Free Republic

In a huge setback for LGBT activists, this week, the high court of Singapore upheld the country’s ban on anal and oral sex between men. Challengers to Section 377A of the Penal Code argued that the ban violated their rights to equal protection and to life and liberty. The court rejected these claims and said any changes in the law must come from the legislature. Two separate challenges were brought, one by a man caught having sex with another man in a public toilet and the other by a homosexual couple. A High Court judge rejected both cases last...

Manufacturers of French arms are back in Cairo The Tribune offers a series of new industrial land conquest of French armaments. Egypt, which has offered this year for four corvettes 1 billion euros, shows again interested in the Rafale. Egypt and God will surprise to the French armament industry in 2014 in the absence yet of major contracts signed by more traditional customers in France (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia .. .) For DCNS scored a real coup in Egypt thanks to a very efficient commercial "raid". In less than six months, the naval group sold in Cairo four corvettes...

Pierre Ryckmans, writer and academic. Born 1935, died 2014 Nowadays Mao is generally regarded as a tyrant on a par with Hitler and Stalin — worse, by some measures, if “indirect deaths” (starvation due to his policies) are counted in the overall toll. Yet in the 1970s he was the darling of the European radical Left. Pierre Ryckmans was born in Brussels into a well-off, devout Roman Catholic family. One relative was a monsignor; another a governor of the Belgian Congo. He first visited China in 1955 as a student and subsequently worked in Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong before...

The Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, released its annual index of economic freedom for the year 2013, using data from the year 2011. The results are not encouraging for Americans. US flag The U.S., which ranked third in economic freedom behind Hong Kong and Singapore from 1980 to 2000, has fallen to 17thout of the 152 countries the Fraser Institute surveyed. What are the contributing factors to this decline? The authors suggested that the U.S. legal system, protection of property rights, international trade freedom, and increasing regulations are stifling economic freedom in the U.S. Moreover, the U.S. has tied...

On June 24, 2012, the body of Shane Todd, a young US electrical engineer, was found hanging in his Singapore apartment. The Singapore Police say it was suicide, but the Todd family believes he was murdered. -excerpt- ... Shane told his family that he was being asked to compromise US security and he feared for his life. Shane refused to do what he was being asked to do and turned in his sixty day notice at IME. Shane found a good job with a company in Virginia, and bought a ticket to fly back to the US on July 1,...

Evidence that Singapore has far more than the officially claimed 24 Boeing F-15SG fighter aircraft has emerged, although the precise number of airframes has yet to be ascertained. The FAA registry shows that eight Boeing F-15SG aircraft were registered to Boeing on 6 August 2014. The aircraft bear registrations N361SG, N363SG, N366SG, N368SG,N373SG, N376SG, N378SG, and N837SG. Over the years industry observers have come to share the belief that the true number of aircraft is probably 32 - not 24 - mainly owing to the range of registration numbers on Singapore air force registered F-15SGs. Moreover, on a tour of...

Three undergraduates from Singapore are relieved they were not on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 which crashed in eastern Ukraine after being allegedly shot down by militants. The Boeing 777 came down in cornfields in the separatist-held region on Thursday, killing all 298 people on board on Thursday (July 17). In April, 23-year-old Nicholas Ng and his two friends had booked a return ticket to Europe through a travel agency. But the National University of Singapore student's booking was cancelled after he missed the deadline to submit the required documents, such as his passport details. His friends also cancelled their...

Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin has weighed in on the removal of the vicious blog targeting the Filipino population in Singapore. Mr Tan said in a post on Facebook that he was glad the blog titled "Blood Stained Singapore", had been taken down by Google, and lamented its hateful content, which had included a list of ways to be nasty to Filipinos here without breaking the law. "This is not about freedom of speech or a debate about immigration or foreign workforce policy," he said. "This is about racism and xenophobia and there is no place for racists and xenophobes in...

Singapore has topped Tokyo to become the world's most expensive city, according to a cost of living survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). In its 2014 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, the EIU said the world's ten most expensive cities to live in are: Singapore, Paris, Oslo, Zurich, Sydney, Caracas, Geneva, Melbourne, Tokyo and Copenhagen, respectively. [NY doesn't even make the top twenty.] Singapore [is] significantly more expensive than any other location when it comes to running a car," the EIU said in its report. "As a result, transport costs in Singapore are almost three times higher than in...

China on Sunday strongly denounced Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US defence chief Chuck Hagel for making "provocative" speeches against Beijing."The Chinese delegation ... have this feeling that the speeches of Mr. Abe and Mr. Hagel are a provocative action against China," said Lieutenant General Wang Guanzhong, deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).Diverting from his prepared remarks, Wang told a top Asian security forum in Singapore that the speeches of the top US and Japanese officials were "unacceptable".He accused Abe, who spoke on Friday, and Hagel, who delivered his speech Saturday, of coordinating...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The United States and China squared off at an Asian security forum on Saturday, with the U.S. defense secretary accusing Beijing of destabilizing the region and a top Chinese general retorting that his comments were "threat and intimidation". Using unusually strong language, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel took aim at Beijing's handling of territorial disputes with its Asian neighbors. "In recent months, China has undertaken destabilizing, unilateral actions asserting its claims in the South China Sea," Hagel said.

A Singaporean man who ordered a plate of Nasi Goreng Kampung at a restaurant here has lodged a police report after he said that his tongue felt like it was “bitten by red ants” after a few spoonfuls of the dish. In his report, former lorry driver Lau Thiam Huat complained about the spicy fried rice which he ordered at the restaurant at around 9pm on April 30. When contacted, the 61-year-old said that he was not fond of spicy food and would usually order steamed fish at the shop. However, he said that he had a sudden craving for...

South Korea has formally decided to purchase 40 F-35 stealth fighter jets for $6.7 billion, South Korea and Lockheed Martin officials announced Monday. The commitment by South Korea, which is boosting its air defenses amid ongoing tensions in the Pacific region, marks a "big day" for the F-35 program in Fort Worth, said Steve O'Bryan, Lockheed's vice president for F-35 business development. "This is a two-year process that Korea held, an open competition where they looked at capabilities, their defense needs, the price as well as the timing and they chose the F-35. It was another open, transparent process that...

My order is inevitable for it is simply The Father's will concisely done in full view and commitment of My Witness that is My spirit in you . . . Acts 17:28 28 For in him we live and move and are! As one of your own poets says it, ‘We are the sons of God.’ John 14:12 I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, if anyone steadfastly believes in Me, he will himself be able to do the things that I do; and he will do even greater things than these, because I go to the Father. Job...

New York has knocked London from its position as the world’s leading global financial center after seven years, according to the Global Financial Centers Index compiled by London-based consultancy Z/Yen. London slipped from the top of the global rankings, scoring 784 against 786 for New York, because a series of own goals had tarnished its reputation, the report said. […] Hong Kong and Singapore took third and fourth spots respectively, the same as a year ago, the survey showed. But the gap between the “Big Four” and the chasing pack, led by Zürich, Tokyo and Seoul, was narrowing, it said....

The American CEO of an exchange for the troubled bitcoin digital currency has been found dead after a suspected suicide at her home in Singapore. Wisconsin native, Autumn Radtke, 28, was discovered inside her apartment on February 28 and officials in the South East Asian city state are now waiting for toxicology test results to determine the exact cause of death. Douglas Adams, the non-executive chairman of First Meta confirmed that his colleague had passed away in a statement which said the company was 'shocked and saddened by the tragic loss of our friend and CEO Autumn Radtke.' The death...

(CNSNews.com) – At a time of escalated tensions with the West over Ukraine, Russia says it is negotiating with eight governments around the world for access to military facilities, to enable it to extend its long-range naval and strategic bomber capabilities. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday the military was engaged in talks with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Algeria, Cyprus, the Seychelles, Vietnam and Singapore. “We need bases for refueling near the equator, and in other places,” ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying. Russia is not looking to establish bases in those locations, but to reach agreement to use facilities there when...

MOSCOW, February 26 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is planning to expand its permanent military presence outside its borders by placing military bases in a number of foreign countries, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday. Shoigu said the list includes Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Seychelles, Singapore and several other countries. “The talks are under way, and we are close to signing the relevant documents,” Shoigu told reporters in Moscow. The minister added that the negotiations cover not only military bases but also visits to ports in such countries on favorable conditions as well as the opening of refueling sites for...

My substance is your makeup but do not look for it to be anatomical and my atomic number is eternal never wasting away for truly I AM Wonderful in ALL aspects of this one word "ETERNAL". I AM thus an eternal constant and there is no slide rule that can measure my kingdom for I have no beginning or end to measure yet I have storehouses ,does my Word not proclaim this ?! So tell me my children is there really a need to be earthbound when even now you carry this makeup within you ?! Let me allow you...

Physicists have proposed an experiment that could force us to make a choice between extremes to describe the behaviour of the Universe. The proposal comes from an international team of researchers from Switzerland, Belgium, Spain and Singapore, and is published today in Nature Physics. It is based on what the researchers call a 'hidden influence inequality'. This exposes how quantum predictions challenge our best understanding about the nature of space and time, Einstein's theory of relativity. "We are interested in whether we can explain the funky phenomena we observe without sacrificing our sense of things happening smoothly in space and...