Tackle ‘national pandemic’ of alcohol abuse, say MPs
Minimum pricing and tough new rules for drink-driving were amongst a host of recommendations unveiled by a group of MPs and peers this week, in response to a ‘national pandemic’ of alcohol abuse. The All Party Parliamentary Committee on Alcohol Misuse revealed its manifesto for 2015, which demonstrates the cost of alcohol-related incidents, and calls for new measures to minimise alcohol-related harm. Incidents ranging from drink-related crime to hospital admissions are thought to cost the UK economy as much as £21 billion annually. In the foreword to the manifesto, Tracey Crouch, who chairs the group, said: ‘The facts and figures of the scale of alcohol misuse in the UK speak for themselves’. She believes that there ‘must be a more thorough and full package of measures which tackles the problem more effectively and reduces the cost to people’s health of alcohol-related crime and treatment’.
Israel: Day 44 of violence
A five-day truce expired on 19 August, the 43rd day of Operation Protective Edge, and the sides agreed a 24-hour extension amid conflicting reports on the progress of talks on a long-term Israel-Hamas deal. But rockets from Gaza broke the truce on Tuesday afternoon, Israel quit the talks and the conflict resumed. By comparison, on 19 August 1947 the local newspaper reported, ‘After a week of Arab-Jewish clashes during which 35 persons were killed and 80 wounded, it seemed probable today that both sides had brought the situation under control, and that at least for the time being, there would be no large-scale rioting in Palestine. Once outside the Tel Aviv-Jaffa trouble area Jewish settlements reported without exception that relations with their Arab neighbours were completely normal. Leaders of the Arab villages showed no signs either of tension or hostility’. At that time conflicts were blamed on outside influences. See:
USA: Ferguson, Missouri - 'This has to stop'
On 9 August a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager. Police and witnesses' accounts varied. The confusion fuelled protests by locals which invited outside agitators bring in gunplay and further violence. Community religious leaders failed in their attempts to dissuade the angry from violent protests. The national president of Black Lawyers for Justice blamed unspecified outside provocateurs for further trouble. Then demonstrators were urged to make their voices heard during the daylight where they can be seen and not be the cover for violent agitators who hide in the crowd and then create chaos. But that idea failed. Because of inconsistencies in reported facts, and the ethnic balance in the background to this incident there will now be a civil rights investigation. Meanwhile, schools in the area are cancelled this week and businesses are being looted or burned. Proprietors stand guard over their businesses with guns and the National Guard have been called in.
Iraq: Britain’s involvement
On Monday Prime Minister David Cameron said, ‘This is not simply a humanitarian mission. We are determined to do what we can to help Iraq combat this new and very extreme form of terrorism.’ He spoke amid a series of dramatic developments on the ground that will fuel concerns about mission creep. British military planes are flying deeper into Iraq to capture surveillance footage of jihadist fighters which is being used to help Kurdish and Iraqi forces on the ground. Regular soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment were in the Kurdish region last week – despite Downing Street’s assurances that there would be no ‘boots on the ground’. At least 1,000 Royal Marines are being deployed to Jordan in a long-planned joint military exercise with the US. The Defence Secretary said the mission has escalated beyond a humanitarian one. Read more:
Syria: ISIS kill kidnapped journalist James Foley
Dozens of journalists - many freelancers without news organisation backing - disappeared in 2012/13 in Syria. On Tuesday ISIS posted a video claiming to show kidnapped American journalist James Foley’s death. He was kidnapped in Syria nearly two years ago. The authenticity of the video, which was also posted on YouTube, could not be verified. YouTube later took down the 4 minute, 40-second video titled, ‘A Message to America,’ showing the journalist kneeling in a desert landscape, clad in an orange jumpsuit - a reference to the uniforms worn by prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Standing to his left is a masked ISIS fighter speaking in English with what sounds like an East London accent. Pulling out a knife, he says that Mr. Foley’s execution is in retaliation for the recent American airstrikes ordered by President Obama against the extremist group in Iraq.
Nigeria: Latest Islamist outrage
Witnesses who fled the sandy fishing village of Doron Baga near the shores of Lake Chad said militants clothed in military and police uniforms loaded 97 men and boys on to trucks and drove them away, leaving no men or boys in the place - only young children, girls and women. They said six older men were also killed in Sunday's raid while another five people were wounded. Terrorists also burned several houses. Boko Haram has dramatically increased attacks on civilians recently and the once-grassroots movement has lost popular support as it becomes more bloodthirsty. Young men are not now willingly volunteering as soldiers. So Boko Haram’s solution is kidnapping boys and forcing them to fight and abducting girls as sex slaves. This is a chilling echo of Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, which operated in the same way in Uganda, South Sudan and central Africa for decades
World: Natural disasters this week
*Japan: After a month’s rain fell in 24 hours, more than 32 died in 10 landslides of mud and rocks buried homes in Hiroshima city outskirts. * Iran: Two Earthquakes. A 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck Abdanan on Monday. Water, electricity and telephone lines were cut and houses, buildings and cars were destroyed. Aftershocks could be felt in three provinces. On Wednesday in Dezful, near the Iraq border, a 5.7 magnitude earthquake occurred. There are expected to be further aftershocks. Fire is the most common hazard after an earthquake. Along with traffic confusion after traffic light outages. *USA: Phoenix, Arizona has suffered torrential storms causing severe flooding across the desert region. A resident living there for 20 years said it has never flooded this badly. *India: 160+ died in floods and landslides following days of torrential rain in Nepal and northern India. *Iceland: 300 earthquakes were detected since Tuesday midnight near a volcano showing ‘escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption’. Authorities have evacuated the area. See also:
Almighty God, creator of the Heavens and the Earth, as a nation and as a people we acknowledge that you are the true architect and designer of all nations. You are a loving father who created us out of your own image and likeness and have given us dominion to govern the earth, with power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of our enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt us.
You created us for a purpose and you have never deviated from it. In Acts 17:26-27, it is written “You have made from one blood every Nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of our dwellings, so that we should seek you, in the hope that we might reach for you and find you, though you are not far from each one of us”.
My Father, Sierra Leone have emerged from one of the most inhu¬man, ferocious and cruel conflicts in the post-Cold war era. The scale of destruction, rape, mayhem, arson and torture perpetrated during our civil war was among the greatest in Africa’s postcolonial history. Women, especially adolescents and young adults, were exposed to extreme sexual brutality at a time when a growing heterosexually-driven HIV pan-demic was occurring in the West African sub-region. We have also experienced economic and social collapse that resulted in human development indicators on employ¬ment, income, health, education, women’s status and child well-being that are among the lowest in the world.
As a nation and as a people, we prostrate before you and confess that our actions of idolatry, witchcraft, occult practices, secret societies, murder, homosexuality, lesbianism, fornication, corruption, selfishness and every form of evil traditions were wrong, ungodly and unfair to the many loved ones we have lost during those times. Please Lord have mercy and exempt us from Judgement. Sierra Leone is still trying to pull through, from the experience and harsh political, social, economic and environmental conditions of the past and have not yet fully recovered.
But your servant David keeps us assured in Psalms 91:3-6; 9-10 that: “Surely you will deliver us from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. He said: you will cover us with your feathers, and under your wings we shall take refuge; your truth shall be our shield and buckler and we should not be afraid of the terror by night, Nor of the arrow that flies by day, Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday”. Because we have made the Lord our refuge and the most High our dwelling; no evil shall befall us and no plague shall come near our dwelling.
See Lord, we have been fast rated to be the Fastest growing economy in Africa lately affirmed by the IMF and, under the administration of our President have earned the best African Leader 2013. Unfortunately for us today, EBOLA have emerged to be one of the most dangerous and deadly pestilence in human history and have swiftly hit the shores, regions and districts of our nation to abort this testimony, challenge and counter our political and medical strength and make us a laughing stock with our nation’s aspiration towards a middle income and a donor country. Ebola has almost brought us to the state of being a beggar and a mockery among nations.
My Father, My Father I submit to you that: My Country is under attack, My people are under attack, Our Faith is under attack, West Africa is under attack, My Continent is under attack and invasion of one of the most dangerous and deadly pestilence of our time. EBOLA have claimed well over 298 lives and 717 case detected since March 25th to August 6th 2014 totalling 961 deaths and 1,779 detected cases that includes Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Nigeria (CDC & WHO Ebola outbreak).
The authorities/leaders you have set over us were not pro-active enough; We are losing our Fathers, Mothers, Children, Families, Friends, Heroes and the engineers of Agenda for Prosperity; The rate of infection is spreading, the resources to contain the situation are still inadequate.
The information channels and education level of my people has misguided the battle against EBOLA, the sick are afraid to go to the Hospitals, our medical practitioners are been infected in the cause of service while many are refusing to attend to EBOLA and EBOLA free patients; Division is taking momentum among families, friends, relatives, workmates cause we no longer greet each other with hug, hand shake to feel the warmth; Victims of relatives and society are inevitably abandoned; Insecurity is mounting so everybody is a suspect while many have devised new methods of dress code to be on the safer side.
My Father, there are still some widespread debate going on among so many school of thoughts on whether - Ebola exists or not? or whether Ebola is a biological weapon?; Nations are shutting their boarders against us and at the moment people are no longer allowed to move in and out to other countries; The authorities/leaders of my Country have consented and have quarantine the regions within the nation making livelihood for survival for the ordinary man more and more complex, prices for local commodities and food stuffs are artificially escalating by some of your untrue, ungodly, unpatriotic and exploiting sons and daughters; Whilst others are seeking for Ebola to go away others have resolved for Ebola to stay because their pockets are getting fatter.
My Father, My Father as the state and condition of my country exacerbates with this pestilence, I hereby stand this day as an oracle of Justice over Sierra Leone and echo my voice from the corridors into the chambers of eternity and summon the parliament of Heaven to rewrite an executive and judicial determination of eviction of EBOLA and other related infirmities from out of the territories, boarders, boundaries, regions, districts and streets of Sierra Leone, West Africa and the Continent of Africa.
Declarations
And so by this heavenly accreditation I declare you EBOLA and other related infirmities within the territories, boarders, regions, districts of Sierra Leone, West Africa and the Continent of Africa that you are a trespasser and you are in contempt of the word of the Lord and the decision of heaven and so I stripe you EBOLA and other related infirmities of all influence and authority over the nations;
In the name of Jesus, I relieve you off and dismiss you from ALL your duties, assignment and commission over the nations to the void of space, and I activate and deploy the Blood of Jesus to cleanse and heal us from every virus/diseases/infirmities and pestilence.
In the name of Jesus I assign and put in motion Angelic surveillance within nations to police, arrest and permanently confide every virus/diseases/infirmities and pestilence into gross darkness.
I proclaim and declare a restraining order by the blood of Jesus against further deaths and infections derived from any virus/diseases/infirmities and pestilence within the territories, boarders, regions, districts of Sierra Leone, West Africa and the Continent of Africa.
Towards this end, from on top of the mountains of Zion to the atmosphere, air waves, territories and boarders of Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Nigeria: Let the high water, storm, thorns, prickly of EBOLA and other related infirmities be still. I declare permanent rest, stillness, tranquillity, calmness, repose, silence, inactivity and deadlock and my Father because of the voice of your manservant grant us this request in Jesus Name.
GOD BLESS AFRICA, GOD BLESS SIERRA LEONE, GOD BLESS GUINEA, GOD BLESS LIBERIA, GOD BLESS NIGERIA
AND GOD BLESS YOU
Christian asylum seekers mobbed by Muslim asylum seekers
August 2014: Christians seeking asylum in Germany are reported to suffer anti-Christian attacks in homes for asylum seekers. Victims claim to have been verbally abused and beaten by Muslim asylum seekers. Syrian Christian Toni said: ‘It started with the children. They told them: You are Christians, non-believers. You eat pigs, we won’t play with you.’ Christian fellow countryman Farid adds: ‘We were watching our children day and night. Several times they were beating them. We were afraid to lose our temper and react to the provocations and cause even more problems.’ An Iraqi-Christian family was mobbed until they decided to return home. Other cases are reported in German media.
for all involved in these attacks that they will learn to live together in peace. (Ps.140:4)
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Crimea on Thursday with senior politicians of his government. They are expected to discuss Russia’s development plans for the Crimea. This is more than just a meeting of the security council, he has effectively taken a large chunk of the Russian government to Crimea with what many believe is his intention to integrate Crimea into Russian structures. For instance Mobile phone operators’ in the Crimea currently are routed through the Ukraine, but he proposes to invest millions of dollars to have the systems routed through Russia. His aims appear to have Crimea part of the Russian federation, which is something the world does not accept. Meanwhile, 260 lorries carrying 2,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid for Eastern Ukraine are heading towards the Ukraine border, but they may not be able to enter Ukraine territory. At the time of writing, the International Red Cross have not sanctioned the convoy. Ukraine politicians describe the convoy as a provocation, Russia is determined to push the aid through, while Donetsk continues to come under heavy fire. More at: