Signs of the Times (4/12/13)

Judge Defends Cross at 9/11 Memorial

A New York City judge has protected the Cross of Jesus Christ to be displayed in the 9/11 memorial display, and thrown out a lawsuit by the American Atheists.  The Blaze reports:  “A judge sided with New Yorkers and others around the country who believe that a steel cross that was formed when World Trade Center buildings collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001 should be included in the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. American Atheists (AA), a secular group committed to church-state separatism, has long fought the presence of the symbol that is being included in an effort that remembers the lives lost during the nation’s most horrific terror attack.

Biggest Reason for Declining Church Attendance: Children’s Sports?

Sunday morning used to be a time reserved by many Christians for attending worship services, but new research indicates the extent to which American churches today are competing against other activities — the biggest competition being children’s sports, Christianity Today reports. According to a study published in the Review of Religious Research, an examination of declining attendance at 16 congregations revealed that most pastors place the most blame on children’s sports activities, since practices and competitions alike are increasingly “scheduled on Sunday mornings at the very time when many churches traditionally have provided religious education.” However, that doesn’t mean that families whose kids are highly involved in athletics will stop attending church. Instead, more Protestant churches are offering alternate service times to accommodate members with Sunday morning commitments. They’re also increasing their emphasis on physical fitness programs or sports ministries. According to David Briggs of the Association of Religion Data Archives, “More than two-thirds of congregations who said sports and fitness programs were a specialty of the congregation reported more than a 10 percent growth in attendance from 2000 to 2010. In contrast, only a third of churches with no athletic programs reported such growth.”

VP Biden Calls for New World Order

At a banking conference last Friday, Vice President Joe Biden called for the creation of a “new world order” with new financial institutions, updated global rules, a level playing field, and a prosperous China. Biden’s remarks also come one week after China, Russia and other powers announced the creation of a new economic order that would rival the Western-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Delivering the keynote address at the Export-Import Bank Conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday, Biden stated “the affirmative task we have now is to create a new world order… We have to update the global rules of the road.”

• Globalists are seeking to create a one-world government, just as Revelation 13 prophesies.

Obama Sends Congress $3.8 Trillion Spending Plan

President Obama found himself weathering bipartisan broadsides Wednesday as he sent Congress his 2014 budget proposal, which in its effort to please both sides of the aisle has ended up angering both. The budget arrived on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning, delivered 65 days after the legal deadline. The $3.77 trillion spending plan, which is over 2,000 pages, tries to curb deficits by further raising taxes on top earners and reining in the growth of Social Security. But Republicans argue they already consented to increased taxes as part of the fiscal crisis deal and have expressed little interest in negotiating another hike. And liberal Democrats — particularly powerful advocacy groups — have launched a series of campaigns to oppose the changes to Social Security.

Obamacare Exchanges Costs Double to: $4.4 Billion

As a number of Republican governors continue to say “no” to Obamacare, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) on Wednesday acknowledged that the president’s signature healthcare law is racking up twice the costs to set up the all-important insurance exchanges. HHS more than doubled its previous cost estimate of $2 billion for the amount it expects to spend to help states set up insurance exchanges, which is a central component of Obamacare. Despite the projection overruns, the department is “determined to make them work,” said HHS. Exchanges were envisioned as places where private consumers, who aren’t necessarily covered by an employer healthcare program, can compare and purchase healthcare coverage.

• Anytime the government gets involved in running a business, losses and cost overruns are all but guaranteed (e.g. the Postal Service and Amtrak)

Pentagon Report Says N. Korea Can Arm Missile with Nuke

Obama administration officials scrambled to downplay the errant disclosure of a classified portion of an intelligence report finding that North Korea has advanced its nuclear knowledge to the point that it could arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead. The analysis, disclosed Thursday at a hearing on Capitol Hill, says the Pentagon’s intelligence wing has “moderate confidence” that North Korea has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles but that the weapon was unreliable. The revelation was significant, because it has not been previously reported or believed that the country had the ability to miniaturize and deliver a nuclear weapon.

North Korea warned foreigners to leave South Korea Tuesday, to avoid harm in the event of war. The latest moves follow weeks of ever escalating threats from Pyongyang, which has reacted with increasing anger to United Nations sanctions punishing the North for its third nuclear test, conducted February 12^th. North Korea has raised at least one missile into its upright firing position, feeding concerns that a launch is imminent, a U.S. official told CNN Thursday. After the raising of the missile Wednesday, it was not clear to U.S. officials why the North Korean government did not proceed with the firing.

U.S. Arming Islamist Militants Through Libya?

Questions remain about the Obama administration’s role in supplying arms to Libyan rebels as a United Nations report released this week reveals the weapons from Libya to extremists proliferating at an “alarming rate,” fueling conflicts in Mali, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere. In December 2012, the New York Times reported that after discussions among members of the National Security Council, the Obama administration backed arms shipments to Libyan rebels from both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The administration urged the emirates to ship foreign weapons to Libya that could not be traced to the U.S., the Times reported. The Times further reported in 2012 the White House “secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants. A report by the U.N. Security Council’s Group of Experts blamed Qatar and the UAE for arming the rebels, but omitted U.S. involvement in what some say is an elaborate coverup.

IRS Tells Agents PK to Snoop on Emails Without Warrant

The Internal Revenue Service believes it doesn’t need permission to root through emails, texts or other forms of electronic correspondence, according to recently released internal agency documents. The documents, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union, reveal that tax department agents have been operating under the assumption that they can bypass warrants. According to a 2009 IRS employee handbook, though, the tax agency said the Fourth Amendment does not protect emails because Internet users don’t “have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.” A lawyer for the agency reiterated the policy in 2010. And the current online version of the IRS manual says that no warrant is required for emails that are stored by an Internet storage provider for more than 180 days. Privacy advocate groups, like the ACLU, say the government must obtain a search warrant based on probable cause.

• Under the Obama Administration we belong to the government and they can do whatever they want

ATF Seeks ‘Massive’ Database of Personal Info

A recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reveals that the agency is seeking a “massive” online database capable of pulling up individuals’ personal information, connections and associates. On March 28, ATF posted the notice on FedBizOpps.gov, entitled “Investigative System.”  The solicitation was updated on April 5 with a few minor changes. The document says that the system will be utilized by staff “to provide rapid searches on various entities for example; names, telephone numbers, utility data and reverse phone look-ups, as a means to assist with investigations, and background research on people, assets and businesses.” The system is described as a “massive online data repository system that contains a wide variety of data sources both historically and current that can be utilized in support of investigations and backgrounds.”

• Government abuse of such information is sure to follow in order to quench dissent

Study Points to Overuse of Drug Prescriptions

Doctors are prescribing enough antibiotics to give them to 4 out of 5 Americans every year, an alarming pace that suggests they are being overused, a new government study finds. Overuse is one reason antibiotics are losing their punch, making infections harder to treat. There is no scientific consensus on an appropriate level of antibiotic prescribing. But some experts said the new study’s results are disturbing, and that rates are excessive. Experts say chances of resistance increase when antibiotics are not used long enough or are taken for the wrong reasons, allowing bacteria to survive and adapt. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking at least 20 strains of resistant bacteria.

• One possible cause of end-time pestilence

Mood of the Nation Trending Upward

As the stock market continues to show record highs, the number of Americans who say things are going well in the country has reached 50% for the first time in more than six years, according to a new national survey. But that doesn’t mean the country is entirely out of the woods yet. The CNN/ORC International poll released Friday indicates that an equal 50% say the country is in bad shape. “The number continues an upward pattern since the summer of last year, when only 35% were optimistic about the country’s conditions,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. Americans haven’t been this optimistic since January 2007, when 57% felt the country was in good shape. For more of the next four years, the figure hovered in the 20’s and 30’s, and stayed mostly in the 30’s and 40’s last year.

• Irrational exuberance? Time will tell. Most likely is the calm before the storm.

Economic News

Retail sales fell in March from February, taking the biggest drop in nine months, the Commerce Department said Friday. Retail sales declined a seasonally adjusted 0.4% last month, Commerce said. That followed a 1% gain in February. Consumers cut back across a wide range of categories. Sales at auto dealers dropped 0.6%.

First-time claims for unemployment benefits fell by 42,000 in the latest week to 346,000 from an upwardly revised 388,000 a week earlier. The data have been volatile the past two weeks largely because of the Easter holiday.

Foreclosure filings — including notices of default, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — during the first quarter fell 23% from a year earlier, the lowest level since the second quarter of 2007. Last month, banks repossessed just under 44,000 homes, within striking distance of the pre-housing bust monthly average. At the height of the housing meltdown, in September 2010, repossessions topped 100,000 a month.

The number of homes listed for sale ticked up by almost 2.4% in March from February but remained down 15% from a year ago. The low inventory of homes for sale in many markets is helping drive up prices.

Personal computer shipments worldwide plummeted 13.9% in the first quarter, the latest evidence of a decaying market. Consumer preferences for tablets and smartphones continue to turn the PC industry upside-down. Desktops have been particularly hard hit as sales have been shaved nearly in half in the past 10 years.

Persecution Watch

Tens of thousands of Christians have left post-revolution Egypt due to concerns over rising Muslim conservatism and a general instability they say is emboldening attacks against them. Perhaps the most dramatic example of sectarian tension yet occurred Sunday in central Cairo, where a crowd attacked Christian mourners after they emerged from a funeral in Egypt’s main Coptic Christian cathedral. Coptic Pope Tawadros II underscored rising tensions between Christians and Muslims when he criticized Islamist president Mohammed Morsi for the weekend violence which resulted in the deaths of four Christians. The state of instability, decaying economy and rise in crime have scared many Egyptians into leaving, or trying to — not least of all Egyptian Christians who say they are easy targets when trouble erupts and there is no system in place to protect them. “They feel if there is an issue, there is vigilante violence,” said Douglas May, a U.S. Catholic priest based in Egypt, where he has lived for 18 years. He said that although there were restrictions on minorities under former President Hosni Mubarak, Christians felt safer because there was at least a sense the country was under control. There are no official figures for how many Christians have left Egypt since the revolution, though estimates range as high as in the tens of thousands. “When there is no clarity, rumors abound,” said Ibrahim Isaac Sedrak, patriarch of Egypt’s estimated 250,000 Coptic Catholics. “There are those saying hundreds of thousands, others saying thousands, but there are people leaving, this we know — and not only Christians, Muslims are leaving as well.”

Syria

President Barack Obama has signed off on a new package of nonlethal aid for Syrian rebels, U.S. officials told CNN, signaling his administration is cautiously wading further into the conflict. The move reflects what officials describe as a ramped-up effort to change the military balance on the battlefield in Syria. It follows a decision by Obama last month to send food and medicine to the rebels, the first direct U.S. support for the armed opposition.

A Syrian rebel group’s pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda’s replacement for Osama bin Laden suggests that the terrorist group’s influence is not waning and that it may take a greater role in the Western-backed fight to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. Al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq said it has merged with Syria’s extremist Jabhat al-Nusra, a move that shows the rising confidence of radicals within the Syrian rebel movement and is likely to trigger renewed fears among its international backers. A website linked to Jabhat Al-Nusra confirmed on Tuesday the merger with the Islamic State of Iraq. Jabhat Al-Nusra has taken an ever-bigger role in Syria’s conflict over the last year, fighting in key battles and staging several large suicide bombings. The U.S. has designated it a terrorist organization.

Last month marked the deadliest month in Syria since protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime began two years ago, CBN News reports. More than 6,000 people were killed in what is being called “Bloody March”; a third of those were civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Those killed include 291 women, nearly 300 children and more than 1,400 rebel fighters. The United Nations reports that 70,000 people have died since the uprising began, but Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Observatory, said, “We estimate it is actually around 120,000 people.” Efforts by foreign media and independent human rights organizations within the country have been curtailed, making the verification of casualty figures virtually impossible.

Iran

Iran’s crude exports declined in March to the lowest this year as international sanctions aimed at the Persian Gulf country’s nuclear program and weaker global demand cut purchases, the International Energy Agency said. Imports from Iran slipped to 1.1 million barrels a day in March, from a revised 1.26 million barrels daily in February, the Paris-based adviser to 28 oil-consuming nations said in a report today. The U.S. and its allies are restricting Iran’s oil exports, the country’s largest source of revenue, to pressure the government in Tehran to stop enriching uranium.

Mali

About 70,000 refugees who fled violence in Mali are living in “appalling” conditions in a camp in the middle of the Mauritanian desert, Doctors Without Borders said Friday. The situation has only got worse in Mbera camp since French forces entered Mali in January to help local forces take on Islamist militants. About 15,000 more refugees have flooded into the camp since the fighting, and conditions are so bad there that many who were healthy became ill or malnourished after they arrived. The number of children admitted to clinics in the camp for severe malnutrition more than doubled in that time, climbing from 42 to 106. The camp was set up by the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, with the Mauritanian government about 37 miles from the border.

China

The death toll in China’s bird flu crisis stood at 10 on Friday, as Hong Kong authorities announced plans to test all poultry imported from the mainland. The total number of cases across eastern China climbed to 38. Seventy people have had close contact with the three patients, but none of them have exhibited abnormal symptoms. The World Health Organization (WHO) and Chinese health officials continue to monitor for human-to-human transmission. On Wednesday, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said the H7N9 virus had probably originated from migratory birds from East Asia mixing with domestic fowl in China’s Yangtze River delta region.

Mexico

Gunmen in Mexico opened fire on police and civilians Wednesday in two separate incidents, in which at least 13 people. Police seized the gunmen’s vehicles and found five assault rifles with magazines and other combat paraphernalia, the National Safety Commission said. Mexico has a reputation for strict gun ownership laws. In the town of Apatzingan, gunmen opened fire twice on residents who were commemorating the anniversary of the death of a revolutionary figure popular in the region. Eight died when the same group, marching in a ceremonial parade, came under fire again. In addition, six civilians and two police officers were wounded.

Earthquakes

A 6.1 magnitude earthquake killed at least 37 and injured hundreds more in a sparsely populated area in southern Iran on Tuesday, Iranian officials said, adding that it did not damage a nuclear plant in the region. The report said the earthquake struck the town of Kaki some 60 miles southeast of Bushehr, a town on the Persian Gulf that is home of Iran’s first nuclear power plant, built with Russian help. Dozens of aftershocks have been reported by the official IRNA news agency.

Weather

Friday is a day of clean up across several southern and midwestern states, after a classic spring storm spawned tornadoes and damaging thunderstorms Thursday. A powerful spring storm hit parts of the Mid-Atlantic on Friday morning after unleashing tornadoes, hail and high winds as it swept through the Midwest and into the Deep South, where it left three people dead and thousands without power. A supercell thunderstorm spawned a tornado in eastern Mississippi killing one person. The severe storm system packed high winds and tornadoes ripped through sections of Arkansas and eastern Missouri overnight Wednesday, including a neighborhood in St. Louis, prompting the governors of two states to activate the National Guard. The storm was part of a dangerous system that raked the Midwest and may have also spawned a tornado in north-central Arkansas that left four people injured. In Missouri, where thousands of people were left without power in the southern parts of the state, Gov. Jay Nixon also called out the Guard and issued a state of emergency.

A winter storm was a major problem for the Plains, dropping temperatures dramatically and then dumping more than a foot of snow across parts of several states. More than two feet of snow fell in parts of South Dakota, while ice has become a problem in the southern Plains.

A wildfire due to extreme drought, a possible tornado touchdown and a blizzard warning all within a 50 mile radius — the weather in northeast Colorado went crazy overnight Monday to Tuesday. Hours after firefighters defeated a 2,600 acre blaze in Sterling County, a wind storm, suspected of being a tornado, tore down a home in adjoining Washington County to the south. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service is predicting a blizzard in the neighboring counties of Arapahoe and Adams to the east, where temperatures should drop into the single digits Tuesday night.

• End-time weather will continue to grow more extreme

Signs of the Times (4/8/13)

Sweeping Anti-Abortion Bill Passed in Kansas

Kansas legislators gave final passage to a sweeping anti-abortion measure Friday night, sending Gov. Sam Brownback a bill that declares life begins “at fertilization” while blocking tax breaks for abortion providers and banning abortions performed solely because of the baby’s sex. The House voted 90-30 for a compromise version of the bill reconciling differences between the two chambers, only hours after the Senate approved it, 28-10. The Republican governor is a strong abortion opponent, and supporters of the measure expect him to sign it into law so that the new restrictions take effect July 1.

States Look to Tax Guns, Ammo

Cook County, Ill., this month began collecting a $25 tax on gun purchases, and at least six states are considering new taxes on firearms or ammunition as a way to help pay for the consequences of gun violence. The Cook County tax applies to purchases in Chicago’s suburbs, but not the city. The tax is expected to raise $600,000 a year, which will help pay for indigent gunshot victims’ medical care at county-run Stroger Hospital. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, says 30% of the hospital’s trauma patients have gunshot wounds and it costs about $52,000 for initial treatment for each. A group of gun sellers and owners sued to block the gun tax, saying it violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Circuit Court Judge David Atkins denied a temporary restraining order, saying the lawsuit didn’t show “that this right is threatened by the tax.”

As Marijuana Goes Legit, Investors Rush In

Pot entrepreneurs have high expectations for a future market in legalized marijuana. The market for legal marijuana, which is accelerating with last fall’s legalization of most personal pot consumption in Colorado and Washington state. Advocates hope to legalize personal use in another 14 states by 2017, mostly among the 16 states besides Washington and Colorado where medical pot is legal (it’s also legal in Washington, D.C.). Industry estimates say today’s $1.5 billion legal market could quadruple by 2018. The public is trending toward legalization. In a Pew Research Center poll released Thursday, a majority of Americans (52%) favored legalization, the first time that threshold has been reached since polling on the issue began in 1969.

Politically Correct AP Strikes Again

For the second time in just days, Associated Press has redefined a word for its reporters that adopts a politically correct position, this time pleasing Muslim activists with a decision to ban the use of “Islamist,” replacing it with “fighters” and/or “militants.” The change by AP was made “after much prodding from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.” Earlier, the AP stylebook banned the use of “illegal immigrant.” Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, or ALIPAC, says it now will use the term “illegal invader” to balance AP’s edited terminology. “This Big Brother move by AP is political correctness on steroids,” said William Gheen, president of ALIPAC. “What class of criminals will the Associated Press and Congress make disappear next with the stroke of a pen?”

• Mainstream media is at the forefront of the war against Christians and conservatives

Nearly Half of Young Women Live With Boyfriend Prior to Marriage

Nearly half of women ages 15 to 44 say their “first union” was cohabitation rather than marriage, according to a new survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a first union, 48 percent of women moved in with their male partner, up markedly from 43 percent in 2002 and 34 percent in 1995. Just 23 percent of first unions were marriages, down from 30 percent in 2002 and 39 percent in 1995. “Instead of marriage, people are moving into cohabitation as a first union,” said demographer Casey Copen, the report’s lead author. “It’s kind of a ubiquitous phenomenon now.” Experts say the numbers show living together is increasingly being used as a “testing ground” for marriage. Within three years of cohabiting, 40 percent of women had transitioned to marriage, 32 percent remained living together and 27 percent had broken up. The median duration of first cohabitation is 22 months, up from 20 months in 2002 and 13 months in 1995. The report also found that 19 percent of women became pregnant and gave birth in the first year of a first premarital cohabitation.

• Marriage and God’s ordained family structure are under attack as never before as end-time “lawlessness” increases by leaps and bounds. (Matthew 24:12)

Discouraged Job Seekers Leave Work Force

A growing number of Americans discouraged by slow economic recovery are leaving the job market. The number of Americans in the labor force — those who have a job or are looking for one — fell by nearly half a million people from February to March, the government said last Friday. And the percentage of working-age adults in the labor force — what’s called the participation rate — fell to 63.3 percent last month. It’s the lowest such figure since May 1979. People without a job who stop looking for one are no longer counted as unemployed. That’s why the U.S. unemployment rate dropped in March despite weak hiring. If the 496,000 who left the labor force last month had still been looking for jobs, the unemployment rate would have risen to 7.9 percent in March.

Many Doctors Driven to Bankruptcy or Retirement

As many doctors struggle to keep their practices financially sound, some are buckling under money woes and being pushed into bankruptcy. It’s a trend that’s accelerated in recent years, industry experts say, with potentially serious consequences for doctors and patients. When a practice shuts its doors, patients can find it harder to get the health care they need nearby. The weak economy has taken a toll on doctors’ revenue, as consumers cut back on office visits and lucrative elective procedures. Doctors also blame shrinking insurance reimbursements, changing regulations, and the rising costs of malpractice insurance for making it harder to keep their practices afloat.

As the U.S. healthcare system changes dramatically over the next few years due to Obamacare, increasing numbers of doctors are planning to retire or scale back the hours they work, a new survey reveals. The annual poll by Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found that six out of 10 doctors believe it is likely that many physicians will retire earlier than planned in the next one to three years. The survey also found that 55 percent of physicians think that doctors will scale back their practice hours “based on how the future of medicine is changing,” Deloitte stated. And 38 percent of doctors polled say Obamacare is “a step in the wrong direction,” while 44 percent say it is “a good start.”

Gas Prices Dropping

March gasoline prices fell for the first time in 10 years. As of Apr. 1, the price of gas had fallen in 29 of the previous 33 days. Nationally, gas costs 30 cents a gallon less than it did a year ago and 15 cents a gallon less than it did following the February run-up in prices. AAA predicts the average price of gas in 2013 will be lower than 2012′s average of $3.60 a gallon — the highest AAA has ever recorded. There are two significant reasons for the price drop. First, Americans are driving less — about 2.7% less, according to Department of Transportation figures, or nearly 90 billion miles since reaching a peak of more than 3 trillion miles in November 2007. Second, older, less-fuel efficient cars are being replaced by new ones that get better gas mileage.

Economic News

The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumer borrowing rose $18.2 billion in February from January. That’s up from a gain of $12.7 billion in the previous month. The increase brought total borrowing to a seasonally adjusted $2.8 trillion. That’s up from $2.78 trillion in January and a new record. Nearly all of the gains were in a category that covers student and auto loans.

Persecution Watch

A mosque in Cairo has been occupied by radical Islamic militias and turned into a torture chamber for demonstrators against the ruling Muslim Brotherhood. Officials at the Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque reported the takeover, which happened after Friday prayers on 22 March, to the police. Demonstrators, including Christians and moderate Muslims, were then rounded up from the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters and taken to the mosque, where they were tortured for hours. Mosque officials expressed regret for what happened, saying that they “had lost control over the mosque at the time.” President Mohammed Morsi is becoming increasingly unpopular in Egypt, and there have been numerous demonstrations against his rule, which opponents have labelled autocratic. And as protests have intensified, so have efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood to clamp down on dissenters. Christians, moderate Muslims and secular liberals are increasingly concerned about the Islamisation of the country.

An Islamic cleric has issued a fatwa calling for the rebels in Syria to rape women who are not Sunni Muslim as part of their campaign to oust President Assad. Salafi sheikh Yasir al-Ajlawni  posted the message on YouTube, saying it was “legitimate” for Muslim fighters who are trying to put in place an Islamist government to “capture and have sex with” Alawites, the sect to which President Assad belongs, and other non-Sunni, non-Muslim women. He described non-Muslim women as “melk al-yamin”, a Quranic term for non-Muslim sex slaves.

Church buildings have been attacked and the homes of Christians looted in the aftermath of a bloody coup by a band of Muslim rebels in the Central African Republic, The Seleka rebels seized control of the country on 24 March following a three-month uprising. Their leader, Michel Djotodia, has assumed the presidency from the ousted François Bozizé, becoming the predominantly Christian nation’s first Muslim president. Days of chaos and looting followed the takeover, with Christian property being targeted by the rebels, while that belonging to Muslims was spared.

Syria

A car bomb Monday afternoon ripped through an area near one of the largest public squares in Damascus, Syria, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens of others. State TV reported that the blast was near a school. The square is surrounded by state buildings including the Central Bank of Syria. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the blast. Syrian state TV reported that authorities preliminarily believe that the explosion was “caused by a terrorist suicide bomber in a car.” Syria is in the midst of a civil war with roots that date back to March 2011, when protesters, partly inspired by Arab Spring uprisings in the region, began demonstrating for more freedom. The United Nations estimates that more than 70,000 people have died in the violence.

Afghanistan

Six American troops and civilians and an Afghan doctor were killed in attacks on Saturday in southern and eastern Afghanistan as the U.S. military’s top officer began a weekend visit to the country. Rhree U.S. service members, two U.S. civilians and the doctor were killed when a suicide bomber detonated a car full of explosives just as a convoy with the international military coalition drove past another convoy of vehicles carrying the governor of Zabul province. One of the civilians, Anne Smedinghoff, 25, was the first U.S. diplomat  to be killed since a September attack in Benghazi, Libya. She was delivering books to a school, along with a U.S. civilian from the Defense Department, when a bomb struck their convoy. The attacks occurred the same day that U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Afghanistan for a visit aimed at assessing the level of training that American troops can provide to Afghan security forces after international combat forces complete their withdrawal at the end of 2014.

Iraq

A suicide bomber killed 20 people and wounded dozens of others on Saturday at a political rally in the Iraqi city of Baqouba. The bomber detonated his explosives as Muthana al-Jourani, who is a Sunni candidate for the council, was hosting lunch for supporters in a large hospitality tent pitched next to his house in the mixed Sunni-Shiite city, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad. Violence is expected to surge in the lead up to Iraq’s provincial elections on April 20.

Bangladesh

Tens of thousands of radical Muslims marched toward the capital on Saturday to demand laws to target bloggers they said denigrated Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. The bloggers initiated a recent sit-in at Shahbagh Square demanding the death penalty for people involved in war crimes perpetrated more than four decades ago. Muslim hard-liners under the banner of Hefazat-e-Islam on Saturday rallied against bloggers and authors. Meanwhile, some 25 liberal groups denounced the Hefazat rally and enforced a daylong general strike across Bangladesh, keeping capital Dhaka’s communications cut off with the rest of the country on Saturday.

North Korea

North Korea said Monday that it would pull out all its workers and temporarily suspend operations at the industrial complex it jointly operates with the South, the latest sign of deteriorating relations on the Korean Peninsula. The North said it would also consider permanently closing down the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a shared manufacturing zone that is the last major symbol of cooperation between the two countries. Kim Yang Gon, secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, accused the South of seeking “to turn the zone into a hotbed of war” against the North.

North Korean church leaders are asking Christians worldwide to pray for their country amid increased war threats and combat preparation by North Korean military officials, Open Doors USA reports. According to underground Christians, there is a war-like atmosphere in the country. “The military army, navy, air force troops, strategic rocket troops, the red guards and the red youth guards are already in combat mode. Urgent meetings are being held everywhere. The leader said North Korean Christians and other citizens feared war and its consequences, and requested prayers from believers worldwide. “We know that our journey will not be an easy one, but we are sure that our faith, desperate hope and passionate desire will some day bear many fruit. No matter how difficult life is for us, we never blame or complain about our circumstances.”

Japan

The operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear plant said Saturday that it was moving tons of highly radioactive water from a temporary storage tank to another after detecting signs of leakage, in a blow to the plant’s ongoing struggles. Tokyo Electric power Co. said about 120 tons of the water are believed to have breached the tank’s inner linings, some of it possibly leaking into the soil. TEPCO is moving the water to a nearby tank at the Fukushima Dai-chi plant — a process that could take several days. Contaminated water at the plant, which went into multiple meltdowns after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan, has escaped into the sea several times during the crisis. Experts suspect there has been a continuous leak into the ocean through an underground water system, citing high levels of contamination among fish caught in waters just off the plant.

China

Chinese authorities have killed more than 20,000 birds from a live-poultry trading zone in Shanghai after an unusual strain of bird flu that has so far killed six people in the country and infected twenty was found in pigeons on sale in the city. The Chinese Minister of Agriculture said Thursday an analysis showed a strong genetic overlap between the strain found in the Huhai market pigeons and the one detected in infected humans. Officials are trying to track where the infected pigeons came from.

Earthquakes

A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit a remote part of eastern Indonesia on Saturday, causing residents to run outside in panic, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The temblor struck about 47 miles underground in Papua province, according to U.S. Geological Survey. It occurred in a mountainous area, about 35 miles northeast of Tolikara. There was no tsunami warning issued due to its location.

Weather

Despite an overall relatively quiet weather pattern, there have been some severe thunderstorms over the past ten days.  Destructive hail pelted parts of Texas. There have even been a couple of tornadoes, including a “stovepipe” tornado on April Fool’s Day near Silverton, Texas. A sharp jet stream trough is currently swinging into the Desert Southwest and Four Corners. To the east of this feature, southerly winds will transport increasingly warm and humid air near the surface northward into the southern and central Plains, middle and lower Mississippi Valleys.  Once this jet-stream level energy pushes eastward overtopping the warmer and more humid air mass, we have a volatile mix for a potential severe weather outbreak, including tornadoes.

Signs of the Times (4/5/13)

Ala. Lawmakers Tighten Rules for Abortion Clinics

Alabama lawmakers late Tuesday gave final passage to a measure placing stricter regulations on clinics that provide abortions. The bill requires abortion clinics to use doctors who have approval to admit patients to hospitals in the same city. Some clinics now use doctors from other cities that don’t have local hospital privileges. Proponents say the regulations will protect women. Opponents say they will make it harder for women to exercise their right to get an abortion. A similar law in Mississippi is threatening to close that state’s only abortion clinic, which is challenging the law in court. The state House voted 68-21 to give final passage to the Women’s Health and Safety Act. The vote came hours after the state Senate voted 20-10 to approve the bill. The votes in the GOP-led legislature, mostly along party lines, send the measure to Republican Gov. Robert Bentley, who backs the legislation.

Judge Strikes Restrictions on ‘Morning-After’ Pill

A federal judge has ruled that the government must make the most common morning-after pill available over the counter for all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls 16 and younger. The decision, on a fraught and politically controversial subject, comes after a decade-long fight over who should have access to the pill and under what circumstances. And it counteracts an unprecedented move by the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, who in 2011 overruled a recommendation by the Food and Drug Administration to make the pill available for all ages without a prescription. In a decision in a lawsuit filed by advocates, the judge, Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court, ruled that the government’s refusal to lift restrictions on access to the pill was “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.”

13 Attorneys General Push Obama on Contraception Mandate

Thirteen state attorneys general are urging the federal government to broaden religious exemptions for private businesses under the White House’s contraception mandate, claiming the policy violates religious freedoms. Put simply, the group — the attorneys general of Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia — believes any employer who says he or she objects to contraception should not have to provide contraceptive coverage. The Department of Health and Human Services’ latest proposal, unveiled Feb. 1, would require all employers to provide contraceptive coverage to workers; some nonprofit religious organizations — primarily houses of worship — that object to contraception on religious or moral grounds would be exempt. In a March 26 letter, the coalition asserted that the exclusion should be extended beyond religious institutions to include all conscientious objectors. At least two dozen suits by private businesses have been filed against the contraception mandate, and 16 have been granted a temporary injunction while the lawsuits are pending, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is spearheading much of the opposition to the mandate. In addition, 30 lawsuits by nonprofit religious groups have been filed against the mandate, although most have been rejected as premature because fines for noncompliance don’t kick in until 2014.

Same Sex Marriage Not Just a U.S. Issue

It’s not just the United States grappling with the issue of same-sex marriage. Many countries around the world are re-examining their laws, and some appear to be on the brink of changing them. Senators in Uruguay approved a marriage equality bill Tuesday that puts them on course to be the 12th country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. And this week, senators in France will begin weighing a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage and allow same-sex couples to adopt children. The bill, which has the support of President Francois Hollande, has cleared the lower house of Parliament. But like the United States, France is far from united on the issue. In January, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Paris to protest same-sex marriage.

Across the English Channel, the United Kingdom is also considering legalization. In February, lawmakers in the House of Commons approved the second reading of a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in England and Wales. (Scotland has its own legalization bill in the works, while Northern Ireland rejected a similar measure in October.) More debate and more votes are still necessary In the U.K. before the bill can become law, but the wide margin of February’s vote — 400-175 — suggests that it may have the support it needs to eventually pass.

• This issue is a barometer of how far along we are in the end-time decline of God-ordained morality

Senators Vow to Oppose UN Arms Trade Treaty

Republican senators — joined by at least one Democrat — ripped the international arms trade treaty approved Tuesday by the U.N. General Assembly, calling it a “non-starter” and vowing to oppose Senate ratification. The treaty approved Tuesday was the first of its kind. The resolution was approved at the U.N. by a vote of 154 to 3 with 23 abstentions. But in the U.S. Senate, which must ratify the treaty in order for the United States to be a party to it, opposition is much stronger. The Senate already voted for an amendment last month to prevent the U.S. from entering into the treaty. The sentiment among conservative and moderate senators is that the treaty represents an infringement of Second Amendment rights.

Conn. Governor Signs USA’s Toughest Gun Law

Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy signed the nation’s most far-reaching gun control bill in Hartford Thursday, concluding several emotional weeks of debate and compromise since the state was rocked and the world stunned by brutal mass murder at an elementary school here. The state House voted early Thursday in favor of the 139-page bill crafted by leaders from both major parties in the Democratic-controlled General Assembly. It passed the Senate in a 26-10 vote on Wednesday. The bill adds more than 100 weapons to the state’s ban on assault weapons, limits the capacity of ammo magazines and requires background checks for all weapon sales, including at gun shows. It would also establish the nation’s first statewide registry for people convicted of crimes involving dangerous weapons. Access to the registry would be available only to law enforcement.

Obama Using Disputed Gun Control Stat

As President Obama prepares to head to Colorado on Wednesday to push gun control legislation, some are calling into question the validity of a key statistic he’s using to tout his message on near-universal background checks. During several speeches, Obama has said 40 percent of all gun purchases were made without a background check. But that number is nearly two decades old and comes from a poll with a relatively tiny sample size. Gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association, as well as The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker,” are calling out the president’s stat, saying his numbers on background checks need a background check of their own.

CDC: 110+ Million Venereal Infections in U.S.

According to new data released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 19.7 million new venereal infections in the United States, bringing the total number of existing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the U.S. to 110,197,000. The STI study referenced by the CDC estimated that 50 percent of the new infections occurred among people in the 15-to-24 age bracket. In fact, of the 19,738,800 total new STIs in the United States, 9,782,650 were among Americans in the 15-to-24 age bracket. “CDC’s new estimates show that there are about 20 million new infections in the United States each year, costing the American healthcare system nearly $16 billion in direct medical costs alone,” said a CDC fact sheet. The most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States in 2008 was human papillomavirus (HPV), which caused 14,100,000 estimated infections.

Dementia Care Cost Is Projected to Double by 2040

The most rigorous study to date of how much it costs to care for Americans with dementia found that the financial burden is at least as high as that of heart disease or cancer, and is probably higher. And both the costs and the number of people with dementia will more than double within 30 years, skyrocketing at a rate that rarely occurs with a chronic disease. Behind the numbers is a sense that the country, facing the aging of the baby boom generation, is unprepared for the coming surge in the cost and cases of dementia. “It’s going to swamp the system,” said Dr. Ronald C. Petersen, who is chairman of the advisory panel to the federal government’s recently created National Alzheimer’s Plan. If anything, Dr. Petersen said of the study’s numbers, “they’re being somewhat conservative.” Dr. Petersen.

Stockton, Ca. Declared Bankrupt

Stockton, Calif., became the most populous city in the nation to go broke Monday, after a judge accepted the city’s application to enter bankruptcy. In the closely watched decision, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein said the bankruptcy declaration was needed to allow the city to continue to provide basic services. He determined Stockton would not be able to perform “its obligations to its citizens on fundamental public safety as well as other basic government services without” the protections provided under bankruptcy proceedings. Stockton was facing a $26 million shortfall when it filed for bankruptcy last summer, the result of the housing bust and soaring pension obligations. The city of nearly 300,000 people has become emblematic of government excess.

Economic New

Employers added a disappointing 88,000 jobs in March, confirming fears of a slowdown in payroll growth that economists say could persist for several months. The number of new jobs is less than half what economists had forecast, falling from 268,000 in February. The unemployment rate fell to 7.6% from 7.7%, largely because 496,000 Americans stopped working or looking for work, the Labor Department said Friday in its monthly employment report.

The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid rose to a four-month high last week. The number was higher than expected and though there is volatility in the figure at this time of year. The Labor Department says weekly applications increased 28,000 to a seasonally adjusted 385,000. That is the highest level since late November and greater than the 375,000 level considered to indicate job growth.

Delinquencies on bank-issued credit cards sank to 2.47% in the fourth quarter — the lowest level since 1994. The percentage of credit card accounts that were 30 days or more overdue during the quarter was roughly half the record high of 5.01% set in 2009 and well below the 15-year average of 3.87%.

After a sharp drop in January, personal incomes bounced back in February. Personal incomes rose 1.1% in February, while spending rose just 0.7%.The surprise jump in take-home pay came after incomes plunged 3.7% in January.

The Institute of Supply Management’s monthly reading on the U.S. manufacturing sector came in at 51.3 in March, down from 54.2 in February. Any number above 50 indicates the sector is growing. U.S. manufacturing activity continued to expand in March, but the rate of growth slowed.

Eurozone

The Eurozone economy has passed another bleak milestone. Official figures Tuesday showed that unemployment across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro has reached 12% for the first time since the currency was launched in 1999. Spain (26.3%) and Greece (26.4%) have massive unemployment and many other countries are seeing their numbers swell to uncomfortably high levels. A total of 19.07 million people were officially out of work in the Eurozone in February, nearly two million more than the same month the year before. For the 27-country European Union, of which the Eurozone is a large part, the unemployment rate was 10.9%.Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has an unemployment rate of only 5.4%, lower than the U.S. rate of 7.7%.

Middle East

Palestinian militants launched several rockets into southern Israel, as Israeli aircraft struck targets in the Gaza Strip early Wednesday in the heaviest exchange of fire between the sides since they agreed to an internationally brokered cease-fire in November. There were no casualties reported, but the violence nonetheless threatened to shatter the calm that has prevailed for more than four months and prompted Israel’s new defense minister to warn that the Jewish state will not sit back if militants attack the south of the country.

According to a report from Al-Jazeera, Syrian rebels have seized control of the area near the town of Aleppo that is believed to contain much of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’Alon has vowed that the Jewish state will take whatever action is necessary to prevent these dreadful weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists. “We’ll act to ensure that these types of weapons don’t reach irresponsible hands,” Ya’alon said.

Syria

The brutal civil war in Syria claimed more than 6,000 lives in March alone — making it the deadliest month since the conflict began a little more than two years ago, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Monday. The group said 6,005 people were killed in Syria last month. That’s more than all the deaths that occurred in the first nine months of the war. The tally, which do not include people who are held in detention centers or who have been kidnapped by rebels. Their fate is unknown. The U.N. estimates that more than 70,000 people are believed to have been killed in the conflict thus far.

Pakistan

Several dozen militants armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked a power grid station in northwestern Pakistan before dawn Tuesday, killing seven people and taking four hostage. The dead included three policemen and four government power workers. The grid that was attacked is located near Khyber, part of Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal region bordering Afghanistan, the main sanctuary for the Taliban in the country. It supplies electricity to a large part of Peshawar, and many areas of the city were still without power on Tuesday morning because the station was damaged in the attack.

Korea

Hours after North Korea said that it had final approval to launch “merciless” military strikes on the United States, South Korea’s defense minister said North Korea has moved two missiles with “considerable range” to its east coast. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin told lawmakers at a parliamentary committee meeting that he did not know the reasons behind the missile movement, saying it “could be for testing or drills.” The U.S. Navy is moving at least one warship closer to the North Korean coastline and more may be on the way. U.S. officials quietly are expressing concern that North Korea could use its “space launch vehicle” to explode a high-altitude nuclear device over the United States, creating an electromagnetic pulse that would destroy major portions of the U.S. electrical grid system as well as the nation’s critical infrastructures.

North Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North in the latest sign that Pyongyang’s warlike stance toward South Korea and the United States is moving from words to action. The move came a day after the North announced it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and a uranium enrichment plant, both of which could produce fuel for nuclear weapons that Pyongyang is developing and has threatened to hurl at the U.S. but which experts don’t think it will be able to accomplish for years.

China

China announced a sixth death from a new bird flu strain Friday, while authorities in Shanghai halted the sale of live fowl and slaughtered all poultry at a market where the virus was detected in pigeons being sold for meat. Four more people in China have fallen ill from a strain of avian flu not previously detected in humans, the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reported, as authorities ramped up efforts to monitor the virus. Of the four latest victims, from four different cities in the east coast province of Jiangsu, two died and two are in a critical condition and receiving emergency treatment. The disclosure of new infections comes only days after authorities announced the first three known cases of humans infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus on Sunday, two of whom died.

We’ve seen the pictures of choking smog and pollution in China, but it might be far worse — and far more deadly — than originally thought. According to a story from the New York Times, 1.2 million premature deaths occurred in 2010 alone from Chinese pollution, accounting for 40 percent of global pollution deaths. The report goes on to project that by the year 2050, dirty air will kill 3.6 million people per year, mostly in China and India, which would surpass dirty water and lack of sanitation as the biggest environmental killer.

Weather

At least 52 people drowned in their homes and cars, were electrocuted or died in other accidents as flooding from days of torrential rains swamped Argentina’s low-lying capital and province of Buenos Aires. Many people climbed onto their roofs in the pouring rain after storm sewers backed up. Water surged up through drains in their kitchen and bathroom floors, and then poured in over their windowsills. The rains also flooded the country’s largest refinery, causing a fire that took hours to put out.

Softball-sized hail rained down on a community in Texas in the early morning hours of Wed., April 3 leaving significant damage in its wake.  The hail shattered windows in buildings and cars in Hitchcock, Tex.           The Hitchcock, Texas Police Dept. says 7 of its 11 police cars were seriously damaged by the hail.  Several trailer parks also sustained heavy damaged as well as a church and fire station. The storm front that produced this hail will linger from Texas and across the Gulf States through Thursday but will produce mostly rain.

Malibu’s celebrity haven of Broad Beach is struggling to survive as nature chews away at the shoreline and a $20 million effort to replace sand appears to be stuck in the mud. Homeowners have run up against opposition and complicated approval processes as they pursue a plan to dredge sand from elsewhere and dump it to restore the 1.1-mile beachfront, the Los Angeles Times reported. In recent years, winter storms and rising high tides have reduced the formerly broad beach, where Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman and others have their beach houses.

Signs of the Times (4/1/13)

Pope’s Foot-Wash Final Straw for Traditionalists

Pope Francis has won over many hearts and minds with his simple style and focus on serving the world’s poorest, but he has devastated traditionalist Catholics who adored his predecessor, Benedict XVI, for restoring much of the traditional pomp to the papacy. Francis’ decision to disregard church law and wash the feet of two girls — a Serbian Muslim and an Italian Catholic — during a Holy Thursday ritual has become something of the final straw, evidence that Francis has little or no interest in one of the key priorities of Benedict’s papacy: reviving the pre-Vatican II traditions of the Catholic Church. Virtually everything he has done since being elected pope, every gesture, every decision, has rankled traditionalists in one way or another. Francis may have rubbed salt into the wounds with his comments at the Good Friday procession at Rome’s Coliseum, which re-enacts Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, praising “the friendship of our Muslim brothers and sisters” during a prayer ceremony.

• Foot-washing is a good thing, and many Catholic ‘traditions’ are not Biblical. But it will bear watching closely as this possible ‘final’ pope continues to reach out to Muslims

Top U.S. Catholic: Welcome Gays

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the top U.S. Catholic prelate, says the Catholic Church has to make sure that its defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gays. Dolan is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and last month was reputed to have gathered some votes in the Vatican conclave where Pope Francis was eventually elected. He made his remarks on two morning talk shows just days after the Supreme Court heard arguments in two same-sex marriage cases. Dolan says the church hasn’t “been too good at that” and could work on being more welcoming to gays and lesbians.

• All churches should welcome all sinners and then lovingly point them in the right direction without watering down the Word of God

Google Controversy: Cesar Chavez over Jesus Christ

Google’s decision to mark Easter Sunday with a doodle of leftist icon Cesar Chavez atop its search engine angered some users in what they see as a snub of Jesus on the day Christians mark his resurrection. Google defended the decision by saying it reserves the spot for historical figures and events, but a review of its past doodles shows it has never honored Jesus on Christmas or Easter, despite his historical and spiritual significance to billions around the world. Microsoft’s Bing, in contrast, featured brightly-colored Easter eggs on its main search page on Sunday.

• Google has always been blatantly anti-Christian

Fusion Centers “Only Spy on Anti-Government Americans”

In trying to clear up the ‘misconceptions’ about the conduct of fusion centers, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis simply confirmed Americans’ fears: the center does in fact spy on Americans – but only on those who are suspected to be ‘anti-government’. After claiming that his office ‘absolutely’ does not spy on Americans, he proceeded to explain that this does not apply to those who could be interpreted as a ‘threat’ to national security. Davis said his office places its focus on international plots, “domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government.”

• It’s how ‘anti-government’ is defined. If it follows Dept. of Homeland Security guidelines, you and I are most likely on their watch list

New Surveillance Tool Raises Concerns of Judges

Federal investigators in Northern California routinely used a sophisticated surveillance system to scoop up data from cellphones and other wireless devices in an effort to track criminal suspects — but failed to detail the practice to judges authorizing the probes. The practice was disclosed in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California — in a glimpse into a technology that federal agents rarely discuss publicly. The issues, judges and activists say, are twofold: whether federal agents are informing courts when seeking permission to monitor suspects, and whether they are providing enough evidence to justify the use of a tool that sweeps up data not only from a suspect’s wireless device but also from those of bystanders in the vicinity.

• Give government a new tool and you can be sure that its use will be abused

Special Forces Commander: ‘Constabulary Force’ Coming

Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, retired, warns that America is well along the pathway that other societies have used to bludgeon and beat their populations into submission to socialism. Even to the point of establishing a “constabulary force” to control the people. Boykin now is executive vice president of Family Research Council. But during his military career, he was one of the original members of the U.S. Army’s Delta Force. He ultimately commanded those elite warriors in combat operations. Later, Boykin commanded all the Army’s Green Berets as well as the Special Warfare Center and School. His concern is that the six steps “done in every Marxist insurgency” now “are being done in America today.” He lists them: 1. nationalize major sections of the economy (the corporate bailouts), 2. redistribute wealth (the man appointed to head Medicare said health care is “nothing but a redistribution of wealth”), 3. discredit opposition (the Obama administration called returning vets, pro-lifers and others a terror threat), 4. censorship (Obama’s censorship has been through “hate crimes” legislation aimed at Christian pastors and others), 5. gun control (Washington’s present agenda), and 6. a constabulary force that Boykin says is the next step and why government is arming itself to the hilt.

In a campaign stop in Colorado on July 2, 2008, President Obama said, “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” This puts the DHS purchase of billions of rounds of ammunition into perspective.  Much of that ammo are hollow-point bullets, designed to expand in the body to cause more damage. These are never used for training exercises as the government claims they are doing. Experts estimate that, at the peak of the Iraq war, American troops were firing around 5.5 million rounds per month. At that rate, the Dept. of Homeland Security is armed for a 24-year equivalent war.

UN Humanitarian Aid is Disorganized

The United Nations spends billions annually to relieve the suffering caused by natural disasters and civil war, but those costly efforts are uncoordinated, overlap or duplicate effort, and often don’t show where the money went, according to a report by a special U.N. watchdog unit. Nor, the report adds, has the world organization done much about it, with several internal efforts to get a grip on at least part of the problem among a tangle of funds, agencies and programs with different operating procedures either ending in frustration or failing to materialize. The result: a sometimes chaotic U.N. global relief effort, where “basic humanitarian financing needs are only partly met in an inconsistent and unpredictable way. ”Keeping track of where the money goes frequently doesn’t happen (or, as the report delicately says, “the reporting and monitoring of financing remain somewhat elusive);” and even a coherent definition of “humanitarian assistance” seems to be lacking.

• So why would anyone want a one-world government spearheaded by agencies such as the UN? Satan and his New World Order cohorts, that’s who, because it is the elitists who profit from such disorganization.

Most Effects of Sequester Cuts Yet to be Felt

A month after the so-called “sequester” triggered $85 billion in automatic cuts to the federal budget, you’d be hard-pressed to find much evidence that anything has changed. Flights haven’t been grounded, jobs haven’t been lost, and government personnel haven’t been sent home en masse. The fact is, it’s not going to be as bad as originally outlined by President Barack Obama’s administration and his Democratic allies in Congress. Some of the effects of sequester were lessened by passage of the 2013 budget, which moved money around inside many departments to avoid some of the harsher reductions.

However, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced civilian defense personnel will still face furloughs, only there will be 14 days without pay instead of 22, and they will begin in June instead of April. Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration went through with plans to close 149 contract air traffic control towers around the country. Education spending cuts also remained largely in place, though they won’t be felt until next school year, most likely. Many other sequester effects will slowly roll-out over the next few months.

Airports Suing FAA over Planned Control Tower Shutdowns

Airport operators are mounting a legal challenge to the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to cut funding for 149 air traffic control towers, accusing the agency of violating federal law meant to ensure major changes at airports do not erode safety. Several airports are now asking a federal court to halt the plan and compel the FAA to more carefully study the potential safety impact. Carl Olson, director of the Central Illinois Regional Airport in Bloomington, Ill., warned that without a more cautious approach, lives will be put at risk by cuts that he contends are arbitrary and the result of reckless political brinkmanship in Washington.

Economic News

After a drop last autumn, the U.S. dollar has climbed 5% against other currencies over the past two months, reaching the highest level since August. The main reason is the recovery in the U.S. economy. Although growth is still weak, the outlook for the U.S. is better than elsewhere in the developed world. Europe is stuck in a recession and struggling to control its debt. Japan is trying to push down the value of the yen to boost exports and end deflation.

Student loan interest rates are going to double on new student loans, to 6.8 percent on July 1^st. The difference between 3.4 percent and 6.8 percent interest rates is $6 billion. Although Congress is talking about a deal to avert the large increase, but nothing concrete has yet emerged.

According to Census data released this week, state and local tax revenue rose in the U.S, for the 13th quarter in a row. However, some states remain much more tax friendly to businesses than others. According to the Tax Foundation, Wyoming is the most business friendly, while New York is the worst.

Activity in China’s manufacturing sector accelerated in March, bolstering hopes for a more robust economic recovery this year as the country completes a key leadership transition. China’s official manufacturing index posted a gain, rising to 50.9 from 50.1 in February. A reading above 50 signals expansion in the manufacturing sector. The index is now at its highest level in 11 months.

Eurozone

A Central Bank official and a senior Finance Ministry technocrat says that Bank of Cyprus savers with over 100,000 euros could take losses of up to 60%. Deposits over 100,000 euros at the country’s largest lender will lose 37.5% of their value after being converted into bank shares. They could lose up to 22.5% more, depending on an assessment by officials who will determine the exact figure aimed at restoring the troubled bank back to health.

Just as quickly as Cyprus’ euro area partners decided that a deposit grab was the only way out, so Cypriots decided their tiny island was ground zero in Europe’s new financial scorched earth policy and that it had to be resisted at all costs. Protests broke out at the country’s Parliament building. One placard stated, “It starts with us, it ends with you” as a warning to other Europeans that their savings were no longer safe.

Persecution Watch

Radical Islamists took over a Cairo mosque and used it to torture Christians who had been protesting against the Muslim Brotherhood, CBN News reports. According to Fox News, mosque officials were so upset over the incident that they had filed a police report. Leaders of Bilal Ibn Rabah mosque said radicals took control of the building after Friday prayers, then detained Christian and Muslim protesters and tortured them there for hours. Mosque officials said they “deeply regret what has happened and apologize.” Observers say that more radical elements of the Muslim Brotherhood are gaining power in Egypt and pushing an Islamist agenda.

A “sudden increase in violence against the Christian community” in Sri Lanka has been reported; incidents include a brutal attack on a pastor’s home and the burning down of a church building. Barnabas Aid received news last week of ten anti-Christian incidents in different parts of the country during March. The most violent of them was an attack by Buddhist extremists on Pastor Pradeep Kumara’s house in Katuwana, Weeraketiya.

The authorities in Indonesia have carried out their threat to demolish a church building in Bekasi, West Java. Workers were cheered on by Muslim protestors, who denounced Christians as “infidels”. HKBP Setu Church was sealed off on 7 March and the congregation were subsequently given a week to destroy their place of worship. Church members refused, so on Thursday (21 March), a bulldozer moved in. As the building was demolished, Pastor Leonard Nababan said that the government was “criminalizing our religion”.

Middle East

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced on Thursday that it had arrested 30 members of the Palestinian Tanzim Fatah terror group, all from the Palestinian village of Beit Fajar, near Bethlehem, on suspicion of carrying out multiple Molotov cocktail and shooting attacks earlier this year on the settlement of Migdal Oz. “During questioning by the Shin Bet, the suspects confessed to carrying out the attacks, and to plans to carry out additional shootings in Gush Etzion – a plot that was disrupted by the arrests,” the Shin Bet said. In related news, Judea Brigade commander Col. Avi Bluth told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that the latest uptick in violence in the West Bank has not yet reached a level where it could be called a “third Intifada.”

Korea

North Korea declared Saturday it has entered “a state of war” with South Korea in the latest of a string of threats that have raised tensions on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea’s government, parties and organizations said in a joint statement that all matters between the two countries will now be dealt with in a manner befitting war. The Korean Peninsula is already in a technical state of war because the Korean War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. But Pyongyang ditched that armistice earlier this month. The U.S. has sent F-22 Raptors to the main U.S. Air Force Base in South Korea to support air drills in the annual Foal Eagle training exercises there.

Afghanistan

U.S. special operations forces handed over their base in a strategic region of eastern Afghanistan to local Afghan commandos on Saturday, a senior U.S. commander said. The withdrawal from Nirkh district meets a demand by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that U.S. forces leave the area after allegations that the Americans’ Afghan counterparts committed human rights abuses there. The transfer of authority ends a controversial chapter in which Karzai accused U.S. troops and an interpreter working with them of torture, kidnapping and summary execution of militant suspects in Nirkh — charges U.S. officials including top commander in Afghanistan Gen. Joseph Dunford firmly denied.

Syria

Syrian rebels pushed into a strategic neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo after days of heavy clashes. The gains marked the biggest shift in the front lines in the embattled city of Aleppo in months. The city, Syria’s largest and a former commercial hub, has been a key battleground in the country’s civil war since rebels launched an offensive on it in July, seizing several districts before the fighting largely settled into a bloody stalemate.

The conflict in Syria entered its third year this month. More than 70,000 people have been killed, over three million displaced and much of the nation’s infrastructure destroyed. Hope of a political solution has all but dissipated, and as the official opposition is in a state of disarray, Islamist units are asserting their strength, imposing sharia law in rebel-held areas.

Egypt

A fuel shortage has helped send food prices soaring. Electricity is blacking out even before the summer. And gas-line gunfights have killed at least five people and wounded dozens over the past two weeks. The root of the crisis, economists say, is that Egypt is running out of the hard currency it needs for fuel imports. The shortage is raising questions about Egypt’s ability to keep importing wheat that is essential to subsidized bread supplies, stirring fears of an economic catastrophe at a time when the government is already struggling to quell violent protests by its political rivals. Farmers already lack fuel for the pumps that irrigate their fields, and they say they fear they will not have enough for the tractors to reap their wheat next month before it rots in the fields.

Iraq

A suicide bomber drove an oil tanker into a police station in central Tikrit on Monday, killing at least nine people and wounding 20 others. Tikrit is about 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Baghdad. It’s a predominantly Sunni town located in Salaheddin province and is the hometown of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. In Baghdad, two policemen and a civilian were shot dead by gunmen in two separate incidents. Two other people were wounded. On Sunday, at least seven people were killed and more than 17 others were wounded in violence across the country. In figures complied by Iraq’s Interior, Defense and Health ministries for the month of March, 163 Iraqi civilians, policemen and soldiers were killed in acts of violence across the country and 256 others were wounded.

Algeria

Protests by the unemployed in southern Algeria are raising the specter of rising unrest in the country’s sensitive oil regions, and are increasingly attracting the attention of al-Qaeda. Algeria’s vast, sparsely populated Sahara only holds 10 percent of the country’s population but it is home to this North African country’s enormous oil and gas reserves — the basis of the entire economy and the source of the government’s power. Those who live there claim they aren’t benefiting from that wealth, and can’t get jobs with the oil companies. Now al-Qaeda has praised the protesters, raising the possibility that it is seeking support among the disaffected groups. The government is rushing to address the protesters’ demands, but hasn’t yet convinced them that it’s serious.

Weather

The term “Marchuary” has been floating around on Twitter to describe the frustrating cold temperatures that has been seen this March in the central and eastern United States. For several cities in this region, March 2013 has turned out to be colder than January 2013 based on the monthly average temperature (highs/lows combined).

Given the timing, you might think it’s a cruel April Fools’ Day joke as we look at the forecast to start out the upcoming work week. A cold front is ushering in yet another blast of late-season arctic air that will charge into the central and eastern states after a brief warmup to near-average temperatures over Easter weekend. Of course, this only piles on to the misery of what was a frustratingly cold March east of the Rockies.

Signs of the Times (3/29/13)

New Research Suggests Shroud of Turin is Real

Tests conducted on the Shroud of Turin by researchers at Italy’s University of Padua indicate that the linen sheet believed by some to be Christ’s burial cloth dates back to Jesus’ lifetime. The 14-foot-long cloth bearing the image of a man with wounds similar to those suffered by Christ was analyzed by university scientists using infrared light, according to The Daily Telegraph. Giulio Fanti, a professor at Padua University, told the Telegraph that the results were based on 15 years of research on fibers taken from the cloth, which were subjected to radiation intensity tests. The Vatican has never confirmed the authenticity of the shroud, but a Vatican researcher in 2009 said that faint writing on the cloth proves it was used to wrap Jesus’ body after his crucifixion. The cloth is presently housed in Turin Cathedral in northwest Italy.

• Whether it’s real or not is beside the point. Jesus is real. He died for our sins and rose again from the dead so that we might have eternal life with Him in Heaven

Next for Supreme Court: Defense of Marriage Act

The Supreme Court turns Wednesday from the threshold issue of sanctioning same-sex marriage to one with financial repercussions: Can the federal government deny benefits to those gays already married? At issue is the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed by President Clinton that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. (Clinton has said he has changed his mind about the law.) At the time of its passage, no states had legalized gay marriage, but now nine states and the District of Columbia have done so — and legally wed gay couples are denied federal benefits. The case accepted by the court from among several it could have taken features Edith Windsor, an 83-year-old New York widow who married her partner of four decades, Thea Spyer, in 2007. When Spyer died in 2009, Windsor was socked with a $363,000 estate tax bill that she would have avoided if DOMA wasn’t the law of the land.

A majority of the Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared ready to strike down a key section of a law that withholds federal benefits from gay married couples, as the justices concluded two days of hearings that showed them to be as divided as the rest of the nation over same-sex marriage. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the pivotal justice on the issue, said the federal Defense of Marriage Act may have intruded too deeply on the traditional role of state governments in defining marriage. Justice joined the four liberals in posing skeptical questions to a lawyer defending the law.

• The secular shift away from God’s ordained family structure continues unabated as symptoms of the Tribulation to come

March for Marriage Draws More 15,000 Supporters

About 15,000 people swarmed the streets of Washington, D.C., Tuesday to march in support of God’s design for marriage. “This (turnout) shows that Americans are realizing that they are going to have to stand up and make their voices heard to take a stand for the definition of marriage,” Thomas Peters, communications director for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), told CitizenLink. The march, sponsored by NOM, took place the same day the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments in cases challenging a federal law and a California marriage amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

9th Circuit Approves Jesus Prayers in California; Hawaii Senate Too

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week it’s OK for pastors to pray “in Jesus’ name” before city council meetings, and Jesus prayers do NOT violate the Constitution. This victory is significant, considering the 4th Circuit and 2nd Circuit have banned city councils from allowing Jesus prayers in many states on the East Coast. The anti-Jesus complainer intends to appeal, either en banc to the full circuit, or to the Supreme Court of the United States. The 75% of the citizens of Lancaster voted in 2010 to allow pastors to pray “in Jesus’ name” before city council meetings.  Diverse faiths were also invited. Now local governments in eleven West-Coast States or Territories may allow free speech by pastors.  AK, AZ, CA, HI, ID, MT, NV, OR, WA, Guam, and N. Marianas Islands have legal precedent to all prayers in ‘Jesus’ name’ without fear of frivolous lawsuits.The Hawaii Senate restored freedom to open legislative sessions with a “moment of contemplation” that may include Jesus prayers, after a 2-year ban on all prayer.

California Schools to Now Include LGBT-Themed Books

The California Department of Education’s newest reading list for students K-12 includes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender literature, prompting complaints from critics who say a leftist agenda is being pushed on kids, Fox News reports. Controversial topics have been introduced to California students in the past, but this is the first time the state has put forth works celebrated by the Stonewall Book Awards, which since 1971 has recognized LGBT literature. The reading list has been met with controversy by those who say it promotes the LGBT lifestyle to children at such a young age. “It’s a frightening trend,” said American Family Radio talk show host Sandy Rios. “The reading lists are very overtly propagating a point of view that is at odds with most American parents. Leftist educators are advocates of everything from socialism to sexual anarchy. It’s very base; it’s raping the innocence of our children.”

Abortion Enters Arizona Debate on Medicaid Expansion

One of the Legislature’s most powerful lobbying groups says Gov. Jan Brewer’s Medicaid-expansion plan would subsidize abortions and is pushing for an amendment that complicates negotiations and threatens the proposal. The Center for Arizona Policy is using an opinion from the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal-defense organization, to argue that the draft Medicaid legislation should be amended to disqualify the non-profit women’s health provider Planned Parenthood from receiving public money. It’s the first in what is expected to be a long line of suggested changes to Brewer’s proposal to broaden eligibility for the state-federal health-insurance program for the poor and disabled, each with the potential to gain or lose votes for the governor’s top legislative priority with thousands of lives and billions of dollars at stake.

U.N. Arms Treaty Blocked

Iran, North Korea and Syria blocked adoption of a U.N. treaty that for the first time would regulate the multibillion-dollar international arms trade. An agreement required approval by all 193 U.N. member states. The Control Arms Coalition, representing about 100 organizations which have campaigned for a strong treaty, said the earliest the General Assembly could vote is April 2, when the chair of the negotiations, Australian Ambassador Peter Woolcott, will present his report to the full world body. There has never been an international treaty regulating the estimated $60 billion global arms trade. For more than a decade, activists and some governments have been pushing for international rules to try to keep illicit weapons out of the hands of terrorists, insurgent fighters and organized crime. Hopes of reaching agreement were dashed last July when the U.S. said it needed more time to consider the proposed accord — a move quickly backed by Russia and China.

• U.S. critics argue that the U.N. treaty will lead to regulation and confiscation of weapons from private individuals in violation of the 2^nd amendment

U.S. Releases Climate Change National Strategy

Climate change threatens U.S. fish, wildlife and plants, including brook trout, the lesser prairie-chicken and the Joshua tree, the Obama administration said Tuesday in releasing its first national strategy on climate adaptation. “Flowers are blooming earlier. Plants and animals are moving” to new places to cope with rising sea levels, higher temperatures, loss of sea ice and other climate effects, said Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which co-authored the strategy. Ashe said the report, prepared at the request of Congress, amounts to an “urgent call to action” for federal. state, tribal and local officials in the next five to 10 years because — in his words — “as wildlife goes, so goes the nation.”

The report recommends seven goals, which include conserving land, maintaining species and informing the public. Ashe said many “millions of acres across the landscape” will need to be conserved as habitats for threatened species such as the polar bear. Under the Obama administration, he said 10 new wildlife habitats — totaling 4.5 million acres — have been established.

• Government can strive all it wants (and conservation is always a laudable goal), but the severity of end-time weather will trump all such efforts

Obamacare to Raise Claims Costs 32%

Medical claims costs — the biggest driver of health insurance premiums — will jump an average 32% for Americans’ individual policies under the Affordable Care Act health care law, according to a study out Tuesday by the nation’s leading group of financial risk analysts. Much of the reason for the higher claims costs is that sicker people are expected to join the pool, the report said. While some states will see medical claims costs per person decline, the report prepared by the Society of Actuaries concluded that the overwhelming majority will see double-digit increases. By 2017, the estimated increase would be 62% for California, about 80% for Ohio, more than 20% for Florida and 67% for Maryland.

Tea Party Express reports that Obamacare is “a disaster waiting to happen.”  Premiums are expected to rise 169%, an estimated 7 million working Americans are going to lose their employer-provided health coverage, and small businesses are either being forced to lay off workers or will be unable to hire new workers. TPE also documents “20 hidden taxes in Obamacare” in the attached document.

Indiana School Vouchers Upheld in Court, Could Set Precedent

In a ruling that could reverberate nationwide, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the state’s voucher program, which gives poor and middle class families public funds to help pay for private school tuition, including religious schools. Indiana has the broadest school voucher program available to a range of incomes and could set a precedent as other states seek ways to expand such programs. Supporters say it gives families without financial means more options on where to educate their children. However, opponents of the Indiana program had sued to block it, describing it as unconstitutional and saying it takes money from public schools. As many as 9,000 students statewide are part of the voucher program and more than 80% use the funds to go to religious schools. But in its unanimous 5-0 ruling, the Supreme Court said that was not an issue. It said it did not matter that funds had been directed to religious schools as long as the state was not directly funding the education. The tuition, the court said, was being funded by the parents who chose to pay it with their vouchers.

• Below the surface, this is an ongoing effort of anti-Christian secularists to maintain their humanist indoctrination centers and restrict Christian alternatives

‘The Bible’ Miniseries Dominates Across Media

History Channel’s “The Bible” miniseries continues to draw audiences from across all platforms, including books, DVDs and downloads, as it heads into its finale, according to Grace Hill Media. The series, which has been viewed by close to 80 million people, has continued to outperform all other television shows on Sunday nights. It took over the No. 1 spot on iTunes for top TV show downloads, and is currently ranked No. 2 on the list of 100 on Amazon’s bestsellers list in movies and TV. Executive producers Roma Downey and Mark Burnett’s novelization of the miniseries, The Bible: A Story of God and All of Us, which debuted Feb. 26, has also climbed to No. 10 on the Publishers Weekly top hardcover fiction list and No. 20 on the New York Times hardcover fiction list. “Roma and I continue to be grateful for the overwhelming global enthusiasm for ‘The Bible’ series,” Burnett said. Downey added: “The audience reaction says so much about what people are looking for these days. We are just thrilled that we were able to bring these stories to life.”

Texting While Driving: Adults Worse than Teens

Forget teenagers. Adults are the biggest texting-while-driving problem in the USA. Almost half of all adults admit to texting while driving in a survey by AT&T provided to USA TODAY, compared with 43% of teenagers. More than 98% of adults — almost all of them — admit they know it’s wrong but still do it. “Texting while driving is not just a teen problem,” says John Ulczycki of the National Safety Council. “Teens text. But you’re looking at around 10 million teen drivers, but about 180 million other adult drivers.” The AT&T survey follows a study this month from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found 31% of drivers in the USA reported texting or e-mailing while driving. Each day, an average of more than nine people are killed and more than 1,060 injured in crashes caused by distracted driving.

Economic News

The Commerce Department said Friday that consumer spending rose 0.7% in February from January. It was the biggest gain in five months and followed a revised 0.4% rise in January. Americans were able to spend more because their income rose 1.1% last month. That followed January’s 3.7% plunge. The jump in income allowed consumers to put a little more away in February. The saving rate increased to 2.6% of after-tax income, up from 2.2% in January. The jump in spending and income suggests economic growth strengthened at the start of the year after nearly stalling at the end of last year. Consumer spending accounts for 70% of economic activity.

The government reported durable goods orders rose a robust 5.7% in February, substantially higher than experts expected. Factory orders surged in February, helped by a surge in demand for commercial aircraft. Overall orders for durable goods, a catchall term for products ranging from refrigerators to jumbo jets, saw the biggest increase in five months.

Housing prices rose in January at the fastest pace since the summer of 2006, before the housing bubble popped. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city price index climbed 8.1% in the 12 months to January. That comes after a 6.8 % increase the previous month. Prices rose in all 20 cities, led by Phoenix.

New claims for unemployment benefits jumped unexpectedly last week to a seasonally adjusted 357,000, up 16,000 from a revised 341,000 the week before. The jump in claims was the second straight weekly increase. Despite weekly hiccups, claims have been declining steadily since November, coinciding with steady job growth. The number of people seeking aid averaged only 320,000 a week in 2007. That figure soared to 418,000 in 2008 and 574,000 in 2009.

Coming off a year in which the Standard & Poor’s 500 gained 13% and companies ended up sitting on record amounts of cash, CEOs are back to collecting big raises. All told, CEOs scored an 8% pay increase in 2012, taking the median to $9.7 million, for the biggest increase in two years.

Eurozone

Cypress reopened its banks for the first time since it agreed to stringent capital controls as part of a $13 billion bailout from international lenders. As part of Cyprus’ deal with the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and European Commission depositors with more than 100,000 euros (about $130,000) in the country’s two largest banks are being forced to take losses. Authorities have been putting measures in place to prevent a rush of euros out of the country’s banks. Cash withdrawals will be limited to 300 euros ($383) per person each day, and no checks will be cashed.

Persecution Watch

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is calling on the state university system chancellor to investigate a classroom lesson at Florida Atlantic University in which students were instructed to stomp on sheets of paper that had “Jesus” written on them. “As we enter the week memorializing the events of Christ’s passion, this incident gave me great concern over the lessons we are teaching our students,” Scott wrote in the letter to Chancellor Frank Brogan. “The professor’s lesson was offensive, and even intolerant, to Christians and those of all faiths who deserve to be respected as Americans entitled to religious freedom.” Scott said in his letter that he was “deeply disappointed” by the recent incident in an intercultural communications class taught by Deandre Poole, who also happens to be the vice chair of the Palm Beach Democratic party. Ryan Rotela, a devout Mormon was in the classroom and refused to obey the instructor’s directions. When he complained, Rotela was banned from the classroom and charged with violating the student code of conduct.

Middle East

Medical teams again provided first-aid to several wounded Syrians who approached the border on Wednesday. One of the wounded Syrians, who had suffered a gunshot wound to the head, died despite the best efforts of doctors at the Western Galilee Government Hospital in Nahariya. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council issued a statement of concern about recent incidents of cross-border fire which have violated the ceasefire line between Syria and the Golan Heights, as well as the danger to UN peacekeepers in the area. “The members of the Security Council expressed grave concern at all violations of the Disengagement of Forces Agreement,” the council said, adding its “grave concern at the presence of the Syrian Arab Republic Armed Forces inside the area of separation.”

Last week, President Obama visited with Israel and Palestinian authorities on their turf. Here’s what he said to Israel: “I genuinely believe that you do have a true partner in President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad.” Here’s what they said: President Abbas to media: “As far as I am concerned, there is no difference between our policies and those of Hamas.” Hamas leaders said: “We don’t want anything peaceful, only bullets and missiles.”

• Islamic nations will never cease their efforts to completely destroy and eliminate Israel. And policy that doesn’t take that into account will result in Israel’s ultimate demise.

Syria

A Syrian government official says 12 people have been killed and 20 wounded in a mortar attack against Damascus University. The official says the mortar rounds struck the university’s architecture department’s cafeteria in the central Baramkeh district on Thursday.

Afghanistan

A blitz of attacks across Afghanistan led to the deaths of 52 armed Taliban members in the past day, the Ministry of Interior said Wednesday. The operations were carried out by Afghanistan’s national police and army as well as NATO-led coalition forces. An additional 45 Taliban members were wounded and 21 others arrested. Authorities also confiscated ammunition and improvised explosive devices in the sweep, which spanned 10 provinces. The Afghan government said another 23 armed members of the Taliban were killed in the previous day.

Pakistan

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a blast that killed 10 people near the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar on Friday. The strike also injured 31 others. A suicide bomber rode a motorbike up to a security checkpoint a third of a mile from the consulate and detonated 22 pounds of explosives attached to his body. Violent attacks occur frequently around Peshawar, which is in Pakistan’s northwest near the border with Afghanistan and adjacent to Pakistan’s tribal region.

Myanmar

As sectarian tensions continue to boil in central Myanmar, authorities have imposed curfews in more towns in an attempt to stop groups of Buddhists from setting fire to mosques and Muslims’ homes. The fresh restrictions come after a state of emergency was declared last week where clashes between the two communities first broke out, leaving at least 40 people dead. Police on Tuesday reported arson attacks on Muslim properties in three townships in recent days.

Mali

Up to 11,200 peacekeeping troops could maintain stability in Mali under a new U.N. proposal. And up to 1,440 police could also participate in a U.N.-led mission there, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report to the U.N. Security Council released Tuesday. Under the proposal, the West African multinational force currently in Mali would eventually become part of the U.N. stabilizing mission. French and allied forces, including Malian and Chadian troops, have made significant inroads in recent weeks combating Islamist extremist fighters in Mali. But fighting continues in the remote northeastern part of the West African nation.

North Korea

On Tuesday, North Korea threatened to strike Guam, Hawaii and the U.S. mainland with nuclear missiles. North Korea said it was putting its long-range rocket units on the highest possible combat-posture level following what is says are provocations from the United States. The U.S. military and the South Korean military have been conducting regularly scheduled drills on land this month. North Korea said Wednesday that it had cut off a key military hotline with South Korea that allows cross border travel to a jointly run industrial complex in the North, a move that ratchets up already high tension and possibly jeopardizes the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.

Mexico

It was a staggering sight, even in a Mexican city that has seen its share of violence in recent years as drug-related crimes surged. Seven bodies sat slumped in white plastic chairs placed near a central plaza in Uruapan, Mexico. Local media reported messages were left behind, written on poster board and pinned to some of the victims’ bodies with icepicks. Investigators believe organized crime groups are to blame. The seven corpses were among at least 30 killed nationwide — a high death toll that once again drew attention toward violence in Mexico, where more than 60,000 people were killed in drug-related violence from 2006 to 2012.

Earthquakes

A strong earthquake struck central Taiwan on Wednesday, killing at one person and injuring 19 as it damaged buildings on the quake-prone island. The Central Weather Bureau said the magnitude-6.1 earthquake was felt throughout the island. Buildings swayed in the capital Taipei, and sections of the high-speed rail were suspended from service. Emergency officials said a 72-year-old woman died when a temple wall she was standing next to collapsed and crushed her.

Weather

Danger lurks beyond our shores that will eventually threaten clams, mussels and everything with a shell or that eats something with a shell. The entire food chain could be affected. “Ocean acidification,” the shifting of the ocean’s water toward the acidic side of its chemical balance, has been driven by climate change and has brought increasingly corrosive seawater to the surface along the West Coast and the inlets of Puget Sound. Since the start of the industrial revolution, the world’s oceans have grown nearly 30% more acidic. Why? Climate change, where heat-trapping carbon dioxide emitted into the air by burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels ends up as excess carbonic acid absorbed into the ocean.

• Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died. (Rev. 16:3)

 

Signs of the Times (3/25/13)

N.D. Lawmakers Define Start of Life, Outlaw Abortion

North Dakota lawmakers Friday completed action to outlaw almost all abortions, voting to define life as beginning at conception. The Republican-dominated House also approved a so-called personhood amendment that asks voters to change the state’s constitution to recognize and protect “the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development.” A third piece of legislation passed Friday by the House requires abortion clinic physicians to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. The legislation is aimed at shutting down the state’s only abortion clinic, in Fargo.

Slim Majority Now Favor Same-Sex Marriage

A Fox News national poll shows that 49 percent of voters now favor legalizing gay marriage, while 46 percent oppose it.  That represents a significant shift since the question was first asked on a Fox poll in 2003.  At that time, 32 percent said gays should be allowed to marry legally, and 58 percent were opposed. Support for gay marriage has increased by 27 percentage points among moderates since 2003, 22 points among independents and 21 points among Democrats.  Over the same time period, the number of liberals backing gay marriage more than doubled. There are smaller yet still significant changes among Republicans (+10 points) and conservatives (+13 points). Those most likely to favor legalizing gay marriage include those who never attend church (76 percent), liberals (72 percent), voters ages 30 and younger (65 percent), and Democrats (65 percent).  Groups most likely to oppose it include “very” conservatives (82 percent), Tea Partiers (75 percent), white evangelical Christians (70 percent) and Republicans (64 percent).

• Same-sex marriage is a barometer of our steady march through the “beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:8) leading up to end-time tribulation. Romans 1:26-27 is clear that gay sex, let alone marriage, is “vile.”

Supreme Court to Hear Two Gay Rights Cases this Week

The future of Arizona’s ban on same-sex marriage rests in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear two unrelated lawsuits on gay rights this week. The cases address bans on same-sex marriage and limits on domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples. The Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday in Hollingsworth vs. Perry, a case in which same-sex couples allege California’s 2008 voter-approved Proposition 8 violates the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Proposition 8 defines marriage as the union between a man and a women, and is identical to the measure Arizona voters passed that same year. On Wednesday, the court will hear arguments in United States vs. Windsor, which alleges that the part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as being only between a man and a woman violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. Because of this federal definition, same-sex couples, even in states that allow them to marry, aren’t eligible for any of the federal benefits heterosexual married couples get, including tax breaks and Social Security benefits.

• Whether it’s this week or further down the end-time road, gay rights will trump God’s ordained natural order, just as Satan planned. However, this near-term victory is but another nail in his forthcoming coffin.

Starbucks CEO to Christians: “We Don’t Want Your Business”

At the annual shareholder’s meeting on Wednesday, Starbucks CEO, Howard Shultz, told Christians, and all who believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life, “we don’t want your business”. It is no surprise that Starbucks supports homosexual marriage.  They have been sending liberal messages for years.  But this is beyond anything we have seen from the left or the right.  Shultz went as far as to tell shareholder who support Christian values to sell their stock and support other companies. According to Forbes, a shareholder raised a question about the significant drop in sales after a boycott from the National Organization for Marriage, who was protesting Starbucks support of homosexual marriage in Washington.

• Where is the mainstream media on this one, after they excoriated Chick Fil-A over its support of traditional marriage? Tolerance is only for everything non-Christian. So let’s do as Shultz asks and boycott Starbucks.

Is Polygamy Next?

There is nothing in our current legal system or national moral climate that will stop polygamy from becoming the next liberal cause, asserts the Christian legal group Liberty Counsel. “Redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would jettison the rationale and logic behind prohibitions on polygamous marriages, according to several friend-of-the court briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the traditional definition of marriage. Ultimately, there is no principled basis for recognizing the legality of same-sex marriage without simultaneously providing a basis for the legality of consensual polygamy or certain adult incestuous relationships,” reads one of the briefs filed by Liberty Counsel. “In fact, every argument for same-sex marriage is an argument for them as well.” The Netherlands is a microcosm of how the homosexual community hoodwinked this once-Christian nation. A former Dutch Member of Parliament has admitted that polygamous marriage is the ‘next logical step’ following the introduction of same-sex marriages in the Netherlands.

• Once this door is ‘legally’ opened, all sorts of abominations will follow

U.N. Chief Warns of Growing Water Scarcity

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that by 2030, nearly half the world’s population could be facing a scarcity of water, with demand outstripping supply by 40%.One in three people already live in a country with moderate to high water stress. Over 780 million people today do not have access to improved sources of drinking water, especially in Africa. With more people moving to urban areas, water use is projected to increase by 50% by 2025. “Competition is growing among farmers and herders; industry and agriculture; town and country; upstream and downstream; and across borders,” the secretary-general said.

Senate Passes Democratic Budget Plan

An exhausted Senate gave pre-dawn approval Saturday to a Democratic $3.7 trillion budget for the next fiscal year that embraces nearly $1 trillion in tax increases over the coming decade but shelters domestic programs targeted for cuts by House Republicans. While their victory was by a razor-thin 50-49, the vote let Democrats tout their priorities. Yet it doesn’t resolve the deep differences the two parties have over deficits and the size of government. The Senate’s budget for 2014 would shrink annual federal shortfalls over the next decade to nearly $400 billion, raise unspecified taxes by $975 billion and cull modest savings from domestic programs. In contrast, a rival budget approved by the GOP-run House balances the budget within 10 years without boosting taxes.

Economic News

As federal agencies scramble to avert or delay sequester-tied furloughs, the Obama administration continues to spend millions of dollars on foreign aid to the Palestinians – and seek millions more, despite past efforts by Congress to freeze the money. The State Department confirmed this month the administration has moved forward with $500 million in aid, and is trying to secure another $200 million from Congress, even as federal agencies were scrambling to manage sequester cuts and cushion their staff from the impact of furloughs.

Eurozone

Cyprus clinched a last-minute solution to avert imminent financial meltdown early Monday after it agreed to slash its oversized banking sector and use funds raised by seizing bank assets from large deposit holders — which in some cases could amount to 40 percent — in troubled banks to secure a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout. The deal, described by the country’s politicians as “painful,” was approved by euro finance ministers in Brussels just in time. The European Central Bank had threatened to cut off crucial emergency assistance to the Cyprus’ embattled banks after Monday if no agreement was reached. Without that funding, Cyprus’ banks would have collapsed, dragging the country’s economy down with them and threatening the small Mediterranean island’s membership of the 17-strong group of European Union countries that use the euro — all of which would have sent the EU’s markets spinning.

Laiki, the country’s second-largest bank, will be restructured, with all bond holders and people with more than 100,000 euros in their accounts facing significant losses, with the guaranteed deposits being transferred to the nation’s biggest lender, Bank of Cyprus. It was not yet clear how severe the losses would be to Laiki’s large bank deposit holders, but he noted that it is expected to yield 4.2 billion euros overall — or much of the money that Cyprus needed to raise to secure the bailout.

• Think your savings belong to you? Not if the government decides otherwise. Just a harbinger of things to come.

Middle East

Just before departing for Jordan on Friday, President Obama scored a diplomatic coup when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Turkey for a 2010 commando raid that killed nine activists on a Turkish vessel in a Gaza-bound flotilla. The apology, long sought by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, eased strained feelings between Turkey and Israel, two vital U.S. allies in the Middle East.

Friday in Jordan, Obama focused on the civil war in neighboring Syria, with King Abdullah telling reporters that the conflict has already caused 460,000 refugees to flood his country and more are on the way. That is equivalent to 10% of Jordan’s population, and the total could double by the end of the year, the king said. He asked for more help from the international community as his country also deals with internal reforms in response to economic woes that are raising public discontent. Obama said he was working with Congress to provide an additional $200 million to Jordan this year to help deal with the refugee influx, but he remained steadfast in his refusal to pledge U.S. military assistance to the Syrian opposition movement.

American citizens’ support for Israel is at an all-time high, according to a Gallop poll measuring American sympathies between Israel and Palestinians. This information was released this week, coinciding with President Obama’s first visit to Israel as US president. 64 percent of the American public supports Israel, while only 12 percent of Americans support the Palestinians and only 23 percent of Americans are undecided.

• The will of the people is of no concern to President Obama, who leads as a king more so than as the leader of a representative democracy

A day before Passover, farmers in southern Israel were suffering from another plague of locusts, entering the country from Egypt with biblical timing. The pests hit fields and greenhouses in the south as the Agriculture Ministry was working to prevent heavy damage to crops in the Negev and stop the insects from penetrating deeper into the country. Unlike previous swarms that have entered Israel in the past month, the locusts that hit Israel Sunday are yellow and fertile and, in this stage of their metamorphosis, pose less risk to crops because they eat significantly less. Once the insects lay eggs and they hatch, however, Israeli farmers will face the threat of this wave’s insatiable brood, who will eat anything green in their path.

• “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.” (Matthew 24:7)

Syria

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely says he has confirmation that Syrian forces have used chemical weapons against rebel forces and civilians, and those weapons are likely stockpiles received from Iraq prior to the U.S.-led invasion 10 years ago. Vallely has met twice in the region with military commanders for the Free Syrian Army, which he describes as the largest and much more moderate faction among the rebels, which also include elements of al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood. Vallely believes the chemical weapons are clearly the work of the Assad regime and that the regime will try to pin the blame on the rebels. But Vallely’s more stunning revelation is that he is virtually certain that Syria is in possession of Saddam Hussein’s old arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some of those may be on display in this civil war. “If you go back to January through March of 2003, we had intelligence in the Defense Department that the Russians helped move, by convoy, a lot of the chemical and biological weapons into two locations in Syria and one in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon,” Vallely said. “We think Russia and Iran have enhanced their inventory. The vast majority of those chemical and biological weapons were from Iraq.”

Egypt

Egyptian protesters clashed with the president’s Muslim Brotherhood backers and ransacked three offices nationwide Friday as anger over allegations of beatings and power-grabbing boiled over into the largest and most violent demonstrations yet on the doorstep of the powerful group. Anger erupted a week ago when Brotherhood members beat journalists and liberal and secular activists during a protest outside the group’s Cairo headquarters. Protesters demand an apology, but the fundamentalist movement said its guards were provoked and acted in self-defense. After smaller demonstrations since last weekend outside the headquarters, thousands of activists thronged to the building and battled Brotherhood supporters with bird shot, rocks, knives, sticks and their fists Friday.

Pakistan

In his first address since returning to Pakistan from self-exile, former President Pervez Musharraf declared his intention to run for office, saying he defied risks to “save” the country. Musharraf landed in Karachi on Sunday after more than four years in exile. He faces criminal charges, and the Taliban have vowed to unleash a “death squad” to assassinate him. In 1999, Musharraf, then chief of Pakistan’s army, became its president in a bloodless military coup. He remained in power until resigning five years ago, a period that included the U.S.-led invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. Under his leadership, Pakistan attained respectable economic growth rates and established a generally favorable investment climate. Along with that came a growing middle class, more aggressive news media, and a more assertive judiciary. Musharraf supported the American war on terror and targeted the Taliban. The militants have accused him of pushing an American agenda in Pakistan.

Nigeria

At least 20 people have been killed by a series of bombings targeting buses in a predominantly Christian neighborhood in Nigeria’s northern city of Kano, International Christian Concern reports. The official death toll is expected to rise as security officials continue to examine the scene of Monday’s attack. Officials suspect the series of explosions were likely initiated by suicide bombers, though investigators are still collecting evidence to confirm that theory. Because the attacks took place in a Christian area of Kano, most officials suspect Christians were the target of the attack. The Islamic extremist group Boko Haram is suspected to be behind the bombings, but the group has yet to take responsibility. Since 2009, Boko Haram has been engaged in an armed insurgency in Nigeria’s northern states, attempting to carve out a separate Islamic state where it can institute sharia law. As part of its bloody campaign to drive all Christians out of Nigeria’s northern states, Boko Haram has targeted the Christian minority there by perpetrating suicide bombings at churches and killing Christians in their homes.

Australia

A little known policy slipped quietly under the radar in January 2012 as Twitter announced they will censor tweets if a country’s government requests them to do so. A year later, Australia became the first modern democracy to identify, filter and ban free speech while not in a state of War. In recent weeks, the censoring of tweets by Australian conservatives, or, indeed anyone who dares to either engage in political debate or offer opinion on the ruling Labor-Green alliance, has become so pervasive many have thought it was a bug with Twitter. Released to the press on 26 January, 2012, the company says: “Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country.”

• Censorship is coming, all in the name of ‘national security’

Weather

The deluge of snow from the Rockies to the Midwest won’t go away anytime soon, no matter what the calendar says. Parts of eight states were under winter storm warning Sunday, despite the fact it’s not winter anymore. The storm threatens to pummel a swath from Missouri to Ohio with 6 to 10 inches of snow. Slick roads were being blamed for a series of crashes on Interstate 60 north of Indianapolis. The snowstorm had already rolled over parts of Kansas and Nebraska and was expected to continue barreling east. Flights were cancelled and the morning commute was a mess in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast corridor Monday morning as the winter storm dumped snow across the region. Some schools were closed, but a lot of students in the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area were already on spring break.

The lowest dew point in Las Vegas in the last 50 years reached late Friday night. The dew point is the temperature at which dew forms from the moisture in the air. This past Friday… March 22nd… at 1156 PM PDT… the dew point temperature at the official Las Vegas climate station at McCarran International Airport was -23 degrees. This means the air was the driest it’s been since 1963.

The U.K. is experiencing its coldest March weekend in fifty years. According to the BBC, heavy snow over the past few days disrupted travel and forced closure of over 1,000 schools.  Power outages were reported in Northern Ireland and Argyll.  In the south of England, heavy rain triggered flooding. This scenario will persist at least through the first half of the work week, as chilly east winds continue to pour in from the continent.

Signs of the Times (3/22/13)

Alabama Proposes to Legalize Ten Commandments

A House committee approved a constitutional amendment Wednesday that would authorize governments and schools to display the Ten Commandments, but an American Civil Liberties Union attorney said the law can’t “trump the Constitution.” The legislation, sponsored by GOP Sen. Gerald Dial would allow public schools and public bodies to display “historically significant displays which reflect the foundations of the rule of law in America, notwithstanding that such displays may also have religious significance.” The Senate approved the measure last month 23-1. The committee approved the amendment on a voice vote; it now goes to the House of Representatives. If approved there, the amendment would go to voters in 2014.

China: 336 Million Abortions in Four Decades

China has aborted 336 million unborn children, many of them forcibly, during slightly more than four decades, the government has announced. The staggering number of abortions should prompt mourning for the victims, but it should not be shocking, said pro-life observers of China’s policy, because the Communist government has enforced a coercive “one-child” policy for more than 30 years. On March 14, the Chinese Health Ministry reported the following statistics for its family planning practices since 1971, according to the Financial Times: 336 million abortions performed, 196 sterilizations conducted and 403 million intrauterine devices inserted. China, the world’s most populous country, first instituted limits on population growth in 1971 and established its “one-child” population control program in 1979. The policy has resulted not only in many reports of authorities carrying out forced abortions and sterilizations, but also in accounts of infanticide. The 336 million abortions surpass the current U.S. population of about 315 million, and also dwarfs the number of abortions — 55 million — reported in the U.S. during the last 40 years.

Assistant Admits to Killing 10 Babies With Scissors During Trial for ‘House of Horrors’ Abortionist

As the trial for notorious Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell proceeded this week, one of Gosnell’s employees testified that she had personally been involved in the murders of 10 newborn babies, the Christian News Network reports. Adrienne Moton told the court the babies who were born alive had their spines “snipped” with scissors. “I learned it from Dr. Gosnell,” she said when asked by prosecutors where she came up with the idea. “I never asked why. … I could remember a good 10 times that I did it.” Moton has been incarcerated since 2011, and has pled guilty to third-degree murder, along with other charges, for her participation in Gosnell’s late-term abortion operation. She is the first of at least two employees who are set to testify against the abortionist in the trial. Gosnell, 72, faces seven counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of babies who were born alive but had their spinal cords “snipped”; he also faces one count of third-degree murder for the death of an abortion client who was administered a lethal amount of medication, in addition to approximately 20 other charges. Philadelphia district attorney Seth Williams, who initially leveled the charges against Gosnell, described the clinic as a “House of Horrors.” Gosnell, if convicted, could face the death penalty for his crimes.

Seven States Running Out of Water

The United States is in the midst of one of the biggest droughts in modern history. At last count, over half of the lower 48 states had abnormally dry conditions and are suffering from at least moderate drought. More than 80% of seven states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas) were as of last week in “severe drought,” characterized by crop or pasture loss, water shortage and water restrictions. In addition to severe drought conditions, relatively large areas in the worst-off states are in “exceptional” drought. Depending on whether the hardest-hit regions see significant precipitation, crops yields could fall and drought conditions could persist for months to come.

Delayed Marriage Fallout: More Unwed Births

Forty-eight percent of first births in the U.S. are now outside of marriage. The National Marriage Project, based at the University of Virginia, has been sounding alarms about the growing disconnect between marriage and parenthood for a while. But the report is the first to make clear that a “tipping point” has been reached for many Americans in the middle class — those who have at least a high school educations but no college degree. Among young women with high school diplomas, 58 percent of first births are now outside marriage, the report says. For high-school dropouts it’s 83 percent; for college-educated women it’s 12 percent. The report notes that 54 percent of young women are high school graduates; 37 percent are college graduates. Overall, the median marriage age is now 27 for women, 29 for men. But the median age at which a woman has her first baby is 26.

• Yet another end-time indicator of the breakdown of God’s ordained family structure

Autism Numbers Rise in Latest Count

Rates of all forms of autism in the U.S. may be substantially higher than previously estimated, according to a new government report that found that 1 out of every 50 school-age children – roughly one on every school bus – has the condition. That’s dramatically higher than the 1 in 88 announced by a different government agency last year. The numbers keep climbing in part because of different methods of counting. The study looked at children ages 6-17 and was based on parent reports, while last year’s study looked at 8-year-olds whose diagnosis was noted in school district or other official records. The autism spectrum includes autism, the most severe form, as well as Asperger’s syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder. The new study, like most others, found that boys are four times more likely to have autism than girls. The study also shows that 15% to 20% of children who were once diagnosed with autism no longer have the condition.

Congress Avoids Shutdown, Bickers over 2014 Budget

Capitol Hill lawmakers finally brought the 2013 budget fight to an end Thursday by approving a bill that ended the threat of a government shutdown — minutes before ratcheting up the partisan warfare over taxes and spending in 2014. Members of the House voted 318-109 to send President Barack Obama a bill funding the government through the end of the current fiscal year in September while easing the pain of $85 billion in forced spending cuts disliked by leaders on both sides of the aisle. The measure extending current federal funding authority was needed to avoid a partial shutdown of the government on March 27. The GOP-controlled House also passed a fiscal year 2014 budget Thursday that is guaranteed to go nowhere in the Democratic-run Senate. Both houses of Congress are scheduled to be on break over the next two weeks for the Easter and Passover holidays.

Economic News

Unemployment claims ticked up by 2,000 in the latest week to 336,000, but the four-week average fell to a 5-year low. The 4-week moving average was 339,750, down 7,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 347,250. That’s the lowest since February 2008, just three months into the recession.

Despite signs of an improving economy, the Federal Reserve Wednesday said it will continue to pursue an easy-money policy aimed at holding down long-term interest rates and stimulating growth. In a statement after a two-day meeting, the Fed said it will keep buying $85 billion a month in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities until the labor market improves substantially.

More Americans are debt-free than in 2000, but the ones who have debt owe nearly 40% more, and seniors have the biggest percentage increase in debt, the Census Bureau said Thursday. The percentage of U.S. households carrying any debt dropped to 69% in 2011 from 74% in 2000, the government reported. But the median debt load rose to $70,000, from an inflation-adjusted $50,971. Debt owed by seniors doubled, to a median of $26,000, according to the Census. The Census Bureau also said that, through 2011, the median household had a 16% lower net worth than in 2000.

Eurozone

Cypriot officials rushed Wednesday to find a new plan to stave off bankruptcy, a day after Parliament rejected an initial scheme to contribute to the nation’s bailout package by seizing up to 10 percent of people’s bank savings. Tuesday’s decisive rejection of the plan to take a slice of all deposits above 20,000 euros ($25,888) has left the country’s bailout in question. Without the bailout, the Cypriot banking sector would collapse, devastating the country’s economy and potentially causing it to leave the euro.

Cypriot politicians moved Thursday to restructure the country’s most troubled bank as part of a broader bailout plan that must be in place by Monday to avoid financial ruin. Concerned customers rushed to get cash from ATMs as bank employees protested. Cyprus has been told it must raise 5.8 billion euros ($7.5 billion) if it is to receive 10 billion euros ($12.9 billion) from its fellow eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund. If it does not find a way by Monday, the European Central Bank said it will cut off emergency support to the banks, letting them collapse.

Middle East

Hoping to move the Middle East peace process forward, President Obama flew by helicopter on Thursday the short distance from Jerusalem to Ramallah, the seat of Palestinian government. The West Bank is a territory conferred limited state status by the United Nations in November 2012, and that the Palestinians hope to make into their nation. Palestinian Authority leaders want Obama to threaten Israel into agreeing to Palestinian aims for an independent state. “Palestinians deserve a future of hope,” Obama said. “Palestinians deserve a state of their own. It’s in our fundamental security interest to stand with Israel,” Obama said

• By basing U.S. support of Israel on “security interests,” Obama has shifted away from the spiritual foundation of America’s relationship – leaving the door open should our security interests also shift

There was controversy even before Obama left Jerusalem on Thursday morning. Israel police said that militants in Gaza fired two rockets at southern Israel. The rockets exploded in the city of Sderot. One rocket landed next to a house causing damage, but no injuries. A second rocket landed in an open area., shortly after emerging from Air Force One around noon local time at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, are skeptical that President Obama’s visit will lead to anything substantive on the peace front.

Persecution Watch

There are only 57 churches left in Iraq compared to 300 churches in 2003, and those that remain continue to be targeted. According to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, attacks by extremists on churcheshave force many Christians to emigrate abroad. Former Minister of Displacement and Migration, Pascal Warda, said a lot of young Christian people want to emigrate to find safety and jobs. “The last ten years have been the worst for Iraqi Christians because they bore witness to the biggest exodus and migration in the history of Iraq,” said William Warda, the head of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization. “The number of Christians has fallen from about 1,400,000 in 2003 to nearly half a million now, which means that more than two-thirds have emigrated,” Warda explained.

Religious freedom is losing even more ground in Kazakhstan: For the first time since the country gained independence in 1991, a court ordered religious literature to be destroyed, Mission Network News reports. According to Forum 18 News, 121 pieces of religious literature, mostly in the Kazakh language, were taken from a Christian in the northern part of the country. Vyacheslav Cherkasov was reportedly handing out the literature on the streets when police arrested him. He was fined a month’s wages, and a suitcase full of Bibles, children’s Bibles, books and Christian tracts were confiscated. This month, a judge ordered the literature to be destroyed. “Most likely the books would be burnt,” an official told Forum 18. Authorities accused Cherkasov of violating Kazakhstan’s Religion Law, which was rewritten in 2011 to include more things as “religious offenses.” Cherkasov is currently appealing his case. “We know that religious literature has frequently been confiscated since the new Religion Law came into force in 2011,” said human rights defender Yevgeni Zhovtis. “But I’ve never heard that religious literature is being destroyed, unless it is extremist. This is terrible, terrible!”

• Imagine the backlash if Islamic literature was torched

Saudi Arabia

A Department of Homeland Security program intended to give “trusted traveler” status to low-risk airline passengers soon will be extended to Saudi travelers, opening the program to criticism for accommodating the country that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Many voiced concern about the under-the-radar announcement which was first made by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after meeting in January with her Saudi counterpart. This would be the first time the Saudi government has been given such a direct role in fast-tracking people for entry into the United States. Only an exclusive handful of countries enjoy inclusion in the Global Entry program — Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands.

• Napolitano has been a disaster as DHS chief, first labeling veterans and conservative Christians as the primary terrorist threat and now fast-tracking Saudi terrorists into the U.S.

Myanmar (Burma)

Mobs set fire to Muslim homes and mosques in frenzied sectarian rioting in a town in central Myanmar, leaving at least 20 people dead and more than 6,000 homeless amid growing fears Friday that the latest bout of Muslim-Buddhist bloodshed could spread. In an acknowledgement of the seriousness of the situation, President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in Meikhtila. The declaration allows the military to take over administrative functions in and around the town. The government’s struggle to contain the unrest is proving another major challenge for Thein Sein’s reformist administration as it attempts to chart a path to democracy after nearly half a century of military rule that once crushed all dissent. The scenes in Meikhtila, where homes and at least five mosques have been torched by angry mobs, were reminiscent of sectarian violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya that shook western Rakhine state last year, killing hundreds of people and driving more than 100,000 from their homes.

Korea

As South Korea braces for a possible military attack from North Korea, the first salvos may have been fired Wednesday in cyberspace. Three South Korean television networks and at least two major banks reported their computer networks had crashed Wednesday afternoon, local time. Screens went blank with skulls popping up on the screens of some computers — a strong indication that hackers planted a malicious code in South Korean systems. Some computers started to get back online more than 2½ hours later. Suspicion for the source of this large-scale hacking campaign fell quickly on the South’s bellicose northern neighbor, which has hit South Korean targets with cyberattacks in recent years.

China

The number of dead pigs recovered in the last two weeks from rivers that supply water to Shanghai has risen to more than 16,000. Tests show Shanghai’s water is still safe, but no official has given any full explanation about the massive dumping of pig carcasses. Hog farmers have told state media that the dumping of swine carcasses is rising because police have started cracking down on the illicit sale of pork products made from dead, diseased pigs. Local officials said that the upstream city of Jiazing lacks enough facilities to properly dispose of dead pigs. Hog farming is a major business in Jiaxing.

Weather

The Northeast and Upper Midwest were digging out from up to 15 inches of snow and temperatures in some areas are well below zero on the first day of Spring. Winter isn’t ready to give up yet as a lingering storm was dumping more snow across most of Maine on Wednesday, after hitting the rest of the region a day earlier.

A powerful winter storm blazing across Alberta, Canada, is blamed for a multi-car wreck that left as many as 100 people injured. The series of accidents happened Thursday afternoon along a stretch of Highway 2 that serves as a main artery between Edmonton and Calgary. No deaths were reported. Meteorologists say the storm will plunge from the Rockies to the Mid-Atlantic during the weekend.

At least 24 people died and scores were injured after a tornado carrying huge hailstones lashed southern China, causing widespread devastation and a ferry to capsize. Many of the dead in Dongguan were trapped in collapsed buildings. Another 148 people were injured, including 11 critically. Other provinces affected by storms and torrential rain on Wednesday were nearby Jiangxi, Hunan in central China and Guizhou in the southwest. A total of 1.53 million residents have been affected by the severe weather and 215,000 people were forced to relocate.

Signs of the Times (3/19/13)

North Dakota Passes Most Restrictive Abortion Bill in Nation

North Dakota’s Senate passed a pair of anti-abortion measures Friday that are considered to be the most restrictive in the nation, including one that would prevent women from having an abortion based on a genetic defect. The other measure would ban doctors from performing an abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected — as early as five or six weeks. The measures now to go to Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple who has indicated he will sign them. The new state laws are even more restrictive than one finalized last week in Arkansas that would make the procedure illegal after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Miss. School Prayer Law Could Face Legal Challenge

A Christian attorney is confident Mississippi’s new school prayer law will stand up to any court challenge – and his legal firm promises free legal representation should the ACLU or anyone else raise such an obstacle to the law. The law, which goes into effect July 1, allows public school students to initiate prayers in what is described as a “limited public forum” – football games or morning announcements, for example. It also allows students to express their faith in classroom assignments without fear of it affecting their grade or causing them to be called to the principal’s office. “We believe that we’re on firm ground here with our opportunity for religious expression in a limited forum within public schools,” the governor said at the signing.

Atheist Group Demands ‘In God We Trust’ Be Removed From Currency

A prominent atheist activist group has filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to have the historic phrase “In God We Trust” removed from the nation’s currency, the Christian News Network reports. The Freedom From Religion Foundation issued a press release this week about the suit, advising that the case is being handled by well-known atheist Michael Newdow, who has filed numerous lawsuits challenging the mixture of God and government. The complaint, which has been filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, claims the motto violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution as it serves to proselytize unbelievers. Those filing the lawsuit, which include seven children and their parents, along with other entities and the group New York City Atheists, state they do not like being forced to look at the name of God on their money every time they make a purchase. “The motto necessarily excludes atheists and others who don’t believe in one god or a god,” FFRF asserts. “Our government is prohibited from endorsing one religion over another but also prohibited from endorsing religion over nonreligion.” The motto “In God We Trust” has appeared on U.S. coins since 1864 and began being printed on paper currency in 1957.

• The Constitution mandates freedom of religion, not freedom from religion

Judge Rules Secret FBI National Security Surveillance Unconstitutional

A federal judge has struck down a set of laws allowing the FBI to issue so-called national security letters to banks, phone companies and other businesses demanding customer information. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said the laws violate the First Amendment and the separation of powers principles and ordered the government to stop issuing the secretive letters or enforcing their gag orders. The FBI almost always bars recipients of the letters from disclosing to anyone — including customers — that they have even received the demands, Illston said in the ruling released Friday. The government has failed to show that the letters and the blanket non-disclosure policy “serve the compelling need of national security,” and the gag order creates “too large a danger that speech is being unnecessarily restricted,” the San Francisco-based Illston wrote.

Supreme Court Hears Arizona Voter-Registration Law

The U.S. Supreme Court decision on Arizona’s voter-registration law, which aims to keep illegal immigrants off the voter rolls but has made access difficult for some citizens, could come down to one swing justice if questions at Monday’s hearing provide any clues to opinions on the bench. Justice Anthony Kennedy, may reprise that role in a case that deals with election integrity and access to the voting booth. A number of controversial Arizona laws reviewed by the high court in recent years, including the immigration-enforcement measure known as Senate Bill 1070, have come down to split decisions. This measure requires Arizonans who register to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship, such as a copy of a driver’s license, birth certificate, passport, tribal identification card or naturalization number. The law goes beyond what federal voter-registration rules require as proof of citizenship. Prop. 200 was almost immediately challenged by voting-rights advocates as burdensome to the young, elderly, minorities and naturalized citizens and to voter-registration organizations. Supporters touted the law as a check against voter fraud.

Big Increase in Border-Crossing Deaths Reported

Fewer people are illegally crossing America’s southwest border with Mexico, but the region saw a big increase in immigrant deaths in 2012, according to a report released Tuesday. U.S. Border Patrol identified 477 deaths along the southwest border, up from 375 the year before, according to the report from the National Foundation for American Policy, an Arlington, Va.-based group that researches immigration issues. That 27% increase in deaths comes even as total migration from Mexico has slowed in recent years. Part of the reason for the rise in deaths is the increase in Border Patrol agents that has driven immigrants to more remote, treacherous areas along the border. Lack of water and high desert heat combine to make such trips very dangerous.

Pentagon Plans to Bolster Missile Defense

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel unveiled Friday a $1 billion Pentagon plan to beef up missile defense in response to threats from North Korea, saying part of the plan would be to explore three new sites for ground-based interceptors. One of the potential sites would be at Alaska’s Fort Greely, which already is home to missile silos. The other two potential locations haven’t been disclosed but would be somewhere on the East Coast. The Pentagon would commit at least 14 additional ground-based interceptors to Fort Greely and send an additional radar system to Japan. The plan is expected to be “in place” by 2017.

UN Reopens Talks on Arms Trade Treaty

Negotiators will reconvene this week to try to hammer out a landmark U.N. treaty designed to regulate the multibillion-dollar global arms trade amid objections from a bipartisan group of legislators and the most powerful gun-rights lobbying group in the U.S. Governmental representatives will meet in New York starting Monday to try to reach consensus on the Arms Trade Treaty, which would require all countries to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms and to regulate arms brokers. The draft treaty under consideration does not control the domestic use of weapons in any country, but it would prohibit states that ratify the treaty from transferring conventional weapons if they would violate arms embargoes or if they would promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.

Many countries, including the United States, control arms exports, but there has never been an international treaty regulating the estimated $60 billion global arms trade. Hopes of reaching agreement on what would be a landmark treaty were dashed last July when the United States said it needed more time to consider the proposed accord — then Russia and China also asked for a delay. The National Rifle Association has portrayed the treaty as a threat to gun ownership rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Colorado Sheriff Won’t Enforce New Gun Laws

Weld County Sheriff John Cooke won’t enforce new state gun measures expected to be signed into law by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper. “They’re feel-good, knee-jerk reactions that are unenforceable,” said. Lawmakers in Colorado on Friday approved a landmark expansion of background checks on firearm purchases. Earlier in the week, Colorado lawmakers approved a 15-round limit on ammunition magazines. The sheriff also said that he and other county sheriffs “won’t bother enforcing” the laws because it won’t be possible to keep track of how gun owners are complying with the new requirements.

Economic News

Housing starts in February rose 0.8% from January, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 917,000, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. The rate is 27.7% above February 2012. Single-family starts were running at a 618,000 annual rate, up 0.5% from January. In addition, building permits for future construction were running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 946,000, up 4.6% from January and 33.8% above February 2012.

Homes sold faster last month than in any February since 2007 as eager buyers met a tight supply of homes for sale, industry figures show. Homes were on the market for a median of 98 days last month, down from 123 days in February 2011, according to Realtor.com. In Oakland, homes spent just 14 days on the market last month before they went under contract. In Sacramento, just 21 days. While eight of the 10 fastest-moving markets were in California, Denver and Seattle made the top 10, too, with median market times of 28 and 33 days.

Nearly all of the markets with low median market times are also seeing big declines in homes listed for sale. The average drop-off was 48% from a year earlier in the markets with the greatest declines in supply. Most were in California. That compared with a 16% drop for 146 other metropolitan regions.

Eurozone

Cyprus’s Parliament is likely to reject an international bailout package that involves taxing ordinary depositors to pay part of the bill, President Nicos Anastasiades said Tuesday.Cash-strapped Cyprus secured a $13 billion bailout package from its European partners and the International Monetary Fund in a bid to prevent the island nation from entering a bankruptcy that could rekindle the region’s debt crisis, officials said early Saturday. In return for the rescue loans, Cyprus was required to trim its deficit, significantly shrink its troubled banking sector, raise taxes and privatize state asset. In a major departure from established policies, the package foresees a one-time levy on the money held in bank accounts in Cyprus. Analysts have warned that making depositors take a hit threatens to undermine investors’ confidence in other weaker eurozone economies and might possibly lead to bank runs.

Middle East

Apartment buildings and residences sandwiched into the very fabric of Arab East Jerusalem are undermining the idea that the area could ever serve as the capital of a Palestinian state. Israel’s building of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and West Bank territories seized during the 1967 war has been a longstanding friction point between Jerusalem and Washington. With President Obama scheduled to visit this week, the government has postponed action on several East Jerusalem projects. While most Middle East experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have long imagined Jerusalem as ultimately being divided, with Jewish neighborhoods remaining part of Israel and Arab ones joining Palestine, these new buildings make such a plan more complicated if not impossible — which may be exactly the point.

• A divided Jerusalem was never a practical solution, but more significantly, it would violate God’s will, having declared that it is His capital on earth.

Syria

Syria’s information minister says a chemical weapon fired by rebels on a village in the north of the country is the “first act” by the opposition interim government announced in Istanbul. Omran al-Zoubi says the missile containing “poisonous gases” was fired from Nairab district in Aleppo into Khan al-Assal village on Tuesday morning. He says 16 people were killed and 86 wounded in the attack. Rebels have denied the accusation and say regime forces fired the weapon. Omran also says the attack is the results of the decision by some in the international community to arm the Syrian opposition.

The Syrian regime is expanding its use of widely banned cluster bombs, an international human rights group said Saturday as the deadlocked conflict entered its third year. In recent months, the regime has escalated airstrikes and artillery attacks on rebel-held areas in the north and east of the country. In response, rebels detonated a powerful car bomb outside a high-rise building in the eastern city of Deir el-Zou. The blast came a day after Syrians marked the second anniversary of their uprising against President Bashar Assad. The rebellion had begun with largely peaceful protests but in response to a regime crackdown turned into an insurgency and then a civil war.

Iraq

The U.S. suffered more than 4,480 deaths and 32,000 wounded during the Iraq War, which opened 10 years ago this week. The price tag for the war, according to nonpartisan congressional researchers, was at least $806 billion, although that figure doesn’t take into account related expenses such as coming decades of veterans benefits and other costs including medical treatment. While history’s verdict is not yet in, the new Iraq so far hasn’t turned out to be the stable, strategic ally in the region that U.S. officials envisioned, despite the $60 billion that taxpayers spent on reconstruction. Greatly weakened, Iraq now is viewed as vulnerable to influence from neighboring Iran as well as internal sectarian violence, nor were any weapons of mass destruction ever found.

• Much of the USA’s debt burden is due to the expensive Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

A wave of bombings tore through the Baghdad area Tuesday, killing 57 people on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion and showing how unstable Iraq remains more than a year after the withdrawal of American troops. Violence has ebbed sharply since the peak of Sunni-Shiite fighting that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006-2007. But insurgents maintain the ability to stage high-profile attacks while sectarian and ethnic rivalries continue to tear at the fabric of national unity.

Iran

Harsh economic sanctions have taken a serious toll on Iran’s economy, but U.S. and European officials acknowledge that the measures have not yet produced the kind of public unrest that could force Iranian leaders to change their nuclear policies. Nine months after Iran was hit with the toughest restrictions in its history, the nation’s economy appears to have settled into a slow, downward glide, hemorrhaging jobs and hard currency but appearing to be in no immediate danger of collapse, Western diplomats and analysts say. At the same time, the hardships have not triggered significant domestic protests or produced a single concession by Iran on its nuclear program. Although weakened, Iran has resisted Western pressure through a combination of clever tactics, political repression and old-fashioned stubbornness, analysts say. The mixed results from the sanctions complicate the West’s bargaining position ahead of the next round of nuclear talks with Iran, in early April.

North Korea

North Korea test-fired a pair of short-range missiles into its eastern waters this past week in a likely response to ongoing routine U.S.-South Korean military drills, a South Korean official said Saturday. The North launched what appeared to be KN-02 missiles during its own drills. North Korea routinely launches short-range missiles in an effort to improve its arsenal, but the latest test comes at a time of rising tensions. Pyongyang has threatened nuclear strikes on Seoul and Washington because of the U.S.-South Korean drills and recent U.N. sanctions over its third nuclear test.

Though North Korea has threatened to launch nuclear strikes on the U.S., the most immediate threat posed by its nuclear technology may be North Korea’s willingness to sell it to nations that Washington sees as sponsors of terrorism. The fear of such sales was highlighted this week, when Japan confirmed that cargo seized last year and believed to be from North Korea contained material that could be used to make nuclear centrifuges, which are crucial to enriching uranium into bomb fuel.

Japan

The Japanese utility that owns the tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant says it has detected a record 740,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in a fish caught close to the plant. That’s 7,400 times the government limit for safe human consumption. The March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami damaged the plant, causing meltdowns that spewed radiation into the surrounding soil and water. Most fish along the Fukushima coast are barred from market.

Solar Flare

A massive eruption on the sun Friday unleashed a wave of intense solar particles at Earth that sparked a geomagnetic storm and boosted aurora displays over the weekend. The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle and is expected to reach its peak activity in 2013. The eruption sent a wave of solar particles streaking toward Earth at about 900 miles per second, about 3.2 million miles per hour. The northern lights are produced when charged particles from the sun interact with atoms in Earth’s upper atmosphere. The awe-inspiring displays — shimmering, translucent green, purple, and red “curtains” that seem to billow across the night sky — are common in extreme northern latitudes, where a constant stream of such particles arrives on the so-called “solar wind.”

Wildfires

A wildfire burning in a resort area outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in eastern Tennessee has destroyed more than 30 large rental cabins. Tennessee authorities declared a state of emergency and sent in the National Guard on Monday in an effort to control the fast-moving wildfire near the resort town of Pigeon Forge. The fire started about 5 p.m. Sunday and quickly spread, charring more than 30 cabins and turning propane tanks into shrapnel. About 20 fire departments have been fighting the fire. The 230 acre blaze started as a house fire. The area is home to rental cabins with some permanent residences. Heavy rains Monday helped firefighters contain the wildfire that damaged dozens of mountain homes outside the Tennessee resort town of Pigeon Forge.

A wind-driven wildfire scorched its way through Lory State Park west of Fort Collins on Friday, threatening hundreds of homes south of its path as flames flared above Horsetooth Reservoir. The Galena Fire was estimated at between 750 and 1,000 acres by fire officials, and there were no natural barriers blocking its spread to evacuated homes in the Inlet Bay area. Firefighters say the cause of the fire is unknown. High winds hampered efforts to control the blaze, but firefighters saved two homes and the park’s visitor center. People forced from their homes by a wildfire in the foothills west of Fort Collins have been given the OK to return Sunday after the fire was 45% contained.

Earthquakes

In 2011, the Oregon Legislature authorized the study of what would happen if a quake and tsunami such as the one that devastated Japan hit the Pacific Northwest. The commission determined that more than 10,000 people could die when – not if – a monster earthquake and tsunami occur just off the Pacific Northwest coast, researchers told the legislators Thursday. Coastal towns would be inundated. Schools, buildings and bridges would collapse, and economic damage could hit $32 billion. The Cascadia Subduction Zone, just off the regional coastline, produced a mega-quake in the year 1700. Seismic experts say another monster quake and tsunami are overdue.

• Earthquakes have been increasing in frequency just as the Bible prophesied regarding the end-times: And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences. (Luke 21:11) I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake. (Revelation 6:12)

Weather

A winter storm brought severe weather into the southern states Monday, including intense thunderstorms that produced huge hailstones throughout the southern United States. Two tornadoes have been confirmed so far, both in Tennessee. Winds of over 100 mph destroyed one mobile home and several outbuildings. In all, there were 264 reports of severe weather Monday and Monday night across seven states from southeast Arkansas and northeast Louisiana to South Carolina.  For the entire month of March prior to Monday, there had been a total of just 165 severe reports.

The day before spring officially arrived, New England was promised one final, sloppy blow of the winter season, with forecasters predicting several inches of snow. A winter storm was forecast for late Monday and early Tuesday and could stick around throughout the day, covering newly bare patches of ground and forcing people to gas up their snow blowers again. The National Weather Service forecast 7 to 19 inches of a mix of snow and sleet in northern New England.

Communities and businesses all along the coasts of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are praying for rain as record-low water levels threaten the region’s economic stability. The area set record lows for precipitation in January and are expected to stay 2 feet below long-term averages at least through August. Blame the extended drought and hot weather that speeds evaporation, says Keith Kompoltowicz, chief of watershed hydrology for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Detroit district. Inaccessible harbors mean trouble for marinas, restaurants, resorts and almost every other business in waterfront towns. Commercial shippers must lighten their loads, increasing costs for their customers and consumers.

With the planet heating up, many scientists seem fairly certain some weather elements like hurricanes and droughts will worsen. But tornadoes have them stumped. These unpredictable, sometimes deadly storms plague the United States more than any other country. But as the traditional tornado season nears, scientists have been pondering a simple question: Will there be more or fewer twisters as global warming increases? They don’t yet have an answer.

• End-time tornadoes will increase in both intensity and frequency

Signs of the Times (3/15/13)

New Pope Chosen

On Wednesday, throngs jamming St. Peter’s Square roared with joy as Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, stepped onto the balcony as the new pope. The election of the new pope shocked the Catholic world with a series of pontiff firsts: a Jesuit from Latin America who chose a name honoring St. Francis of Assisi. The pope chose his name after Francis of Assisi, the saint of the poor who preached a radical return to the gospel in a medieval church steeped in pomp, luxury and power struggles with worldly leaders. Not only is he the first Latin American pope, the first Jesuit pope, and the first non-European pope in more than a millennium, Francis appears to be the first pope bent on shaking the ritualized world of Vatican traditions and taboos. Pope Francis, 76, is considered a straight-shooter who calls things as he sees them, and is a follower of the Catholic Church’s most conservative wing. He is already taking heat in the mainstream media over his well-documented stand against gay marriage.

An author who predicted that Pope Benedict XVI would be the first pontiff in nearly 600 years to resign believes the election today of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the 266th Roman Catholic pontiff lines up with a medieval prophecy that would make him the “final pope” before the End Times. Tom Horn, author of the book “Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here,” told WorldNetDaily that Bergoglio’s selection was a “fantastic fulfillment of prophecy.” His book examines St. Malachy’s “Prophecy of the Popes,” said to be based on a prophetic vision of the 112 popes following Pope Celestine II, who died in 1144. Horn said a pope of Italian descent would fulfill the prophecy, noting Bergoglio is the son of Italian parents and a Jesuit. Horn said the name “Petrus Romanus” in the prophecy “implies this pope will reaffirm the authority of the Roman Pontiff over the Church and will emphasize the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Faith and the Roman Catholic Church above all other religions and denominations, and its authority over all Christians and all peoples of the world.” Horn points out the Jesuits order was organized “to stop Protestantism from spreading

‘The Bible’ Sees Big Numbers for History Channel Again

The second week of History Channel’s “The Bible” miniseries may not have delivered the ratings of the previous week’s record-breaking premiere, but the two-hour telecast still saw big numbers, Entertainment Weekly reports. “The Bible” had 10.8 million total viewers Sunday night, down 18 percent from its premiere, but still No. 1 in all of television from 8 to 10 p.m. More than 50 million cumulative viewers have seen at least a portion of the series since it began on March 3.

ICE Confirms 2,228 Immigrants Released

U.S. immigration-enforcement officials acknowledged Thursday that they released 2,228 illegal immigrants last month due to budget constraints, including more than 600 convicted criminals, some of whom had multiple drunken-driving and other serious offenses. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton’s testimony during a House subcommittee hearing drew an immediate and sharp rebuke from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and several Republican members of Congress. “The American people were initially told there were hundreds, not thousands of individuals released,” Brewer said in a written statement. “We were assured they were low-level detainees of little public risk. As we now know, neither of these claims was accurate.” The releases came to light as Obama was warning Americans that the sequester could devastate many federal programs, prompting Republicans to accuse his administration of using scare tactics to drum up support for tax hikes to avoid some of the cuts.

Drones Killing Innocent Pakistanis, U.N. Says

The United States has 8,000 drones, unmanned planes and helicopters flown by a remote control. They are outfitted with a video camera to help the operator spot targets and often armed with weapons used to neutralize them. The New America Foundation estimates that U.S. drones in Pakistan, drones have killed between 1,953 and 3,279 people since 2004 – and that between 18% and 23% of them were not militants. A study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that since 2004, Pakistan has had 365 drone strikes that have killed between 2,536 and 3,577 people — including 411 to 884 civilians. U.N. Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson says, “Adult males carrying out ordinary daily tasks were frequently the victims of such strikes,”

Physicists Find ‘God Particle’

The search is all but over for a subatomic particle that is a crucial building block of the universe. Physicists announced Thursday that they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago that will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape. The elusive particle, called a Higgs boson, was predicted in 1964 to help fill in our understanding of the creation of the universe. Its existence helps confirm the theory that objects gain their size and shape when particles interact in an energy field with this key particle. The ongoing hunt for the Higgs entailed the use of CERN’s atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, which cost $10 billion to build and run in a 17-mile tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border.

• If only the scientists would discover God through the particles that He created, worshiping Him instead of His creation

Bat-Killing Fungus Spreads South

A deadly fungal infection that has killed millions of bats has been confirmed for the first time in Georgia and South Carolina, report federal officials, raising the syndrome’s spread to 22 states. First seen in an upstate New York cave in 2006, white-nose syndrome spreads among closely-clustered hibernating bats, sapping their winter reserves. It has led to the deaths of more than 5.4 million bats since then, killing more than 90% of them in some afflicted caves. There is no treatment yet for the syndrome. Biologists are experimenting with altering cave conditions to make them less hospitable to the fungus responsible for the syndrome, but they expect it to spread to caves nationwide at some point.

Drought, Wildfires Shrink Monarch Butterfly Population

Monarch butterflies — one of the sure signs of spring and summer — may not be as plentiful this year across the USA, in part because of the ongoing drought and recent wildfires in Texas that ravaged their food sources. The butterflies usually fly north across Texas this time of year, as they migrate from Mexico into the USA. In 2012, Texas endured its hottest year on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center. This came on the heels of the state’s driest year on record in 2011. The lack of rain and raging fires diminished the main food source for butterfly larvae (milkweed) and also decreased food sources for adult butterflies (such as wildflower nectar).

Deluge of Sick Sea Lion Pups in CA

- Sick and malnourished sea lion pups are stranding themselves on Southern California beaches in some of the largest numbers seen in over a decade, perplexing scientists and leading one care facility to declare itself near capacity. Officials at the facility, the only one of its kind in Orange County, said they were caring for over 90 sea lions on Wednesday. Last year in March, the facility was caring for only 10 sea lions, which was an average number. The last time they saw such an onslaught of the mammal pups this early in the year was 1998, when an “El Nino” weather pattern warmed the waters off the California coast.

Huge Mosquitos Plague Florida

As if deadly sinkholes and Burmese pythons weren’t enough, now Florida may find itself contending with another summer of giant mosquitoes that pack a ferocious bite. Dubbed gallinippers, the quarter-sized mosquitoes hatch after a flood or rainstorm, and saw a bumper crop after Tropical Storm Debby struck Florida last summer. Now another rainy season could produce even more. A gallinipper is 20 times the size of a typical mosquito, “and it’s mean, and it goes after people, and it bites, and it hurts,” says Anthony Pelaez of Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry. A gallinipper bite “feels like you’re being stabbed.” What’s more, they may be resistant to bug repellent and like to strike fish, wild animals, and pets.

• End-time pestilence will come in many shapes and forms, from microbes to mosquitos to locusts

Auto Crashes Top Killer of Youth

Twenty teenagers dead in five automobile crashes in five states. All within one week. Motor vehicle wrecks continue to be the number one killer of youths in the United States. Such accidents took the lives of about a quarter of 15- to 24-year-olds who died in 2010. They significantly outpaced the other top culprits: firearm wounds, homicides, suicides and accidental poisonings.

GOP Unveils $4.6 Trillion Plan to Cut Deficit

House Republicans unveiled a budget Tuesday that would balance the nation’s books in 10 years without raising taxes but by eliminating President Obama’s health care law, revamping Medicare for future retirees and creating just two tax brackets for individuals — 10% and 25%.By cutting $4.6 trillion in current spending over the next decade, the budget would achieve balance between what the government spends and what it collects in revenues by 2023. The conservative blueprint stands no chance of gaining traction with Senate Democrats or Obama, but the plan is a starting point for renewed debate about how to balance the budget. The measure would Cut the growth of the public debt to an estimated $14.2 trillion by 2023 instead of the nearly $20 trillion estimated by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Economic News

Americans spent more at the gas pump and less at department stores in February, but overall, retail sales were stronger last month. Retail sales climbed at an annual rate of 1.1% in February, as strength in auto sales helped show that consumers are not scared off by this year’s tax hikes. Higher gasoline prices also drove spending higher, but sales still rose 0.6% last month, excluding spending at the pump. Retail sales were 4.6% higher than a year ago.

The number of U.S. homes repossessed by lenders last month fell 11% from January and declined 29% from February last year, tumbling to the lowest level since September 2007. All told, 45,038 U.S. homes completed the foreclosure process in February. That’s less than half of the 102,000 homes lost to foreclosure in March 2010, when home repossessions peaked.

Initial claims for unemployment benefits fell by 10,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 332,000, hitting a five-year low. The number of claims have fallen 13% since November. Employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs per month from November through February, up from about 150,000 a month in the previous four months.

U.S. wholesale prices rose in February by the most in five months, pushed higher by more expensive gas and pharmaceuticals. But outside those increases, inflation was mild. The producer price index grew a seasonally adjusted 0.7% in February from January, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s up from 0.2% in the previous month. Wholesale gas prices increased 7.2%. Wholesale prices have risen just 1.7% in the past 12 months. The Consumer Price Index, the government’s key measure of inflation, showed prices rose 0.7% in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Year-over-year, inflation was up 2%.

The effects of the sequester have spread to the hallowed halls of education. Both graduate students and the parents of undergrads have been quietly receiving letters from the federal Department of Education. The letters say the fees on their Direct PLUS loans from the government are being raised from 4% to 4.2% as a direct result of the automatic budget cuts that kicked in this month because Congress and the White House couldn’t come to a fiscal agreement.

The top 10 percent of taxpayers paid over 70% of the total amount collected in federal income taxes in 2010, the latest year figures are available, CNN reported Tuesday. That’s up from 55% in 1986. The remaining 90% of U.S. taxpayers bore just 29% of the tax burden, down from 45% in 1986. And 47% of all Americans pay hardly anything at all — a fact that got Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney into political hot water last year.

Persecution Watch

Five Iranian Christian converts who were detained late last year will reportedly begin trial in Iran’s Revolutionary Court this week, according to a human rights group following the case, Fox News reports. The five men were among seven arrested in October when security forces raided an underground house church in the city of Shiraz during a prayer session. They will be tried at the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz’ Fars Province on charges of disturbing public order, evangelizing, threatening national security and engaging in Internet activity that threatens the government, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide. “Judging from recent cases, it is likely that, at the very least, those detained may face lengthy prison sentences,” said CSW spokesperson Kiri Kankhwende. According to Kankhwende, the crackdown on Christian converts and house churches comes as the government is leading up to June’s presidential elections. “There has been a noticeable increase in the harassment, arrests, trials and imprisonment of converts to Christianity, particularly since the beginning of 2012,” Kankhwende said.

Students at a Massachusetts charter school will perform a biblical play of Genesis with gay characters, despite objections from many who say it’s offensive to Christians, CBN News reports. The play is a 1998 comedy called “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told,” and in a letter to parents, administrators at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Public Charter School said it was consistent with the school’s philosophy and appropriate for a high school audience. But they did admit to receiving email petitions and phone calls describing the production as “blasphemous and hateful.” According to some of the messages, opponents said they planned to organize protests through local churches.

• Imagine the hue and cry if the play satirized Islam or even gays. Only Christianity is considered a legitimate target for intolerance

Middle East

Unrest is growing in the Palestinian territories ahead of President Barack Obama’s first visit to Israel on March 20^th. Riots and protests have erupted throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip in recent days, prompting some Israeli officials and Middle East observers to warn that Obama’s visit could spark a third intifada (or uprising). Hamas officials have warned that Obama’s visit will further fracture its relations with the Palestinian Authority and have even stated that a presidential visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount will be viewed as a declaration of war.

Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached an agreement Thursday to form a new coalition government that is expected to try to curb years of preferential treatment for the country’s ultra-Orthodox minority and may restart peace efforts with Palestinians. The new coalition will be the first in a decade to exclude ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties. Although Netanyahu’s bloc emerged as the biggest faction in the Jan. 22 election with 31 seats, he struggled to form a coalition with the necessary 61-seat majority in the 120-member parliament. His new coalition is expected to control 68 seats. The ultra-Orthodox make up about 10 percent of Israel’s 8 million citizens. Through the coalition government system, they have traditionally wielded disproportionate influence by ensuring a parliamentary majority for a string of prime ministers. With the exception of a three-year period in the early 2000s, they have served in every government since the late 1970s. This time, Netanyahu was forced to drop his plans to bring the ultra-Orthodox, his traditional partners, back into the coalition.

• Israel continues its march toward secularism and away from its spiritual foundations

Iran

Iran is more than a year away from developing a nuclear weapon, but that does not mean the United States will wait for it to become a reality, President Barack Obama said in an interview that aired Thursday on an Israeli television station. “I have been crystal clear about my position on Iran possessing a nuclear weapon. That is a red line for us. It is not only something that would be dangerous for Israel. It would be dangerous for the world,” Obama told CNN affiliate Israeli Channel 2 TV before a scheduled visit next week to the country.

Syria

Bashar al-Assad’s regime has lost control of much of Syria’s long desert border with Iraq, as Sunni jihadist groups in both countries grow in strength, according to Western counter-terrorism officials and analysts. The resurgence of al Qaeda in Iraq and the growing power of groups like the Nusra Front in Syria pose a broader threat: a cross-border alliance of militant Sunni groups capable of challenging governments in both Damascus and Baghdad and carving out a haven in a region where governments are struggling to exert control.

Afghanistan

The American commander in Afghanistan told his forces to intensify security measures on Wednesday, issuing a strongly worded warning that a string of anti-American statements by President Hamid Karzai had put Western troops at greater risk of attack both from rogue Afghan security forces and from militants. An array of Afghan political leaders issued a joint statement criticizing Mr. Karzai and saying his comments did not reflect their views. And though American military and diplomatic officials have mostly refrained from replying publicly to Mr. Karzai’s criticism, in private they have expressed concerns that relations between the allies had reached a worrisome low point right at a critical point in the war against the Taliban.

Iraq

A string of explosions tore through central Baghdad within minutes of each other on Thursday, followed by a coordinated assault by gunmen who raided a government building and battled security forces in the streets. The attack left at least 22 people dead and dozens wounded. The fighting lasted about an hour, ending with security forces storming the building, killing the gunmen and evacuating hundreds of people who had hunkered down in their offices. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the attack bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda’s Iraqi arm. The group, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, frequently uses car bombs and coordinated blasts in an effort to undermine Iraqis’ confidence in the Shiite-led government.

Pakistan

A separatist group fighting the Pakistani government for years has deployed a new weapon in its arsenal, police said: child bombers. Police in the southwestern Balochistan province say they have arrested a group of children as young as 8 that the United Baloch Army has been using to carry out attacks. All the children belong to extremely poor and down-trodden families. The militant group paid them $25 to $50 to drop off packages carrying bombs with timer. The militant group uses children because they seldom arouse suspicion.

Egypt

The announcement of a religious police force to uphold Muslim morals in Egypt is the latest chilling sign of the country’s move towards becoming an Islamic state. The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, an informal group, shares its name with the much-feared religious police (“mutawaah”) in Saudi Arabia. Opponents fear that the Islamists will abuse their position and force people, especially women, to adhere to strict, oppressive shariah law. There are concerns also for the country’s minority Christian community, who could be subjected to the indiscriminate enforcement of sharia law.

Falkland Islands

Residents of the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina voted overwhelmingly to remain a British Overseas Territory, an official said late Monday. The question put to voters was: “Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?” More than 99% of voters said yes. Just three people voted no. Turnout was 92%.But the Argentinian Embassy in London said Friday that the referendum had no legitimacy, characterizing it as “a further attempt by the British to manipulate the question.” The two countries went to war over the territory in 1982. Now, renewed rhetoric between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the islands has escalated to a fever pitch.

Earthquakes

A modest but widely felt earthquake rolled through a wide swath of Southern California late Monday morning but there were no immediate reports of damage. The 9:55 a.m. quake had an estimated magnitude of 4.7 with several aftershocks of lesser magnitude. The epicenter was about a dozen miles from the Riverside County desert community of Anza, about 100 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

A small earthquake also jolted Northern California on Thursday morning, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The U.S. Geological Survey says a quake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.6 struck at 2:09 a.m. Thursday in Lake County. It was centered near the small rural community of Cobb, about 70 miles northwest of Sacramento. Some reports say it was felt as far away as San Francisco, some 70 miles away.

Weather

High pressure centered over the Four Corners will continue to expand, allowing temperatures to surge again Friday in the Southwest. Temperatures in cities such as Phoenix, Ariz., and Palm Springs, Calif., are expected to make it into the 90s for the second day in a row. Palm Springs got an early jump on the warmth, with the “heat wave” starting back on Tuesday, reaching 90 degrees, following with a warm 95 on Wednesday. Phoenix set a record high Thursday, also at 95 degrees.

Signs of the Times (3/11/13)

Obama Sequesters 9/11 Victims

With the Sequester, the Obama Administration is taking $27 million from the 9/11 Victim’s Fund even while it gives Muslim Brotherhood-led Egypt a cash infusion of $250 million. “In other words, the American victims of terrorism are making financial sacrifices while the ideological fathers of modern jihad are getting an economic stimulus – at U.S. taxpayer expense. Jihadists should get nothing from American taxpayers,” writes Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law & Justice.

60,000 Border and Customs Agents Told to Take Furloughs

Sixty-thousand federal employees responsible for securing the nation’s borders and facilitating trade will be furloughed for as many as 14 days starting next month because of $85 billion in cross-government spending cuts. The federal government notified the workers on Thursday, CNN reports. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said the furloughs and other austerity measures would cause delays at ports of entry, including international arrivals at airports, and would reduce the number of border patrol officers on duty at any one time. David Aguilar, the agency’s deputy commissioner, said it must cut about $754 million by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. The agency plans to institute furloughs throughout its departments, a hiring freeze — and to reduce or eliminate overtime, compensatory time, travel and training. Other federal agencies are following similar steps because of the spending cuts that took effect on March 1 through sequestration.

• The Obama administration is targeting the sequester cuts to advance their agenda

Communities Mull Mandates for Guns

A town of 140 people in western Maine is considering an ordinance making gun ownership mandatory, the latest of a handful of communities nationwide to pass or consider such a rule even though the measures are widely considered unenforceable. Communities from Idaho to Georgia have been inspired to “require” or recommend their residents arm themselves ever since a gunman killed 26 youngsters and educators Dec. 14 in a school in Newtown, Conn., and raised fears among gun owners about an impending restriction on Second Amendment rights. Backed by gun rights supporters, the ordinance is intended to pre-emptively block gun-control laws, Maine Attorney General Janet Mills said. The idea has also caught on in Nelson, Georgia, a city of just over 1,300 about 50 miles north of downtown Atlanta, where supporters of the gun-ownership proposal say light police patrols leave city residents virtually unprotected for most of the day.

New Law Lets South Dakota Schools Arm Teachers

School boards in South Dakota will be able to let school employees, hired security personnel or volunteers carry guns in schools under a law signed Friday by Gov. Dennis Daugaard. The law, set to go into effect July 1, will let school boards establish “school sentinel” programs. Under these programs, the school boards can arm people “to secure or enhance the deterrence of physical threat and defense of the school, its students, its staff, and members of the public on the school premises against violent attack,” according to the legislation. All school sentinels would first be required to complete a training program. Some other states, including Utah, also allow teachers to have loaded weapons inside classrooms.

Gun Ownership Has Declined over Several Decades

The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s. In 2012, the share of American households with guns was 34 percent, according to survey results released on Thursday. Measuring the level of gun ownership can be a vexing problem, with various recent national polls reporting rates between 35 percent and 52 percent. Responses can vary because the wording of questions differ.

Public Transportation Ridership Increasing

Ridership on buses, subways and other modes of public transportation in the USA rose 1.5% to 10.5 billion trips last year, the highest annual total since 2008, according to a new report. Although Superstorm Sandy and its aftermath slowed ridership on some of the nation’s largest transit systems, at least 16 systems reported record ridership numbers in 2012, says the American Public Transportation Association. The increase in transit ridership was driven, at least partly, by high gas prices, the volatility of those prices and the nation’s changing demographics. The popularity of public transportation is increasing, especially among Baby Boomers, empty-nesters and Millennials, who total about 150 million people.

America’s Fastest Growing Job Pays Poorly

Home health care aide is the fastest growing job segment in the U.S. but it pays poorly. These nearly 2 million (mostly minorities and women) workers do everything from prepare meals and clean homes, to bathe and change bedpans for elderly and disabled patients. As Baby Boomers age, this job is expected to explode, growing 70% between 2010 and 2020, according to the Labor Department. That makes it the single fastest growing job in the United States. But even though there are plenty of job opportunities, many of these people make the same wage as teenagers flipping burgers or selling clothes at the mall. The average hourly wage is just $9.70 an hour, according to the Labor Department.

Economic News

The jobs recovery is broadening as the housing revival and rising consumer wealth begin to lift an array of industries, from mortgage lending to charities. The spread of employment gains to previously lagging industries makes for a more sustainable recovery that’s less vulnerable to unforeseen events that could hobble certain sectors, economists say.

Federal government jobs fell by 4,200 in February, the fifth month in a row those jobs have been zapped from the economy. And, thanks to the automatic budget cuts, it’s going to get worse. In contrast to gains in the private sector, a total of 33,000 federal worker jobs have been lost since January 2012 — and that does not include jobs at the Postal Service, which is in the midst of a crisis of its own. Federal agencies have been freezing jobs as workers retire or leave for the private sector.

The supply of homes for sale is still unusually tight as the spring buying season opens, helping sellers by turning up the heat on already-rising prices. The number of homes listed for sale was down almost 17% in late February vs. a year earlier. In some California markets, they were down more than 40%.The supply crunch is likely to last all year.

The nation’s biggest banks, ranked by assets, agreed to pay more than $60 billion in settlements related to the national credit crisis and mortgage-related cases during the last three years, a new survey shows. Bank of America led the way, with more than $40 billion in settlements announced so far. Wells Fargo announced more than $8 billion in settlements while JPMorgan Chase agreed to a $1.95 billion national settlement with the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency over mortgage loan and foreclosure abuses. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Metlife and Morgan Stanley also agreed to settlements in the millions.

Middle East

In what scientists describe as the worst locust swarm in decades, a massive locust outbreak—estimates run as high as thirty million—has now moved from Egypt into Israel. It was 1959 the last time something this severe threatened the crops and livelihoods of the Jewish people.

Persecution Watch

Hundreds of people in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore attacked a Christian neighborhood Saturday and set fire to homes after hearing accusations that a Christian man had committed blasphemy against Islam’s prophet. Blasphemy is a serious crime in Pakistan that can carry the death penalty but sometimes outraged residents exact their own retribution for perceived insults of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed. Pakistan is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and people of other faiths, including the nation’s small Christian community, are often viewed with hostility. Outraged Pakistani Christians took to the streets of Lahore on Sunday, protesting a rash of violence against their community over the weekend.

International Christian Concern reports that 125 Christians have been beaten and detained over the past week in Eritrea. “Police arrested these church members from homes and workplaces during broad daylight and then marched them through town to the police station while beating them,” an investigator for Open Doors said. Among the 125 Christians, 45 men and women were arrested on Feb. 27 for worshipping outside highly regulated government-approved churches in Eritrea. “Being a Christian in Eritrea is like living in hell,” a source inside Eritrea said. “Christians are treated like enemy number one.” President Isaias Afwerki, who has been in power since 1993, has instituted a totalitarian regime that seeks to control all aspects of life in Eritrea, including the religious practices of its citizens. “Systematic, ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations continue in Eritrea,” the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom states. “These violations include torture, sometimes resulting in death, arbitrary detention and prolonged bans on religious activities.” It is estimated over 2,000 Christians remain imprisoned in Eritrea, exposed to some of the most inhuman conditions in the world.

Islamic rebels have been taking over Christian villages in Syria, leaving Christians facing some tough choices, CBN News reports. A Muslim group recently captured the Christian village of Yacoubiyeh, and many residents fled, leaving behind empty homes and damaged churches. Some say they won’t return until they see how the Muslim rebel commander treats minorities. Though the commander says he will treat everyone fairly, like many rebel leaders he rules according to strict Islamic law. Elsewhere in Syria, reports abound of Muslim rebels murdering Christians and kidnapping others for ransom.

Syria

Syrian rebels on Saturday freed 21 U.N. peacekeepers after holding them hostage for four days, ending a sudden entanglement with the world body that earned those trying to oust President Bashar Assad a flood of negative publicity. The peacekeepers were part of a force that has spent four decades monitoring an Israeli-Syrian cease-fire without incident. The Filipino peacekeepers crossed from Syria to safety in Jordan on Saturday afternoon. Their captors from the Martyrs of the Yarmouk Brigades initially said they would only release the hostages once Syrian troops withdrew from the area. However, as the abduction made headlines, the rebels eventually dropped their demand and began negotiating a safe passage for the peacekeepers with U.N. officials.

Egypt

An Egyptian court on Saturday confirmed the death sentences against 21 people for taking part in a deadly soccer riot but acquitted seven police officials for their alleged role in the violence. On Saturday, the court announced its verdict for the other 52 defendants in the case, sentencing 45 of them to prison, including two senior police officers who got 15 years terms each. Protesters were enraged by the verdict and torched the soccer federation headquarters and a police club in Cairo in protest. As expected, the court’s decision failed to defuse tensions over the case, which has taken on political undercurrents at a time when the entire nation is mired in political turmoil over a worsening economy and growing opposition to the rule of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

Afghanistan

A suicide bomber on a bicycle struck outside the Afghan Defense Ministry on Saturday, one of two attacks that killed at least 18 people as U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited the nation. Nine people were killed in the bombing at the ministry, a fresh reminder that insurgents continue to fight and challenges remain as the U.S.-led NATO force hands over the country’s security to the Afghans. About a half hour later, another suicide bomber attacked a police checkpoint in Khost, the capital of Khost province in eastern Afghanistan. An Afghan policeman and eight civilians, who were mostly children, died in that blast. “We are still at war,” Hagel said shortly before he arrived on Friday, the same day that three men wearing Afghan army uniforms and driving an Afghan army vehicle forced their way onto a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan and opened fire, killing one civilian contractor and wounding other U.S. troops.

Kenya

Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta appears to have won the presidential election in the first round with the slimmest of majorities. Final numbers showed Kenyatta with 50.03 % of the vote. He needs more than 50 % to win outright and avoid a runoff with Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who had 43.3%. Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s founding president, is indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court and if he becomes president, problems with Western allies are expected.

North Korea

A new joint military exercise between South Korea and the United States began Monday amid heightened tensions across the region. The North Korean army has declared invalid the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953, the official newspaper of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party said Monday. The armistice agreement, signed in 1953, ended the three-year war between North and South Korea in a truce. “The U.S. has reduced the armistice agreement to a dead paper,” the newspaper said. North Korea also cut off direct phone links with South Korea at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. The phone line was the emergency link for quick, two-way communication between the two sides. Since the two sides remain technically at war, it remains to be seen whether the invalidation means that North Korea will resume hostilities.

Weather

Omaha public schools are shut down Monday, March 11 as a winter storm blanketed the region with heavy snow.  Interstate 80 was shut down for part of Sunday after multiple car accidents littered nearly 200 miles between Nebraska and Iowa. There were several reports of vehicles hitting the median or going into ditches. The National Weather Service forecast up to 8 inches of snow Sunday around east-central Nebraska and southwest Iowa. The heaviest snow was expected in a swath from around David City in Nebraska, to Missouri Valley and Onawa in Iowa. Up to 9 inches of snow was possible in some areas.