Uprooted tree leads Dutch police to major cocaine lab

Yahoo – AFP, June 6, 2019

Clean-up workers removing a tree uprooted by a storm noticed a chemical smell and
"suspicious" men walking about a nearby farmer's shed (AFP Photo/EMMANUEL DUNAND)

The Hague (AFP) - A tree uprooted during a storm in the Netherlands has led to the discovery of one of the largest cocaine laboratories in the country, police said on Thursday.

Clean-up workers were removing the tree after the storm early Thursday when they noticed a chemical smell and "suspicious" men walking about a nearby farmer's shed in the southern Dutch village of Oud-Vossenmeer.

"Police were called and agents discovered the laboratory in the shed," a police statement said, adding it was "one of the largest discovered to date in the country."

Police declined to say how much cocaine was found, but admitted taking the laboratory apart will take "several days."

No arrests were made, with the suspects having fled.

Record quantities of increasingly pure cocaine are being seized by European authorities, the EU drugs agency said in a report published on Thursday.

EU member states seized 140 tonnes of cocaine in 2017, the highest level ever recorded, with an average street price of 55 to 82 euros ($62-92) per gram in the EU, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) said.

The purity of cocaine at street level reached its highest level in a decade in 2017, while its retail price has remained stable.

Belgium accounted for the highest proportion of cocaine seizures with 45 tonnes, followed by Spain with 41 tonnes.

An increase in trafficking via shipping containers is a "major challenge", the report said.

Shivering Europe hopes for weekend respite as deep freeze persists

Yahoo – AFP, March 3, 2018

Temperatures in many parts of Europe remained sub-zero because of a
deadly cold snap from Siberia (AFP Photo/Tolga AKMEN)

Paris (AFP) - Europe's deep freeze, which has cost more than 60 lives over the past week, continued to wreak havoc early Saturday as the shivering continent awaited a sliver of weekend respite from a brutal Siberian cold front.

After heavy snowfall and deadly blizzards lashed Europe, conditions marginally improved in some regions on Friday -- although temperatures generally remained sub-zero, forcing more major delays on roads, railways and at airports.

But Britain's Met Office said the Arctic temperatures were set to rise.

"After the extreme weather many of us have seen recently many will see conditions ease a little through the next few days," it said.

In France, the forecast this weekend was for rain rather than the kind of heavy snowfall that has blanketed vast tracts of Europe.

The deadly chill has been caused by weather blowing in from Siberia. British media have dubbed the front "the Beast from the East," while the Dutch have gone for the "Siberian Bear" and the Swedes plumped for the "Snow Cannon".

Over the past week, the freezing conditions have claimed more than 60 lives, according to an AFP toll, including 23 in Poland, seven in Slovakia, six in the Czech Republic and five in Lithuania.

The cold weather did not spare even Mediterranean beaches, with a thick blanket of
snow covering the Promenade des Anglais in Nice (AFP Photo/VALERY HACHE)

Other deaths were recorded in Spain, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway.

France has seen at least nine weather-related deaths, including four skiers killed by an avalanche on Friday in the Alps, which have seen particularly heavy snowfall.

A 41-year-old Libyan man was found dead in an empty train carriage in the western French town of Saintes. Police suspect he died of hypothermia, but could not be sure.

In Austria meanwhile, five migrants abandoned by smugglers were rescued from a motorway near the city of Graz on Friday, some of them walking barefoot in sub-zero temperatures, according to police.

Switzerland has seen the mercury plummet to records of up to minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit) in the ongoing blizzard, which has even covered usually balmy Mediterranean beaches with a blanket of snow.

Geneva's busy airport announced it had re-opened shortly after midday Friday "despite the unfavourable meteorological conditions", having warned earlier it faced staying shut for a second consecutive day as snowstorms continued to lash the Swiss city.

Airport authorities warned, however, of further "delays and cancellations".

Snow falls on Paris during the cold front dubbed "The Beast from the East" 

(AFP Photo/OLIVIER MORIN)

The cold threw a spanner in the works of British Prime Minister Theresa May's plans to give a speech on Brexit in the northeastern city of Newcastle.

May elected to stay put in London given the transport mayhem, which saw motorists stuck in their cars around Manchester in the northwest and troops deployed overnight in Hampshire in the deep south to aid other drivers battling fresh snowfall and icy gales.

Snow baby

Also having to change their plans were Andrew Waring and his wife Daniella, who gave birth to baby daughter Sienna on the side of a snowbound main road outside the northeastern town of Darlington.

Waring delivered the child on the roadside after the couple realised they would not reach the hospital in time, with paramedics dubbing Sienna the #A66snowbaby after the road where she emerged into the world.

In Ireland, housing minister Eoghan Murphy tweeted that "blizzard conditions have now passed", advising people they could now venture outdoors while still exercising "extreme caution".

The brutal conditions have claimed at least 60 lives across the continent and

 brought many cities to a standstill (AFP Photo/JASPER JACOBS)

Even so, Dublin airport remained closed until at least Saturday. Some 24,000 people remained without electricity in Ireland Friday morning.

The country battled to get over the worst of a combination of the cold blast and Storm Emma, which has also been battering western Europe and was doing its worst over Britain.

Italy was also still stuck in sub-zero temperatures with a number of major roads blocked because of snow and black ice as forecasters warned the country's northern and central regions would see little immediate improvement.

Many schools remained closed and local authorities told people to remain indoors unless they urgently needed to travel.

Elsewhere in Europe, Serbia and Croatia saw some improvement but two people died overnight in Poland as temperatures plunged to a low of -27 Celsius (-16.6 Fahrenheit). They were set to remain as low as -17 Celsius across the day in some areas even as forecasters spoke of a relative weekend thaw.

Folldal, a small village in central Norway, saw a record European low for recent days of -42 Celsius during the night.

Even so, residents used to harsh conditions were sanguine.

"Life is generally ongoing," mayor Hilde Frankmo Tveren quipped to broadcaster TV2.

Three killed, 360,000 without power as freak storm hits Ireland

Yahoo – AFP, Julien LAGACHE, October 17, 2017

Dark clouds gathered over the Irish Sea and Dublin as Ireland braced for the
passing of the storm Ophelia that left three dead and hundreds of thousands of
homes without power (AFP Photo/Ben STANSALL)

Dublin (AFP) - Ireland was hit by what officials called an "unprecedented storm" on Monday that left three people dead, more than 300,000 customers without power and shut down schools as well as government offices.

A police spokesman said one woman in her 50s was killed outside the village of Aglish, near the south coast, when a tree fell on her car. A female passenger in her 70s suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

One man died in an accident while he was clearing a fallen tree with a chainsaw near the town of Cahir, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) further inland.

And the third victim was a man killed on the roads by a falling tree north of Dundalk in the northeast, close to the border with Northern Ireland, police said in a statement.

Ophelia, the largest hurricane ever recorded so far east in the Atlantic Ocean and the furthest north since 1939, was downgraded to a storm before it hit the Irish coast but nonetheless wrought havoc.

"It will still however bring violent and destructive winds for a time," Met Eireann, the Irish National Meteorological Service, said on Monday.

Flooding was also expected "due to either heavy thundery downpours or storm surges in coastal areas," the service said after issuing a red alert for the whole country.

Winds reached 191 kilometres (119 miles) per hour at Fastnet Rock, Ireland's southernmost point, while the strongest winds recorded onshore were 156 kph (97 mph) at the entrance to Cork Harbour in the southwest.

Seventeen millimetres of rain fell at Valentia on the southwest coast, including nine millimetres (third of an inch) in one hour.

The Electricity Supply Board said 330,000 customers were without power, due to more than 3,200 individual faults on the network.

Map showing the path of Storm Ophelia (AFP Photo/Laurence CHU)

PM says stay indoors

"We can predict that it will take a number of days to restore power to all customers. Five to 10 per cent of this number will be without power for up to 10 days," it said.

Dublin Airport scrapped 180 flights while Cork Airport cancelled most flights in what it said was the worst storm seen in its 56-year history. Meanwhile several services to and from Shannon, the third-biggest airport, were also grounded.

Across the border in Northern Ireland, Belfast airport also saw extensive delays and cancellations.

Power cuts affected 18,000 customers in Northern Ireland, after power lines and poles came down due to strong winds and flying debris, supplier NIE Networks said.

"Stay indoors wherever you are until the storm has passed," Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said in comments to reporters.

"I don't want anyone to think that this is anything other than a national emergency and a red alert."

The Department of Education closed all schools, colleges and other education institutions on Monday due to the "unprecedented storm", with minister Richard Burton saying schools would remain closed on Tuesday.

Government offices were also shut.

Ireland's top football team Cork City were hit when their stadium roof collapsed, the day before they hoped to seal the league title at their Turners Cross ground.

The eye of the storm is forecast to track across Northern Ireland and then Scotland.

Though it will weaken as it goes, gusts are expected to reach 80 mph (129 kph) in the UK.

Huge waves strike the harbour wall and lighthouse at Porthcawl, south Wales, on 

October 16, 2017 as Storm Ophelia hits the UK and Ireland. (AFP Photo/Geoff CADDICK)

Britain's Met Office issued amber severe weather warnings for Northern Ireland, Wales, and southern Scotland, saying power cuts, transport disruption, flying debris and large waves were likely.

"This leads to the potential for injuries and danger to life," the national weather service said.

The fringes of the storm turned the hitherto sunny afternoon skies over London a murky shade of brown-orange, due to the southerly warm winds bringing dust from the Sahara Desert.

Ophelia came 30 years to the day after the Great Storm, which ravaged southern England in the early hours of October 16, 1987, leaving 18 people dead.

Hurricane season

Ophelia is the 15th named storm of the 2017 Atlantic season, which is expected to last until the end of November.

Three major hurricanes -- Harvey, Irma and Maria -- caused catastrophic damage in the Caribbean and the US Gulf Coast.

Ophelia was classed Category 3 on Saturday as it passed near Portugal's Azores islands, which means it packed winds of at least 178 kilometres per hour.

Though seven of the nine islands in the Azores were on high alert, the storm did not cause major damage.

Office workers take time out to photograph the orange sky over London, caused by warm air and dust swept up by storm Ophelia pic.twitter.com/hKfRSmEOXG

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 17, 2017

Experts to begin probe into Air Algerie crash

Yahoo – AFP, July 27, 2014

Experts to begin probe into Air Algerie crash (AFP)

Bamako (AFP) - The second black box from the Air Algerie plane disaster was recovered Saturday at the remote crash site in northern Mali as investigators headed to the scene to determine the cause of the tragedy.

French President Francois Hollande, who met families of some of the victims in Paris, said the bodies of all 118 victims of Thursday's accident would be repatriated to France and a memorial would be erected at the site.

Officials who had already reached Mali's remote, barren Gossi area described a scene of devastation littered with twisted and burnt fragments of the plane.

No one survived the impact and entire families were wiped out. France bore the brunt of the disaster as 54 of its nationals were killed in the crash of the McDonnell Douglas 83, which had taken off from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso bound for Algiers.

Travellers from Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Algeria, Spain, Canada, Germany and Luxembourg also died in the crash, increasingly being blamed on bad weather that forced the pilots to change course.

Hollande said flags would fly at half-mast from government buildings for three days from Monday to mourn the victims, and all bodies would be repatriated to France as soon as was possible.

"A memorial will be put up so that no one forgets that 118 people perished in this area," he told reporters.

But the identification of bodies could be an arduous task given the violent impact of the crash.

"It is difficult to retrieve anything, even victims' bodies, because we have only seen body parts on the ground," said General Gilbert Diendiere, chief of the military staff of Burkina Faso's presidency.

A member of a delegation sent to the crash site by President Blaise Compaore, Diendiere added that "debris was scattered over an area of 500 metres (yards) which is due to the fact that the plane hit the ground and then probably rebounded."

Compaore met on Saturday with relatives of some crash victims in Ouagadougou and announced that Burkina Faso has opened an official inquiry into the cause of the disaster.

The Burkinade prosecutor "will work in close cooperation with his counterparts from Mali and France," he said.

Experts from France's Bureau of Investigations and Analyses agency (BEA) which investigates air accidents were due to fly to the scene by helicopter in the afternoon, spokeswoman Martine Del Bono said.

Entire families wiped out

Meanwhile, the scale of the tragedy for some communities became clear as it emerged that 10 members of one French family died in the crash.

"It's brutal. It has wiped an entire family from the earth," said Patrice Dunard, mayor of Gex, where four of the Reynaud family lived.

And the small town of Menet in central France was left devastated when residents discovered that a local family of four -- a couple, their 10-year-old daughter Chloe and their 14-year-old son Elno -- had died.

In Lebanon, one family in the southern El-Kharayeb village died too -- the third time that residents there had been involved in a plane disaster.

The families of some of the victims were being flown Saturday to the crash site from Ouagadougou. The first helicopter left in the morning and another was due to follow.

The MD-83 jet was operated by Spanish charter firm Swiftair -- a company with a good safety record -- on behalf of Air Algerie.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said weather conditions appeared to be the most likely cause of the accident, the worst air tragedy for French nationals since the crash of the Air France A330 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in June 2009.

Police forces, crash experts

The Air Algerie crash was the third worldwide in the space of just eight days, capping a disastrous week for the aviation industry.

On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines plane was shot down in restive eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

And a Taiwanese aircraft crashed in torrential rain in Taiwan on Wednesday, killing 48.

Apart from the BEA experts, France has also dispatched 20 police forces to try and identify the victims and determine the cause of the Air Algerie crash.

One of the flight recorders of the plane was retrieved almost as soon as rescuers arrived on the spot, while the second black box was found late Saturday, according to Radhia Acouri, the spokeswoman for the MINUSMA UN stabilisation force in Mali.

France has also dispatched military forces already stationed in Gao since because of an offensive it launched in Mali last year to try to rid the north of Islamist extremists.

This year has already seen Algeria mourn the loss of more than 70 people in the crash of a C-130 military aircraft in February.

The north African country is observing a three-day period of national mourning for the latest crash.

Related Article:

Air Algerie loses contact with plane over west Africa

Catastrophic floods bring down Bosnia ethnic barriers

Yahoo – AFP, Rusmir Smajilhodzic, 20 May 2014

A photo shows houses over a ravine after a landslide occurred in the flooded

 village of Kosova, near the northern Bosnian city of Doboj, on May 19, 2014

(AFP Photo/Elvis Barukcic )

Zepce (Bosnie-Herzégovine) (AFP) - When Ibro Begic decided to tackle the hazardous mountain road to reach those stricken by record floods near his Bosnian town, he was also challenging deep ethnic divisions left over from the brutal conflict of the 1990s.

When news reached him last week that the Serb-populated town of Doboj had been inundated, Begic immediately called on 10 friends to put together a relief operation.

It was a generous move, made remarkable by the fact that Begic is a Bosnian Muslim and a former soldier who fought the Serbs during the country's horrific civil war between 1992 and 1995.

"During the war, we were in enemy armies," he told AFP. "But the war is history. Humanity is something else."

Villagers inspect damaged road after a

 landslide in the flooded village of Kosova,

 near the northern Bosnian city of Doboj,

 on May 19, 2014 (AFP Photo/Elvis

Barukcic )

Having gathered supplies including milk, sheets and rubber boots, Begic set off along the mountain pass -- the only road still open to Doboj from his town of Tesanj in central Bosnia.

He says the response he received from the Serbs in Doboj, one of the worst-hit towns where at least 20 people have died or are missing from the floods, was immense gratitude mixed with "shock".

"God asks us all to help each other in need. I am certain that the Serbs would do the same," Begic said.

'A turning point'

It is certainly not the only instance in Bosnia where the difficult legacy of the war -- which has left the country politically divided between Serbs, Croats and Muslims -- was put to one side during the devastating flooding of the past week.

The small town of Zepce, around 30 kilometres (18 miles) further south from Tesanj, is mostly populated by Croats.

When a stream of Muslims began to arrive here from villages dotted around the region, few expected a warm welcome. The experience was a painful reminder of the war when tens of thousands were expelled from their homes by both Croats and Serbs.

But this time around, they were met with nothing but friendship.

A local high school gym in Zepce was ready to shelter the first group of evacuees from the Muslim village of Zeljezno Polje.

One of the villagers, Elvir Cizmic, a soldier during the war, told AFP: "Honestly, I did not expect such a solidarity. In just a few hours, people brought food, clothes and offered their homes to the families."

Around 30 to 40 people, mainly elderly women, were sheltering in the school when AFP visited, while dozens of young volunteers moved between them offering assistance.

"No one asked us for our name or our religion. They helped us in a way that I would not expect even from Muslims," Hanifa Masic, a 68-year-old evacuee, told AFP.

She hugged one of the young volunteers, a Croat called Ivana Grlic, who looked happy to help.

For Cizmic, the disaster marks a "turning point in relations between the three communities".

"I believe it will greatly help to regain trust between the people who had been pushed into the war," he said.

'Solidarity'

Like nothing else in the past two decades, the natural disaster has allowed people to ignore the divisive nationalism spouted by many of their political leaders.

Bosnian Hanifa Masic (2rd L), 68, from the village of Zeljezno Polje, is comforted

 by young volunteers at a refugee collective center in Zepce, after she lost her home

following a landslide in her village, on May 19, 2014 (AFP Photo/Elvis Barukcic )

Even Milorad Dodik, the fiercely nationalist president of the Bosnian Serb entity, had to express his gratitude to the Muslims who came to help their Serb neighbours in the northern town of Samac.

"I thank you on behalf of all residents of Samac to whom aid was brought by the (mainly Muslim) town of Gradacac, which provided inflatable boats and rescuers," Dodik said.

The compliment was returned by Edhem Camdzic, an Islamic mufti from the northern town of Banja Luka, who said he had come across an "honourable man, a Serb, who has been rescuing people with his inflatable boat regardless of their ethnicity" during a tour of Muslim villages.

"Amid this tragedy, I am so delighted to see this solidarity between people who generously helped each other," said Camdzic.

More than a quarter of Bosnia's 3.8 million population has been affected by the worst floods in a century.

The Bosnian war claimed some 100,000 lives and displaced two million people, almost half the country's pre-war population.

Related Articles:

Thousands flee floods in Bosnia and Serbia as death toll rises

Balkan floods threaten Serbia power plant on River Sava

Thousands flee floods in Bosnia and Serbia as death toll rises

At least 25 dead and fears that landmines will be exposed after torrential rain causes 'horrible catastrophe'

theguardian.com, Associated Press in Maglaj, Bosnia, Sunday 18 May 2014

People evacuate in boats from Obrenovac, south-west of Belgrade, on
Saturday. Photograph: Marko Djurica/Reuters

Packed into buses, boats and helicopters, carrying nothing but a handful of belongings, tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in Bosnia and Serbia to escape the worst flooding in a century.

Rapidly rising rivers surged into homes, sometimes reaching up to the second floors, sending people climbing to rooftops for rescue. Hundreds were also evacuated in Croatia.

Authorities said on Saturday 25 people had died, but warned the toll could rise. Tens of thousands of homes were left without electricity or drinking water.

Landslides triggered by the floods also raised the risk of injury or death from land mines left over from Bosnia's 1992-95 war. The landslides swept away many of the carefully placed warning signs around the minefields.

Three months' worth of rain fell on the region in three days last week, creating the worst floods since records began 120 years ago.

From the air almost a third of Bosnia, mostly its north-east corner, resembled a huge muddy lake, with houses, roads and rail lines submerged. Admir Malagic, a spokesman for Bosnia's security ministry, said about a million people – more than a quarter of the country's population – lived in the affected area.

"Bosnia is facing a horrible catastrophe," said Bakir Izetbegovic, the chairman of the Bosnian three-man presidency. "We are still not fully aware of actual dimensions of the catastrophe ... we will have to take care of hundreds, thousands of people."

Izetbegovic was touring Maglaj, hard hit by the floods. As the waters mostly withdrew on Saturday, Maglaj was covered in mud and debris, with residents checking damage and bringing furniture out in the streets to dry.

"Everything is destroyed, but we are happy to be alive," said Maglaj resident Zijad Omerovic.

In the eastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina, some 10,000 people were being evacuated on Saturday after the rain-swollen Sava river pushed through flood defences, endangering four villages outside the town.

"We need everything, we are underwater," mayor Mico Micic exclaimed.

In eastern Croatia, the overflowing Sava spread over villages and farm land, sending hundreds fleeing.

Officials in Bosnia said 17 people haddied and more bodies could be found as water receded from dozens of cities. In some places, people had to be rescued by helicopter from their roofs.

Many in Bosnia lost homes they had only just rebuilt after the war, which claimed 100,000 lives and devastated the impoverished country.

In Serbia, eight deaths were reported and emergency crews and soldiers were using boats and helicopters to rescue thousands trapped in the town of Obrenovac, near Belgrade. Authorities also ordered residents of another nearby small town, Baric, to leave immediately on Saturday afternoon. Many hurriedly climbed into buses and military trucks to get away.

Officials said more than 16,000 people have been evacuated from flood-hit regions in Serbia, many finding shelter in schools and sports halls. Lines of mattresses covered the floors of Belgrade schools, with frightened survivors describing unstoppable torrents that surged in a matter of minutes.

Mirjana Senic, who lives in the centre of Obrenovac, said that "we thought we had it pretty bad ... [but] only when they evacuated us and when we actually saw the amount of water in other parts of town did we realise that we were lucky."

The flooding in Obrenovac is threatening the Nikola Tesla power plant, Serbia's biggest. Plant capacity had already been cut after a nearby coal mine was flooded and authorities urged residents to save energy to avoid brown-outs.

Prime minister Aleksandar Vucic told a press conference a new wave of flooding on the Sava would hit on Sunday evening.

"Our primary concern is to protect the power plant," Vucic said. "We are doing all we can."

International help poured into the two nations to support thousands of volunteers. A Russian team joined the rescue efforts in Serbia. Rescue teams from Luxembourg, Slovenia and Croatia were already in Bosnia, and others from the UK, Austria and Macedonia were expected.

Aerial footage showed flooding near Serbia Tesla power plant

Related Articles:

Catastrophic floods bring down Bosnia ethnic barriers

Balkan floods threaten Serbia power plant on River Sava

Ukip suspends councillor who claimed floods were caused by gay marriage

Ukip councillor David Silvester's suspension comes after new interview in which he says gay people 'can be healed'

The Guardian, Press Association, Sunday 19 January 2014

A delegate wears badges and a Union flag tie at the Ukip annual conference
in central London, 2013 Photograph: Luke Macgregor/REUTERS

A Ukip councillor who blamed the Christmas and new year floods on the passing of gay marriage laws has been suspended from the party, a spokesman has said.

Henley-on-Thames councillor David Silvester, who defected from the Tories in protest at David Cameron's support for same-sex unions, said he had warned the prime minister of "repercussions" if gay marriage went ahead.

He was suspended by the party after defying a request not to do further interviews on his beliefs following his initial claims made in a letter to a local newspaper. The move came as leader Nigel Farage launched a clearout of "extremist, nasty or barmy" views from the party ahead of polls in May.

On Sunday he caused fresh controversy telling BBC Radio Berkshire that being gay was a "spiritual disease" that can be healed.

He said the new law, paving the way for the first gay marriages in Britain this spring, was the latest mistake that would anger God – following on from abortion laws, which he likened to the Holocaust.

In the radio interview, which followed his initial claims about the link between flooding and gay marriage in a letter to the Henley Standard, Silvester said: "I don't have a problem with gay people.

"I believe as a Christian I should love gay people and indeed, I do. My prayer for them is they will be healed.

"When I was at Bible college I did a thesis on homosexuality and I came across the writings of an American psychiatrist, Jeffrey Satinover. He came up with two particular beliefs; one, he said it has not been proven at all that the gay condition comes from the genes, and second he said that by the Holy Spirit, there is always power for a gay person to be healed.

"I believe that is what the Apostle Paul said in the New Testament; he said some of you are gay but you have been healed. There is healing for the gay condition and I believe a Christian should long for gay people to be healed and to have normal heterosexual lives.

"It is nonsense to say it is homophobic. If you love a person enough to want them to be healed and to have a proper family, that is hardly homophobic.

"It is a spiritual disease … it's not what I say, it's what the Bible says."

Silvester said he was convinced that there were "repercussions for a nation persisting in what is wrong", and that he had clear beliefs "there are things that are right and wrong".

"Over the years we have done many things that have caused problems," he said.

"One, for example, is the abortion law in which something like six million children, as many as the people killed by the Nazis in the death camps, have been killed as a result of the abortion laws.

"Now, this is a process. The latest in this process is these homosexual laws and the homosexual marriage."

Expanding on his views about the repercussions of the state, Silvester added: "I am a man who prays every day for every member of the cabinet and for every member of the royal family and when, two years ago, I wrote to the prime minister to warn him there are repercussions for serious breaches of the Coronation Oath, such as this one has been, when I saw what followed I naturally assumed this was the result of them going against God's laws.

"This is not new, this happened in the Old Testament – they were warned if they turned against God there would be pestilence, there would be war, there would be disasters.

"All I'm doing is following the pattern that the Old Testament set out for a nation that followed God. If they followed God, things would go well, if they rebelled against God, then there would be repercussions."

The councillor said Ukip, to whom he defected from the Conservative party, had told him not to give any more interviews.

He said: "I had a phone call yesterday from one of them and the instructions I have got from now on is not to answer anybody and not to do interviews such as this one... [this] is the last one.

"I'm not going to go into [their reasons]. That's a private discussion between me and them."

Related Articles:

Kryon Q&A

Question: Dear Kryon: Regarding homosexuality or transsexuals. WHY are they the way they are and WHY are they not accepted in mainstream society?

Answer: [From the Kryon Office]

There is often a tremendous amount of information on subjects that are not necessarily part of the on-line magazine Q&A database. Kryon has been channelling for fourteen years, with 9 books covering many, many topics. Homosexuality was one of them from the very beginning. Please see our "Books index page" for subjects contained in the Kryon books: [http://www.kryon.com/direct.html]

An excerpt from Kryon Book 6, page 306

Question from the book: Dear Kryon, I am gay, and an enlightened man. I live in an American society that barely tolerates me, and actually has some laws against my way of life. The church I used to belong to cast me out as being evil and anti-God. I don't feel that I am violating some Human ethic. My love is as true as any heterosexual, and I am a light worker. Tell me what I should know.

Answer from the book: Dear one, less than two generations from now, there will be those who find this book and laugh at the quaintness of this very question. Before I answer, let me ask you and those reading this to examine a phenomenon about Human society and "God."

Thirty years ago, interracial marriage was considered to be wrong by the laws of God. Now your society finds it common. The spiritual objections around it were either dropped or "rewritten" by those divinely inspired and authorized to do so. Therefore, your actual interpretations of the instructions from God changed with your society's tolerance level--an interesting thing, indeed, how the interpretations of God seem to change regularly to match a changing culture!

The truth, of course, is that you find yourself in a situation that is known to create a test for you. Right now, in this time, you have agreed to come into your culture with an attribute that may alienate you from friends and religious followers. You have faced fear of rejection and have had to "swim upstream," so to speak, just as an everyday life occurrence. Your contract, therefore, has been set up well, and you are in the middle of it. Additionally, like so many like you, you have a divine interest in yourselves! You feel part of the spiritual family. What a dichotomy indeed, to be judged as evil by those who are the high spiritual leaders--interpreting God for today's culture.

Now I say this: What is your intent? Is it to walk with love for all those around you and become an enlightened Human Being in this New Age? Is it to forgive those who see you as a spiritual blight on society? Can you have the kind of tolerance for them that they seem not to have for you? Can you overlook the fact that they freely quote their scriptures in order to condemn you, yet they don't seem to have the love tolerance that is the cornerstone of their own message?

If the answer is yes, then there is nothing else you must do. Your INTENT is everything, and your life will be honored with peace over those who would cause unrest, and tolerance for the intolerable. Your sexual attributes are simply chemistry and setups within your DNA. They are given by agreement as gifts for you to experience in this life. Look on them in this fashion, and be comfortable with that fact that you are a perfect spiritual creation under God--loved beyond measure--just like all humans. But then you know that, don't you?

Kryon Q&A

Question: Dear Kryon, did a person named Jesus actually exist, or was it a group with the Christ energy that the church made into a person?

Question: Dear Kryon, I’ve looked at birth charts for Jesus over many years and found one which I believe, if not real, is the most intriguing. Therefore, I ask: Can you please reveal the exact date and time of Jesus Christ’s birth? And which DNA layer is the "astrology layer" that you’ve mentioned? I really believe that this may help in realigning astrology with the energy you’ve talked about

Question: Dear Kryon, when Jesus came here, did he know of our eternal work of Universe building? Does he know how much we love him?

Question: Dear Kryon, I’m not a Christian, but am curious as to whether the story of Jesus is accurate. Did he die by crucifixion, or was he spared to live a full life with a family of his own, elsewhere?

Question: Dear Kryon, was Jesus nothing more or less than a Crystal Child? Did he possess something that simply wasn’t understood during his time? Did he have different DNA or advanced DNA? This time is so exciting, and things have become so clear, that I want to be able to tell others what I now understand.

Answer: Dear ones, we posture this answer with great respect for those who love this Human master. It serves no purpose to give information that would be detrimental to any study or search for the divine by any Human alive. This is why we often do not give you the actual history of some of the masters who walked this earth. We see the search for the divine as the most important thing a Human can do. Even if the facts of history are incorrect, sometimes the benefits of the search still bring the Human into the light and into the realization that God is inside us all.

Jesus was a real person. His birth and death were far different than have been reported, but he walked the earth as an enlightened soul whose miracles and teachings were the beginning of a new dispensation. He taught unity, and the principle that all men could speak personally to God. He said, "You can be just like me!" and that is what our message is, also . . . that master-hood is within each of you. If you really want to know more about the real history, it’s very clearly in the scrolls, but it’s not in your scriptures!

If you feel that Jesus might have had a special consciousness, as many of the new children do, you’re right! His DNA was without some of the restrictions that you have, but had those that you’re now learning about. The astrological layer of his DNA (the layers that respond to other planetary energy movements) were void and neutral. (This particular layer will be exposed this year for you, along with a name.)

And yes, he knows of your love, and all the things that your divinity knows. Like all of you, he is multidimensional, and is in many places at the same time. Did you know that you are, too?

Spiritual enlightenment is not about following any Human Being or any entity in the Universe. It’s about knowing that God resides within you, and that you’re an eternal part of His universal plan. This information has been brought to you from many masters and is within many cultures throughout the history of the earth.

Jesus, as well as other masters who walked the earth, not only gave you messages of empowerment, but then "walked the walk" so you could see that a Human Being could actually do what he said could be done. Many of you are poised on the edge of realizing this same thing.