Free Republic

At about $50 a barrel, crude oil prices are down by more than half from their June 2014 peak of $107. They may fall more, perhaps even as low as $10 to $20. Here’s why.

Radical Islamist group Hizb-ut- Tahrir which cleverly avoided global scrutiny while spreading its ideology may become a more dangerous terrorist group than the ISIS and it's presence in South Asia should be a cause for concern for India, according to a report. "While ISIS runs amok in Syria and Iraq, demanding media attention through acts of barbarous cruelty, HuT (Hizb-ut- Tahrir or the Party of Liberation) is quietly building a global infrastructure of radicalised youth and deep-pocketed Arab support in preparation for the global Khilafat," said the report published in the latest edition of CTX Journal. The group has cleverly...

Warning alarms can be heard "screaming" on the cockpit voice recorder of AirAsia Flight 8501 before it crashed, an investigator was quoted as saying Wednesday. Among the audible alerts is one that indicated the plane is stalling, the investigator told Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Wall Street Journal. NBC News was immediately unable to confirm the accounts. The reports come a day after Indonesia's transport minister said the Airbus A320, which crashed last month with 162 people on board, was climbing at an abnormally high rate before it plunged and disappeared from radar. "The warning [alarms] kept on screaming, and...

For the past few years, 100-year-old rubber-like blocks from Indonesia have been mysteriously washing up on beaches in the UK and northern Europe. The Titanic has been suggested as one of the possible sources - but now a beachcomber says she may have solved the puzzle of the Tjipetir blocks.

A new species of shark that "walks" along the seabed using its fins as tiny legs has been discovered in eastern Indonesia, an environmental group said Friday. The brown and white bamboo shark pushes itself along the ocean floor as it forages for small fish and crustaceans at night, said Conservation International, whose scientists were involved in its discovery. The shark, which grows to a maximum length of just 80 centimetres (30 inches) and is harmless to humans, was discovered off Halmahera, one of the Maluku Islands that lie west of New Guinea. Bamboo sharks, also known as longtail carpet...

Jakarta (AFP) - Brazil and the Netherlands recalled their ambassadors from Indonesia and expressed fury on Sunday after Jakarta defied their pleas and executed two of their citizens along with four other drug offenders by firing squad.

KUALA LUMPUR: Despite being an investigator for almost two decades, analysing the Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ8501 will be one of the toughest challenging for Nurcahyo Utomo, who knew the pilot personally. The National Transportation Safety Committee investigator, Nurchayo said listening to recording from black boxes over and over again can be disturbing and requires utmost mental strength. “Listening to the playback of a black box involved in a crash is not like listening to music or a discussion. “We are listening to a recording that represents the last moments before the crash and it is disturbing. There are times where...

Following the recovery of the two “black boxes” aboard the crashed AirAsia Flight QZ8501, a story on Yahoo! News reports that “Allahuakhbar, Allahuakhbar were the last words [the pilots] said before they died.” AirAsia Flight QZ8501, a flight out of Surabaya, Indonesia and bound for Singapore, took off early Sunday December 28, 2014 in what can only be described as violent weather. The pilots, amidst the storm, radioed in, asking air traffic control for permission to turn left and climb to a higher altitude to avert the storm. A little while later, the plane crashed into the Java Sea, taking...

airasia According to Indonesian official the last words on the blackbox belonging to missing AirAsia flight was “Allahu Akbar!” The recorder says, “Allah is Greatest! Allah is Greatest!” Via Tribune News (translated): Investigator Nurcahyo Utomo an expert examiner blackbox recording of National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC). He was assigned to check the recording of a conversation Captain irianto that fateful plane flew Air Asia, QZ8501. But it was not an easy task for him, because he knew very close to the former pilot of the Indonesian Air Force pilots. As quoted from Dailymail, Wednesday (14/01/2015), Nurcahyo can not imagine what...

Divers have retrieved the crashed AirAsia plane's second black box from the bottom of the Java Sea, giving investigators the essential tools they need to start piecing together what brought Flight 8501 down. Transportation Ministry official Tonny Budiono says the trapped cockpit voice recorder was freed from beneath the wing's heavy ruins early Tuesday from a depth of about 30 meters (100 feet), a day after the aircraft's flight data recorder was recovered.

More than a quarter of the victims on AirAsia flight 8501 were members of the same pentecostal church in Indonesia ... Mawar Sharon Church, in Surabaya, Indonesia, hosted a prayer service earlier this week as to comfort relatives and remember those who were lost in the crash.

The newly-elected Chinese Christian governor of Indonesia’s capital city, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, is finding new allies in Jakarta’s influential Muslim leaders, reports MNN. Mr. Purnama, who goes by “Ahok,” reflects an “acceptance of diversity” agenda being put forth by the newly-elected President and former gubernatorial running mate, Joko Widodo. “He’s referred to as a double-minority because he’s ethnic Chinese, which is a minority in Indonesia, and he’s also Christian,” notes John Bachman of the Haggai Institute. “Given the fact that Indonesia has a very large Muslim population, there are some leaders that have been very vocal [about], ‘This is not...

The CIA should be abolished. After a trial run of 67 years, the agency has proven a sorcerer’s apprentice. The director and his subordinates have became insufferably arrogant Platonic Guardians hiding behind secrecy in the belief that the rest of us are too stupid or naive to judge what risks to accept to preserve liberty and the rule of law. The CIA has made Americans less safe. Its incorrigible anti-democratic ethos was epitomized by legendary chief of counterintelligence James J. Angleton. He voiced contempt for the Church Committee’s investigation of chronic agency abuses, i.e., the “Family Jewels.” As reported in...

...among the top 10 breakthroughs was the realization, made public in October, 2014, by scientists that cave paintings discovered in 7 cave sites in the Maros karsts on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia were actually between 35,000 and 40,000 years old. The breakthrough was significant in that it was the first time that prehistoric human cave painting art found in Indonesia, or East Asia, for that matter, was found to date during time periods usually associated with the "first cave painter" works long known to exist in Europe. In the potential landmark study, the researchers used uranium-series dating of...

WASHINGTON – Ancient cave drawings in Indonesia are as old as famous prehistoric art in Europe, according to a new study that shows our ancestors were drawing all over the world 40,000 years ago. And it hints at an even earlier dawn of creativity in modern humans, going back to Africa, than scientists had thought. Archaeologists calculated that a dozen stencils of hands in mulberry red and two detailed drawings of an animal described as a "pig-deer" are between 35,000 to 40,000 years old, based on levels of decay of the element uranium. That puts the art found in Sulawesi,...

Indonesian rescue teams said Tuesday that they had found bodies and what appeared to be debris from the AirAsia plane that vanished shortly after taking off from the airport here on Sunday. Members of search teams told the Indonesian news media that they had spotted what appeared to be suitcases, life vests and aircraft debris. Indonesian television showed a rescuer descending from a helicopter toward a bloated corpse floating in the sea. The debris was found in the Karimata Strait off the coast of Borneo. Search teams also spotted what appeared to be a larger piece of the fuselage of...

Several pieces of debris have been spotted floating in the sea off Borneo island, possibly linked to the missing AirAsia jetliner, an Indonesia National Search and Rescue spokesman said Tuesday. Yusuf Latif said an Indonesian military aircraft saw white, red and black objects, including what appears to be a life jacket, off the coast, about 105 miles (170 kilometers) south of Pangkalan Bun. He said the agency has dispatched at least one helicopter to pick up at least 10 pieces of debris to be checked. The items will be taken to the search and rescue coordination post on Belitung Island....

It’s been a rough year for Kuala Lumpur-based airlines, but AirAsia’s response to the loss of an airliner over the Java Sea has been miles ahead of Malaysia Airlines. Darkness and bad weather forced the suspension of a massive search and rescue operation for AirAsia Flight QZ8501, which disappeared Sunday over the Java Sea as it flew from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore. Distraught relatives rushed to airports for news about the missing aircraft, an Airbus A320-200 carrying seven crewmembers and 155 passengers, including 16 children, one of them an infant—162 people presumed lost. Singapore and Indonesia authorities searched the heavily...

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Several hours of searching Indonesian waters turned up no sign of an AirAsia plane that disappeared Sunday with 162 people on board in airspace possibly thick with dense storm clouds, strong winds and lightning, officials said. Aircraft searching for AirAsia Flight 8501 called off the effort for the night and will resume at Monday morning, said Achmad Toha of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency. Some ships were continuing the search overnight, he said. The plane took off Sunday morning from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, and was about halfway to its destination, Singapore, when it vanished from radar....

HOURS after the disappearance of QZ8501, aviation experts are already comparing the incident with the yet to be solved mystery of MH370. Like MH370, the AirAsia Indonesia flight disappeared from radars and made no further communication with Air Traffic Control early into the flight from Surabaya to Singapore. ...