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The White House’s budget office has notified federal agencies that the government is shutting down Tuesday, after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on a temporary spending plan. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said late Monday in a memorandum to agency heads that there was no indication Congress would approve a short-term funding measure before the midnight deadline. She said federal agencies should execute their plans for an orderly shutdown. The deadline for a shutdown came and went at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, after a lengthy battle between the Republican-controlled U.S. House...

Global average temperature has been flat for a decade. But frightening myths about global warming continue. We're told there are more hurricanes now. We're told that hurricanes are stronger. But the National Hurricane Center says it isn't so. Meteorologist Maria Molina told me it's not surprising that climatologists assumed hurricanes would get worse. "Hurricanes need warm ocean waters," but it turns out that "hurricanes are a lot more complicated than just warm ocean waters." Computer models have long predicted nasty effects from our production of greenhouse gasses. But the nasty effects have not appeared. As far as hurricanes, more hit...

Archbishop prays while topless gay activists shout curses and douse him with water BY JOHN-HENRY WESTEN Wed Apr 24, 2013 16:44 ESTComments ()Tags: Andre-Joseph BRUSSELS, April 23, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an astonshing display of gentleness in the face of a vile attack, the head of the Catholic Church in Belgium, Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, remained calmly seated with eyes closed in prayer Tuesday as four topless women attacked him with shouts and curses and doused him with water. It’s not the first time the bishop has been attacked for standing up for the Church’s teachings on homosexuality and expressing his...

A Catholic’s Guide to Surviving the End of the World As We Know It By Emily Stimpson Does anyone else feel like one night, not too long ago, they went to bed in a reasonably normal world and woke up to a world scripted by Albert Camus?My hand’s up. Way, way up. I know I’m still supposed to be bubbling over with Easter joy (and believe me, I’m doing my due diligence in the chocolate-eating department), but the culture’s rapid and violent pivot to absurdism has me too disoriented for bubbling. Spinning is more like it.I mean, we’ve got George...

Remember back in 2011 when radio broadcaster and end-of-the-world prognosticator Harold Camping predicted the world’s end on October 21 yet the day passed with nary a sign of Armageddon? Last year, the ancient Mayans and a few North American self-proclaimed prophets like Warren Jeffs had various dates in December pegged for the end. Imagine the surprise of their true believers when the sun came up the next day. Did they feel relief? Disappointment? Skepticism (somewhat overdue) toward their leaders? Some no doubt have left the cult while others wait in trepidation for their prophet to predict a new date of...

George Noory hosts. Tonight's topics: "Apocalipticism" and "End of the Mayan Calendar".

SAN DIEGO - With his gas mask on and machete in hand, Nikko Sanchez is ready for December 21. "It does possibly mean the end of the world," said Sanchez. "I do know about the Mayan calendar, I have done some research." The Mayan calendar only extends to December 21, 2012. Some people interpret that as a prediction for the end of the world on that date. "I've seen how horrific people can be when they really want to be," said Sanchez. Sanchez is a Gulf War veteran and he's ex-law enforcement. Now, he's a "prepper" -- prepared to survive...

Hotel owners around the pyramid-shaped Mount Rtanj, in the east of the Balkan country, say that bookings are flooding in, with believers in the prophecy hoping that its purported mysterious powers will save them from the apocalypse. Adherents of the end-of-the-world scenario think the 5,100ft-high mountain, part of the Carpathian range, conceals a pyramidal building inside, left behind by alien visitors thousands of years ago. Arthur C Clarke, the British science fiction writer, reportedly identified the peak as a place of "special energy" and called it "the navel of the world". Doomsday cultists believe that it emits special energy that...

For those of you who’ve been living under a mainstream media rock the past ten years, then the following sentences are simply the chorus to a song by the famous rock band R.E.M. It’s the end of the world as we know it. It’s the end of the world as we know it. It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. But to those of us with an apocalyptic bent, the chorus to that song takes the form of an acronym. TEOTWAWKI. And we refer to the acronym on a daily basis, because we...

A massive explosion on the sun's surface has triggered the largest solar radiation storm since 2005, hurling charged particles at Earth. (NASA / May 4, 2012) A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before — and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of...

If you’d really like to depress yourself some evening, watch “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel. The show details the plans of normal, well adjusted people to cope with the aftermath of fiscal collapse, nuclear holocaust, the eruption of Yellowstone, solar flares, and so on. The New York Times noted with outrage that many of these people were accumulating guns and ammunition in order to defend their 1,500 pounds of MREs and dried brown rice, but stockpiling guns is fine with me. My concern is that most of them seem pretty inexpert with guns. One prepper was counting on...

A year from today the world will come to an end, according to some who cite the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar as evidence of a Dec. 21, 2012, apocalypse. But both astronomers and experts on Mesoamerican history say the Mayan apocalypse is likely to be another in a long line of failed doomsdaysAccording to the Maya Long Count calendar, the winter solstice of 2012 — Dec. 21, 2012 —is the end of a b'ak'tun, a 144,000-day cycle that has repeated 12 times since the mythical Maya creation date. The b'ak'tun that will end in 2012 is the...

A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain. The major scientific project will follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider and will answer questions about the universe. The laser will be capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it will be similar to the light the earth receives from the sun but focused on a speck smaller than a pin prick. Scientists say it will be so powerful they will be able to boil the very fabric of space and create a vacuum. A vacuum fizzles with...

In case you had forgotten (or made other plans), the world is supposed to end tomorrow. The prognosticator who predicted that the world would end this spring, Harold Camping, has updated his forecast, and the new End Date is October 21. In May, the world was supposed to end with a series of rolling earthquakes that began at 6PM in New Zealand (and then rolled through all the world's time zones). This time, Harold Camping says, the world will end quietly. As far as we know, he hasn't specified a particular time. In the intervening months, unfortunately, Camping has suffered...

Ready or not here she comes. New Yorkers are scrambling for last minute provisions today as Hurricane Irene draws closer to the city. The forceful storm — a Category 1 with ferocious 85 mph winds — is expected to wallop the city by 4 a.m. tomorrow. -snip- "How can I get out of Coney Island?" said Abe Feinstein, 82, from an apartment with view of the boardwalk. "What am I going to do? Run with this walker?"

The Christian radio station belonging to Harold Camping, who twice incorrectly predicted the world would end, plans to replace his weekday segment Open Forum with new programming after rebroadcasting the last show he recorded before suffering a stroke on June 9. Family Radio on Hegenberger Road began playing repeats of Open Forum after a stroke hospitalized the 89-year-old Camping. On Monday, staff again started airing 20 segments recorded by Camping from May 23 -- two days after he most recently predicted Judgment Day would arrive -- through June 9. "When those are completed, we will have other programming that is...

ALAMEDA -- Harold Camping, the Doomsday radio preacher who sparked international media attention by predicting the end of the world last month, has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke at his Alameda home Thursday night. The 89-year-old radio evangelist and president of the Oakland nonprofit Family Radio was taken by ambulance from his house Thursday night, a neighbor said, but his well-known, gravelly voice that led many believers to donate millions of dollars to his cause may never be the same. "He had a stroke, it was on his right side," said the neighbor, who declined to give her name...

What I learned from the End of the World… Once again the movie wasn’t as good as the Book. By movie I mean 2012 and by the book, I mean the Bible. Book Better than Movie Some would say, that from a Christian perspective while Harold Camping got the date of the rapture wrong – he was right about one thing. He was right in saying the Bible says the rapture is coming. Will Graham, the grandson of Billy Graham on Harold Camping's failed doomsday date: "Harold couldn't be more right. The end * * * * * Camping’s Explanation…...

End of Days Did you believe the world was going to end on May 21? Yes, my bags were packed and everything. No, everyone knows that doesn't happen until 2012.

The religious broadcaster who made the world's biggest mistake, twice, is bewildered that things did not go according to his prediction and the world did not end at 6 pm on May 21. Harold Camping, whose radio network is reported to be worth between USD 70 million and USD 120 million, was nowhere to be seen publicly Sunday after his prediction didn't come true, according to media reports on Monday. Camping's Family Radio network in Oakland, California, broadcasts on 150 stations in the US, as well as reaching audiences in Europe, Asia and AfricaTom Evans, a Family Radio board member,...

<p>OAKLAND, Calif. — They spent months warning the world of the apocalypse, some giving away earthly belongings or draining their savings accounts. And so they waited, vigilantly, on Saturday for the appointed hour to arrive.</p> <p>When 6 p.m. came and went at various spots around the globe, and no extraordinary cataclysm occurred, Keith Bauer — who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles to California for the Rapture — took it in stride.</p>

USGS is reporting a 10.0+ earthquake, the largest ever reported in the islands of and around American Samoa. It seems to be splitting the fault and creating rift, moving Eastward. It is predicted it will go around the world. Just kidding- can we officially call Camping a fraud now?

I thought it would be nice to minimize the silliness (as if) and at the same time save bandwidth, so I am setting up this "DAY AFTER" Live Thread, in honor and remembrance of all of those who will be "LEFT BEHIND" after the Rapture on May 21st, 2011.

In truth, the ideas and images in men’s minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them. - John Locke, English philosopher, physician The American evangelicals whose frenzied scriptural arithmetic points to the Second Coming of Christ 2,000 years after his birth are engaged in an activity which has been threatening the stability of the Christian Church since the second century; they are trying to align God’s calendar with man’s. - Damian Thompson, author, ‘The End of Time’ ________________________________________________________________________________ MIDDLE EAST, INDIA, May 19, 2011 —I bumped into Harold Camping when I came across his book ‘1994?’ Since he put...

Family Radio says the rapture will start at 6 pm local time. Kiritimati is 16 hours ahead of UTC which gives the rest of the world plenty of time (and the U.S. by midnight Friday into Saturday) to figure out if this supposed rapture is to take place. Check out what time it will be at your home when Kiritimati reaches 6 pm.

NEW YORK (AP) -- For some, it's Judgment Day. For others, it's party time. A loosely organized Christian movement has spread the word around the globe that Jesus Christ will return to earth on Saturday to gather the faithful into heaven. While the Christian mainstream isn't buying it, many other skeptics are milking it. A Facebook page titled "Post rapture looting" offers this invitation: "When everyone is gone and god's not looking, we need to pick up some sweet stereo equipment and maybe some new furniture for the mansion we're going to squat in." By Wednesday afternoon, more than 175,000...

Throughout human history and especially in recent centuries, cults of all kinds have predicted the end of the world. You’ve probably noticed that they’ve all been seriously wrong. The latest such silliness has come from 89-year-old Harold Camping’s Family Radio network of 66 stations. Based on his study of the Bible, Camping calculates that doomsday will be on Saturday, May 21, 2011. Christianity is particularly prone to such nonsense. After all, the Book of Revelation is all about doomsday, though with details from a clearly delusional mind. The “son of man” appears out of the clouds with a two-edged sword...

Throughout human history and especially in recent centuries, cults of all kinds have predicted the end of the world. You’ve probably noticed that they’ve all been seriously wrong. The latest such silliness has come from 89-year-old Harold Camping’s Family Radio network of 66 stations. Based on his study of the Bible, Camping calculates that doomsday will be on Saturday, May 21, 2011. Christianity is particularly prone to such nonsense. After all, the Book of Revelation is all about doomsday, though with details from a clearly delusional mind. The “son of man” appears out of the clouds with a two-edged sword...

An Irish American man has spent almost $150,000 in preparation for what he believes is the beginning of the end. Robert Fitzpatrick, 60, spent what he called his "life savings" on bus and subway advertisements throughout New York City in preparation for May 21, 2011 – or Judgement Day as Fitzpatrick has referred to it. Fitzpatrick, a recently retired MTA engineer, is so convinced that the fast approaching date is the end of the world, that he published a book titled "The Doomsday Code." In an interview with the New York Post Fitzpatrick reasoned that his book provided "proof that...

May 21, "starting in the Pacific Rim at around the 6 p.m. local time hour, in each time zone, there will be a great earthquake,". The true Christian believers will be "raptured": They'll fly upward to heaven. "and on top of all that, there's no more salvation at that point. 153 days later that the entire universe and planet Earth will be destroyed." "I no longer think about 401(k)s and retirement," he says. "I'm just a lot less stressed, and in a way I'm more carefree." Brown is married with several young children, and none of them shares his beliefs....

We picked up a pamphlet in Union Square to see why so many people are talking about the world ending on May 21, 2011. It turns out the theory comes down to two numerological proofs. The first proof is based on Genesis 7:4, when God said to Noah: "Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made." When God referred to seven days, he meant both seven days and seven thousand years, because "one day is...

Extramarital sex leads to earthquakes: Iran cleric Saturday, April 17, 2010 Tehran, Apr 17: An Iranian cleric has proclaimed that inappropriately dress women leading to extramarital affairs are the resons behind the devastating earthquakes that frequently rattle the country. Speaking to worshipped at the Friday prayers here on Apr 16, senior cleric Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi said, "Many women who dress inappropriately ... cause youths to go astray, taint their chastity and incite extramarital sex in society, which increases earthquakes." "Calamities are the result of people's deeds...We have no way but conform to Islam to ward off dangers," the teligious leader...

Scream glory Christians! The end is nigh! Soon we will be returned into the bosom of Christ, while the sinners are left to suffer the tribulation! If you haven't been saved yet, do so now! It is urgent!!! I have been carefully studying the books of Revelation, Daniel, and other key passages in Matthew, Ezekiel, and Song of Solomon, and having computed some numbers, have realized the return of Jesus is going to be three weeks from now! Now, I know some of you will say Jesus said we cannot predict the day and the hour, but the Bible actually...

We humans love a good scare, don’t we? Remember Y2K? All the computers in the world were supposed to do horrible things, banks were going to topple, governments who depended on PCs for their defense systems would vaporize, and The Osmands threatened to come back to prime time TV... Fast forward to now. We’re on the precipice of the end of days: December 21, 2012. That’s when the cognoscenti are saying that the world, as we know it, will end. Right?

Prophecy is a fascinating, compelling, and ever-so interesting field of study. It is history written in advance. When you get into it, and I mean really into it, you can see God’s will for the world and see his plan unfold in it. Understanding Bible Prophecy serves these functions. 1. It proves the validity of the promises of God. 2. It reminds us that God is in control. 3. It serves as an instrument for measuring the moral and immoral state of humanity. 4. It serves as a tool to prepare us for the Lord’s return, so that we will...

Signs are evident we are living in a spiritually prophetic age. Many have deep seated questions about our times and are frantically searching for answers wherever they can to find them. Intellectuals are turning to lost civilizations like the Mayans and the ambiguous predictions of Nostradamus to satisfy a need for truth. They’ve even dug up some of old Merlin’s psychic prophesies to learn what he said about the end of the world — we won’t repeat them here. Their conclusion after gathering all the prophetic material: All sources agree, the world will end in 2012. It can’t be a...

Mankind is an interesting creation. When he gets to the point where he has everything he could possibly want, he begins taking the things he has for granted. After he takes things for granted, he pursues more, with his appetite never fully satisfied...... ....If man disregards God, he feels that he is in control, and if he is in control, then he feels that he is the writer and creator of the laws, and eventually begins playing God. When a person holds power and has no fear of God, or being held accountable to Him, then he feels that he...

At this particular moment in time, people’s hearts are growing in darker strains, and people are taking more and more liberties, while making decisions without any fear of being held accountable to God. This is the fulfillment of prophecy.

Will there be an end of the world? Will the earth blow up the way many speculate? Will approximately 6.6 billion people on earth be destroyed in a very small time frame due to nuclear warfare, neutron bombs, dirty bombs, or something worse? The answer to this question depends on who you put your faith in.

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Months before make-or-break climate negotiations, a conclave of scientists warned Tuesday that the impact of global warming was accelerating beyond a forecast made by UN experts two years ago. Sea levels this century may rise several times higher than predictions made in 2007 that form the scientific foundation for policymakers today, the meeting heard. In March 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that global warming, if unchecked, would lead to a devastating amalgam of floods, drought, disease and extreme weather by the century end. The world's oceans would creep up 18 to 59...

GENEVA — It's been called an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe — or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday.

It has been called an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe — or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday. Whatever the case, the most powerful atom-smasher ever built comes online Wednesday, eagerly anticipated by scientists worldwide who have awaited this moment for two decades.

Iran on Sunday remained defiant in the standoff over its nuclear programme after the latest talks with the European Union ended in failure and world powers agreed to step up moves for further sanctions. Foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said more UN Security Council sanctions would not deter Iran from pressing ahead with its nuclear drive, which the United States alleges is aimed at making an atomic weapon. "If these powers are trying to deprive Iran of its rights, then resolutions and sanctions will be fruitless," he told reporters. His comments came two days after the latest round of...

Russia sect holes up in cave to await end of world Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:53am GMT     [] []   By Tatyana UstinovaMOSCOW (Reuters) - At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are threatening to commit suicide if police intervene, officials and media said on Thursday."They have covered the entrance and refuse to come out and are threatening to blow themselves up," an official in the local prosecutor's office told Reuters by telephone. "They threaten to detonate a gas tank...

While global warming continues to gain widespread public awareness, a potentially more devastating environmental threat is only beginning to get noticed, reports Tony Russomanno with KPIX-TV, the CBS station in San Francisco. The threat is mass extinction, and scientists are taking it very seriously. There is widespread belief among scientists that current species of life are becoming extinct at a rate more than 1,000 times higher than normal. "We are at the precipice of the end of the world," said Chera Van Burg of Species Alliance. An asteroid caused the last mass extinction when it wiped out the dinosaurs 65...

The world has nudged closer to a nuclear apocalypse and environmental disaster, a trans-Atlantic group of prominent scientists warned Wednesday, pushing the hand of its symbolic Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight. It was the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward, this time from 11:53 to 11:55, amid fears over what the scientists are describing as "a second nuclear age" prompted largely by atomic standoffs with Iran and North Korea. But the organization added that the "dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear...

Orange County's coastal plains could experience patches of frost tonight and Saturday night as a blast of Alaskan air moves through the region, the National Weather Service says. Overnight temperatures the next two days will be in the mid-to-low 30s across much of the county and could drop to 29 degrees in canyon areas protected from the winds. Cold air is heavy and tends to sink to the surface of the Earth. Forecasters said there's a slim chance that the county will get brief showers today. But the storm clouds will disappear by early Saturday and a mild Santa Ana...

Pizza lovers who don't happen to have American currency on them can still purchase their favorite pies with Mexican pesos, thanks to a Texas-based restaurant chain. Starting this week, Pizza Patrón outlets, which caters heavily to Mexicans, will offer the alternative form of payment. "We're trying to reach out to our core customer," Antonio Swad, president of Pizza Patrón Inc., told the Dallas Morning News. "We know they come back [from Mexico] and have pesos left over. We want to be a convenient place for them to spend their pesos." It's believed no other food chain operating so far from...