Minister uses NASA forecasting to study signals of Jesus' return
By Joe Kovacs
Total lunar eclipses often make the moon appear red 
Will Jesus Christ return to Earth in the year 2015?
And can studying NASA's website provide evidence for such a scenario?
A minister who promotes the Old Testament roots of Christianity suggests a rare string of lunar and solar eclipses said to fall on God's annual holy days seven years from now could herald what's come to be known as the "Second Coming" of Jesus.
"God wants us to look at the biblical calendar," says Mark Biltz, pastor of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, Wash. "The reason we need to be watching is [because] He will signal His appearance. But we have to know what to be watching as well. So we need to be watching the biblical holidays."
In a video interview on the Prophecy in the News website, Biltz said he's been studying prophecies that focus on the sun and moon, even going back to the book of Genesis where it states the lights in the sky would be "be for signs, and for seasons."
"It means a signal, kind of like 'one if by ...   more »

Israel reportedly warned Syria in February that it would hold it accountable for Hizbullah attacks
Israel recently conveyed a warning to Syria through a third party that it would hold Damascus accountable if Hizbullah launched attacks on the Jewish state, Israeli and European sources said on Friday.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the warning stemmed largely from Israeli concerns that Hizbullah would launch salvoes of cross-border rockets to coincide with any major Israeli offensive in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Arab Summit
The sources said the message was conveyed in February through at least one European intermediary following the assassination of a top Hizbullah commander and before this month's five-day Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.
After the group's senior commander, Imad Mugniyah, was killed in a bombing in Damascus, Hizbullah leader Nasrallah threatened Israel with "open war."
'This is sound strategy'
A European source familiar with the matter noted that the message conveyed to Damascus said Syria could be targeted by Israel even if Hizbullah's attack emanated from Lebanese soil.
An Israeli source with knowledge of government affairs said: "The message was passed around late February, before the last round of fighting in Gaza."
"It has become ...   more »

By Anat Rosenberg 
Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV aired a documentary on April 18 claiming that Jews planned and perpetrated the Holocaust in order to rid the nation of the "burden" of the weak and disabled.
Palestinian Media Watch, a group that monitors Palestinian Arabic language media and schoolbooks, uploaded part of the program onto YouTube in a segment called "Hamas Holocaust Perversion: Jews Planned Holocaust to Kill Handicapped Jews."
The Al-Aqsa TV clip edits together footage from the World War II Nazi Genocide, showing Jews being rounded up and taken to a train as well as emaciated corpses lying in a pile, alongside images of Israeli leaders David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir.
The accompanying commentary claims that Ben Gurion said "the disabled and handicapped are a heavy burden on the state." To rid them of that scourge, the video claims, Ben Gurion and "the Satanic Jews thought up an evil plot to be rid of the burden of disable and handicapped in twisted criminal ways."
The video also claims that Jews made up the Holocaust and blamed the Nazis for it in order to "benefit from international sympathy."
The Holocaust "was a joke, and part of the perfect show that ...   more »

By The Associated Press 
A rarely displayed segment of the Dead Sea Scrolls will be part of an exhibition for U.S. President George W. Bush and other dignitaries attending Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations next month, a museum official said Wednesday.
The ancient manuscripts date back over 2,000 years and contain almost the full text of the Jewish Bible, as well as early Christian texts.
The segment on display will be from Psalm 133. It reads: Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. 
There are about 1,000 segments of the ancient scroll. Eight pieces are on
permanent display at the Israel Museum and the rest, including Psalm 133, are kept by the Israel Antiquities Authority and rarely shown, a spokesman said Wednesday.
Many of the fragments were found in a cave next to the Dead Sea. Others were bought from collectors of ancient artifacts.
Study of the scrolls has been going on for decades, and some scientists
complain that fragments of the scrolls have been given to too few experts, drawing out the process of analyzing them
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Israel removes anti-terror checkpoint under international pressure
By Aaron Klein
Tony Blair
JERUSALEM – The Israeli defense establishment is fuming over the government's decision here to remove what security officials describe as an important anti-terror checkpoint directly responsible for stopping suicide bombings inside the Jewish state.
Yesterday, visiting Middle East envoy to the Quartet Tony Blair presented Defense Minister Ehud Barak with a list of checkpoints Blair said should be removed by Israel to ease Palestinian travel in the northern West Bank. Barak agreed to remove one key checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus but rejected the dismantling of other checkpoints. The Quartet consists of the U.S., Russian, the EU and the U.N.
Defense officials here strongly opposed checkpoint removals, saying the obstacles impede the mobility of terrorists. Palestinians complain checkpoints and roadblocks make it more difficult for them to travel throughout the West Bank. The majority of West Bank checkpoints were established in the 1990s following repeated terrorist attacks from the territory.
An Israel Defense Force spokesman told WND the checkpoint outside Nablus was removed today.
The checkpoint in question, between the eastern entrance to Nablus and the Palestinian villages of Asireh and Ashimalieh, was first erected ...   more »

  A team of European astronomers has discovered a cosmic time bomb.
"We found a clock that ticks slower and slower, and when it slows down too much, boom! The bomb explodes," team leader Diego Altamirano tells NASA.
Altamirano and several fellow researchers at the University of Amsterdam used NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite to watch what happens in 4U 1636-53, a binary star system about 20,000 light-years away.
One of the system's two stars is ordinary, but the other is a superdense, superstrong neutron star that is constantly sucking gas off the other star's atmosphere and gathering it on its accretion disk, a spiral of material that orbits it like a skirt.
Several times a day, enough stolen gas builds up on the neutron star's surface that a blinding thermonuclear explosion takes place, quickly spreading to engulf the entire surface.
• Click here to watch a computer animation of the big boom.
Each explosion releases more energy in a matter of seconds than our Sun does in a week — and the neutron star survives intact each time.
Normally, there wouldn't be any way to predict when such an explosion would happen. But RXTE detected a regular ...   more »

Measles outbreaks in several states have led to more than 70 cases so far this year, the worst in six years, health officials said Thursday.
Most of the cases have been traced to outbreaks overseas and are mainly in children who were not vaccinated for religious or other reasons, according to the Centers for Disease control and Prevention. Since measles vaccinations began in the early 1960s, cases have dramatically declined in the U.S.So far this year, the CDC has confirmed reports of 64 cases in nine states. There were no deaths, but 14 people were hospitalized, said CDC spokesman Curtis Allen.
That count doesn't include Washington state, where eight cases were reported this week. Those cases stemmed from an international church conference in suburban Seattle in March, according to the state health department.
Measles is caused by a virus that normally grows in cells that line the back of the throat and line the lungs. It spreads through contact with a sneezing, coughing, infected person.
Symptoms include rash, high fever, cough, runny nose, and red, watery eyes. But about 1 in 5 measles sufferers experience more severe illness that can include diarrhea, ear infections, pneumonia, encephalitis and even seizures and ...   more »

By David Morgan
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy has temporarily added a second aircraft carrier in the Gulf as a "reminder" to Iran, but this was not an escalation of American forces in the region, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters during a trip to Mexico, Gates flatly denied a suggestion that the presence of two U.S. carriers in the Gulf could be a precursor to military action against Tehran.
"This deployment has been planned for a long time," Gates said. "I don't think we'll have two carriers there for a protracted period of time. So I don't see it as an escalation. I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder."
He declined to elaborate on his remarks and provided no details about the deployment.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the second carrier arrived in the Gulf on Tuesday to replace one on duty that was expected to depart the region in two days.
U.S. Navy officials were not immediately available for comment.
News of the second carrier came amid simmering tension between the United States and Iran that has fed speculation about a possible U.S. military strike.
Navy Adm. Mike ...   more »