DISENGAGEMENT LEAD TO ISRAELI WARS

1-WORLD QUAKES LAST 2 DAYS.2-Texas storms leave 5 dead, 1 missing. 3-China hit by deadly flooding, severe drought. 4-Mudslide, lightning strike kill 43 in China. 5-One killed, hundreds evacuated in France after storms. 6-New museum says dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark. 7-U.S. sends ammunition to Lebanon amid militant threat. 8-About 70 pct of Iran oil income in non-U.S. dollar. 9-Christian arrested for visiting Mecca. 10-Ex-Chief of Staff: Disengagement Led to Lebanon and Gaza Wars.

EARTHQUAKES

MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

WORLD QUAKES LAST 2 DAYS (USGS)

Update time = Sun May 27 12:01 PM EDT

MAY 27,07
MAP 3.0 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 2.9 KENAI PENINSULA, ALASKA
MAP 2.9 KENAI PENINSULA, ALASKA
MAP 4.8 COLOMBIA
MAP 3.6 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 4.1 FOX ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 2.5 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 5.0 SEA OF OKHOTSK

MAY 26,07
MAP 4.8 CASPIAN SEA, OFFSHORE TURKMENISTAN
MAP 3.7 BERING SEA
MAP 4.9 SOLOMON ISLANDS
MAP 3.2 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 3.7 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 3.1 ISLAND OF HAWAII, HAWAII
MAP 2.5 NORTHERN ALASKA
MAP 3.5 CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
MAP 2.7 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 4.9 MARIANA ISLANDS REGION
MAP 4.6 KURIL ISLANDS
MAP 5.2 EASTERN NEW GUINEA REG, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
MAP 4.9 SUMBAWA REGION, INDONESIA
MAP 2.8 COLORADO
MAP 4.9 FLORES SEA
MAP 5.5 SOUTHEAST OF EASTER ISLAND
MAP 5.4 TONGA REGION

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Texas storms leave 5 dead, 1 missing By ANABELLE GARAY, Associated Press Writer Sat May 26, 10:11 AM ET

DALLAS - Forecasters predicted more heavy thunderstorms in the Plains over the holiday weekend after two days of storms and flooding that left five people dead and one missing in central Texas.

Dozens of people were plucked from rising waters on Friday, and Gov. Rick Perry activated National Guard troops to be deployed in Waco, Austin and San Antonio for the weekend.NearFredericksburg, authorities were looking for a man whose sport utility vehicle was swept away during storms that have dumped about 8 inches of rain in the area since Thursday.Lt. Jim Judd of the Gillespie County sheriff's office said about 30 people spent Friday looking for Edgar Garcia, 22, who called his mother after he drove around a barricade blocking a swollen creek and got stuck.

Three people died in Killeen, police said. The bodies of two brothers, ages 5 and 6, were found early Friday in a submerged SUV. The boys were riding with their mother and two siblings Thursday when their vehicle was wiped off the road into a gully.Rescuers saved the mother and two siblings, but the swift-moving water rose too quickly for rescuers to help the boys trapped inside, said Garland Potvin, a Bell County justice of the peace.

Elsewhere in Killeen, the body of a 20-year-old man caught in rushing water was found lodged along a culvert, Potvin said.Outside Copperas Cove, a husband and wife died late Thursday after attempting to cross floodwaters in their vehicle, said Bill Price, a Coryell County justice of the peace.About 100 homes, apartment buildings and businesses sustained minor damage Friday, and a few minor injuries were reported, said Dennis Baker, the Bell County emergency management coordinator.

In Kansas, rivers and creeks continued to rise Friday in the central and south-central parts of the state following a downpour two days earlier. The most serious flooding was expected along the Arkansas River in Harvey County, the National Weather Service said.Floodwaters closed off all roads leading into the central Kansas town of New Cambria, Saline County emergency management officials said Friday. Rising rivers also covered many of the streets in the small town east of Salina.At least 60 homes and businesses were flooded but no injuries were reported, and only voluntary evacuations had been ordered.

China hit by deadly flooding, severe drought Fri May 25, 12:29 AM ET

BEIJING (AFP) - Torrential rain in southwest China triggered flash floods and mudslides that have left 21 dead, while a neighbouring region is suffering its worst drought in 60 years, state media reported Friday. A further 11 people are missing following the rains in Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality, Xinhua news agency said, in the latest extreme weather to ravage the country.

More than 360 people have been hurt and 112,000 evacuated in the disasters in a region that only last year endured its worst drought in half a century.Meanwhile, more than 1.6 million people in Gansu province to the north face drinking water shortages due to the worst drought there since the 1940s.

The dry spell, which has had no significant rainfall in some areas for more than two months, is endangering crops or delaying planting on 1.46 million hectares (3.6 million acres) of cropland, Xinhua quoted officials with the Gansu provincial flood control and drought relief office as saying.

China last year suffered a range of extreme weather events including exceptionally strong typhoons, floods, and droughts, which meteorological officials have partly attributed to the affects of climate change.Officials warned recently that similar weather is expected in 2007.

Mudslide, lightning strike kill 43 in China MAY 26,07

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Mudslides and floods caused by torrential rains, and lightning strikes in southwestern China's Sichuan province have killed 43 people and left many homeless over the past week, the Xinhua news agency said on Saturday. Twelve of the deaths took place in the province's Jiulong county, while nine people died when a bus was caught in a landslide on a Sichuan highway.

The bus slid down a 10-meter slope after it was hit by a falling rock, Xinhua said.Another landslide, also triggered by a rainstorm, killed seven in Leibo county, it said.Twelve people were missing after being washed away by mountain torrents or mud slides, Xinhua added.

The rest of the deaths were caused by floods or lightning strikes, Xinhua said.Lightning struck an elementary school in southwest China's Chongqing municipality on Wednesday, killing seven children and injuring 40 pupils and teachers, it said.The Ministry of Civil Affairs has dispatched a rescue team to the province, it said.About 32,000 people had been relocated as rainstorms inundated 500 houses and damaged 5,800 dwellings in Sichuan, Xinhua said, citing the ministry. Farms and some roads and bridges had also been damaged, it said.The rain in Chongqing lasted for 32 hours, forcing the local government to evacuate 112,300 people from their homes which caused a direct economic loss of 573 million yuan ($73.5 million), Xinhua cited the Chongqing government as saying.

One killed, hundreds evacuated in France after storms Sat May 26, 4:15 PM ET

PAU, France (AFP) - One woman died and several hundreds were evacuated in France following storms and flash floods in the country's south-west, officials said Saturday. An elderly woman thought to be around 70 who was alone when her home near the town of Pau was flooded on Friday, drowned to death, local officials said.Some 400 firefighters, police officials and rescue officials were pressed into service in the Ossau valley in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques region where more than 500 people were evacuated from their homes on Friday, they said.Rescuers were on Saturday pressing on with aid work and helping clean up devastated homes in the area, Christian Gueydan, a senior official in the local administration, told AFP.

Gueydan said about 300 homes have been flooded but added that there are certainly many more.He however added that those forced to leave their homes on Friday had all returned as the waters receded.Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie visited the area on Saturday and asked for all possible methods to speed up the work, her ministry said in a statement.Alliot-Marie said fire brigade officials had made more than 1,000 rescue actions in the south-west and the area in and around Paris.

Elsewhere, a house was badly damaged by lightning but there were no deaths or injuries while infrastructure was badly damaged in other places. Roads were cut off in some place but traffic resumed on Saturday.Heavy rains meanwhile lashed parts of north-eastern France.

New museum says dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark By Andrea Hopkins MAY 26,07

PETERSBURG, Ky (Reuters) - Like many modern museums, the newest U.S. tourist attraction includes some awesome exhibits roaring dinosaurs and a life-sized ship. But only at the Creation Museum in Kentucky do the dinosaurs sail on the ship Noah's Ark, to be precise.The Christian creators of the sprawling museum, unveiled on Saturday, hope to draw as many as half a million people each year to their state-of-the-art project, which depicts the Bible's first book, Genesis, as literal truth.While the $27 million (13.6 million pound) museum near Cincinnati has drawn snickers from media and condemnation from U.S. scientists, those who believe God created the heavens and the Earth in six days about 6,000 years ago say their views are finally being represented.What we've done here is to give people an opportunity to hear information that is not readily available ... to challenge them that really you can believe the Bible's history, said Ken Ham, president of the group Answers in Genesis that founded the museum.

Here exhibits show the Grand Canyon took just days to form during Noah's flood, dinosaurs coexisted with humans and had a place on Noah's Ark, and Cain married his sister to people the earth, among other Biblical wonders.Scientists, secularists and moderate Christians have pledged to protest the museum's public opening on Monday. An aircraft trailing a Thou Shalt Not Lie banner buzzed overhead during the museum's opening news conference.Opponents argue that children who see the exhibits will be confused when they learn in school that the universe is 14 billion years old rather than 6,000.Teachers don't deserve a student coming into class saying Gee Mrs. Brown, I went to this fancy museum and it said you're teaching me a lie, Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Centre for Science Education, told reporters before the museum opened.A Gallup poll last year showed almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.Three of 10 Republican presidential candidates said in a recent debate that they did not believe in evolution.

U.S. sends ammunition to Lebanon amid militant threat By Nazih Siddiq MAY 26,07

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (Reuters) - The United States sent more ammunition on Saturday to Lebanon, whose army is struggling to defeat a group of heavily armed Islamist militants holed up inside a Palestinian refugee camp.

The militant Fatah al-Islam group, which has vowed to fight to the death, said in a statement the U.S. military supplies included nerve gas and cluster bombs.If they use unconventional weapons against us, we will respond with unconventional attacks everywhere, said the statement, read by the group's spokesman Abu Salim Taha.A military spokesman said he had no reaction to these false allegations which are not worth commenting on.Three U.S. Air Force cargo planes landed at Beirut's airport and unloaded ammunition and other equipment for the army, airport sources said. Six planes carrying similar military aid from the U.S. and Arab allies arrived on Friday.

The shipments, promised months ago but rushed after fighting erupted between the army and Fatah al-Islam on May 20, arrived as Lebanese soldiers beefed up their positions around Nahr al-Bared camp, the militants' main base.Security forces searched buildings and houses in the nearby port city of Tripoli and other villages in search of militants who may have slipped through the cordon, security sources said.A fragile truce between the combatants has held since Tuesday despite sporadic clashes.

The fighting, the worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war, has killed at least 78 people 33 soldiers, 27 militants and 18 civilians.

TRAGIC SITUATION

Thousands who fled the fighting are sheltering in a nearby refugee camp and other areas. Around 150 refugees, mostly women and children, left Nahr al-Bared camp on Saturday.The situation inside is tragic. There is large-scale destruction. Our homes are in ruins, Abdel A'al, a refugee, told Reuters as he left the camp, home to around 40,000 people before the conflict.The International Committee of the Red Cross was delivering 30 tons of food to 12,000 displaced refugees, an ICRC spokesperson said. A 12-truck convoy from the United Arab Emirates also arrived in the area and began distributing aid.Lebanese leaders have vowed to stamp out Fatah al-Islam, which is led by a Palestinian but has little support among Lebanon's Palestinian refugee community of around 400,000.Officials said they were giving mediators a chance to persuade the militants to surrender before ordering the army to move into the camp. The Lebanese army is banned from entering Lebanon's 12 refugee camps under a 1969 Arab agreement.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that storming Nahr al-Bared would mark a red line and would plunge the country into an uncontrollable cycle of violence.Shi'ite Hezbollah is the country's most powerful group but is at odds with the country's anti-Syrian ruling majority.An al Qaeda-linked group has threatened to carry out bombings in Lebanon and attacks on Christians unless Beirut withdraws its army from around Nahr al-Bared.Three bombs have hit the Beirut area this week, killing one woman and wounding about 20 people. Anti-Syrian Lebanese leaders say Fatah al-Islam is a tool of Syrian intelligence. Damascus and the group deny the charge. (Additional reporting by Nadim Ladki in Beirut)

About 70 pct of Iran oil income in non-U.S. dollar By Peg Mackey
Sat May 26, 5:56 AM ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran, embroiled in a row with Washington over its nuclear program, has increased the amount of its oil export earnings in currencies other than U.S. dollars to about 70 percent, an Iranian official said on Saturday. The figure is up from 60 percent cited in March for Iran's non-dollar oil export income and reflects the No. 2 OPEC producer's policy of reducing exposure to the greenback.

About 70 percent of our oil export income is now in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, international affairs director of the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), told Reuters.If the dollar gets weaker, we will increase that percentage, said Ghanimifard, who in March had cited a figure of 60 percent for Iran's oil export income in other currencies.

Iranian officials have said they are seeking to limit dollar-denominated trade. The central bank governor has said Iran was seeking to distance itself from dollars and held just 20 percent of its foreign reserves in the U.S. currency.We are following our government's monetary policy not to depend on the weak U.S. dollar, Ghanimifard said, speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Tehran organized by Iran's Ravand Institute for Economic and International Studies.

The United States has been leading efforts to try to isolate Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington says involves a covert plan to make atomic bombs, a charge Tehran denies.

COMPENSATING FOR SHORTFALL

Washington has slapped sanctions on two Iranian banks, a move that unnerved some international banks working with Iranian businesses and prompted many to halt dollar transactions. U.N. sanctions have added to worries by targeting an Iranian bank.The U.S. administration has tried to deprive NIOC of money. We have found other ways to compensate for the shortfall. Proof of that is that our oil production capacity and production of gas and petrochemical products have increased, Ghanimifard said.A chunk of money came from the Oil Stabilization Fund (OSF) and some from an additional budgetary hard currency allocation to NIOC, he said.Iranian media said this week Iran planned to use foreign exchange reserves to finance a $2 billion development of parts of its South Pars gas field after a French bank pulled out.

The OSF, a fund set up to save windfall oil earnings in times of need, forms part of the country's foreign reserves.Industry sources say Iran now produces about 4 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil and exports about 2.4 million bpd. In the year to March, Iran earned about $53 billion from its oil exports, an oil official said.Ghanimifard said that figure could be higher in the current Iranian year to
March if oil prices continued to rise.Benchmark Brent crude is now hovering around $70 a barrel, within sight of last year's record highs. Iranian crude tends to trade several dollars below Brent prices.

FAITH UNDER FIRE
Christian arrested for visiting Mecca Only Muslims are allowed to enter Islam's holy cityMay 26, 2007- 1:00 a.m. Eastern - WorldNetDaily.com

When Saudi authorities discovered a man working in Mecca was a Christian, they immediately arrested him, highlighting the desert kingdom's law barring non-Muslims from the Islamic holy city.

The Saudi regime's Expatriates Monitoring Committee used a new high-tech finger-print system to identify Nirosh Kamanda of Sri Lanka as a Christian, reported Arab News, the government-approved English-language paper. The Grand Mosque and the holy city are forbidden to non-Muslims, said Col. Suhail Matrafi, head of the department in charge of Expatriates Affairs in Mecca. The new fingerprints system is very helpful and will help us a lot to discover the identity of a lot of criminals and overstayers.Highway sign warns non-Muslims not to stray on wrong path Kamanda came to the Saudi city of Dammam to work as a truck driver and left his sponsor to sell goods near Mecca's Grand Mosque, Arab News reported. The sponsor reportedly denied he knew where Kamanda was working.

He fled six months after coming to the kingdom, the sponsor said. I have no idea how he reached Mecca.Arab News said that after Kamanda's identity became known, he admitted he was a Christian and had come to Mecca to earn money.

I heard that Mecca is a safe place, where I could hide my identity, he said. The U.S. State Department, in its annual reports on human rights worldwide, consistently has stated religious freedom does not exist in Saudi Arabia, which is dominated by the strict Wahhibist interpretation of Islam. In the kingdom, the State Department says, non-Muslim worshippers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation and sometimes torture for engaging in religious activity that attracts official attention.The Saudi royal family has stated it permits non-Muslims to practice their own religion in the privacy of their homes, but many arrests have been made of worshippers in house churches. In 2004, for the first time, the State Department named Saudi Arabia a country of particular concern, subjecting it to possible sanctions for egregious and ongoing violations of religious freedom.

In the U.S., an estimated 80 percent of mosques are supported largely with funds and imams from Saudi Arabia. As WorldNetDaily reported, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings in 2005 in response to a yearlong study by a Washington human-rights group asserting the government of Saudi Arabia is disseminating propaganda through American mosques that teaches hatred of Jews and Christians and instructs Muslims that they are on a mission behind enemy lines in a land ofunbelievers.

Responding to the report by the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, 15 senators, including Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanding the Bush administration take stronger action against Riyadh.

Ex-Chief of Staff: Disengagement Led to Lebanon and Gaza Wars
by Ezra HaLevi (INN) MAY 27,07

Former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said Saturday that Ariel Sharon's 2005 Disengagement Plan is what led to the Second Lebanon War and brought southern Israel under fire from Gaza.

Yaalon, who was replaced as Chief of Staff just before the Disengagement Plan's implementation due to his semi-public disapproval of the plan, said on Channel 2s Meet the Press program that the only solution to Israels current situation is a return of the IDF to Gaza. The unilateral approach that drove the Disengagement Plan has failed and Israel must abandon it, he said. The Disengagement is seen by the other side as Israel fleeing, he added.Yaalon said that no solution other than reversing the IDFs departure from Gaza is tenable. The problems in Gaza won't go away, he said. Nobody can solve it for us - not Egypt and not an international force You have to be blind to think entering Gaza in unnecessary.

In order to get the other side to recognize our right to exist as an independent Jewish State, we have to come off forceful.We have to strike the terrorists, hit their workshops and hit their infrastructure, Ya'alon continued. We did it in [2002s] Operation Defensive Shield, although we had our reservations before launching that operation as well.Yaalon qualified his statements, saying he was not talking about staying in Gaza or reestablishing the Jewish towns there destroyed during the Disengagement.

I'm not talking about going in and staying there. I'm talking about cleaning the place up, he said. I'm not talking about ruling the city, but if we do not go in now, when they are firing at Sderot we will soon find ourselves with rockets in Ashdod.