Junior Economic Affairs Minister Mona Keijzer has been fired by Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Her crime? Suggesting that the country's vaccine passport scheme is "illogical" and the Netherlands should "go back to the old normal."

As of Sunday, people hoping to visit bars, cafés, restaurants, and other venues will have to show proof of vaccination against Covid-19 or the results of a recent negative test. The pass system was introduced despite recent mass protests in Amsterdam, and demonstrations against the now-compulsory vaccine passports took place again on Sunday.

Criticism of the scheme has come from both the public and workers in the hospitality sector, but also from within the government. In an interview with the Telegraaf newspaper on Saturday, Keijzer had said it was "inexplicable" that the pass was required, even though the wholesale reopening of schools and universities in August had not led to a surge in hospitalizations.

The Biden administration is pushing for dishonorable discharges and even court martials for troops who disobey orders to get COVID vaccines.

GOP Representative Mark Green of Tennessee proposed an amendment this week to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would prohibit "any discharge but honorable" for troops who refuse vaccines.

The White House responded with a statement noting:

"The Administration strongly opposes section 716 [as] it would detract from readiness and limit a commander's options for enforcing good order and discipline when a Service member fails to obey a lawful order to receive a vaccination.

"To enable a uniformed force to fight with discipline, commanders must have the ability to give orders and take appropriate disciplinary measures."

Responding to the statement, Rep. Green said

"I am appalled that the Biden Administration is trying to remove my amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that prevents anything but an honorable discharge for service members who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine. This was a bipartisan amendment — every Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee agreed to it. No American who raises their hand to serve our Nation should be punished for making a highly personal medical decision."

Another section of the bill, 720, proposes that troops who have previously had COVID-19 should be exempted from a vaccine mandate.

The Biden administration also opposes it, claiming it creates

"a new and overly broad exemption from the vaccination requirement for previous infection that would undermine the effectiveness of the requirement."

The top U.S. military officer says the United States should explore ways to expand its military contacts with Russia as a way to increase trust and avoid a miscalculation.

Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said allowing things such as observers at each other's combat exercises would increase transparency and reduce the risk of conflict.

"We need to put in place policies and procedures to make sure that we increase certainty, to reduce uncertainty, increase trust to reduce distrust, increase stability to reduce instability in order to avoid miscalculation, and reduce the possibility of great power war. That's a fundamental thing that we should try to do, and I am going to try to do it."

Milley made the comments on September 23 after meeting his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, in Finland on September 22.

Two top executives of HNA Group have been detained by China's police, days after one of the country's largest private conglomerates was broken down into four separate businesses following its bankruptcy restructuring.

HNA's founder and former chairman Chen Feng, and the former chief executive Adam Tan Xiangdong have been detained by police on "suspected crimes," the group said in a statement in its official WeChat account.

"HNA Group and its member enterprises are operating in a stable and orderly manner. The [company's] bankruptcy restructuring is going smoothly and its production and operations have not been affected."

The detentions bring the curtains down on HNA, built on the foundations of China's most successful private carrier Hainan Airlines.

With a handful of aircraft, the carrier - with an early investment from the American financier George Soros - quickly built a business flying holiday makers and Russian tourists from China's frigid north to the country's sole tropical island, long regarded as "China's Hawaii" for its beaches, azure waters and holiday resorts.

Two Canadians imprisoned in what China's Western critics branded "hostage diplomacy" were headed home Friday after being released, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

The pair — former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor — had "left Chinese airspace, and they're on their way home," he told a news conference in Ottawa.

Their plane was expected to land Saturday in Canada, he said.

Pegasus spyware has been found on the phones of at least five French ministers, multiple sources told news outlets. The company behind the tech, the Israel-based NSO Group, denies it was used to target French officials, however.

The revelation was first made by French investigative website Mediapart, with the report further corroborated by the AFP news agency on Friday.

Traces of Pegasus spyware have been found on the mobile phones of at least five current cabinet ministers, Mediapart said, citing a confidential intelligence report and numerous anonymous sources. The alleged activity of the spyware was traced back to 2019 and, to a lesser extent, 2020.

The five affected officials include Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie, Housing Minister Emmanuelle Wargon, Overseas Territories Minister Sébastien Lecornu, and Territorial Cohesion Minister Jacqueline Gourault, according to Mediapart.

Republicans say a new nonpartisan report indicates President Biden improperly avoided paying Medicare taxes before he took office — raising eyebrows and the possibility that he owes the IRS as much as $500,000 in back taxes.

Biden is leading a Democratic push for a $3.5 trillion bill to subsidize child care, education and health care by targeting tax avoidance and raising tax rates on higher incomes so the rich "pay their fair share."

A House Ways and Means Committee draft of the bill would end the accounting trick apparently exploited by Biden and boost IRS funding for audits — but the new report, drafted by the Congressional Research Service and provided to The Post, suggests Biden owes taxes under current rules, according to the congressman who requested it.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said that the British government should begin vaccinating nursery age children and begin imposing vaccine passports in order to supposedly prevent another lockdown in the winter.

In written comments in the foreword to a coronavirus report from the Tony Blair Institute, which has been attempting to steer decision-making in the United Kingdom and across the world from the outset of the pandemic, the former Prime Minister argued children are becoming a significant source of the spread of the virus.

While the government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) did not recommend vaccinating children on health grounds, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government has decided to push forward with vaccinating children over the age of 12-years-old, even without parental consent in some cases.

Early treatment of symptoms is the last remaining enemy of the global Covid consensus.

In his March 17, 2020, article in Stat, Stanford epidemiologist Dr. John Ioannidis argued for a vast reconsideration of the societal response to the emerging SARS-COV-2 pandemic, commonly called Covid-19. For unknown reasons, the scientific and medical tradition forming the foundation for how to respond to pandemics was being quickly disbanded. Abandoning such previously established traditions entailed filling the void with the appearance of a new global consensus: The combination of unending non-pharmaceutical interventions (masks, social distancing, etc.) and universal vaccination was the key that would end the pandemic.

The totalizing power of this new global pandemic consensus has certainly been effective over the last year and a half. However, the last month and a half has brought about a palatable instability to this apparently once-certain agreement.

As one writer observes,

Until now, Corona policy in every western country has unfolded more or less according to the same script, devised by the World Health Organization at the end of February 2020. The final act was supposed to be the wide-scale eradication of Corona after mass vaccination. It is now clear that this will never happen. For the first time since March 2020, there is no obvious international consensus on the way forward.

The Texas Secretary of State's office announced on Thursday, September 23 it has begun a forensic audit of the 2020 election in three North Texas counties, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin along with Harris County.

In a statement sent to CBS 11, it said in part: Under existing Texas laws, the Secretary of State has the authority to conduct a full and comprehensive forensic audit. We anticipate the Legislature will provide funds for this purpose.

Full Text Of News Release From Texas Secretary Of State:

Under existing Texas laws, the Secretary of State has the authority to conduct a full and comprehensive forensic audit of any election and has already begun the process in Texas' two largest Democrat counties and two largest Republican counties — Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, and Collin — for the 2020 election. We anticipate the Legislature will provide funds for this purpose.

Earlier in an open letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Former President Donald Trump has backed House Bill 16(PDF) that calls for a "review of the results of the 2020 general election.