Free Republic

The Supreme Court unanimously decided on Thursday to limit environmental reviews for major infrastructure projects in a case that will have sweeping impacts on President Donald Trump’s energy agenda. In a move that will restrict power of federal judges, Thursday’s decision reduces the scope of reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to focus solely on immediate impacts. Under NEPA, federal agencies are required to study any potentially significant environmental consequences of federal permits for infrastructure projects. “NEPA does not allow courts, ‘under the guise of judicial review’ of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects...

House Republicans brought the receipts to this week's "USAID Betrayal" hearing exposing the U.S. international aid agency's widespread waste and abuse of American tax dollars. Amid intense examination of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)'s spending spree, Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), a majority member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, listed off more ways USAID has wasted taxpayer money. [snip] According to the congressional committee's findings, USAID spent: $11.75 million on measuring the effectiveness of DEI promotion efforts in Nepal (Award ID #AID367C1500001); $750,000 on Princeton University's DEI survey in the Middle East (Award ID #7200AA21C00087); $859,000 on hiring...

House Republicans who have led a nearly two-year investigation into a $500,000 State Department grant to an organization that promotes humanism and secularism are pressing the agency to conduct more diligent oversight after it admitted that the organization may have misused taxpayer funds.Rep. Mike McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who heads the panel’s human rights subcommittee, have accused the State Department of trying to promote atheism overseas under the guise of advancing religious pluralism, a longtime U.S. foreign policy priority. Rep. Brian Mast, a Florida Republican who...

“It was a surprise to us,” said Roshan Pokhrel, Nepal’s secretary of the Ministry of Health and Population. “We really did not expect all the programs to stop.” He told DW that the phone call had come early this week, announcing an end to all US-funded programs in Nepal. “The programs in nutrition and in maternal health will certainly be affected. It’s definitely a worrying sign to us,” Pokhrel said. US President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending US development aid on his very first day in office. Funds have been frozen for 90 days while his administration reviews...

A strong earthquake shook a high-altitude region of western China and areas of Nepal on Tuesday, damaging hundreds of houses, littering streets with rubble and killing at least 95 people in Tibet. Many others were trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook the remote region. Rescue workers climbed mounds of broken bricks, some using ladders in heavily damaged villages, as they searched for survivors. Videos posted by China’s Ministry of Emergency Management showed two people being carried out on stretchers by workers treading over the uneven debris from collapsed homes. At least 130 people have been injured in the earthquake-hit area...

HOUSTON – Bail has been denied for a suspect accused of killing a 21-year-old student from Nepal who was studying nursing in Houston. Bobby Singh Shah is charged with capital murder. He was supposed to appear in probable cause court Thursday afternoon, but waived his appearance. The magistrate found probable cause in his case and his bail was denied. His next hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. next Tuesday. What happened? On Monday at around 5:45 p.m., the body of 21-year-old Muna Pandey was found lying in her bed with multiple gunshot wounds to her torso, according to court records....

Qionglin New Village sits deep in the Himalayas, just three miles from a region where a heavy military buildup and confrontations between Chinese and Indian troops have brought fears of a border war. The land was once an empty valley, more than 10,000 feet above the sea, traversed only by local hunters. Then Chinese officials built Qionglin, a village of cookie-cutter homes and finely paved roads, and paid people to move there from other settlements. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, calls such people “border guardians.” Qionglin’s villagers are essentially sentries on the front line of China’s claim to Arunachal Pradesh, India’s...

While general elections were held in Pakistan on February 8 amid allegations of fraud, Christians in the country continued suffering from severe persecution and braced themselves for a frightening future – having still been traumatized by last year’s anti-Christian pogrom.Hundreds of Christians fled their homes on August 16, 2013 when in the Pakistani district of Jaranwala, Muslim mobs launched an anti-Christian riot, vandalizing churches and committing arson against both churches and Christians’ homes — all based just on an accusation that a Quran was desecrated.At least 20 churches throughout the city were set on fire and more than 400 Christian-owned...

Real Americas Voice correspondent Ben Bergquam is currently in the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama, reporting on the international human smuggling operation coordinated by the cartels, globalists, and the Biden Regime. The Biden Regime is now granting asylum to illegal immigrants in South America and flying them by plane into the United States to arrive “as refugees who have already met the requirements and will be legally allowed to live and work in the U.S.,” according to the Associated Press. Bergquam shared a photo of a group he discovered on Tuesday night showing “over 50 men from Bangladesh, Sri...

The flight on 15 January, which involved an ATR 72, was the flight crew's third sector of the day, shuttling between Kathmandu and Pokhara. The pilots had likely put the condition levers, which control power, in the feathering position instead of selecting the flap lever... The report also listed a lack of appropriate technical and skill based training, high workload and stress, and non-compliance with standard operating procedures as contributing factors to the accident. It added that the aircraft had been properly maintained, had had no known defects and that the cockpit crew had been qualified in accordance with the...

According to a new Pew report, a growing number of U.S. adults admit to regularly getting their news on TikTok. “This,” notes the report, “is in contrast with many other social media sites, where news consumption has either declined or stayed about the same in recent years.”This should concern all readers who care about the United States. As this piece clearly demonstrates, TikTok is an incredibly dangerous app that is most likely being weaponized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). More specifically, it's being used by the CCP to further divide a country that is already dangerously divided.The Pew report...

NEW DELHI (Morning Star News) – As he awaits prison after a wrongful conviction for proselytizing, Pastor Keshab Raj Acharya fears his case will set a precedent for authorities in Nepal to incarcerate other Christians, he said. The 35-year-old pastor said he fears police and judiciary will cite his case as an example to send Christians to prison for either proselytizing or forcible conversion even without evidence. “In case someone wilfully converts to Christ, the police and the court will convict the person through whom this believer has heard the message of Christ and His salvation,” Pastor Acharya told Morning...

Democrats across Congress are calling on President Biden to allow Palestinians entry into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds as war drags on in Gaza. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., together with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Was., led a letter of 103 colleagues to the president asking him to grant the Palestinian territories Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and/or authorize Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for Palestinians already living in the U.S. The TPS program allows those from war-torn or crisis-wracked countries to legally live and work in the U.S., but does not give them permanent residency. It allows...

The Biden administration is funding a $4 million project to determine a connection between child labor and climate change in the South Asian country of Nepal. One of the desired outcomes is "increased understanding of the link between climate change and vulnerability to child labor and/or forced labor risks," while another is "increased implementation of child-centered, gender-sensitive and socially inclusive climate adaptation initiatives," according to documents released on the federal government's grant website. "Locally-led" climate change strategy, according to the grant details, should be collaborative with the Nepalese government to address the "priorities of climate-vulnerable populations, such as children, women,...

Since July 20, India has maintained an embargo on non-basmati rice amid the threat of El Niño weather disruptions.Neighbours Nepal and India are in a kitchen give and take. While India has started importing tomatoes from Nepal amid a record-high spike in prices in the country, Nepal has written to the Indian government to send rice and sugar. The first lot of tomato imports is likely to reach by Friday in Varanasi, Lucknow and Kanpur cities in northern India, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told the parliament in New Delhi, according to Reuters. Tomato prices have surged more than 1,400 percent...

A helicopter crash in Nepal, near Mount Everest, has left six people dead, according to Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority. File Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA-EFE July 11 (UPI) -- A helicopter crash in Nepal, near Mount Everest, has left six people dead. Five of the victims were Mexican citizens on a sightseeing tour, while the sixth was a Nepalese pilot. The passengers, who have been identified as Maria Jose Sifuentes, Fernando Sifuentes, Abric Gonzalez, Ismael Rincon and Olacio Luz Gonzalez, were all from the same family. The pilot was identified as Nepalese citizen Chet B. Gurung, according to the Civil Aviation...

According to USA Spending, a site that tracks how and where taxpayer dollars being spent, at least $2,315 worth of grants from the Biden State Department have gone to the Nepal Federation of Sexual and Gender Minorities between April 16, 2023 and this week. Never mind, apparently, that the United States is nearly $32,000,000,000,000 in debt and we're potentially days away from Biden bumbling his way into the first default in U.S. history. Nope, the Biden administration is still throwing taxpayer dollars at woke causes around the globe. The description of how the State Department grant funds — read: taxpayer...

The propellers of both engines of the Yeti Airlines aircraft that crashed in Nepal last month and killed 71 people, including five Indians, did not have power during its descent, a PTI report quoted government-appointed panel probing the aviation disaster as saying. During the analysis and investigation, the propellers of both engines were found to have gone “feathering in the base leg in the course of landing,” My Republica newspaper reported, quoting the panel. Yeti Airlines flight 691, after taking off from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport on January 15, crashed on the bank of the Seti River between the old...

Anju Khatiwada, 44, joined Nepal’s Yeti Airlines in 2010, following in the footsteps of her husband, Dipak Pokhrel, who was killed four years prior when the small passenger plane he was piloting for the air carrier crashed minutes before landing. On Sunday, Khatiwada was in the co-pilot’s chair on a Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu that went down into a gorge as it approached the city of Pokhara, in what was Nepal’s deadliest aviation disaster in three decades “She got her pilot training with the money she got from the insurance after her husband’s death,” Bartaula added. “On Sunday, she...

A group of five friends on holiday can be heard laughing on a Facebook live stream as the plane comes into land at an airport in Nepal. His phone kept broadcasting and captured the moment the plane crashed and was engulfed by fire. Footage shows him filming out of the window while one of his friends can be heard saying “it’s a lot of fun” as the rooftops of the city can be seen below. The landing seems routine until suddenly the screen turns orange and screams are heard as the cabin appears to shake. Sonu’s phone keep broadcasting as...