Friday, 13 May 2011
largest lottery jackpots
In 2006, Michigan joined five other states to found a multistate lottery called The Big Game, which would eventually become Mega Millions. Along with Powerball, it produces the largest jackpots in the country.
Lotteries are big businesses in most states, and they can provide windfalls for both the winning ticket-holders and state coffers. In the case of lotteries that include multiple states like Mega Millions and Powerball, jackpots have hit records of over $300 million.
The guaranteed winners of lotteries, though, are state treasuries, which can receive several hundred million dollars a year on annual ticket sales of over $1 billion. The costs of operating a lottery are relatively low, the margins are excellent, and in this new era of government austerity, the funds they generate are even more important. Many states rely on lottery revenues to beef up education budgets: In New York, the lottery accounts for 5 percent of education spending. In others, the money goes into the general fund.But the numbers that might most interest individuals are their own odds of winning. Business news website 24/7 Wall St. has compiled a list of the 10 states that pay out the most in lottery winnings. The figures we're using are based on the most recently available full data, which is from 2009. It turns out that the best states in which to buy a ticket don't change much from year to year. And in terms of total prizes paid to all players and the size of the maximum prize, New York holds the crown.
10. Illinois
- Largest jackpot: $363 million, (two-state lottery win shared with Michigan, 2000)
- Prizes paid: $1.23 billion
- Ticket sales: $2.1 billion
- State profit from sales: $625 million
- Government use: K-12 education, veterans benefits, multiple sclerosis research
9. Michigan
- Largest single jackpot: $363 Million, (two-state lottery win shared with Illinois, 2000)
- Prizes paid: $1.4 billion
- Ticket sales: $2.38 billion
- State profit from sales: $702 million
- Government use: K-12 education
8. Ohio
- Largest single jackpot: $270 million (2006)
- Prizes paid: $1.5 billion
- Ticket sales:$2.41 billion
- State profit from sales: $702 million
- Government use: Education
7. California
- Largest single jackpot: $315 million (2005)
- Prizes paid: $1.6 billion
- Ticket sales: $2.97 billion
- State profit from sales: $1.04 billion
- Government use: Education
6. Pennsylvania
- Largest single jackpot: $213 million (2004)
- Prizes paid: $1.9 billion
- Ticket sales: $3.09 billion
- State profit from sales: $910 million
- Government use: Services for the elderly
5. Georgia
- Largest single jackpot: $390 million (two-state lottery win shared with New Jersey, 2007)
- Prizes paid: $2.2 billion
- Ticket sales: $3.66 billion
- State profit from sales: $872 million
- Government use: Education
4. Texas
- Largest single jackpot: $330 million, (four-state shared lottery win, 2007)
- Prizes paid: $2.3 billion
- Ticket sales: $3.72 billion
- State profit from sales: $1.04 billion
- Government use: Education, state general fund
US interviews Osama bin Laden's widows
Three of Osama bin Laden's widows taken into detention following the al-Qaida chief's death have been interviewed by U.S. officials, according to NBC News.
The women — who, according to reports, were interviewed together — are not believed to have provided with fresh details about bin Laden's movements or activities, or that of the terror network.According to reports citing sources in both the Pakistani and U.S. governments, the women were quizzed by U.S. intelligence officers under the supervision of representatives from Pakistan's intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The same report describes the women as "hostile" toward the Americans. According to NBC News, the information provided by the women appeared to be rehearsed, as if they were told what to say if captured.
A senior Pakistani official tolds NBC News that during a briefing before parliament, the director-general of the ISI, Gen. Shuja Ahmed Pasha, said that that Pakistan's policies do not included denying the U.S. access to any evidence or people in custody, including the wives of Osama bin Laden. He added that Pakistan has "never handed over" anyone to the U.S., but nor has the U.S. been denied access.
Wives to be repatriated? Bin Laden was shot dead on May 2 in a top-secret raid in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad. The discovery and killing caused much embarrassment to Pakistan, which for years denied the world's most wanted man was on its soil.The government is now under considerable pressure to explain how the al-Qaida leader was found in the garrison town, a short distance from the main military academy, while at the same time facing criticism at home over the perceived violation of sovereignty by the U.S. commando team.
Pakistani cooperation is crucial to combating Islamist militants and to bringing stability to Afghanistan and the U.S. administration has been keen to contain the fallout.
U.S. investigators, who have been sifting through a huge stash of material seized in bin Laden's high-walled compound, wanted to question his three wives as they seek to trace his movements and blunt the activities of his global militant network.
Pakistan says the three wives, one from Yemen and two from Saudi Arabia, and their children, will be repatriated.
Bin Laden's discovery has deepened suspicion that Pakistan's pervasive ISI spy agency, which has a long history of contacts with militants, may have had ties with the al-Qaida leader, or that some of its agents did.
Scores killed as Pakistani Taliban claims it 'avenges' Osama bin Laden killing
Security officials visit the site of bombing at a gate of training school in Shabqadar, Pakistan, on Friday. The explosions destroyed at least 10 vans recruits were boarding to go home for a break at the end of a session.
msnbc.com staff and news service reports msnbc.com staff and news service reports
SHABQADAR, Pakistan — A double Taliban suicide attack Friday that killed 66 paramilitary police recruits and 14 other people represented the deadliest terrorist strike in Pakistan since the killing of Osama bin Laden. It sent a strong signal that militants mean to fight on and to try to avenge the al-Qaida leader.
The attack came as both the Pakistani and Afghan wings of the Taliban have been carrying out attacks to prove they remain a potent force and bolster their profiles in case peace talks prevail in Afghanistan. U.S. and Afghan officials have said they hope the Afghan Taliban will use bin Laden's death as an opportunity to break their link with al-Qaida — an alliance the U.S. says must be severed if the insurgents want peace in Afghanistan. But Afghan officials and Pakistani experts say any severing of ties would not happen anytime soon, if at all.
"The Taliban want to prove that bin Laden's killing did not really affect them," said Rahimullah Yusafzai, a Taliban expert in the Pakistani city of Peshawar who has interviewed their reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.
"I don't think anybody is talking peace at this stage," Yusafzai said. "Everybody is wanting to score something on the ground. I think the spring fighting, the summer fighting will continue and it will be worse than last year."
Video: Onslaught of info paints clear portrait of bin Laden (on this page) The Pakistani Taliban, close allies of al-Qaida, are fighting to bring down the nuclear-armed state and impose their vision of Islamist rule. They launched their war in earnest in 2007, after security forces cleared militant gunmen from a radical mosque in the capital, killing about 100 people.
"We have done this to avenge the Abbottabad incident," Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, told The Associated Press in a phone call.
2011 Dates of Destruction? March 19, May 21, Oct. 21
2011 Dates of Destruction? March 19, May 21, Oct. 21
It's an astronomical fact that March 19 will see a lunar perigee -- a time when the Earth's moon will come into its closest point in orbit to the Earth. The lunar perigee that will occur on March 19 has been dubbed by one astrologer, Richard Nolle, as an "extreme supermoon" because not only will it be at perigee, it will also be a full moon and it will be at its closest point to our planet in 18 years. According to Nolle, this particular combination will trigger an increase in natural disasters.
Nolle suggested that the supermoon will wreak havoc -- earthquakes, massive storms, volcanic activity and other disasters of natural occurrence. Nolle's assertions may have some basis in scientific fact (even though astrology is not an actual accepted science) -- according to seismologists.
Two seismologists quoted in an article on the website Life's Little Mysteries (a sister site of Space.com) said that just as the moon's gravity has an effect on Earth tides, it can also have a minimal effect on the land in what is known as "land tides" or "solid Earth tides." Ultimately, ocean tides and land tides can have an effect upon seismic activity.
University of Washington at Seattle seismologist and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, John Vidale, told Life's Little Mysteries that "you see a less-than-1-percent increase in earthquake activity, and a slightly higher response in volcanoes" during a new moon and a full moon.
Seismic activity in subduction zones can see the greatest effect from a lunar tide according to U of W Seattle seismologist William Wilcock: "When you have a low tide, there's less water, so the pressure on the seafloor is smaller. That pressure is clamping the fault together, so when it's not there, it makes it easier for the fault to slip." A subduction zone is a location where one tectonic plate slides under another -- such as the area of the Pacific Northwest.
End of the World on May 21 and October 21
A religious group isn't worried about the March 19 supermoon, but instead they have pegged a later date for a specific worldwide natural disaster -- the Apocalypse. According to a report on Daily Mail Online, a group from Family Radio Worldwide have predicted a massive worldwide earthquake on May 21 to herald the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ.
The group believes this predicted earthquake on May 21 will be a precursor for the actual end-of-the-world date on October 21 of this year. The group is so convinced of the accuracy of the prophecy that a handful of believers in the date are traveling around the United States in what is being called "Project Caravan" to spread the word.
What does the Bible say?
While the Bible does predict a great earthquake will shake the Earth, a date is not specified. Revelation 6:12-14 says "I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, 13 and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. 14 The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. " (NIV)
Most Christians, though, recall another Biblical passage that refute the May 21 date. Matthew 24:36 quotes Jesus as saying "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (NIV) This statement is made after Jesus' disciples asked him specifically "what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"
Preparation is key to surviving disaster
Whatever your personal beliefs regarding a scientific prediction or a religious prediction for disaster, it is a fact: Natural disasters happen daily and predicting them is not always possible. Preparation is the key to survival whether you expect disaster to strike on March 19 or May 21 or another date. For tips on disaster preparation, see the suggestions on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) website at fema.gov.
Tamara L. Morris developed a special interest in weather issues and natural disasters after a tornado swept through her hometown in 1982. She is certified as a National Weather Service Skywarn Stormspotter and Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) member and has served locally in this capacity after a rare derecho struck her area in 2009. She researches and writes about earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes and other natural phenomena.
End of Days in May? Believers enter final stretch
Allison Warden poses with her car showing a message about the Rapture. Warden, 29, has been helping organize a campaign using billboards, postcards and other media in cities across the U.S.
RALEIGH, N.C. — If there had been time, Marie Exley would have liked to start a family. Instead, the 32-year-old Army veteran has less than six months left, which she'll spend spreading a stark warning: Judgment Day is almost here.
Exley is part of a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin on May 21, 2011.To get the word out, they're using billboards and bus stop benches, traveling caravans of RVs and volunteers passing out pamphlets on street corners. Cities from Bridgeport, Conn., to Little Rock, Ark., now have billboards with the ominous message, and mission groups are traveling in countries from Latin America to Africa to spread the news outside the U.S.
"A lot of people might think, 'The end's coming, let's go party,'" said Exley, a veteran of two deployments in Iraq. "But we're commanded by God to warn people. I wish I could just be like everybody else, but it's so much better to know that when the end comes, you'll be safe."
In August, Exley left her home in Colorado Springs, Colo., to work with Oakland, Calif.-based Family Radio Worldwide, the independent Christian ministry whose leader, Harold Camping, has calculated the May 21 date based on his reading of the Bible.
She is organizing traveling columns of RVs carrying the message from city to city, a logistics challenge that her military experience has helped solve. The vehicles are scheduled to be in five North Carolina cities between now and the second week of January, but Exley will shortly be gone: overseas, where she hopes to eventually make it back to Iraq.
"I don't really have plans to come back," she said. "Time is short."
'Definitely against the grain' Not everyone who's heard Camping's message is taking such a dramatic step. They're remaining in their day-to-day lives, but helping publicize the prophecy in other ways. Allison Warden, of Raleigh, has been helping organize a campaign using billboards, postcards and other media in cities across the U.S. through a website, We Can Know.
The 29-year-old payroll clerk laughs when asked about reactions to the message, which is plastered all over her car.
"It's definitely against the grain, I know that," she said. "We're hoping people won't take our word for it, or Harold Camping's word for it. We're hoping that people will search the scriptures for themselves."
Camping, 89, believes the Bible essentially functions as a cosmic calendar explaining exactly when various prophecies will be fulfilled.
The retired civil engineer said all his calculations come from close readings of the Bible, but that external events like the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 are signs confirming the date.
"Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment," he said.
The doctrine known as the Rapture teaches that believers will be taken up to heaven, while everyone else will remain on earth for a period of torment, concluding with the end of time. Camping believes that will happen in October.
"If May 21 passes and I'm still here, that means I wasn't saved. Does that mean God's word is inaccurate or untrue? Not at all," Warden said.
Great Disappointment The belief that Christ will return to earth and bring an end to history has been a basic element of Christian belief since the first century. The Book of Revelation, which comes last in the New Testament, describes this conclusion in vivid language that has inspired Christians for centuries.
But few churches are willing to set a date for the end of the world, heeding Jesus' words in the gospels of Mark and Matthew that no one can know the day or hour it will happen. Predictions like Camping's, though, aren't new. One of the most famous in history was by the Baptist leader William Miller, who predicted the end for Oct. 22, 1844, which came to be known as the Great Disappointment among his followers, some of who subsequently founded the Seventh Day Adventist church.
"In the U.S., there is still a significant population, mostly Protestant, who look at the Bible as kind of a puzzle, and the puzzle is God's word and it's predicting when the end times will come," said Catherine Wessinger, a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who studies millennialism, the belief in pending apocalypse.
"A lot of times these prophecies gain traction when difficulties are happening in society," she said. "Right now, there's a lot of insecurity, and this is a promise that says it's not all random, it's part of God's plan."
Past predictions that failed to come true don't have any bearing on the current calculation, believers maintain.
"It would be like telling the Wright Brothers that every other attempt to fly has failed, so you shouldn't even try," said Chris McCann, who works with eBible Fellowship, one of the groups spreading the message.
For believers like McCann, theirs is actually a message of hope and compassion: God's compassion for people, and the hope that there's still time to be saved.
That, ultimately, is what spurs on Exley, who said her beliefs have alienated her from most of her friends and family. Her hope is that not everyone who hears her message will mock it, and that even people who dismiss her now might still come to believe.
"If you still want to say we're crazy, go ahead," she said. "But it doesn't hurt to look into it."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Judgment Day! May 21, 2011
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And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. Revelation 9:5 | |
The End of the World |
The purpose of this tract is to inform you of the great urgency there now is in the world for each and every person to be reconciled to God. The Bible is the Word of God! Everything the Bible declares has the full authority of God Himself. Now, at this time, information is coming forth from the Bible which clearly reveals God’s plan for Judgment Day and the end of the world itself. The Bible has opened up its secrets concerning the timeline of history. This information was never previously known because God had closed up His Word blocking any attempt to gain knowledge of the end of the world. We read about this in the book of Daniel:
Daniel 12:9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
However, now in our present day, God has opened up His Word (the Bible) to reveal a great deal of truth concerning the end of time (and many other teachings). Also, in the same chapter of Daniel, it says:
Daniel 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
God is now opening up His Word because we have arrived at the time of the end. For this reason, it has become very obvious to the serious student of the Bible that we are now living in the last few days of earth’s history. As a matter of fact, because we are living at the end of time, God is now revealing to His people the following information:
THE BIBLE’S CALENDAR OF HISTORY
The Lord has opened up His people’s understanding to the “Biblical calendar” found on the pages of the Bible. The genealogies of the book of Genesis, primarily in chapters 5 and 11, can be shown to be a precise calendar of the history of mankind in this world. The Bible’s calendar of history is completely accurate and trustworthy.
Since this Bible calendar is given by God in His Word, it can be trusted wholeheartedly. In this brief pamphlet, we will share some of the conclusions derived from the Biblical calendar and from other studies in the Scriptures. However, the amount of information available is far too abundant and complex to get into much detail in this short pamphlet; but we can and will give precise and compelling dates. These dates can be trusted entirely because they come right out of the Bible. (EBiblefellowship has no affiliation with Family Radio; however, we highly recommend that you obtain a free copy of the book “We Are Almost There!” by writing to the following address: Family Stations, Inc., 290 Hegenberger Rd., Oakland, CA 94621. This book goes into far greater detail regarding the timing of Judgment Day and the end of the world. Also, you can read or download “We Are Almost There!” online at: www.familyradio.com).
TIMING OF IMPORTANT EVENTS IN HISTORY
11,013 BC—Creation. God created the world and man (Adam and Eve).
4990 BC—The flood of Noah’s day. All perished in a worldwide flood. Only Noah, his wife, and his 3 sons and their wives survived in the ark (6023 years from creation).
7 BC—The year Jesus Christ was born (11,006 years from creation).
33 AD—The year Jesus Christ was crucified and the church age began (11,045 years from creation; 5023 calendar years from the flood).
1988 AD—This year ended the church age and began the great tribulation period of 23 years (13,000 years from creation).
1994 AD—On September 7th, the first 2300-day period of the great tribulation came to an end and the latter rain began, commencing God’s plan to save a great multitude of people outside of the churches (13,006 years from creation).
2011 AD—On May 21st, Judgment Day will begin and the rapture (the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people) will occur at the end of the 23-year great tribulation. On October 21st, the world will be destroyed by fire (7000 years from the flood; 13,023 years from creation).
ONE DAY IS AS 1000 YEARS
The child of God has learned from the Bible that the language of Genesis 7 has a twofold meaning:
Genesis 7:4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
Historically, as God spoke these words, there were seven days remaining for Noah, his family, and the animals to get into the safety of the ark; but spiritually (and the Bible is a spiritual book), God was speaking to all of the people of the world and was declaring that sinful mankind would have 7000 years to find refuge in the salvation provided by Jesus Christ. How can we know that? We know this is so based on what we read in 2 Peter, chapter 3:
2 Peter 3:6-8 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
The context of 2 Peter 3 is extremely important! In the first few verses, God refers us to the destruction of the world by the flood during Noah’s day. Then we find an interesting admonition that we ought not to be “ignorant” of one thing, which is, 1 day is as 1000 years, and 1000 years is as 1 day. Immediately following this bit of information is a very vivid description of the end of the present world by fire.
What could God be telling us by identifying 1 day along with 1000 years?
Since we recently have discovered the Biblical calendar of history on the pages of the Bible, we find that the flood of Noah’s day occurred in the year 4990 BC. This date is completely accurate (for further information on the Biblical timeline of history, please go to: www.familyradio.com). It was in the year 4990 BC that God revealed to Noah that there would be yet 7 days until the flood of waters would be upon the earth. Now, if we substitute 1000 years for each one of those 7 days, we get 7000 years. And when we project 7000 years into the future from 4990 BC, we find that it falls on the year 2011 AD.
4990 + 2011 = 7001
Note: When counting from an Old Testament date to a New Testament date, always subtract one year because there is no year zero, resulting in:
4990 + 2011 – 1 = 7000 years exactly.
The year 2011 AD will be the 7000th year from the flood of Noah’s day. It will be the end of the length of time given to mankind to find grace in God’s sight. This means that the time to find refuge in Christ has grown extremely short. We are only a little ways off from the year 2011 AD!
It is not unusual that God’s people have been given insight into the timing of the end of the world. Actually, the Bible tells us this is normally the case. In times past, God has warned His people of approaching periods of judgment:
Amos 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.
Hebrews 11:7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.
JUDGMENT DAY: MAY 21st, 2011
We know that the year 2011 is the 7000th year from the flood. We also know that God will destroy this world in that year. But when in 2011 will this occur?
The answer is amazing. Let’s take another look at the flood account in the book of Genesis:
Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
Faithful to His Word, God did bring the flood 7 days later in the 600th year, on the 17th day of the 2nd month of the calendar aligned with Noah’s lifespan. It was on this 17th day of the 2nd month that God shut the door on the ark, securing the safety of its occupants and also sealing the fate of everyone else in the world outside of the ark. They would all now certainly perish in that worldwide catastrophe.
Genesis 7:16,17 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in. And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.
Earlier it was mentioned that the church age came to an end in the year 1988 AD. It so happens that the church age began on the day of Pentecost (May 22nd) in the year 33 AD. Then 1955 years later, the church age came to its conclusion on May 21st, which was the day before Pentecost in 1988.
The Bible teaches that the end of the church age would occur simultaneously with the beginning of the great tribulation:
Matthew 24:21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
On May 21st, 1988, God finished using the churches and congregations of the world. The Spirit of God left all churches and Satan, the man of sin, entered into the churches to rule at that point in time. The Bible teaches us that this awful period of judgment upon the churches would last for 23 years. A full 23 years (8400 days exactly) would be from May 21 st, 1988 until May 21st, 2011. This information was discovered in the Bible completely apart from the information regarding the 7000 years from the flood.
Therefore, we see that the full 23-year tribulation period concludes on May 21st, 2011. This date is the exact day that the great tribulation comes to its end, and this is also the most likely landing spot for the 7000 years from the flood of Noah’s day.
Keep in mind that God shut the door on the ark on the 17th day of the 2nd month of Noah’s calendar. We also find that May 21 st, 2011 is the end of the great tribulation period. There is a strong relationship between the 2nd month and 17th day of Noah’s calendar and May 21st, 2011 of our Gregorian calendar. This relationship cannot be readily seen until we discover that there is another calendar to consider, which is the Hebrew (or Biblical) calendar. May 21 st, 2011 happens to be the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Hebrew calendar. By this, God is confirming to us that we have a very correct understanding regarding the 7000-year timeline from the flood. May 21 st, 2011 is the equivalent date to the date when God shut the door on Noah’s ark. Through this and much other Biblical information, we find that May 21 st, 2011 will be the day when God takes up into heaven His elect people. May 21st, 2011 will be Judgment Day! This is the day God shuts the door of salvation on the world.
In other words, in having the great tribulation period conclude on a day that identifies with the 17th day of the 2nd month of Noah’s calendar, God is without question confirming to us that this is the day He intends to shut forever the door of entry into heaven:
John 10:9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.
The Bible is very clear that Christ is the only way into heaven. He is the only portal into the glorious kingdom of heaven.
Acts 4:12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
Once the door (Jesus) is shut on Judgment Day, there is no more salvation possible on earth:
Revelation 3:7 …These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth;
The Bible teaches that on May 21st, 2011, only true believers elected by God to receive salvation will be raptured (taken up) out of this world to meet the Lord in the air and forever be with the Lord:
1 Thessalonians 4:16,17 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
All the rest of mankind (billions of people) will be left behind to experience the awful judgment of God, a horrible period of 5 months of torment upon earth:
Revelation 9:3-5 And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
THE END OF THE WORLD: OCTOBER 21st, 2011
By God’s grace and tremendous mercy, He is giving us advanced warning as to what He is about to do. On Judgment Day, May 21st, 2011, this 5-month period of horrible torment will begin for all the inhabitants of the earth. It will be on May 21st that God will raise up all the dead that have ever died from their graves. Earthquakes will ravage the whole world as the earth will no longer conceal its dead (Isaiah 26:21). People who died as saved individuals will experience the resurrection of their bodies and immediately leave this world to forever be with the Lord. Those who died unsaved will be raised up as well, but only to have their lifeless bodies scattered about the face of all the earth. Death will be everywhere.
The Lord also emphasizes these awful 5 months of destruction in the final verse of Genesis, chapter 7:
Genesis 7:24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
Five months after May 21st, 2011 will be October 21st, 2011. It so happens that October 21st of 2011 is also the last day of the Biblical Feast of Tabernacles (held simultaneously with the Feast of Ingathering). Tabernacles is held in the 7th month of the Hebrew calendar. The way God speaks of this feast in the Bible is very significant:
Exodus 23:16 …the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.
Exodus 34:22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end.
The Feast of Tabernacles / Ingathering was said to be in the “end of the year” even though it was observed in the Hebrew 7th month, which is not the end of the year. The reason for this is that the spiritual fulfillment of this particular feast is the end of the world. The date October 21st, 2011 will be the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles and the last day of earth’s existence. The Bible describes what will take place on October 21st, 2011 in the following passage:
2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Along with the entire world and universe, all those who have sinned against God and were left behind will likewise be consumed by this fire and be eternally destroyed:
2 Thessalonians 1:8,9 In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;
On October 21st, 2011, God will completely destroy this creation and all of the people who never experienced the salvation of Jesus Christ along with it. The awful payment for their sinful rebellion against God will be completed by the loss of everlasting life. On October 21st, 2011, all of these poor people will cease to exist from that point forward. How sad that noble man, made in God’s image, will die like a beast and perish forever:
Psalm 49:12 Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish.
There is much more to share. But please, dear soul, be warned that the time for salvation is drawing to a rapid close! God has given the world 7000 years from the flood, and now only a few days remain until we reach May 21st, 2011. Before we know it, time will have run completely out. The few grains of sand remaining in our hourglass will have elapsed and be gone forever. Although little time remains, there is still wonderful hope for anyone today:
2 Corinthians 6:2 (For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)
It does not take God much time at all to save someone. In the last hours of a terribly sinful life, the thief on the cross was saved by Christ:
Luke 23:42,43 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
Our prayer is that you will receive this tract in the spirit of genuine concern in which it is being offered. As you read this pamphlet, please carefully consider the verses quoted from the Bible, for they are the Word of God, and as such, possess absolute power and authority. Our only hope for salvation is through the reading of the Word of God. It is now that the door of heaven (Christ) is open. It is now that God is saving a great multitude of people from around the world outside of the churches and congregations:
Revelation 7:9,13,14 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; …What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
God saves through the hearing of the Word of God and no other way:
Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Read the Bible with all your family (especially your children); and along with your reading, pray for mercy. Pray to the merciful and gracious God of the Bible that He might deliver you from the approaching destruction. We learn a little about God’s tremendous compassion in the book of Jonah. God also gave advance warning to the people of Nineveh regarding the destruction of their city:
Jonah 3:4-9 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?
God did not destroy the people of Nineveh. Although there is no possibility that God will not follow through on His intention to destroy the world in 2011, we can know from His dealings with the people of Nineveh that God is tenderhearted and full of mercy. This should encourage each one of us to go to God and beseech Him for His great mercy.
Colonel Gaddafi is wounded and has left Tripoli
'Colonel Gaddafi is wounded and has left Tripoli' claims Italian foreign minister
Colonel Gaddafi has very likely left the Libyan capital and is probably wounded, an Italian government minister has claimed.Foreign minister Franco Frattini said he believed reports from Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, the Catholic Bishop in Tripoli, that the despot had been wounded by Nato airstrikes.
He told reporters in Tuscany that 'Gaddafi was most probably outside Tripoli and probably even wounded'. The Libyan government has denied the reports.
Rumours: The Italian foreign minister has claimed that Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator, is probably wounded and has left Tripoli
Still, 'I tend to take as credible the words of the Tripoli Archbishop (Giovanni) Martinelli who tells us that Gaddafi is very probably outside of Tripoli and probably also wounded,' the ANSA news agency quoted Mr Frattini as telling reporters in Rome.
In comments during a TV interview posted on the Corriere della Sera newspaper's website, Mr Frattini added that 'international pressure has likely provoked the decision by Gaddafi to seek refuge in a safe place.'
'I lean toward the solution of an escape from Tripoli, not an escape from Libya,' he said.
'Libya is a big country, with desert areas.'
Fake? The Libyan leader was filmed talking to tribal elders apparently in a Tripoli hotel.Mr Frattini expressed scepticism over the footage
The claims come the day after the colonel made his first TV appearance in weeks after a Nato air strike on Tripoli killed his youngest son and three grandchildren.
It was the first sighting of the Libyan dictator since April 9. He was filmed talking with tribal leaders in a hotel in the capital.
A projection screen behind him showed a morning chat show on state al-Jamahirya TV which displayed yesterday's date in one corner.
It seemed a very deliberate move to scotch rumours - helped along by an official Nato spokesman the day before - that he may have been killed by an air strike.
Gaddafi had been in hiding since the rocket attack which struck a house in Tripoli. The Libyan government said he and his wife were unhurt in the attack.
Mr Frattini said he had 'many doubts that that footage had been made that day and especially in Tripoli.'
Nato air attacks have continuously targeted Gaddafi's compounds in and around the Libyan capital ever since support for the rebel forces from the east began several weeks ago - although leaders claim not to be deliberately targeting him.
Nato has said it has carried out around 2,400 sorties against the Colonels forces since March 31.
Did Bin Laden watch porn?
Did Bin Laden watch porn as he hid in Pakistan? Stash of X-rated films found in his squalid lair
First it emerged Osama Bin Laden spent hours watching videos of himself as he callously planned new terror attacks against the 'decadent' WestBut now it appears the Al Qaeda mastermind may have watched something else as he hid in his squalid lair - pornography.
Today officials revealed U.S. Navy SEALs discovered a stash of x-rated films in the terror leader's final hideout.
What was he watching? Today it emerged U.S. Navy SEALs found a stash of pornography videos in Osama Bin Laden's squalid lair
According to officials, the commandos found a 'fairly extensive' collection of modern porn films as they searched the building after Bin Laden was shot.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they did not yet know where in the compound the films were found - or who had been watching it.
The terror leader shared the three-storey house in Abbottabad, not far from the Pakistani capital, with his three wives, several of his children and the families of two of his closest aides.
It is not known whether Bin Laden himself watched the pornography, which consisted of recent, electronically-recorded video.
Vanity: Osama Bin Laden dyed his greying beard black to record propaganda videos. Amal Al-Sadah, right, was a 'mail order' bride from Yemen
It is not yet clear how the compound's residents would have got hold of the x-rated videos, but it seems likely they would have been smuggled in by Bin Laden's courier.
Three other U.S. officials who have seen evidence gathered during investigations of other Islamic militants said it is not unusual to discover porn in such cases.
Yesterday it emerged that, rather than being a reclusive figure, Bin Laden kept in constant contact with his network of terrorists to plot attacks across the globe.
Investigators uncovered thousands of messages and email addresses documenting potential terror plots.
Final hideout: Investigators are trawling through a treasure trove of evidence found at Bin Laden's final compound in Abbottabad
Incoming messages were processed in reverse, allowing Bin Laden to stay in touch with his terror network
More than 100 flash drives, five desktop computers, laptops and ten years’ worth of handwritten journals have been found in the compound, showing that Bin Laden was plotting attacks on New York, Los Angeles and other American cities as well as Europe.
His personal diaries reveal his determination to achieve a ‘body count of thousands’ by targeting trains and planes on significant dates such as the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attack.
Investigators continue to search through the haul, an unprecedented cache of evidence about the Al Qaeda's operations.
Miss A and Miss W, Julian Assange's Swedish accusers
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Since the allegations -- decried by the WikiLeaks head as a smear campaign -- they have kept out of the spotlight, with one moving to the Palestinian territories on a Christian mission and the other cutting her phone line. Their full identities are not being revealed, which were kept secret by Swedish prosecutors. Both Miss A and Miss W, as they were called in a British court hearing on Stockholm's still pending demand for Assange to be extradited to Sweden for questioning about the allegations, are connected to him by an event on August 14. That day, the 39-year-old Australian gave a seminar in Stockholm organised by the Social Democratic Party's Christian wing and titled "The First Casualty of War is Truth". Miss A, 31, was working for the organisation and acted as an unofficial go-between for Assange and journalists during his visit. She also allowed him to stay with her from his arrival in Stockholm on August 11, according to a transcript of the women's account to police. Miss A and Assange had sex several times at her one-room Stockholm flat, according to Swedish tabloids, giving details that were blocked out of the police transcript. Representatives of Swedish prosecutors told the British hearing that "unlawful coercion" occurred on August 14 because Assange held down Miss A in a sexual manner. Another encounter on August 18 was characterised as "sexual molestation", because Assange had sex with Miss A without a condom despite her "express wish" one should be used, they said. Assange also "deliberately molested" Miss A on the same night "in a way designated to violate her sexual integrity", the British court heard. Nonetheless, the WikiLeaks head stayed at Miss A's flat until August 20, even accompanying her to a party on August 15. On her still active blog, the 31-year-old describes herself as "a political scientist, communicator, entrepreneur and freelance writer with special knowledge in faith and politics, equality matters, feminism and Latin America". A Master's thesis on Cuba, her admiration for former Argentinian president Nestor Kirchner and a now-removed blog post on how to get revenge on an ex-boyfriend have led to a slew of cyberspace rumours about her motives for accusing Pentagon nemesis Assange. "CIA agent, angry feminist/Muslim-lover, Christian fundamentalist, lesbian and desperately in love with a man, can one be all that at the same time?" she commented on her Twitter account earlier this month. Miss W., 27, was also in the audience at Assange's talk on August 14, sitting in a bright pink jumper on the front row with a number of journalists. Her background and occupation are not as well know as her co-accuser's, but her admiration for Assange and her encounters with him are described in detail in the police interview transcript. She saw him on television discussing the release in July of classified US documents on the Afghanistan war, and told police she found him "interesting, courageous and admirable". When she found out the WikiLeaks head was speaking in Stockholm on August 14, she went to the event, insisted on spending the evening with Assange and friends after the talk, and ended up alone with him at the cinema. There they flirted and he said he found her "very attractive," she told police. Two days later, they travelled to Miss W's home in Enkoeping, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Stockholm. But Assange "spent the train ride looking at Twitter posts about himself" and by the time they arrived at her place, "the passion and excitement were gone", she told investigators. The rape allegations stem from later that night at Miss W's home: the British court heard that Assange had sex with her without a condom while she was asleep. The following morning, they had breakfast together, and "in an attempt to de-dramatise what happened", she made "sarcastic comments". She then took him back to the train station and he promised to call her. Defence lawyer Claes Borgstroem said the two women later discovered they had both had similar experiences with Assange and went to the police on August 20. "They were not sure they wanted to (press charges), they wanted to get advice" and were also worried they could have contracted HIV, Borgstroem told reporters earlier this month. "When they told the police officer, a woman, she realised that what (the women) were telling her about was a crime. She reported that to the public prosecutor who decided to arrest Assange," the lawyer said. The following day, the story made the front page of tabloid Expressen, launching the scandal and its numerous ramifications. Assange has not been charged and says his lawyers have been given no evidence to back up the Swedish assertions, which prosecutors insist have nothing to do with the activities of WikiLeaks. |
Katrina’s French connection
| Saturday 30 April, 2011 | |
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However, Kat herself broke her silence and later revealed that she wanted to buy the remake rights of the 2006 French movie Priceless. And after months of going back and forth, the deal as of today, stands cancelled. The people in question simply stopped reverting to the Bollywood actress. “It was ridiculous. Katrina is an A-list actress in Bollywood. They should have dealt with the proceedings very tactfully,” revealed a source close to Kat. Tired of the unprofessional behaviour, Katrina too, has eventually given up on her French dream. added a source. However, this setback has not managed to squash Katrina’s dream of turning producer. “She is very much open to other films. She is quite a film buff and sees a lot of foreign films. Who knows, she might even pick up a Hindi film and remake it,” informed the source. |
Asian markets fall on US wariness, Japan economic data
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Tokyo’s Nikkei index closed down 1.75 percent, or 163,58 points, at 9,202,45, Sydney ended 0.50 percent, or 23.3 points, lower at 4,661.6 and Seoul fell 1.31 percent, or 24.92 points, to 1,882.95. Hong Kong closed down 0.49 percent, or 114.54 points, at 23,096.32, while Shanghai’s Composite index was down 0.46 percent, or 13.74 points, at 2,978.84. Wall Street offered only a weak lead Thursday, with the Dow index falling 0.11 percent, the broader S&P 500 gaining 0.11 percent and the tech-rich Nasdaq up 0.16 percent. Markets were generally cautious ahead of next week’s US Federal Reserve meeting, expected to unveil some form of economic stimulus, and ahead of US third-quarter growth data due out later Friday. “Speculation over the magnitude of the second round of quantitative easing to be implemented by the US Federal Reserve… continued to prompt cautious trading in the Asian markets,” Hong Kong-based securities firm Taifook was quoted by Dow Jones Newswires as saying. Tokyo was also hit by data showing industrial output slid a worse than expected 1.9 percent in September from the previous month and consumer prices fell 1.1 percent from a year earlier, their 19th straight month of decline. However strong earnings reports and forecasts helped limit losses, as Sony, Honda and Mitsubishi Electric both raised their full-year forecasts. A climbing yen however continued to exert pressure on Japan’s export sector. The dollar fetched 80.65 yen in Tokyo, down from 80.98 in New York late Thursday. The euro changed hands at 1.3883 dollars, compared with 1.3929 dollars in New York and the single European currency declined to 111.95 yen from 112.86 yen. “Yen-buying sentiment against the dollar is getting stronger,” said Daisuke Karakama, market economist at Mizuho Corporate Bank. “But the dollar-yen rate is still within an expected range.” Hong Kong and Shanghai mostly moved in tandem, led by declines in Shanghai-listed mainland property developers, which have been hit by expectations of sustained government efforts to cool the sector. But shares in AIA, the Asian unit of troubled US insurer AIG, soared almost 17 percent from their listing price thanks to interest from wealthy Hong Kongers and global investors such as Kuwait’s sovereign fund. The offering could prove to be the second largest in the world this year after the mammoth Agricultural Bank of China listing. Seoul’s stock market fell after data showed industrial output had unexpectedly contracted for a second straight month in September, falling 0.4 percent from August. That overshadowed strong earnings results from Samsung Electronics and Kia Motors. On oil markets, crude prices slid below 82 dollars thanks to the dollar’s gains against the euro, which makes oil less affordable for buyers holding other currencies. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for December delivery, fell 51 cents to 81.67 dollars a barrel. Brent North Sea crude for December shed 41 cents to 83.18 dollars. Gold closed at 1,339.50-1,340.50 US dollars an ounce in Hong Kong, up from Thursday’s finish of 1,325.00-1,326.00 dollars. |
Forex reserves fall to $16.39bn
| Friday 24 December, 2010 | |
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Reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) fell to $12.63 billion from $12.69 billion in the week ending Dec. 18, while those held by commercial banks rose to $3.76 billion from $3.72 billion, said Syed Wasimuddin, chief spokesman of the central bank. Pakistan's reserves hit a record high of $17.10 billion in the week ending Oct. 15 because of an increase in remittances from overseas Pakistanis and a narrowing trade deficit. Earlier the reserves got a boost in September after the IMF sent Pakistan $450 million and said that the money would go toward the budget to help with additional spending for flood relief and immediate foreign exchange needs. This was separate from the $11 billion IMF bailout programme, agreed in 2008. In May, Pakistan received $1.13 billion in the fifth tranche of the programme. Pakistan has formally asked for a nine-month extension of its $11 billion IMF bailout package, a source involved with the IMF talks said on Monday, but the extension has not been approved yet. |
80 killed in Charsadda suicide attacks
| Friday 13 May, 2011 | |
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The explosions detonated as newly trained cadets were getting into buses and coaches for a 10-day leave after their course, and they were wearing civilian clothes, police said. The attacks took place in the Shabqadar area, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of Peshawar. "Sixty-eight people have been killed," the police chief of the northwestern Charsadda district, Nisar Khan Marwat, told media. "Sixty-five of them are from the paramilitary police. Three dead bodies of civilians were taken to Shabqadar hosiptal," he added. Twelve vehicles were destroyed in the blasts, Marwat said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Pakistani Taliban last week threatened to attack security forces to avenge bin Laden's killing in a US helicopter raid north of the capital Islamabad on May 2. They were the deadliest attacks in Pakistan since November 5 when a suicide bomber killed 68 people at a mosque in the northwest area of Darra Adam Khel. More than 4,300 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan in the past four years since 2007. |
Drone attacks hurting Pak-US relations
The differences between the United States and Pakistan that broke into the open last week over the scale of C.I.A. operations here signaled a fundamental rift, plunging the relationship, sometimes strained, sometimes warm, to its lowest point in memory.
The rupture over Pakistan’s demands that the Americans end drone strikes, which the Obama administration rejected and scale back their intelligence presence within Pakistan exposed the tentative nature of the alliance forged after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And it is increasingly apparent that the two countries have differing, even irreconcilable, aims in Afghanistan, a report in the New York Times said on Monday.
With the Afghan endgame looming, suspicion is overwhelming faint cooperation between the United States and Pakistan, as each side seeks to secure its interests, increase its leverage to obtain them, and even cut out the other if need be, American and Pakistani officials say.
No one in Pakistan or in Washington now speaks of returning to the strategic alliance made by President George W. Bush and Gen. Pervez Musharraf immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the primary goal was to operate joint intelligence efforts to capture operatives of Al Qaeda. Military officials from both sides say that arrangement was never bound to be a longstanding affair.
“There was never a level of trust,” said a former American military official who served in a senior position in Pakistan. “I’m convinced now they don’t want our help.”
The American official did not want to be identified while discussing the delicate nature of a relationship that, whatever its failings, both nations are reluctant to jettison completely.
But politicians on both sides are disappointed with the results of billions of dollars in American military and civilian assistance since 2001, and the Obama administration acknowledged to Congress in a report this month that the results of the spending fell short of expectations.
In any case, the money has done little to pave over the accumulating strategic differences between the two nations.
Broadly, the Americans seek a strong and relatively centralized Afghan government commanding a large army that can control its territory. Almost all those ends are objectionable to Pakistan, which while it calls for a stable Afghanistan, prefers a more loosely governed neighbor where it can influence events, if need be, through Taliban proxies, the newspaper said.
Voilance in Afghanistan by US Army
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Special report: The bin Laden kill plan
WASHINGTON |
(Reuters) - A pivotal moment in the long, tortuous quest to find Osama bin Laden came years before U.S. spy agencies discovered his hermetic compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.In July 2007, then Senator Barack Obama's top foreign policy advisers met in the modest two-room Massachusetts Avenue offices that served as his campaign's Washington headquarters. There, they debated the incendiary language Obama would use in an upcoming speech on national security, according to a senior White House official.
Pakistan was a growing worry. A new, highly classified intelligence analysis, called a National Intelligence Estimate, had just identified militant safe havens in Pakistan's border areas as a major threat to U.S. security. The country's military leader, Pervez Musharraf, had recently cut a deal with local tribes that effectively eased pressure on al Qaeda and related groups.
Days after the Washington meeting, candidate Obama told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."
It was the most carefully crafted sentence in the speech, a statement no U.S. leader had ever made. (Text of Obama's speech: link.reuters.com/weg59r)
In the two weeks since President Obama made good on that threat -- in fact, bested it by declining to give Pakistan a chance to act first -- reams have been written about the painstaking detective hunt that led to bin Laden.
But Reuters interviews with two dozen current and former senior intelligence, White House and State Department officials reveal another side of the story.
The 13-year quest to find and eliminate bin Laden, from the November 1998 day he was indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the East Africa embassy bombings, was filled with missteps, course adjustments and radical new departures for U.S. security policy. It ultimately led to a fortified compound in a little known Pakistani city named after a long-dead British major.
Even with bin Laden buried at sea, the changes to U.S. security policy could linger for years, or decades.
The mission to destroy bin Laden, and his network, sparked the creation of a chillingly bureaucratic process for deciding who would be on "kill lists," authorized for death at the hands of the CIA. It revolutionized the use of pilotless drones to find and attack militants; drove the controversially brutal treatment of detainees in U.S. custody; and brought the United States and Pakistan closer together, then wrenched them apart.
(Even in ordering the risky Navy SEAL raid on May 1, Obama made allowances for Pakistan's sensitivities. The raid was carried out by the U.S. military but under CIA legal authorities and command, partly for deniability if something went wrong and partly because the United States is not at war with Pakistan, a U.S. official said.)
But there was one constant in the search for bin Laden. On September 17, 2001, six days after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush issued a still-classified "finding" that gave the CIA "lethal authorities" to deal with the al Qaeda leader and his top lieutenants. Ever since, there was an expectation -- even a preference -- that bin Laden would be killed, not captured, Bush and Obama administration officials said.
The same day that Bush signed the directive, he publicly declared bin Laden was wanted "dead or alive."
Numerous officials said they knew of no explicit command that bin Laden was not to be taken alive. When he ordered the SEAL raid, Obama had on his desk a written protocol for what would happen if the al Qaeda chief were captured and removed from Pakistan to an unnamed U.S. military installation, the senior White House official said.
But it was vaguer than the rest of the operational plan, and the expectation among most of the people who planned and executed the mission was that bin Laden would be killed. If bin Laden had surrendered, Obama's senior advisers "would have to reconvene and make a decision about what to do with him," said one official, who like many requested anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters. "It was intentionally left to be decided after the fact."
Richard Armitage, who was deputy secretary of state in Bush's first term, voiced the view that prevailed through two presidencies. "I think we took Osama bin Laden at his word, that he wanted to be a martyr," Armitage told Reuters.
The U.S. government, he said, would do all it could to help bin Laden realize that goal.
RABBIT HOLES AND WRONG TURNS
The hunt for bin Laden turned out to be riddled with dead ends, wrong turns and long, desolate periods of frustration.
The 9/11 attacks would push the Bush administration into a war in Iraq that critics -- including candidate Obama -- denounced as a dangerous diversion from al Qaeda and its Afghanistan/Pakistan nexus. Interrogation techniques such as "waterboarding," a form of simulated drowning, were used on a handful of suspects deemed most dangerous, sparking a debate -- it erupted again on May 2 -- over the best way to fight terrorism.
In Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains in December 2001, U.S. special forces came close to bin Laden -- perhaps within 2,000 meters, according to the published recollections of a former U.S. Army special forces commander who uses the pseudonym "Dalton Fury."
Opting to rely on local Afghan allies, the United States declined to send in the 1,500 U.S. Army Rangers needed to block bin Laden's escape route.
It would be more than nine years before U.S. special forces would get that close again.
In the intervening years, "there were a lot of empty rabbit holes down which we pursued and ultimately didn't find any results. It was very frustrating," said Juan Zarate, a top White House counter-terrorism aide from 2005-2009. "I always had a mantra that I used for myself, both not to get too discouraged and also with the counter-terrorism community, which is: these guys are not ghosts. They are flesh and blood and can be found and we'll find them."
With virtually no hard knowledge, U.S. counter-terrorism officials said they assumed bin Laden was hiding in the mountainous, lawless Afghan-Pakistan border region. But it's now believed that after Tora Bora, he spent some time in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province, crossed the border into Pakistan in late summer or fall 2002, moved to a Pakistani village in 2003 for a couple of years, and hid in plain sight in Abbottabad beginning in 2005 or 2006.
Yet even in deadly U.S. failures, there were small breakthroughs.
On February 4, 2002, a Predator drone struck a group of men in Arab dress in the Zawar Kili area of eastern Afghanistan. Among them was a tall man to whom others were acting deferentially, U.S. officials said at the time.
It turned out not to be bin Laden. Reports quoted local residents saying it was a group of villagers collecting scrap metal. But before the episode was over, U.S. intelligence agencies had received, with help from the Saudi government, a DNA sample from bin Laden's extended family that would clinch identification if he were ever found.
FROM CAPTURE TO KILL
It was President Bill Clinton who launched the hunt for bin Laden. After the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton signed what some former U.S. officials called a "covert action finding" authorizing CIA operations against al Qaeda, then regarded as a marginal Islamic militant faction with an eccentric, Saudi-born leader.
But some Clinton aides, led by attorney general Janet Reno, were concerned about the legality of killing bin Laden, former top intelligence and counter-terrorism officials said. Clinton's orders permitted U.S. forces to kill bin Laden in self-defense, but the prime directive was to capture him and bring him to justice in the United States.
The September 11, 2001, attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania instantly made such scruples seem anachronistic.
Bush's September 17, 2001, order, which is still highly classified, authorized the CIA to use all methods at its disposal -- explicitly including deadly force -- to wipe out al Qaeda and its leaders.
Presidential covert action findings never expire unless a president issues a new written order suspending or revoking them, current and former U.S. national security officials told Reuters. So Bush's nine-and-a-half-year-old order remained a key legal authority under which Obama launched the commando raid that led to bin Laden's death.
It was perhaps inevitable, then, that partisans of both men and their political parties would claim the lion's share of credit for bin Laden's demise.
Bush's order was both sweeping and general in the powers it granted to the CIA to launch operations against al Qaeda.
As Armitage and others recalled, 9/11 rapidly accelerated a program that had progressed only fitfully in the Clinton administration thanks to CIA-Pentagon turf battles: a scheme to arm increasingly sophisticated remote-controlled drone aircraft with missiles that could launch precision strikes.
In Bush's last months in office, and even more under Obama, the drone strikes expanded dramatically, rattling relations with Pakistan. But when it came time to attack the Abbottabad compound, Obama rejected an option for using drones, fearing civilian casualties and that proof of bin Laden's demise would never be found in the wreckage. (For similar reasons, the president also rejected an option which would have sent B-2 "Stealth" bombers to destroy bin Laden's lair.)
In the months after 9/11, the CIA forged ahead with three other major initiatives to eradicate bin Laden and company:
* A program in which militants captured by U.S. or allied forces were detained and interrogated either in special U.S. military facilities or in a network of secret CIA prisons, where some were subjected to harsh physical interrogation tactics dreamed up by agency contractors.
* Another program where captured militants were subjected to what the agency called "extraordinary rendition" and delivered without judicial proceedings into the custody of often-brutal security agencies in their native countries.
* A troubled effort to create a secret U.S. capability that would be similar to the "hit squads" deployed by Israel's Mossad and other spy agencies.
To guide the CIA's new activities, the Bush administration began drawing up a list of "high value targets," who were the top priority for intelligence gathering and who could be captured or killed depending upon the circumstances in which they were found.
There had been nothing quite like it before in U.S. history. Initially, according to former officials familiar with the process, the lists were compiled and approved by an interagency committee of lawyers and bureaucrats based on recommendations from the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
The U.S. spy agencies would propose a name for the high-value target list and prepare a dossier explaining who the suspect was and why he ought to be on the list, they said. This dossier would then be circulated to the interagency committee, whose members, including lawyers from the Justice Department, Pentagon and CIA, would review it. If the lawyers deemed the dossier adequate, the committee would then approve the individual's name for inclusion on the "high-value target" list -- subject to capture or death by American spies or soldiers.
The Obama White House approved adding American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, based in Yemen, to the target list in 2010 because officials believed the English-speaking Muslim cleric had gone beyond inspirational rhetoric and become involved in terrorism operations.
At any one time, the list would contain between 10 and 30 names, the most obvious ones being bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former officials said. At one point, Bush's advisers prepared for him a rogues' gallery of about 20 top suspects on the list, which was laminated in plastic. Bush kept it in his Oval Office desk. When militants on the chart were captured or killed, Bush would take it out of his desk and mark them off.
But bin Laden's name stayed on the list while the young orphans of 9/11 grew into teenagers.
THE TRAIL BACK
The plan to create CIA hit-squads proved another dead end. The original concept was to create surveillance and "lethal" teams under the agency's paramilitary wing, staffed by former military commandos and coyly named the Special Activities Division, according to two former officials familiar with internal government debates at the time.
That plan was put into cold storage by CIA director George Tenet, then revived by his successor Porter Goss with a twist: the agency would use outside contractors for the hit teams, to give it more deniability. Erik Prince, founder-owner of the controversial private military contractor then known as Blackwater and a former Navy SEAL, was invited to participate in brainstorming sessions. At some point, a former senior official said, the agency conducted training exercises in the field.
As one of his first acts, Obama's CIA chief Leon Panetta killed the hit squad idea for good, and informed congressional oversight committees, which had never been told of it.
The trail back to bin Laden began with the militants detained and interrogated by the CIA. That's the crucible of the debate over whether the United States veered badly off track in its war with al Qaeda, or was on the right course all along.
Did waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other "enhanced interrogation techniques," a phrase critics call a euphemism for torture, ultimately work? Or did such tactics muddy the search for bin Laden? Did old-fashioned, persistent investigation prevail in the end?
The debate is unlikely ever to be settled. But multiple U.S. intelligence officials told Reuters the real breakthrough that led to bin Laden came from a mysterious CIA detainee named Hassan Ghul. Ghul, who was not captured until 2004 at the earliest, was not subjected to waterboarding, the CIA's roughest and most controversial interrogation technique. It had already been phased out by the time he was captured. But two U.S. officials acknowledged he may well have been subjected to other coercive CIA tactics, possibly including stress positions, sleep deprivation and being slammed into a wall.
It was Ghul, the officials said, who after years of tantalizing hints from other detainees finally provided the information that prompted the CIA to focus intensely on finding Abu Ahmed al Kuwaiti, pseudonym for the courier who would lead them to bin Laden.
Much about Ghul remains obscure, including his nationality. Two U.S. officials told Reuters, however, that at some point the CIA turned him over to authorities in Pakistan. The officials said their understanding is that in 2007, Pakistani authorities released him from custody. The officials said the U.S. government now believes Ghul has once again become a frontline militant fighter.
Leaving Ghul aside, it remains unclear whether the brutal interrogations -- which Obama banned upon taking office -- were effective or not.
The available facts, bolstered by evidence from secret Guantanamo detainee files made public by the WikiLeaks organization, suggest that some of the first information U.S. intelligence received about Abu Ahmed al Kuwaiti surfaced in 2002, when the harshest elements of the CIA interrogation program were still in force.
Two high-ranking al Qaeda operatives, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who was waterboarded repeatedly) and Abu Faraj al-Libbi (who was not), were questioned about the courier, current U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said. Both tried to steer interrogators onto a different track, which only piqued the CIA's interest further, the officials said.
While Ghul's information brought tighter focus to the hunt for bin Laden's most important courier in 2004, it would be another two to three years before the agency discovered his true identity and more about his activities. A new president would take office before the Abbottabad hideout that Abu Ahmed and his brother are believed to have built for bin Laden was discovered.
RENEWED FOCUS ON PAKISTAN
To outsiders, it sometimes seemed as if the hunt for bin Laden languished in Bush's final years in office. That was not the case, aides said.
Former CIA director Michael Hayden told Reuters that each time he went to the White House for his weekly meeting with Bush, the president would always ask him, "Where are we, Mike?" Hayden always knew Bush was referring to bin Laden.
But Bush had expended huge resources -- military, financial, diplomatic and political -- in Iraq. Obama was intent on shifting the focus of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts back to South Asia, specifically to Pakistan.
Former aides to Bush acknowledge that while he took a tougher line on Pakistan toward the end of his term, the new Obama team displayed far less concern for fragile Pakistan's sensitivities.
"For a long time there was a strong inclination at the highest levels during our time to work with the Pakistanis, treat them as partners, defer to their national sensitivities ... There was some good reason for that," said a former top Bush aide, citing the need for Islamabad's help in countering terrorism, stopping nuclear proliferation and stabilizing Afghanistan.
Obama and his team "do seem more willing to push the envelope," he said.
Would Bush have handled the Abbottabad raid in the same way? "I really don't know for sure," the former aide said. "There's no doubt he would have ordered the assault in a heartbeat. But what would he have done regarding the Pakistanis? I'm not sure."
Vali Nasr, a senior State Department adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan until last month, said: "Obama was fundamentally honest that the United States and Pakistan were on different trajectories in Afghanistan. Under Bush, there was this pretense that we were all in this war on terror together."
Obama had no close personal ties to Musharraf, who resigned shortly before the new U.S. president was elected. Obama's aides were increasingly skeptical of Pakistan's pledges that it would take care of al Qaeda, a senior White House official recalled. Most of all, Pakistan was a major player in Afghanistan, where Obama had pledged to turn around a war he acknowledged was going badly.
Those views hardened after Obama's first classified intelligence briefing in Chicago on a September day in 2008. He was now the Democratic nominee for president.
The briefing solidified Obama's view that "this guy was living inside Pakistan," the senior official said. "What I remember in terms of the aftermath of that briefing and into the transition was just how much the focus became on Pakistan." As Obama prepared to take office, Islamist militants rampaged in the Indian city of Mumbai. There were clear signs they had help from within Pakistan.
After taking office, Obama instructed CIA director Panetta to develop options for pursuing bin Laden and pour additional resources into the effort. While "a lot of good" had been done in the Bush years, the senior official said, resources for the CIA's bin Laden unit "fluctuated over time."
Obama wanted the effort revitalized and given a presidential imprimatur. With no public fanfare, the CIA escalated drone strikes on militants inside Pakistan.
ENDGAME
Obama was brought the lead about the Abbottabad compound in August 2010. Fewer than 10 people within the White House, and only a handful at the CIA, knew about it. By last month, that number had grown, as the CIA operators and military commandos who would execute a raid were read into developing operational plans.
At what would be a crucial, two-hour meeting on April 28, Obama, as is his custom, went around the room, asking each of his principal advisers for their views. At one point, laughter permeated the tension as each adviser prefaced his or her comments by saying, "This is a really hard call," the senior White House official said.
Obama was presented with four scenarios, some of which evoked the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" fiasco in Somalia: The team gets cleanly in and out with bin Laden. The team gets cleanly in and out, but bin Laden is not there. There's a messy situation on the ground, with fighting and casualties, and bin Laden is there. Worst of all was scenario four: the same as scenario three, but with no bin Laden in sight.
"There was discussion of catastrophic -- that was the word we used -- catastrophic outcomes where you had dead or injured U.S. personnel or a hostage-taking," the senior official said.
Obama left the room saying he had not yet made a decision, but a close aide knew that he had. "I knew with 100 percent certainty that he was going to decide to do this because I've worked for him for four years. I just knew. He said he'd do this."
Three days later, the group gathered in the White House Situation Room to monitor the raid as it unfolded. A mood of "tense silence" filled the room as Obama and the advisers waited for the next pieces of information. Then Panetta spoke the words U.S. officials had hoped to hear for years: "Geronimo" -- a code phrase meaning bin Laden had been found -- "EKIA." Enemy killed in action.
Amid a scramble to inform counterparts abroad, especially the Pakistanis, and to prepare for the release of the blockbuster news to the public, pizza and chips were brought in for fortification.
There would be tough questions ahead. Could U.S.-Pakistan relations be salvaged? Successful once, would Obama authorize similar raids against other leading militants? (Another top Obama aide would not "take that off the table.")
But now, there were at least a few moments for reflection. After years in the wilderness, literally and figuratively, the United States had got its man.
Obama walked along the White House colonnade to the East Room to deliver the news that many in the United States had by now guessed. He could hear the chants of "USA, USA" from a rally in Lafayette Park.
As Obama spoke, adviser and speechwriter Ben Rhodes turned to John Brennan, the president's top counter-terrorism adviser, and whispered: "How long have you been going after this guy?" Brennan immediately replied: "Fifteen years."
(This story was corrected to show proper date of indictment for embassy bombings.)
(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider in Pakistan; Writing by Warren Strobel; Editing by Kristin Roberts and Claudia Parsons)
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