Free Republic

Thousands of brides are being burned alive in India despite the practice being illegal, a Christian ministry has warned. India Partners, a Christian organization that works alonside indigenous Christian grassroots agencies in India, told Mission Network News on Thursday that there are still as many as 8,000 bride burning cases a year in the Hindu-majority country. A representative with India Partners, identified only as John, said the low view of women is spread through parts of India's society. “This is true both of men and women. It’s not just of men itself. Most women see the other woman as in...

Heather Mac Donald has written and spoken extensively about how identity politics is hampering America’s ability to maintain its dominance in STEM fields. Our main competitors, most notably China, are focused on making sure the best scientists, mathematicians, and engineers are doing the work. They care nothing about gender. And they spend virtually every dollar related to STEM on hard research and analysis. The U.S., by contrast, is preoccupied with the gender and (to a lesser extent) the race and ethnicity of who is in the lab. And we pour money into promoting identity politics in STEM. Indeed, Elizabeth Harrington...

Ever since Justice Powell’s lone opinion in Bakke allowed the camel’s nose of “diversity” under the anti-discrimination tent, controversy has raged over preferential treatment awarded to college applicants of certain races. Just as hurricanes often change direction after landfall, the diversity movement has recently taken off in some surprising new directions that deserve public attention. Diversity Statements First came the “diversity statements,” introduced by a smattering of institutions for promotion or tenure and sometimes for all new hires. Both the prevalence and the required content of these diversity statements has expanded dramatically. UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, for...

Bryant Swenson and his wife Lauren, from Utah, were driving near Mai Mahiu on November 30 when three masked men attacked their car. The couple, who moved to Nairobi with their three children to open a CrossFit gym, spotted a white van which the gangsters are believed to have been trying to rob. Bryant said in a Facebook post about the attempted robbery, that one of the men was carrying a gun but “couldn't get it out of his waistbelt in time”. As the bandits rushed towards their Toyota Land Cruiser, Bryant had to reverse backwards to give himself time...

Nobel Prize winning Economist Paul Krugman (MIT, Princeton) opines on the future demographics of America: "The real craziness in America comes from, if you like, rural white Americans who feel their power is going away, that they are losing their ownership of their country, and they're right; we're becoming more diverse, more multicultural. Rural whites are not the future. In the end the power they still have will go away. But it's still very difficult until that happens. The future is Mayor Bill DeBlasio of New York, but there is still Ted Cruz out there, and he still has tremendous...

BREAUX BRIDGE, La. — Bryson Sassau’s application would inspire any college admissions officer. A founder of T.M. Landry College Preparatory School described him as a “bright, energetic, compassionate and genuinely well-rounded” student whose alcoholic father had beaten him and his mother and had denied them money for food and shelter. His transcript “speaks for itself,” the founder, Tracey Landry, wrote, but Mr. Sassau should also be lauded for founding a community service program, the Dry House, to help the children of abusive and alcoholic parents. He took four years of honors English, the application said, was a baseball M.V.P. and...

Returning from the NATO Trident Juncture strategic exercise, a Norwegian frigate collided with a tanker. Many are speculating that gender politics sunk the vessel. The collision with the KNM Helge Ingstad left a big enough hole in the starboard side of the frigate for the warship to take on water. The crew has been forced to abandon the vessel, The Barents Observer reported. On Tuesday morning, most of the navy ship was already under water. The warship, one of Norway’s five top modern frigates.. a mystery why the well-equipped warship couldn’t avoid colliding with the 250 meters long oil tanker...

**SNIP** “While I was reading this letter that was kind of released today, my main concern was that there is no vision, there is no common value, there is no goal that is really articulated in this letter aside from we need to change,” she said. “I do think that we got sent to Congress [with] a mandate to change how government works, to change what government even looks like. But if we are not on the same page about changing the systems and the values and how we’re going to adapt as a party for the future, then what...

WELL WE are at least 30 minutes into Monday morning so it's time for the first "Facebook did WHAT?" story of the week. According to a report in The Intercept, Facebook has been offering potential advertisers the chance to target their wares at groups who believe in a "White Genocide". Yes. Really. Just days after a mass-shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the topic "white genocide consipracy theory" was used by the research team as a "detailed targeting" criterion to aim adverts at the 168,000 users who have interacted with the subject in some way.(continued at link)

Amazon has been an aggressive advocate for diversity. That includes providing strong support for immigrants, minorities, the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities, the military, women engineers and more. When the company was searching for a second headquarters, it made diversity a key issue. To achieve long-term success, Amazon said last year, the winning city must have a diverse population and a community that supports it. Does that also mean diversity in politics, geography and even home prices? Apparently not, because Amazon chose two locales — New York City and Washington — that have a lot in common with its hometown...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi wants to establish a House diversity office to recruit and retain employees from different backgrounds to Capitol Hill as one of the first acts of the new Congress, according to a letter obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.</p>

Saudi Arabia has executed an Indonesian maid who killed her employer during a rape attack, sparking outrage in Jakarta. Ms Tursilawati, who was working in the city of Ta'if, was found guilty of killing her employer in June 2011.  Indonesian President President Joko Widodo called Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, demanding to know why Jakarta had not been informed about Monday's execution of mother-of one Tuti Tursilawati. It was the fourth time in three years that Saudi Arabia had failed to notify Jakarta before executing an Indonesian migrant worker.     'We have called Saudi Arabia's foreign minister and conveyed our protest,' Mr...

YORK, S.C. - A South Carolina courthouse has been evacuated after bedbugs were found there for the second time in just over two weeks. York County Clerk of Court David Hamilton said specially trained dogs found evidence of bedbugs in both courtrooms of the criminal court building Thursday as well as in offices on both floors. Hamilton told The Herald of Rock Hill officials decided to close the entire building for safety as a stronger chemical treatment is applied.

ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MO – A Vice Principal is assaulted in a video that is spreading like wildfire on social media. According to authorities, the brawl began when a staff member tried to break up a fight between three students. We are told St. Louis County Police took a 15-year-old and two 16-year-old students into custody. ... students laughing as the fight broke out and chaos erupted in the cafeteria at Oakville High School. Fox 2 was told the students tackled the assistant principal to the ground before pulling and kicking him on Monday. The attack prompting district officials to...

Multnomah County “sheriff” Mike Reese is now taking heat for failing to notify I.C.E. when he had an illegal alien in custody up on assault charges. Those charges were dropped, of course, and the illegal alien was set free, only for said illegal alien to go on to murder his wife by stabbing her to death and dumping her body in a ditch. Multnomah County is home to Portland, Oregon. ... A man accused of murdering his wife and leaving her body in a ditch is at the center of a firestorm between ICE and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office....

If you live in Ohio and you're currently struggling with a bed bug issue, you're not alone. Exterminators say the state is experiencing an “epidemic” of the parasite, especially in northeastern cities. Dale Pluck, an exterminator and owner of Dale’s Pest Control, told Cleveland 19 News he's noticed a rise in cases involving the blood-suckers in Lorain, Sandusky and West Cleveland. “They’re everywhere,” he said. “Stores have them. Doctors offices have them. You can almost pick them up anywhere.” Wayne Minor, who works for Dale’s Pest Control as an exterminator, told the news station bed bugs are also a problem...

Georgia’s registered voters became more racially diverse this year, continuing a long-term demographic trend among the electorate. White voters are still the majority in Georgia, but their collective influence is slowly waning each election year, according to voter registration data from the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. Meanwhile, racial minorities are gradually gaining ground. The latest voting numbers released this week by the state present an updated look at how it has changed in recent years, in terms of race, gender and age. The figures were compiled after the Oct. 9 voter registration deadline and analyzed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution....

ver the last few decades, the number of college administrators has grown far more than the numbers of students and faculty. Amid this administrative bloat, the greatest growth has been in “diversity” officials. Even community colleges have begun hiring Chief Diversity Officers (CDO). A persistent question, however, is whether having a CDO and other diversity administrators accomplishes anything of educational value. American colleges and universities are as inclusive and “welcoming” to students and faculty of all races and backgrounds as any institutions on the planet, so exactly how does a CDO make things any better? More than ten years ago,...

Despite its international reputation for hacking up victims with machetes – sometimes brazenly leaving the bloodied, mangled corpses in the open – the street gang MS-13 slipped into Mendota relatively unnoticed.