Free Republic

The figures are astonishing. There are more than 195,289 registered charities in the UK that raise and spend close to £80 billion a year. Together, they employ more than a million staff – more than our car, aerospace and chemical sectors – and make 13 billion ‘asks’ for money every year, the equivalent of 200 for each of us in the UK. But many charities have become hungry monsters, needing ever more of our money to feed their own ambitions. And while registered charities claim that almost 90p in every pound donated is spent on ‘charitable activities’, many spend at...

G20 leaders reveal global growth plan to boost GDP by $2 trillion The Associated Press Published Saturday, November 15, 2014 9:00PM EST Last Updated Sunday, November 16, 2014 1:45AM EST BRISBANE, Australia -- Leaders of the G20 nations finalized a plan Sunday to boost global GDP by more than $2 trillion over five years by investing in infrastructure and increasing trade. The communique issued at the conclusion of their summit in Brisbane, Australia says the leaders plan to jumpstart growth, in part, by creating a global infrastructure hub. The plan will purportedly help match potential investors with projects, and also...

Jihadi John, the Briton who beheaded two British and two American hostages held by Islamic State terrorists, has been injured in a US-led air strike, according to reports received by the Foreign Office. The masked ‘executioner’ with a London accent is believed to have narrowly escaped death when he attended a summit of the group’s leaders in an Iraqi town close to the Syrian border last Saturday. The meeting was targeted by American and Iraqi jets.

The G20 thread got me thinking of this from earlier i the year... Prime Minister of Canada spoke in favour of building a monument in Canada to remember the victims of communism. "100 million died because of it"...read here

Remember the global financial crisis, triggered six years ago when billions of dollars of dodgy loans - doled out by banks to subprime borrowers and then resold numerous times on international debt markets - began to unravel and default? Stock markets plunged, banks collapsed and the entire global financial system teetered on the brink of catastrophe. Well a similarly chilling economic scenario could be set off by the current collapse in oil prices. Based on recent stress tests of subprime borrowers in the energy sector in the US produced by Deutsche Bank, should the price of US crude fall by...

Glenn Reynolds refers to this as “smart diplomacy – the real thing,” but it’s based on the very dumb diplomacy rolled out by Vladimir Putin over the past year. Brisbane, Australia hosts the G-20 meeting this week, and Putin decided to make a point by sending a war flotilla of the Russian navy to the waters north of Australia, in order to make the point that, er … he’s a reasonable guy, or something: But it was clear that Putin’s actions over the past few days were top of mind for the leaders.Abbott lashed out at the Russian leader...

FULL TITLE: EXCLUSIVE: Got him! Jihadi John is 'wounded in US airstrike on secret bunker meeting of ISIS high command' Jihadi John, the Briton who beheaded two British and two American hostages held by Islamic State terrorists, has been injured in a US-led air strike, according to reports received by the Foreign Office. The masked ‘executioner’ with a London accent is believed to have narrowly escaped death when he attended a summit of the group’s leaders in an Iraqi town close to the Syrian border last Saturday. The meeting was targeted by American and Iraqi jets.

Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to leave the G20 summit early after Western leaders lambasted him Saturday over the crisis in Ukraine and threatened further sanctions. “I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I have only one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told Putin, according to his spokesman Jason MacDonald, Reuters reports. President Barack Obama said the United States was at the forefront of “opposing Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which is a threat to the world, as we saw in the appalling shoot-down of MH17.” German Chancellor Angela...

Several commentators pointed out that the "Malaysia" logo on the plane from the photograph was in the wrong place. Maksim Kats, a Russian blogger, said the plane in the picture looked like a slightly altered version of the one that tops the search results if you Google "Boeing view from above" in Russian. It also happens to be a publicity photo of a Boeing 767, not a 777, which was shot down over Ukraine in July. Others noted that the fighter jet looked different from an Su-25 - the type which the Russian media had consistently claimed shot down MH17....

David Cameron has warned Russia it will face more sanctions if it continues to support the separatists in Ukraine's civil war. Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Cameron said: "If Russia continues to destabilise Ukraine, and we continue to see Russian troops and Russian tanks inside Ukraine, then there's going to have to be a very different relationship with Britain and Europe on the one hand, and Russia on the other, and potential for further sanctions." Mr Cameron also suggested in a separate interview that he does not trust Vladimir Putin, and said he was saddened that Mr Putin...

Yesterday, mankind achieved something seriously amazing: we landed a space probe on a comet millions of miles away from Earth. Unfortunately for the scientists involved in this momentous accomplishment, modern day “feminists” exist. One of the scientists was wearing a shirt covered in sketches of of scantily clad women. Not actual photos of women, but sketched images of pin ups in skivvies. So this chick from The Atlantic does what “feminists” do when encountering the inane: she lost her damn mind. Naturally, this scientist’s wardrobe selection means women are not welcome to participate in scientific oriented fields…

Stephen Harper had a showdown with Vladimir Putin on Saturday, telling the Russian leader to “get out of Ukraine” in a dust-up at the Group of 20 summit in Australia. Harper’s spokesman, Jason MacDonald, said the prime minister was speaking to a group of G20 leaders at a private leaders’ retreat on Saturday morning when Putin approached and extended his hand. MacDonald said Harper told Putin: “I guess I’ll shake your hand but I have only one thing to say to you: You need to get out of Ukraine.” According to MacDonald, Putin did not respond positively. He didn’t provide...

Matt Taylor, who's a great scientist and seems to also be a pretty cool dude, gave a teary, heartfelt apology for his choice of attire on the day of Rosetta's probe landing. "I made a big mistake, and I offended many people," Taylor said at Friday's media briefing, his voice trembling, "and I'm very sorry about this." With that, the briefing moved onto the science (as it should -- Philae's days are numbered, and we want to find out as much as we can from the little probe that could). Taylor seemed to have trouble speaking for a few minutes,...

The “root cause” of terrorism is not poverty, marginalization or Western nations’ foreign policy, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday, but an “extremist narrative” that must be confronted. Addressing the Australian federal parliament in Canberra, Cameron announced new measures that are being put in place in Britain to prevent jihadists from returning to the country from Middle East conflict zones and to stop suspected foreign fighters from leaving in the first place. He contested the argument that issues like poverty and deprivation, or unhappiness with foreign policy, are fueling Islamist terrorism. …

David Cameron has compared Russia to Nazi Germany because of its actions in Ukraine on the eve of a tense meeting with Vladimir Putin. Mr Cameron will on Saturday night challenge Mr Putin about Russia’s continued acts of aggression in Ukraine as it supplies heavy weapons and tanks to the separatists. In a reference to World War II, Mr Cameron said that the world must “learn the lessons of history” and intervene to stop “a larger state bullying a smaller state”. He said: "Russian action in Ukraine is unacceptable. We have to be clear about what we are dealing with....

Unfortunately I'll have to skip tomorrow's London Forum meeting. But I wish to write about the topic of one of the announced speeches, by Richard Edmonds: "Bad Nenndorf – a Nuremberg Trial for Allied War Criminals". The subject is described as "the tragedy of Bad Nenndorf where in the aftermath of WWII British torturers, many of them later emigrating to Israel, killed dozens of National Socialist sympathisers including girls belonging to the BDSM." Richard Edmonds is a British nationalist who is capable of criticising his country when necessary, who rightly doesn't believe that patriotism means defending the indefensible. I'd never...

Dr Matt Taylor, the British scientist involved in the Rosetta mission, cries as he makes an apology for wearing an ‘offensive’ shirt.

The European Central Bank on Thursday (6 November) formally made public a letter showing that the eurozone bank threatened to pull emergency bank funding if Ireland did not enter a bailout and undertake austerity measures in 2010. The letter, signed by the then-ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet, speaks of “great concern” about the solvency of Irish lenders—which had loaned heavily to the overheated construction sector—and the extent to which the whole eurosystem was exposed. It then says that the ECB would cut off emergency funding to Irish banks unless Ireland meets four conditions, including getting a bailout and undertaking “fiscal consolidation,...

The world's biggest Internet-retailer Amazon is going to start testing air drones for delivery of parcels in Britain. Two years after buying the Cambridge startup Evi Technologies, the company turned to looking for engineers and experts who can help with the tests, the Business Insider reported. It is likely that the military specialists will be involved in the tests. The drones will be flying over Cambridge. The date of the start is not yet announced. The project named Prime Air in future will allow the customers to receive their parcels within 30 minutes after the order confirmation. The Amazon drones...

A group of young Muslims have been videoed launching rocket fireworks at police in Bow, East London. The video was distributed on Facebook by members of the public that were concerned it did not appear in the mainstream media.