"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths." Northwoods is a ministry dedicated to refreshing Christians and challenging them to search for the truth in Christianity, politics, sociology, and science
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"
Father God, thank you for the love of the truth you have given me. Please bless me with the wisdom, knowledge and discernment needed to always present the truth in an attitude of grace and love. Use this blog and Northwoods Ministries for your glory. Help us all to read and to study Your Word without preconceived notions, but rather, let scripture interpret scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All praise to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Please note: All my writings and comments appear in bold italics in this colour
Singapore introduced new penalties for vaping, including increased fines and caning. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo
Aug. 28 (UPI) --Singapore on Thursday introduced higher fees and the threat of caning as punishments for vaping in an effort to crack down on the use of drug-laced vapes.
The increased penalties will take effect on Sept. 1, the same day that Singapore will classify 15 etomidate -- an anaesthetic agent found in Kpods, or vapes laced with drugs -- will be reclassified as a Class C drugs.
The new penalties will increase fines for people younger than 18 caught using non-drug-laced vapes for the first time from about $233 to roughly $389, while fines for people older than 18 will increase from about $389 to approximately $545.
A second offense will carry a penalty of three months in rehab, with the threat of prosecution for failing to attend, while a third offense will result in prosecution and potential fine of up to about $1,559.
The Ministry of Health and of Home Affairs said the new penalties will include caning, fines starting at $300 for people younger than 18 and $500 older than 18, alongside longer jail terms if caught vaping and required rehabilitation.
Kpod users face the same penalties, along with the potential to be prosecuted and fined up to nearly $7,800 a two-year jail sentence or both.
Drug-laced vape suppliers will face up to 15 strokes of the cane and 20 years in jail.
Foreigners and tourists will also face the same penalties, but may also be deported from the country.
Singapore initially banned vaping in 2018, but is introducing the new penalties to combat the rising use of Kpods.
"Vapes have become a gateway for very serious substance abuse," said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung when he introduced the new laws.
FILE - An Australian man has been ordered to reimburse an airline AUS$8,630 (C$7,870) in fuel costs after his unruly behaviour on a 2023 flight forced pilots to dump fuel and return the plane to its starting point. Andrew Hanlon via Getty Images
An Australian man is on the hook for thousands of dollars after his poor behaviour on a plane required a domestic flight to dump fuel and return to its starting point.
In what Australian officials hope will serve as a warning to other potentially unruly travellers, the unnamed man has been ordered to pay more than AUS$8,630 (C$7,870) in reparation fuel costs to the airline.
Australian Federal Police on Monday said the 33-year-old traveller has also been fined an additional AUS$9,000 (C$8,200) by Perth Magistrates Court.
Aus$17,630! Ouch! That bites.
Officials did not specify what kind of unruly behaviour caused the September 2023 flight from Perth to Sydney to turn around. When the plane landed again in Perth, the flight was cancelled.
The man was charged with disorderly behaviour on an aircraft and failure to comply with safety instructions. He pleaded guilty to both charges last week.
Acting Supt. Shona Davis of the Australian Federal Police said the incident “should serve as a warning that criminal behaviour on board can come at a heavy cost to the offender.”
“It’s far simpler to obey the directions of airline staff than cause unnecessary issues, which can end up hitting you in the hip pocket,” she warned. “The AFP is committed to ensuring all travellers have a safe journey from their departure through to their arrival at their destination.”
Other passengers onboard the rerouted plane were re-accommodated on a later flight.
In June of last year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported a rise in poor passenger behaviour on commercial flights.
The association said data from 2022 showed there was one unruly incident reported for every 568 flights that year. The most common issues included non-compliance, verbal abuse and intoxication.
The Australian man is not the only person to face a high fine for acting out on an airplane.
In 2023, an Arizona court ordered an American Airlines passenger to pay US$40,823 (about C$55,400) after the traveller illegally brought their own alcohol onboard, attempted to smoke marijuana in the plane’s lavatory and sexually assaulted a flight attendant.
*Was Macron's timing a stroke of genius, or lunacy?
French conservatives in turmoil as leader
backs Le Pen alliance for snap elections
The leader of France's main right-wing party on Tuesday said he backed an alliance with the far right of Marine Le Pen in snap legislative elections, triggering a crisis within his own party and fury from the government.
The stunning announcement by the Republicans (LR) leader Eric Ciotti in a lunchtime television interview is the first time in modern French political history that a leader of a traditional party has backed an alliance with the far-right National Rally (RN).
President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday called the elections on June 30, with a second round on July 7, in a major gamble after the RN scored more than double the number of votes of his centrist alliance in the EU elections.
With less than three weeks to go before the first round, Macron is facing opposition alliances crystallising on the left and right amid warnings that his bet could backfire.
A Harris Interactive-Toluna poll published on Monday suggested just 19 percent of people would back him, compared to 34 percent for the far-right National Rally.
But in an interview, he ruled out resigning after the poll.
The forthcoming ballot has set alarm bells ringing across Europe, as it risks hobbling France – historically a key player in brokering compromise in Brussels and support for Ukraine against Russian invasion.
"We need to have an alliance while remaining ourselves... an alliance with the RN and its candidates," Ciotti told TF1 television, adding that he had already held discussions with Le Pen, a three-time presidential candidate, and RN party leader Jordan Bardella.
"We say the same things so let's stop making up imagined opposition," Ciotti added. "This is what the vast majority of our voters want. They tell us 'reach a deal'."
Le Pen praised "the courageous choice" and "sense of responsibility" of Ciotti, saying she hoped that a significant number of LR figures would follow him.
She hailed the move as a historic break with the traditional right's refusal to work with the far right in France.
Bardella later told France 2 television that his party would be supporting "dozens" of LR candidates for seats.
"Forty years of a pseudo sanitary cordon – which caused many elections to be lost – is disappearing," Le Pen, now head of RN deputies in the lower house National Assembly, told AFP.
But Ciotti's move, which he said was aimed at creating a "significant" group in the new National Assembly after the elections, risks tearing apart his own party.
"A political party is not just one person," said the head of the Republicans in the upper house Senate, Bruno Retailleau.
The LR speaker of the Senate, Gerard Larcher, a heavyweight figure, said he would "never swallow" an agreement with the RN and urged Ciotti to resign.
*Larcher and his ilk are trying to bask in the shadow of de Gaulle even while that France no longer exists. And, if they don't get their act together soon, there will be no possibility of it ever existing again.
"Eric Ciotti is only speaking for himself. He must leave the presidency of the Republicans," added the head of the Republicans in the National Assembly, Olivier Marleix.
*French conservatives on Wednesday said they had removed their leader Eric Ciotti for trying to strike an electoral alliance with the far-right National Rally (RN), although he insisted he was still in the post.
Issued on: 12/06/2024 - 17:02, Modified: 12/06/2024 - 17:41
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, a past defector from the LR to Macron's alliance, described the move as a "dishonour to the Gaullist family" and compared it to the Munich accords with Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II.
Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, another transfuge from LR, called on Macron's Renaissance party to “make room” in its ranks for those conservatives who refuse to cooperate with the far right at the election.
And France's divided left-wing parties pledged to nominate joint candidates, but were yet to strike a formal deal, adding to uncertainty over the outcome of the June 30 and July 7 votes.
'Right decision'
Macron's office delayed until Wednesday a major press conference initially slated for Tuesday afternoon, while insisting that the nationwide vote would put a choice before the French people of "Republican forces on one side and extremist forces on the other".
Macron told Figaro Magazine he ruled out resigning, "whatever the result" of snap elections.
The French president scoffed at a question about whether he was "crazy" to dissolve parliament and call for elections at such short notice.
"I am only thinking of France. It was the right decision, in the interest of the country," he said, adding that he was prepared to debate head to head with Le Pen.
With just 19 days until the first round on June 30 – the shortest campaign since France's Fifth Republic was founded in 1958 – Macron's task to shore up support for his centrist camp is formidable, according to polls.
In a primetime interview with TF1 on Tuesday, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said he would lead the ruling party's campaign, listing "health, schools, purchasing power and the environment" among its priorities.
Attal, who reportedly warned against calling the election, earlier told party MPs he would "do everything to avoid" a victory for Le Pen, his office said.
This election "has more dramatic and historic stakes than that of 2022" because "the extreme right is at the gates of power", he added.
The European Union Court of Justice Thursday fined Hungary over $215 million dollars plus a penalty of more than $1 million a day for violating EU immigration and asylum law. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called the penalties outrageous and unacceptable. File photo by Szilard Koszticsak/ EPA-EFE
June 13 (UPI) --The European Union's Court of Justice Thursday fined Hungary for violating EU migration and asylum law.
The court ordered Hungary to pay a fine of more than $215 million dollars plus a penalty payment of $1.07 million a day, saying it failed to comply with a court judgment.
"That failure concerned restricting access to the international protection procedure, unlawfully detaining applicants for international protection in transit zones and failing to observe their right to remain in Hungarian territory pending a final decision on their appeal against the rejection of their application, as well as the removal of illegally staying third-country nationals,"the court said.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban reacted to the fine in a post on X, calling the decision "outrageous and unacceptable" while framing Hungary's actions as "defending the borders of the European Union."
"It seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens," he wrote.
The ECJ held that Hungary did not take measures to comply with a 2020 ruling regarding migrant access to the EU's international protection procedure.
The court said migrants applying for asylum in Hungary had the legal right to stay in Hungary "pending a final decision on their appeal against the rejection of their application and the removal of illegally staying third-country nationals."
The ECJ said Hungary deliberately disregarded "the principle of sincere cooperation, is deliberately evading the application of the EU common policy on international protection as a whole and the rules relating to the removal of illegally staying third-country nationals."
The court said those actions by Hungary constituted a serious threat to the unity of EU law.
*And the EU law constitutes a serious threat to the integrity of Hungary as country.
Hungary's failure to comply with the law, the court said, impacts other EU member states because it has the effect of transferring Hungary's responsibilities to other member states.
*Those responsibilities were never agreed to by Hungary, they are the EU's responsibilities, and they are incredibly stupid policies which will guarantee the Islamization of Europe.
U.K. Novichok poisoning inquest should be public inquiry, coroner says
Inquiry would allow coroner to examine Russia's possible involvement in death of Dawn Sturgess
The Associated Press ·
Posted: Sep 22, 2021 4:30 PM ET
Police stand near Salisbury, Britain, home of Dawn Sturgess in July 2018. Sturgess died after being exposed to the nerve agent Novichok. The coroner presiding over the inquest into her death wants to examine Russia's possible involvement. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)
A coroner presiding over an inquest into the death of British woman poisoned by a Soviet-developed nerve agent after a similar attack targeting a Russian ex-spy said Wednesday that she wants the probe to be turned into a public inquiry so she can examine Russia's possible involvement.
Unlike an inquest, British law allows a public inquiry to consider sensitive intelligence material during partly closed hearings. The inquiry that coroner Heather Hallett requested in order to consider any role played by the Russian government in the 2018 death of Dawn Sturgess would be unlikely to start before 2023.
Sturgess, 44, and her partner collapsed in the southwest England town of Amesbury after coming into contact with a small perfume bottle containing Novichok, a military grade nerve agent.
The pair were exposed three months after Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were sickened in a Novichok attack in the nearby city of Salisbury.
Adam Straw, a lawyer representing Sturgess' family and her partner, Charlie Rowley, said the "overriding concern is to ensure the truth of how Ms. Sturgess died is established."
A photo made available by London police shows Sturgess, 44, who died in 2018 after being exposed to Novichok. (EPA-EFE)
"No family should wait five and a half years to find out how someone died," he said.
Britain's government on Tuesday named and charged a third Russian suspect in the Novichok poisonings.
It alleges that three men working for Russia's military intelligence service travelled to the U.K. for a mission targeting the Skripals before flying back to Moscow. Russia vehemently denies the allegations.
Rowley told authorities he found the perfume bottle containing traces of the nerve agent in a trash bin.
Since all three Russian suspects returned immediately to Russia, it begs the absurd question, 'how often are garbage bins emptied in Amesbury?'
Britain has acknowledged that extradition requests for the three suspects would be futile and they cannot be brought to trial as long as they remain in Russia. While there is almost no chance of a criminal trial, lawyers believe a public inquiry is the best way to find out what happened.
The Skripals became seriously ill after Novichok was smeared on Sergei Skripal's door handle in March 2018, but the father and daughter survived.
Sturgess died in July that year after she and Rowley came into contact with the discarded perfume bottle the month before. Rowley later recovered.
Police said they could not account for the whereabouts of the perfume bottle between the attack on the Skripals and when Rowley said he found it three months later.
Cathryn McGahey, a lawyer representing the British government, said she hoped authorities will make a decision about the public hearing by the end of the year.
Porton Down is a microbiology lab that happens to be equidistant from Amesbury and Salisbury
I'm sure that's a coincidence!
Brussels begins infringement proceedings against Austria and other
states for failing to implement EU rules on combating terrorism
24 Sep, 2021 12:42
European Union flag in Brussels
The European Commission announced that it has launched infringement procedures against Austria, as well as Finland, Croatia and Luxembourg for failing to correctly implement certain elements of EU rules on combating terrorism.
On Thursday, the bloc’s executive body announced that it was sending a letter of formal notice to Vienna, remarking that it now has two months to respond to arguments put forward by Brussels. If there is no response, the Commission may send a “reasoned opinion”.
Oh my gosh, no! Not a reasoned opinion!
Aside from Austria, the EU said that it will be sending formal notices also to Croatia, Luxembourg and Finland for their failure to adopt the union’s terrorism measures.
Under the EU directive, there are regulations that criminalize and sanction terrorist training, going overseas for terrorism, as well as returning to or traveling across the bloc to commit offences.
The rules in place also have provisions for victims, such as making sure people affected receive professional and specialist support and reliable information, both in the wake of incidents and in the long term if needed.
Austrian Social Democrats security spokesman Reinhold Einwallner called for Interior Minister Karl Nehammer and Justice Minister Alma Zadić “to explain how this government failure could occur”, slamming the lack of action in a statement.
“The Austrian population deserves the highest protection of terrorism”, Einwallner remarked, calling it a scandal that Vienna “has been failing to implement the EU-directive since 2017.”
The central European country’s capital was rocked by a terrorist attack on November 2, 2020, when a shooting broke out outside of the city’s main synagogue, which then spread to other locations. The attack claimed four victims and left over 20 injured.
In the wake of the attack, the Austrian Interior Ministry confirmed reports that the gunman had met with a group of fellow jihadists from Switzerland and Germany in Vienna several months prior. Nehammer also admitted that Austrian officials had made “intolerable mistakes” and had failed to act on information from Slovakia about suspects trying to buy ammunition there in the summer.
Poland must pay €500,000 daily for ignoring
top EU court’s ruling on Turow mine
Is EU's overreaction being pushed by the 'Climate Change' hysteria crowd?
20 Sep, 2021 15:25 / Updated 1 day ago
The Polish coal-fired power plant Turow is seen from a hill near Vitkov village in the Czech Republic
Poland must pay a daily penalty of €500,000 ($585,550) for ignoring a previous order from the European Union’s top court to cease operations at the Turow lignite mine, with its CEO slamming the fine as “bizarre”.
On Monday, the EU’s Court of Justice (CJEU) confirmed it was enforcing the financial penalty against Warsaw, stating that Poland must pay the European Commission the daily half-million euro fine until it sees compliance with the earlier order.
Judges from the Luxembourg-based court said that the fine is “necessary… to deter that member state from delaying bringing its conduct into line with that order.”
Wojciech Dabrowski, the CEO of the company that operates the mine, Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE), said that the court’s decision to impose fines was “bizarre” and that the firm does not agree with the action taken. The Polish government has also vowed that the mine's operations will continue despite the ruling.
The Czech Republic took legal action against Poland in February over activities at the mine, which also sits close to the German border, claiming that it spoiled its citizens’ drinking water.After Warsaw failed to obey the court orders in May to “immediately cease lignite extraction activities at the mine”, Prague asked the court to fine Poland €5 million per day.
Poland’s PM Mateusz Morawiecki criticized the May ruling, calling it “very dangerous” for the central European country’s energy security and for the 5,000 people employed at the mine.
Unlike neighboring Germany, Poland is still heavily reliant on coal as a major source of power, accounting for around 70% of its total energy production. In 2018, the mine at the centre of the legal action produced some 6.5 million tons of the brown coal, lignite.
If the EU was a genuine union for the betterment of all, it would find a better way to deal with this issue. A big stick is not what unions are about, or shouldn't be. There must be some carrots they can throw around such as assisting Poland to switch to better sources of power.
The EU lied, refugees died: Belarus’ deadly game treats desperate
people as pawns. But the West sees them as something even worse
By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian at Koç University in Istanbul working on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
Just a few days ago, four migrants died of exhaustion and hypothermia while trying to cross the border between Poland and Belarus. Nobody knows how many others have perished in this same way, dreaming of a new life in the West.
The would-be asylum seekers have unwittingly become pawns in a wider geopolitical game. EU states, which stand accused of turning back desperate people along the frontier, have alleged that the Belarusian government has laid on flights to troubled destinations such as Iraq and Afghanistan and is now ‘weaponizing’ refugees to create a border crisis for Brussels. The lives at stake, however, have received little sympathy.
At around the same time as the bodies of the four people who had dreamed they would be welcome in Poland were found, the country’s president, Andrzej Duda, gave an address to the UN General Assembly in New York. The contrast is stunning.
Duda made a special point of lecturing his global audience on the merits of “solidarity,” and was clearly trying to cash in rhetorically on the name of the Polish trade union movement that resisted Communism in the 1980s. And not just any solidarity, but that between the wealthy global “North” and the neglected “South.” Tying himself into a bit of a geographical pretzel, Duda even claimed that the “North” had let down Ukraine – apparently now part of the “South,” if you ignore its location, economy, and massive privileges of Western support – over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that Polish conservatives can’t stop bemoaning.
And also at the same time, actual people from the real Global South were being systematically abused in a deadly game of chicken between Belarus’ embattled autocrat, Alexander Lukashenko, and Polish nationalist populists. The essence of the row is simple: Lukashenko, unhappy over EU pressure on his domestic crackdown on the opposition and increasingly repressive rule, is trying to use migrants to deliver payback by encouraging or compelling them to cross the border into the EU – that is, Poland, as well as Lithuania and Latvia.
The countries he has reportedly targeted in this manner have responded by locking down their frontiers with fences and troops and by, declaring states of emergency. Lithuania and Latvia did so first. Poland followed at the beginning of September, severely restricting the media and the civil rights of its own population in the significant area bordering on Belarus.
This is a clear over-reaction that contradicts the spirit and the letter of Polish law, which reserves a state of emergency for – unsurprisingly – emergencies. That is, situations that pose far greater challenges and cannot be dealt with by ordinary means.
The Polish measures, undertaken by a government with a well-deserved reputation for repeatedly undermining democracy and the rule of law, reek of panic-mongering and nationalist populism. They have come with the rhetorical cover you would expect: Lukashenko’s dirty tricks are denounced as a “hybrid war,” thereby invoking the dire necessities of wartime in a situation that has nothing to do with it. Here, Polish conservatives follow in the footsteps of the US, with its dishonest “wars” on drugs and on terror.
And, just as in the American case, one big lie requires more to be added to it: Polish government members have indulged in hyperbole, presenting their intransigence towards the migrants as protecting all of the EU from a non-existent great migration crisis (and, as if in passing, darkly warning of the also non-existent dangers emanating from pre-scheduled and transparent Russian-Belarusian military maneuvers).
Really, non-existent migration crisis? Only because the doors are slamming shut on them.
In reality, the Polish state of emergency has made it easy for the authorities to impede the work of those Poles who do care for refugees, restricting the access of not only the media but also activists and NGOs, such as the Ocalenie Foundation, which are trying to help them. In particular, a group of 32 refugees from Afghanistan who have been stranded in inhospitable terrain and under very harsh conditions near the village of Usnarz Górny, between Poland and Belarus, for more than 44 days, and counting. According to the foundation, which has managed to stay in touch with the group despite its deliberate isolation by the state of emergency, their plight is now “dramatic.” They are surrounded by barbed wire on all sides, weak with hunger, cold, and in despair. At the same time, Polish border guards have repeatedly prevented doctors and UN representatives from reaching them.
Poland’s president, Duda, meanwhile, has used the same speech in which he held forth on “solidarity” to insist that his country will stand firm and not give in to what he called Belarus’ “instrumentalizing of migrants” and the “use of their difficult situation” to endanger the safety of the Polish border.
Perhaps rankled by some, far too reticent, criticism of his country’s brutal course, or perhaps aware that the UN presents a very different audience from the one he faces at home, Duda was clearly trying to signal at least some recognition of the migrants’ suffering. Yet words are cheap. In reality, there is a glaring contradiction that makes his talk hypocritical: It is impossible to both stay firm – that is, to continue Poland’s current policy – and to do justice to the humanity of the victims of both Lukashenko’s strategy and Poland’s response.
Poland is, of course, by no means alone in betting on deterrence by brutality. The US has done so for a long time, and the current scandal over the treatment of Haitian migrants stranded in the small Texan border town of Del Rio shows, once again, that this attitude is bipartisan: Despite his promises to do better, when the going gets tough, President Biden uses the tools of his predecessor Donald Trump, even if both the Democrats and the opposing Republicans pretend otherwise, for obvious if different reasons.
The EU as a whole has a nasty record of abusing migrants and letting them die, rather than letting them in. This year alone, for instance, almost 1,400 migrants have already lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean, continuing a steady trend that reached a peak in 2016, with 3,557 estimated deaths. After a history of scandals over harsh camps, Greece has just opened a facility that critics describe as akin to a prison.
In that sad sense, both Poland and Belarus, one inside and the other outside the EU, turn out to be really very European: ruthless and bereft of compassion. For the migrants lost between them, exhaustion and hypothermia were the immediate causes of death, yet politics is the fundamental one. And these lethal politics are produced by both governments together. The last thing a Polish president should dare to speak about right now is solidarity.
52% of Germans won’t miss Chancellor Angela Merkel,
new poll indicates a day before general election
25 Sep, 2021 09:42
German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a campaign event in Munich, September 24, 2021.
As her long service as chancellor comes to an end, more than half of all Germans will not be missing Angela Merkel, a new poll has shown. The country’s new leader will be determined on Sunday.
In a poll of 5,007 people conducted by Civey for the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper between September 22 and 24, respondents were asked if they would miss Merkel after her chancellorship ended.
The majority (52%) said they would not miss the veteran politician, who has continuously governed Germany since 2005. Just 38% said they would miss Merkel, while the rest were undecided.
Merkel, Germany’s second-longest-serving chancellor since World War II, will step down after this Sunday’s general election. The state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, is tapped to succeed her as chancellor if the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) draws enough votes.
The CDU’s main rivals are the Social Democratic Party, led by Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the Greens, whose chief candidate is Annalena Baerbock, the party’s co-leader.
