Apocalyptic Church

money.cnn.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Employers are getting hit with a massive tax hike at a time when they can least afford it.

Companies in at least 35 states will have to fork over more in unemployment insurance taxes this year, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies.

The median increase will be 27.5%. And employers in places such as Hawaii and Florida could see levies skyrocket more than ten-fold.

Many of these hikes happened automatically as prolonged joblessness triggered state laws governing their unemployment insurance systems. But at least seven states voted to raise their taxable wage bases, the level of income subject to unemployment tax. And another 10 are looking at upping the wage bases or tax rates.
read more »

news.yahoo.com

LOS ANGELES – Thunderous mudslides swept away cars and pushed furniture out of homes and into the streets in the foothills north of Los Angeles Saturday as an intense winter storm brought down hillsides in wildfire burn areas.

At least 41 homes were seriously damaged and 500 more were ordered evacuated after heavy rains overflowed debris basins, carried away cement barricades and swept cars into storm drains.

“We’ve got crews going door to door to tell residents to get out,” said Los Angeles County Fire Insp. Frederick Stowers. “Some of the roads up there are a complete mess.”

At least a foot of debris was reported in some houses. Family photographs, furniture and other personal items were spotted among the rocks and debris that flowed into yards and streets.
read more »

news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON – Life in the nation’s capital ground to a halt Friday as steady snow fell, the beginning of a storm that forecasters said could be the biggest in modern history.

A record 2 1/2 feet or more was predicted for Washington, where snow was falling heavily by evening, with big amounts expected elsewhere throughout the Mid-Atlantic. Authorities already were blaming the storm for hundreds of accidents and the deaths of father-son Samaritans in Virginia.

The region’s second snowstorm in less than two months could be “extremely dangerous,” the National Weather Service said. Heavy, wet snow and strong winds threatened to knock out power, clog roads and paralyze the region’s transportation and retail.
read more »

irishtimes.com

Members of the public throughout the country have been reporting sightings of a fireball in the skies this evening.

Tommy Moore from Astronomy Ireland said a space rock collided with the earth’s atmosphere at about 6pm, showering debris over many parts of the country.

Mr Moore said: “A major explosion happened in the sky over Ireland. We think it’s a fireball, that’s a rock from space the earth has slammed into and they burn up as huge shooting stars. This one appears to have lit up the whole country. The phones here in Astronomy Ireland are going crazy.”
read more »

telegraph.co.uk

The death toll in the Haiti quake has swelled to 200,000, as angry protests over the slow arrival of aid erupted on the rubble-strewn streets.

More than three weeks after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake, prime minister Jean Max Bellerive said his tiny Caribbean nation had been ravaged by “a disaster on a planetary scale” and detailed the tragic toll suffered by his people.

“There are more than 200,000 people who have been clearly identified as people who are dead,” he said, adding that another 300,000 injured had been treated, 250,000 homes had been destroyed and 30,000 businesses lost.

At least 4,000 amputations have also been carried out due to horrific crush injuries — a shocking figure which is likely to strain the impoverished nation’s already meager resources for years to come.
read more »

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.
read more »

necn.com

(NECN: Anya Huneke, Dorset, VT) – When it comes to cute animals, bats are not generally on the top of the list. But they are a vital part of our eco-system- as a major predator of insects.

And now they are being threatened with extinction– a number of species have contracted a disease that is causing massive die-offs.

Getting to the top of mount Aeolus in East Dorset Vermont, is never an easy feat. Especially in the dead of winter, when snow shoes are a must on this two mile uphill climb.

But it’s a climb biologists are compelled to make – now, perhaps, more than ever before, as they search for answers to a mystery that has them profoundly baffled… And concerned.
read more »

news.yahoo.com

LONDON – Call it pork in a petri dish — a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon.

Dutch scientists have been growing pork in the laboratory since 2006, and while they admit they haven’t gotten the texture quite right or even tasted the engineered meat, they say the technology promises to have widespread implications for our food supply.

“If we took the stem cells from one pig and multiplied it by a factor of a million, we would need one million fewer pigs to get the same amount of meat,” said Mark Post, a biologist at Maastricht University involved in the In-vitro Meat Consortium, a network of publicly funded Dutch research institutions that is carrying out the experiments.

Post describes the texture of the meat as sort of like scallop, firm but a little squishy and moist. That’s because the lab meat has less protein content than conventional meat.
read more »

edition.cnn.com

(CNN) — A major earthquake struck southern Haiti on Tuesday, knocking down buildings and power lines and inflicting what its ambassador to the United States called a catastrophe for the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation.

Several eyewitnesses reported heavy damage and bodies in the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, where concrete-block homes line steep hillsides. There was no estimate of the dead and wounded Tuesday evening, but the U.S. State Department has been told to expect “serious loss of life,” department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters in Washington.

“The only thing I can do now is pray and hope for the best,” the ambassador, Raymond Alcide Joseph, told CNN.
read more »

telegraph.co.uk

An influx of the deadly Sydney funnel-web spider has taken hold in the Australian city of the same name after a spate of wetter than usual weather brought them scuttling into suburban gardens and sheds.

The Australian Reptile Park, which makes anti-venom for funnelweb bites, has recorded higher than usual numbers of funnel-webs and warned the plague could get worse.

Rex Gilroy, who runs Katoomba Rotary Club’s dangerous spiders hotline, said a long period of dry weather followed by heavy rain and high humidity over Christmas prompted an explosion in numbers.

“I think climate change might have something to do with it. This season there’s more moisture and coolness and the spiders have been able to breed up,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
read more »

cnn.com

(CNN) — A 6.5-magnitude earthquake has struck off the shore of Northern California, leaving thousands of households without power.

The quake, which ran about 13.5 miles deep, hit offshore at 4:27 p.m. (7:27 p.m. ET) Saturday, about 33 miles from the coastal city of Eureka, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

About 28,000 customers, most of them in Humboldt County, were left without power Saturday evening, said Jeff Smith, spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. One gas leak in the county was also reported.
read more »

news.yahoo.com

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A tsunami unleashed by a major earthquake plowed into the Solomon Islands on Monday with the crashing waters devastating at least one village.

Initial reports said no one was seriously hurt.

A series of major quakes have rocked the South Pacific region since Sunday, with three powerful temblors striking Monday, including a 7.2 magnitude tremor. The Solomon Island’s National Disaster Management Office said reports of the devastation were beginning to filter in late Monday.

The tremors were centered beneath the ocean floor near the town of Gizo, which was badly damaged in April 2007 when a 8.1-magnitude quake sent a tsunami crashing into the coast, killing more than 50 people.
read more »

economy.kansascity.com

As 2009 nears its end, YRC extends debt offer again

As the end of 2009 approaches, trucking giant YRC Worldwide Inc. has extended its debt exchange offer once again.

YRC, attempting to restructure outside bankruptcy court, said the deadline to swap $357 million of debt for common stock will expire tonight at 10:59 p.m.

It’s the latest of several deadline extensions YRC has taken in an attempt to complete the debt swap, considered to be a critical component in YRC’s restructuring plan.
read more »

news.yahoo.com

MOSCOW – Russia is considering sending a spacecraft to a large asteroid to knock it off its path and prevent a possible collision with Earth, the head of the country’s space agency said Wednesday.

Anatoly Perminov said the space agency will hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis, telling Golos Rossii radio that it would invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project once it is finalized.

When the 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated the chances of it smashing into Earth in its first flyby in 2029 were as high as 1-in-37, but have since lowered their estimate.
read more »

news.yahoo.com

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Some 125 pilot whales died in New Zealand after stranding on beaches over the weekend — but vacationers and conservation workers managed to coax 43 others back out to sea.

Rescuers monitored the survivors as they swam away from Colville Beach on North Island’s Coromandel peninsula, and by Monday morning they were reported well out to sea.

Department of Conservation workers and hundreds of volunteers helped re-float the 43 whales at high tide. The volunteers covered the stranded mammals in sheets and kept them wet through the day.
read more »