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(AP) HELL, Michigan -- This Tuesday, it'll be a hot time in Hell. Tuesday marks the once-in-a-millennium date of 6-6-06. It's a spot on the calendar watched carefully in the small Michigan town named Hell, about 60 miles west of Detroit. The date comes close to the number 666, which signifies the devil in the Bible's Book of Revelation. In anticipation, radio stations as far away as San Diego and Seattle have been raffling off trips to Hell. Live entertainment and a costume contest are also planned. One local businessman is especially fired up. He's selling souvenir mugs and T-shirts...

THE controversy over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad was reignited yesterday after an Italian Catholic magazine printed one on its front cover.Studi Cattolici carried a drawing of the Prophet in Hell, with the Italian writer Dante Alighieri asking the poet Virgil: "That man divided in two from his head to his feet - isn't that Muhammad?" Virgil replies: "Yes, it is him and he is in two because he has divided society - while the man next to him with his arms down represents Italian politics towards Islam." The cartoon is a play on Dante's Inferno - a similar scene...

Muslims outraged by new cartoon of Prophet in Hell By Malcolm Moore in Rome (Filed: 17/04/2006) An Italian magazine has infuriated Muslims by publishing a cartoon showing the Prophet Mohammed cut in half and burning in Hell. The drawing appears in Studi Cattolici, a monthly magazine with links to the ultra-conservative Roman Catholic group, Opus Dei. It shows the poets Virgil and Dante on the edge of a circle of flame looking down on Mohammed. "Isn't that man there, split in two from head to navel, Mohammed?" Dante asks Virgil. "Yes and he is cut in two because he has...

"Through me the way into the suffering city, Through me the way to the eternal pain, Through me the way that runs among the lost. Justice urged on my high artificer; My maker was divine authority, The highest wisdom, and the primal love. Before me nothing but eternal things were made, And I endure eternally. Abandon every hope, ye who enter here."

The difference between Universalists and Unitarians (the old joke has it) is that Universalists believe that God is too good to damn them, whereas Unitarians believe that they’re too good to be damned. I am a Universalist. For all my many failings, the day I wake up dead I won’t be in a cattle car on the fast train to Satan’s fiery pit. Nor will you. And neither will Old Scratch himself. If he actually exists, the devil too will be saved. In the good news of universalism, God is a loving God who will not rest until the entire...

I was going to write a bit of a Lenten reflection on heaven and hell, but Frederica Mathewes-Green does so much better a job of it than I possibly could. Hell has never been a fashionable destination, but it in recent years it's met a fate that even the most passé hotspots don't endure; people suspect it doesn't exist. Or, if it does exist, it attracts no customers; "we are permitted to hope that hell is empty" is how this is sometimes phrased. Even the most conservative Christians have a hard time putting a positive spin on a wrathful God...

Frederica in Orthodoxy, Christian Life, Christian Apologetics [Beliefnet: March 23, 2006] Hell has never been a fashionable destination, but it in recent years it’s met a fate that even the most passé hotspots don’t endure; people suspect it doesn’t exist. Or, if it does exist, it attracts no customers; "we are permitted to hope that hell is empty" is how this is sometimes phrased. Even the most conservative Christians have a hard time putting a positive spin on a wrathful God who flings evildoers into flaming torment. It is tragic that some Christians have been so battered with stories of...

HARRISBURG -- Cash with far higher-than-normal trace levels of cocaine can be seized as contraband from speeding drivers, a divided state appeals court ruled today. The 5-2 Commonwealth Court decision concerned the seizure of $451,000 from two separate vehicle stops by state police on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 2002 and 2004.

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU Rocket attack against Jerusalem thwarted Terror leader says more missiles on way to 'bring hell' to Israelis Posted: February 21, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Aaron Klein © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com JERUSALEM – Marking what many here are calling a major escalation in Palestinian terrorism, security officials announced yesterday they captured a rocket launcher and several mortar shells intended for attack against a Jerusalem neighborhood. A leader of the planned attack told WorldNetDaily yesterday his group will soon launch a rocket war against the Jewish state, threatening to fire missiles at Israel's international airport and warning his...

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Hamas has apparently won the Palestinian parliamentary election, a senior official of President Mahmoud Abbas's long-dominant Fatah faction said on Thursday. A Hamas victory, if confirmed by official results, would put it in position to dominate a new Palestinian cabinet, which would dramatically shake up the Palestinian Authority and likely put peacemaking with Israel in a deep freeze. "It seems that Hamas will form the next government," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, after a Hamas leader claimed victory in Wednesday's vote. Fatah and Hamas had both said earlier that a coalition...

Repeatedly referring to a need for "new vision and leadership" in U.S. policy toward the Middle East, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) called Wednesday for United Nations sanctions against Iran and further global advances in women's rights, and urged optimism for a peaceful resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. "We cannot and should not — must not — permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons," Clinton said in a speech before a capacity crowd in Richardson Auditorium. (See full text.) "In order to prevent that from occurring, we must have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by China and Russia,...

he release of French hostage Bernard Planche yesterday earned the Americans warm thanks from Paris. This reflects the rapprochement between the partners on Iraq as well as on other matters in the Middle East. Expressing his thanks to "all those who mobilized" to help the French hostage regain his freedom, Jacques Chirac "thanked the coalition forces that permitted this release". Dominque de Villepin was more explicit. Thanking "the diplomatic services and intelligence services", the prime minister also thanked "the US authorities that lent their assistance to this release". Such expressions of gratitude, which have been rather rare in the Iraqi...

"Who's Your Daddy?" Based on the performance by Toby Keith"Where's Osama?" Parody by Sarcastic Paranoid Have you noticed that Zawahiri does all the talking for al-Qaeda these days and Osama hasn't said anything since 2004? Logically, given these two facts as premises, what is the most valid and highly probable conclusion we can draw? Oh, there you are, you whore Zawahiri,On al-Jazeera spewing lies.You celebrate with Moore and Sheehan when a soldier dies. Yeah, you've lost your mind, look like crap, now you're squirming in our trapAnd al-Qaeda's in a bind,What happened to that dork Osama? Was he cramping your...

I am the product of a “dumbed down" generation. During my “Catholic” instruction in the late 1960s, I can’t recall having ever seen a monstrance, prayed a novena, heard Gregorian chant, taken part in a May crowning or prayed a benediction prayer. In This Article... The Affective Shift The Pertinent Questions Up, Up and Away The Affective Shift When Rome recently asked for churches to again start the “Forty Hours” devotion, I found myself asking people exactly what that entailed. So I struggle even in adulthood, reaching back like an orphaned child searching for her parental roots. At one time...

The following words are from a dead man. A child actually, one that had to grow up to fast, and lost everything... Before that though, I will tell you a little story... Now it has nothing to do with myself other then that John was a really close friend and a great person... That and I was part of it all, or at least, have the scars. A few years about the time John was thirteen, we were walking to school... He asked me, "Steven, if you lost the only person you ever could love, what would you do?" I...

THE Devil's work is far from done. More than a third of Scotland's clergy still believe in the literal existence of Hell as a place, according to a new survey. Hell has not got any less hellish over the centuries either. The ministers, from a wide range of denominations, are convinced that lost souls will still suffer eternal mental anguish after death. Hardliners hold out the prospect of eternal physical punishment as an added part of the package for the condemned. Judgment Day, whether it ends in being sent to Hell or not, is also a strong belief, the survey...

THE Devil's work is far from done. More than a third of Scotland's clergy still believe in the literal existence of Hell as a place, according to a new survey. Hell has not got any less hellish over the centuries either. The ministers, from a wide range of denominations, are convinced that lost souls will still suffer eternal mental anguish after death. Hardliners hold out the prospect of eternal physical punishment as an added part of the package for the condemned. Judgment Day, whether it ends in being sent to Hell or not, is also a strong belief, the survey...

Vatican considers dropping 'limbo' Theologians meet to look again at fate of unbaptised tots (ANSA) - Vatican City, November 29 - The Catholic Church appears set to definitively drop the concept of limbo, the place where it has traditionally said children's souls go if they die before being baptised . Limbo has been part of Catholic teaching since the 13th century and is depicted in paintings by artists such as Giotto and in important works of literature such as Dante's Divine Comedy . But an international commission of Catholic theologians is meeting in the Vatican this week to draw up...

The notebooks are now yellow with age and illegible in some sections. Filled with heart-wrenching short stories and poems that depict a horror beyond human imagination, they serve as the last will and testament of a young Jewish boy incarcerated in the Lodz Ghetto during World War II. The stories were written in Polish by an ill and malnourished Avraham Cytryn over a four-year period (1940-1944) - from the time he was 13 until he was 17, when he was transported to Auschwitz and gassedto death. After the war, the notebooks were found scattered on the floor of the family's...

Every soul that meets death in a state of mortal sin will be damned for eternity Father Joseph Pfeiffer's sermon recorded on the first Sunday of Advent at St. Michael the Archangel's Roman Catholic Church in Farmingville, NY. LISTEN HERE