drone damaged an A-50 on the ground in Belarus last year. On Jan. 14, a long-range Ukrainian missile shot down an A-50 over the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine. Six weeks later on Feb....

Eyes shining with excitement, the nine-year-old English boy in a dark Parka jacket holds up a certificate showing he has just converted to Islam. ‘You’re a Muslim, Rudi!’ cheers the imam as he hugs the child In his piping voice, the youngster has just recited the words of the Shahada, a strict Islamic creed pledging that there is ‘nothing worthy of worship but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger’. The mantra means he must now wash before praying five times a day, never eat pork and — when he is grown up — shun Western habits including drinking alcohol or...

Fight against those who, having received the Scripture, do not believe in Allah or the Last Day, nor prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor practice the true religion, until, humiliated, they pay the tribute directly! (Muhammad. The Quran. Sura 9:29) I do not believe that Monsignor Juan José Omella was very well inspired when he wrote his Sunday letter entitled The Necessary Dialogue with Islam. http://www.revistaecclesia.com/necesario-dialogo-islam-juan-jose-omella-omella-arzobispo-barcelona/ This new reactivation of Christian-Muslim dialogue, paralyzed by the alleged “imprudences” of the long-missed Benedict XVI, is very far from becoming a reality. And Islam does not allow dialogue. Either you...

Rust, Go (Golang), and Java are three distinct programming languages, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Let’s compare these languages across various dimensions to help you make an informed choice: Performance: Rust: Rust is known for its excellent performance, particularly in system-level programming and scenarios where low-level control over memory is essential. It can often outperform Go and Java in these domains. Go: Go offers good performance, especially for concurrent applications. While not as low-level as Rust, it is faster than many dynamically typed languages. Java: Java also offers good performance due to its Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation and optimization....

India has reported surprisingly robust economic growth, ending 2023 on a high note and providing a boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi just weeks before an election that could give him a third term in office. Gross domestic product (GDP) in the world’s fastest growing major economy surged 8.4% in the final three months of 2023 compared with a year prior, up from growth of 7.6% in the June-to-September period, the country’s statistics office said Thursday. The latest increase was much stronger than analysts expected and means India’s economy “ended last year with a bang,” Thamashi De Silva, assistant India...

Ghana's parliament has passed a tough new bill that imposes a prison sentence of up to three years for anyone convicted of identifying as LGBTQ+. It also imposes a maximum five-year jail term for forming or funding LGBTQ+ groups. Lawmakers heckled down attempts to replace prison sentences with community service and counselling. It is the latest sign of growing opposition to LGBTQ+ rights in the conservative West African nation. The bill, which had the backing of Ghana's two major political parties, will come into effect only if President Nana Akufo-Addo signs it into law. He previously said that he would...

A north Indian town is preparing for a mega event next week, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate a grand Hindu temple that symbolizes the country’s surging Hindu cultural nationalism, a movement also known as Hindutva. The inauguration of the grand temple in Ayodhya, India is set for Monday, January 22. The temple is dedicated to the Hindu deity Lord Ram and stands on the site of a demolished 16th-century mosque. Some Hindu leaders have begun calling the town a "Hindu Vatican." Many Hindus claim that Ram was born in Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh — exactly...

A video has been going viral on social media wherein a man in yellow attire can be seen vandalising a worship place. The video is reportedly from the Tarumi Ward in Japan’s Kobe City where the accused identified as Mamadou Balde had vandalised the Mizuoka Hachiman shrine in the area. Balde is a Muslim native of the Republic of Gambia in West Africa, who migrated to Japan and now lives in Tarumi Ward, where the incident took place. The accused, who was later arrested by the Japanese police, reportedly broke an offering box kept in the shrine. He also, reportedly,...

A pro-war Russian military blogger died on Wednesday, his lawyer said, after the blogger wrote the country’s military pressured him to remove a post exposing the scale of its losses in a recent battle in Ukraine. The blogger, Andrei Morozov, claimed in his post that Russia had lost 16,000 men and 300 armored vehicles in its assault on the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, which the Russians captured last week. He deleted the post on Tuesday after what he said was a campaign of intimidation against him. The following morning, Mr. Morozov published a series of posts on Telegram outlining the...

A statue of Amy Winehouse in her former home of Camden has had a pro-Palestinian sticker placed over a star of David necklace, prompting condemnation from many including environment secretary Steve Barclay. Metropolitan police acknowledged the incident would cause “upset to many people”, and said they were “making inquiries with Camden Market to establish the circumstances and what evidence, such as CCTV footage, may be available”. Owners of Camden Market, where the statue stands, said the sticker “was removed immediately, and the incident was reported to the police. Camden Market remains first and foremost, a place of diversity – a...

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh says the PA is still seeking unity with Hamas terror group and may hold talks with the group in Moscow on February 26. “Russia has invited all Palestinian factions who will be meeting on the 26 of this month in Moscow. We will see if Hamas is ready to come to the ground with us,” he says at the Munich Security Conference. “We are ready to engage. If Hamas is not then that’s a different story. We need Palestinian unity,” he says. He adds that Hamas needs to meet certain prerequisites. Asked about making...

There can be no definitive answer to the question, ‘what was England’s population in [such and such a period]?’. Even with the sophisticated data gathering and processing techniques used in compiling the modern Census, not every individual is counted, and a few assumptions have to be made. When the question is applied to earlier centuries, a degree of intelligent guesswork is called for. Although England is famously blessed with a generous source of historical records, the information is not sufficient to provide a complete picture. However, a profile or ‘shape’ to England’s population history is certainly possible, one that may...

The European Union should form its own combined army that could play a role in peacekeeping and preventing conflict, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said. In an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa, Tajani said that closer European cooperation on defence was a priority for the Forza Italia party that he leads. "If we want to be peacekeepers in the world, we need a European military. And this is a fundamental precondition to be able to have an effective European foreign policy," he said in an interview published on Sunday. "In a world with powerful players like the United States,...

Moscow has put the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, and other Baltic states officials on a wanted list, as Tallinn warns of an imminent Russian military buildup along its border. The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the Estonian state secretary, Taimar Peterkop, the Lithuanian culture minister, Simonas Kairys, and Kallas were accused of “destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers”, a reference to the removal of Soviet-era second world war memorials “This is only the start,” Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel. “Crimes against the memory of the world’s liberators from nazism and fascism must be prosecuted.” Russian authorities have...