Free Republic

During recent exercises by the French navy aimed at monitoring the country's underwater resources, a crew detected an abnormally large feature on the seafloor near Saint-Tropez. "The sonar detected something quite big, so we went back with the device's camera, then again with an underwater robot to snap high-quality images," said Arnaud Schaumasse, head of the French Ministry of Culture's underwater archaeology department. The AFP reports that an investigative marine team subsequently located the site of a well-preserved shipwreck, dubbed "Camarat 4," lying 1.5 miles beneath the surface -- the deepest wreck ever recorded in French waters. Researchers believe the...

Balestrino, LiguriaOf all the ghost towns in Italy Balestrino is probably the most mysterious one. It is not quite certain when the town was founded, nor exactly what happened and why it is was abandoned. However, one of the earth quakes that struck the region in 1887 coincides with a drop in population, so that may be a plausible explanation. Before the earthquake that the population amounted to 800-850 inhabitants, mainly farmers. In 1953 the town was completely abandoned due to 'geological instabilility'. The remaining inhabitants (about 400) were moved to a safer area to the west of the...

The northern region of Liguria on Tuesday announced plans to ban the Islamic face veil from hospitals and other public institutions, in a bid to “defend women’s freedom”. Regional president Giovanni Toti, of the Forza Italia party, described the burqa as “the worst symbol of the oppression of women”. He defended the ban against accusations that it is discriminatory and possibly anti-constitutional. “Those who live in Italy need to grasp and respect at least the minimum rules of equality between men and women,” said Toti, who proposed the measure together with Liguria’s health councillor, Sonia Viale of the far-right Northern...

because there were no qurans or books about Islam on the shelves In Busalla, a small town of 5,700 inhabitants, in the province of Genes, in Liguria, a 24-year-old Senegalese Muslim man went to the town’s public library looking for the Quran and books about Islamic culture but found none. So he went mad and started beating up the two staff members, a 43-year-old woman and a 64-year-old man. Then he ransacked the library, knocking over shelves and throwing down all the books, while shouting “ALLAHU AKHBAR!” (Senegalese Muslims are among the hordes of North African boat people who keep...