Free Republic

“Lack of Global Warming Means Cold, Empty Chairs at New York Times Environment Desk,” Jim Lakely writes ... The New York Times will close its environment desk in the next few weeks and assign its seven reporters and two editors to other departments. The positions of environment editor and deputy environment editor are being eliminated. ... Al Gore has just declared Mission Accomplished for environmentalism? He’s got his $100 payout, and the rest of the world is left wondering why we should care about a religion when its chief practitioner has just signed his non-aggression pact with Big Oil. At...

Britain cannot possibly afford its welfare state for much longer. Most people do not realize that state handouts (£207 billion [$334 billion] a year) mop up every penny we pay in income tax (£155 billion [$250 billion] a year). Everything else, the NHS, schools, transport, police, defense, interest on the debt (nearly £50 billion [$80.7 billion] a year, by the way) must be paid for by other taxes, including the vast sums raked in by so-called “National Insurance”, or by more borrowing.As we are more or less bankrupt as a country, such generosity is not noble, but plain idiotic. Yet...

Britain's New Stealth Bomber Is Unmanned And Fully Autonomous Robert JohnsonJan. 13, 2013, 4:38 AMBritain's New Stealth Bomber Is Unmanned And Fully AutonomousBAE Taranis Britain's Air Force has been using Tornado jets as bombers for decades and is already building a fleet of new Typhoons, but BAE hopes to supplement those forces with a powerful new drone. The Taranis, named for the Celtic god of thunder will fly faster than the speed of sound and beyond the eye of enemy radar with its single-wing stealth design, and UK officials hope to see it replace piloted planes and current unmanned drones...

Hospitals are denying patients the latest life-extending cancer drugs, a report reveals. Dozens of trusts are failing to hand out treatments for bowel, ovarian, lung and brain cancer that have been approved by the NHS watchdog NICE. Some of these drugs have been shown to boost survival rates by a quarter while others have extended the lives of terminally-ill patients by over a year. The report - commissioned by the Department of Health - also reveals that many hospitals are failing to prescribe the latest treatments for heart attacks, asthma, multiple sclerosis, arthritis and Crohn’s Disease. In fact some of...

A series of military options are being actively considered as the war of words over the islands intensifies. It is understood that additional troops, another warship and extra RAF Typhoon combat aircraft could be dispatched to the region ahead of the March referendum on the Falkland Islands’ future. The options being proposed by planners at the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, north-west London are also said to include a “show of force” such as conducting naval exercises in the South Atlantic. These could involve the deployment of the Royal Navy’s Response Task Force Group, a flotilla comprising destroyers, a frigate,...

HYDERABAD: India has denied award-winning British journalist Yvonne Ridley a visa. She was scheduled to address the Spring of Islam conference being held here by the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. The London-based journalist, who was captured by the Taliban on an undercover assignment in Afghanistan in 2001 and converted to Islam after her release in 2003, was to address various sessions at the three-day conference, which began Friday. "The Indian Government is refusing to give me a conference visa to address 50,000 women in Hyderabad about women's rights ... I would have thought after the catastrophic handling of the Dehli rape case,...

David Cameron will this week be urged by a leading group of Conservative MPs to push for Treaty changes to help claw back swathes of powers covering crime, justice and policing from the European Union. The Fresh Start Group will call for the repatriation of more than 130 powers which it claims are vital to retain “national democratic accountability”, protect British interests and resist the rise of the EU superstate. The call comes in a manifesto by the group—the leading Euroskeptic parliamentary body—to be published on Wednesday ahead of a major speech by the Prime Minister on Britain’s future relationship...

Defence chiefs prepare new plans to defend Falkland Islands Defence chiefs have drawn up new contingency plans designed to prevent hostile action by Argentina towards the Falkland Islands. By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent 9:00PM GMT 12 Jan 2013 A series of military options are being actively considered as the war of words over the islands intensifies. It is understood that additional troops, another warship and extra RAF Typhoon combat aircraft could be dispatched to the region ahead of the March referendum on the Falkland Islands’ future. The options being proposed by planners at the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, north-west...

More than a thousand Catholic priests have signed the letter to The Daily Telegraph arguing that the Government's gay marriage plans will "severely restrict the ability of Catholics to teach the truth about marriage in their schools" and rejecting promised safeguards as "meaningless". I'll be honest: when I read the news story about the letter, I thought: gosh, a thousand conservative/traditionalist priests are standing up to be counted. But that just goes to show the folly of assuming that the Catholic Church is as factional as the Church of England. Because when I worked my way down the names, I...

During the Obamacare debate, Paul Krugman told us we could ignore stories about what was happening across the ocean, writing that “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.” Every so often, I wonder how Krugman would define a “scare story.” How about starving babies to death, as I wrote about last month? Would he say that’s “false,” or simply not a “scare story”?Let’s look at some new information from the U.K.’s government-run system and see whether we can expect our...

NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD: New Delhi on Friday reacted to Pakistan's protest over the killing of one of its soldiers in cross-border gunbattle the previous day by asserting that Indian troops had resorted to "controlled response" in retaliation against unprovoked firing by Pakistani troops at Mendhar. With Pakistan persisting with its disdain towards the outrage in India over the beheading of its soldiers and tensions spiking, Indian troops were stepping up their "alertness levels" along the entire 778-km LoC. Indian Army threatened Pakistan with "dire consequences" if the latter refused to mend its barbaric ways. Indian high commissioner in Islamabad Sharat Sabarwal...

Hospitals are denying patients the latest life-extending cancer drugs, a report reveals. Dozens of trusts are failing to hand out treatments for bowel, ovarian, lung and brain cancer that have been approved by the NHS watchdog NICE. Some of these drugs have been shown to boost survival rates by a quarter while others have extended the lives of terminally-ill patients by over a year.

(CNSNews.com) – Europe’s highest court next week will hand down rulings in the cases of four British Christians who claim to have been discriminated in the workplace because of their religious beliefs. Two of the applicants, Nadia Eweida and Shirley Chaplin, said their rights were violated when employers barred them from wearing crosses visibly at work. They pointed to Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others...

Twisted Jimmy Savile carried out an 'unprecedented' 60 year long campaign of sexual abuse across Britain with up to 450 victims, including 34 who claim to have been raped, an official report revealed. Since the paedophile DJ died in October 2011 aged 84, a staggering 214 official crimes have been recorded by 28 police forces. Today's report into his abuse states Savile used his celebrity to 'hide in plain sight' while he targeted those as young as eight and sexually assaulted at least 23 on BBC premises, as well as in 14 hospitals, prisons and at least one hospice between...

Jimmy Savile spent "every waking minute" of his life thinking about abusing children, attacked patients in hospices and even used the final edition of the BBC's Top of the Pops to commit sex offences, police disclosed this morning. Commander Peter Spindler, head of the inquiry, said Savile had "groomed a nation" and preyed on 450 victims, aged between eight and 47, over a 54-year period. Almost a fifth of his victims were boys. A Metropolitan Police report giving the findings of Operation Yewtree, the investigation into Savile's offending launched after an ITV documentary exposed his paedophilia last year, says that...

LONDON (Reuters) - The military has changed its standard issue pistol to the Glock after using the Browning for more than 40 years, the Ministry of Defence said on Friday. It said it had awarded a 9 million pound contract to Austrian arms firm Glock for 25,000 guns because their pistol is lighter, carries more bullets and is more accurate than the U.S.-made Browning. "I have seen this pistol demonstrated in target ranges and am impressed that this new lighter, safer generation of pistol provides better value for money for the MoD," Defence Equipment Minister

Philip Gordon, the US assistant secretary responsible for European affairs, said that Britain´s membership of the EU was "in the American interest". His remarks came as David Cameron prepares to deliver a speech on Europe later this month. The Prime Minister is expected to promise to renegotiate Britain’s membership and then put the new terms to a referendum.[Snip] "Britain has been such a special partner of the United States--that shares our values, shares our interests, has significant resources to bring to the table. More than most others, its voice within the European Union is essential and critical to the

I've long been a decorative smoker. One daily roll-up hasn't imperilled my health much, and it's rescued me from the ranks of the self-righteous. I've relished the dash of badness, but my indulgence has come at a price: complicity. My more heavily addicted husband has smoked from the age of 19. So long as I join him in the odd postprandial drag, I'm a bad influence. Last month I switched to an e-cig. I'm a convert. Sleek, black, and easily confused with a fine-point felt-tip, this newfangled "nicotine delivery system" is dead cool. The gently warm vapour ingeniously replicates the...

A popular textbook used by institutions and teachers to teach English as a second language has been found to have a disturbing anti-Israel undertone. The textbook contains a map of the Middle East, labelling and identifying the countries displayed and presenting it as part of an exercise for a “Jordanian student at Greenhill College”. The map however, leaves off the label of “Israel”, instead replacing it with the words “Occupied Palestine”. The book, “Skills in English: Writing Level 1” is utilized by teachers across the United Kingdom and further afield. The Duke of Edinburgh ESU English Language Award judges called...

Elections have consequences. One of them is continuing US support for the European Project and the process of ‘ever closer union’, following Barack Obama’s re-election last November. Had Mitt Romney won, there would have been a very different approach towards the EU, with a far greater emphasis upon advancing ties with nation states in Europe as opposed to currying favour with Brussels. Romney’s approach was distinctly Eurosceptic, with frequent warnings against America ending up like Europe, with its big government, high tax approach. As David Blair has reported, Philip Gordon, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian...