Free Republic

COLOMBO/LONDON (Reuters) - A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will meet Sri Lanka's president on Wednesday for talks to finalise a bailout package, including restructuring debt of about $29 billion, amid the nation's worst financial crisis in more than seven decades. The country's most severe financial crisis since independence from Britain in 1948 stemmed from the combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic mismanagement, stoking unprecedented protests. For months the population of 22 million has struggled with soaring inflation, economic contraction and a severe shortage of essential items of food, fuel and medicine caused by a record...

“We have the instruments to have safe travel,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “Let’s use those instruments to avoid this kind of, allow me to say, travel apartheid."As the world continued to grapple with how to respond to the new omicron variant Thursday, the sweeping travel bans imposed by many countries faced fresh criticism from global leaders. The scrutiny over the Covid- 19 restrictions came as the United States moves to slightly tighten its own international travel rules, after the first omicron case was detected in California and as South Africa, where the variant was first reported last week, saw...

Last week, the director of the United Nation's World Food Programme said if the world's top billionaires just donated a fraction of their worth, millions of people who are at risk of starving to death can be saved. Elon Musk, the second wealthiest person in the world, said he'd give up some of his wealth – only if he knows exactly where the money is going. Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX who has an estimated net worth of $151 billion, according to Forbes, replied to a tweet questioning the group's figures. "If WFP can describe on this Twitter...

“We will not cooperate, engage, fund, or assist the ICC in any way. This president will not allow American citizens to be prosecuted by foreign bureaucrats, and he will not allow other nations to dictate our means of self-defense U.S. national security advisor John Bolton condemned the International Criminal Court (ICC) “as a free-wheeling global organization claiming jurisdiction over individuals without their consent.” He announced in a major speech to the Federalist Society earlier this week that the Trump administration would consider strong steps to protect the American people if the ICC oversteps its bounds, such as imposing sanctions on...

Trump’s new administration are set to review US involvement in international treaties and agreements and could cut United Nations (UN) funding by 40 per cent – putting aid and peacekeeping operations across the world in jeopardy. Speaking on Newsnight, New York Times analyst Max Fisher said the White House is mulling over two executive orders which would see a massive reduction in US involvement with international partners on a range of issues. The order would mandate a 40 per cent cut in all US funding towards the United Nations, any UN agency, or any other international organisation which would amount...

As the United Nations becomes increasingly radical in its assaults on liberty and national sovereignty, the movement for free nations to leave the dictator-dominated UN has now officially arrived in Australia. Speaking on the floor of Parliament in his inaugural address, newly elected Senator Malcolm Roberts with the One Nation party said Australian values were under threat from “insidious” institutions such as the unelected UN. To deal with it, he called for an “OzExit.” In a passionate defense of freedom, Roberts also blasted privately owned central banks and the incestuous relationship between global mega-banks and Big Government. The tide is...

For Hillary Clinton, the UN remains a useful instrument to advance her “progressive internationalist” agenda Hillary Clinton is planning to hold “a number of bilateral meetings” during this week’s gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where climate change and the rights of migrants and refugees will top the agenda. Hillary loves the United Nations. She said while serving in the Senate, for example, that “a strong United Nations is in America’s interest.” As Secretary of State, she declared that the UN “remains the single most important global institution.” She added, “We are constantly...

American taxpayers will once again be liable for more than one-fifth of the United Nations' regular budget next year, as well as more than one-quarter of the much-larger peacekeeping budget - a total of approximately $2,957,000,000. The U.N. General Assembly just before Christmas approved a regular operating budget of $5.4 billion for the 2016-17 period. (That budget is calculated biannually.) Of the $2.7 billion earmarked for 2016, the U.S. will account for 22 percent, or $594 million. Of the separate peacekeeping budget - $8.27 billion for the year ending June 30 - the U.S. is liable for 28.5783 percent, or...

A UN-sponsored deal to evacuate more than 2,000 Islamic State (IS) group fighters and other militants from rebel-held parts of south Damascus has been delayed, a body that monitors the war said on Saturday, a day after a rebel leader was killed. Buses were due to transport the fighters to Raqqa, the de facto capital of the IS group in northern Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah’s Manar TV station said. But the deal fell through after the Jaysh al Islam rebel group’s leader Zahran Alloush, through whose territory the convoy had been granted safe passage, was killed in an air strike on...

Britain's Prince Charles has blamed climate change in part for the Syrian war and warned that global warming could exacerbate similar conflicts worldwide. Charles's comments — in an interview broadcast Monday — came exactly one week before the start of a United Nations climate change conference in Paris, where he plans to deliver a keynote address. Unless world leaders take action to slow the impact of climate change, "it’s going to get so much worse," Charles warned in the interview with Sky News, which was recorded before the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. "Some of us were saying 20...

John Kerry’s been babbling about some “international community” developing a united front against ISIL. Just what is this international community? Where is it? Who directs it? Who are the members? Community: noun; a group of associated nations sharing common interests or a common heritage. United Nations: noun: an international organization with headquarters in New York City, formed to promote international peace, security and cooperation under the terms of the charter signed by 51 founding countries in San Francisco in 1945

WARNING: Graphic pictures below… WHO stands for the World Health Organization. A recent glance on YouTube has uncovered a video provided by WHO giving step by step instructions for performing an abortion. WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends. The Reproductive Health Library is a division of the World Health Organization (WHO). This “library” contains an abortion video. In...

Humans have shrunk the habitats of many life forms, through unsustainable agriculture, fishing or hunting. And it is going to get even worse. Global warming is said to be threatening thousands of animal and plant species with extinction. That, at least, is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been predicting for years. But the UN climate body now says it is no longer so certain. The second part of the IPCC’s new assessment report is due to be presented next Monday in Yokohama, Japan. On the one hand, a classified draft of the report notes that a...

NIKE has pulled a pair of leggings after the design was criticized for being racist. The monochrome print, which features on the label's Pro Tattoo Tech Tights, has caused controversy in Australia and New Zealand for its similarity to the traditional Samoan Pe'a male tattoo.

Shame on the Interior Department for trying to drum a family-owned enterprise out of business. After a seaside area has been designated as wilderness, when is it considered pristine enough by Washington's standards? Is it after airplanes have been banned from flying over it? After electricity pylons and telephone cables have been removed, cars and bikers prohibited, the roads torn up? When hikers are forbidden access to trails, and kayakers, sailors and snorkelers banished from the water? When eucalyptus trees and other foreign species are eradicated? Or only after Miwok Indians' arrowheads have been excavated and placed in a museum?...

New legislation that jumps the death tax to 55 percent of estates exceeding $1 million threatens 526,421 family farms, of about 25 percent of all farms in America. ... Farm values are largely tied up in non-liquid assets like land, buildings, and livestock. Many farm and ranch families would be forced to sell their assets to satisfy Washington Democrats' insatiable appetite for tax money. Up to 24 percent of America's farm and ranch families could be forced to hand over a large chunk of their heritage to the Internal Revenue Service when a family member dies. This would economically devastate...

The NGO Major Group Organizing Partners have finalized their key document for the Rio+20 Summit. “TheFutureWeWant” outlines the common vision for “sustainable development” throughout the planet sought by those nongovernmental organizations - mostly social and environmental activist groups. There are many noble sentiments in its 283 statements. There also is much that raises serious concerns. “Sustainable,” “sustainability” and “sustainable development” appear in the text an astounding 390 times. Like “abracadabra,” these amorphous words are supposed to transform even corrupt societies into Gardens of Eden under United Nations auspices. They will use less, pollute less, be sustainable, get along and save...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Women tend to accept the scientific consensus on global warming more than men, according to a study by a Michigan State University researcher. The findings ('The effects of gender on climate change knowledge and concern in the American public', Population & Environment, 2010, Volume 32, Number 1, Pages 66-87), challenge common perceptions that men are more scientifically literate, said sociologist Aaron M. McCright. "Men still claim they have a better understanding of global warming than women, even though women's beliefs align much more closely with the scientific consensus," said McCright, an associate professor with appointments in...

Apparently Barack Obama is not content to make a federal case out of his immigration feud with Arizona; he just made it an international one.

Chairman of the United Nations' IPCC, Rajendra K. Pachauri a scientist from India, is being pressured to resign his position because he is accused of putting advocacy in front of the scientific method. His lack of scientific protocol has led to a loss of face for the global warming moonbat committee. The UN's latest report on climate change was mistaken when it said the Himalayan glaciers were melting, it was wrong when it said other mountain ranges were losing their snow tops, and it was wrong when it claimed that global warming was damaging the rain forests. They didn't even...