Delta Blue Squadron

PALATKA, FL — Palatka police are looking for a man who robbed a store clerk of his shorts.

Authorities say a man went into the store at 700 North 19th street with a white shirt wrapped around his head and a plastic bag covering a gun in his hand.

Investigators say the man took a cash box, a handgun, and the clerk’s blue jean shorts.

Detectives say the man was last seen getting into a white car, possibly a buick, behind the store. He is described as a black male, 6 feet tall, 200 pounds with short dreads.

Anyone with information should contact the Palatka Police Department at (386) 329-0110.

The devastation wrought in Myanmar by Tropical Cyclone Nargis is revealed in new NASA satellite images.

Nargis made landfall with sustained winds of 130 mph and gusts of 150 to 160 mph, the equivalent of a strong Category 3 or minimal Category 4 hurricane, according to Accuweather.com. The death toll could exceed 100,000, officials said.

Flooding is difficult to capture in pictures, even from satellites, particularly when the water is muddy. NASA used both visible and infrared light to make floodwaters more obvious.

The before and after views of the Myanmar coast and Irrawaddy Delta, where much of the devastation occurred, were generated by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite. Water is blue or nearly black, vegetation is bright green, bare ground is tan and clouds are white or light blue.

An image from April 15, 2008, shows dark blue or nearly black water that sharply outlines the shore, the Irrawaddy River (which flows south through the left-hand side of the image). The wetlands near the shore are a deep blue green. Cyclone Nargis came ashore across the Mouths of the Irrawaddy and followed the coastline northeast.

The entire coastal plain is flooded in an image taken on May 5. Here, much of Myanmar is seen as a combination of blue water and turquoise muddy runoff into the Gulf of Martaban. Previously tan areas without vegetation are flooded, such as the 4-million population city of Yangon. The cyclone’s path is clearly visible as it moved northeast along the coast from the Mouths of the Irrawaddy. Light blue or white
clouds float above the flooded landscape.

Three children were recently removed from a remote church compound called Strong City in New Mexico. There had been allegations that children at the cult may have been sexually abused, though the matter remains under investigation and charges have yet to be filed.

The leader of the group, Wayne Bent, claims to be the son of God.

In early 2007, Bent said that the world would end on Halloween of that year. That apparently fell through, however Bent was undeterred and has updated his prophecy to say that the Apocalypse will happen at any moment: “The seven last plagues are all falling now and the end of all things is at hand,” Bent wrote on his church’s Web site.

Failed doomsday predictions are nothing new, of course. There have been thousands of people predicting the imminent end of the world, dating back to at least 2800 B.C. They have all been wrong for thousands of years (or however how long since they spoke), but that doesn’t keep people from trying.

End-times claims are often rooted in Bible passages, but also based on everything from schizophrenia to misunderstood astronomy. Most doomsday promoters are quite sincere, genuinely believing that
they have discovered a (literally) Earth-shaking secret that must be shared with others.

Doomsday deferred

It seems quaint now, but as the last century came to a close, there was fear of the “Y2K bug,” the computer programming glitch that supposedly was going to bring the world to its knees as the millennium turned. The news media ran alarmist stories of possible consequences, ranging from the timing on your coffeemaker being off to a global nuclear war started by mistakenly-launched missiles.

While most people were only mildly concerned, many stocked up on survival gear, and some even headed to remote areas to wait out the impending holocaust.

And it wasn’t just the Y2K bug; there were dozens of predictions that the world would end in 2000 (just as there had been a century earlier — some things never change). For example, author Richard Noone decided that the planets would align catastrophically almost exactly eight years ago, on May 5, 2000. The result would be the end of civilization through the melting and shifting of the polar icecaps.

Noone was so concerned about it he wrote a book titled “5/5/2000: Ice, The Ultimate Disaster.” (About 18 months before doomsday, I interviewed Mr. Noone about his book and prophecy; when we concluded, I
asked if we could arrange a follow-up interview on May 6, 2000, just in case the world didn’t end. He declined. Noone’s book is currently for sale on Amazon.com for 1 cent.)

Now what?

So how do true believers react when it’s clear that the world didn’t end? In many cases, followers have sold or given away all their possessions, assuming that they would have no need of them after the apocalypse. There must be some red faces as the hour of judgment comes … and goes.

You might also think that followers would decide they’d been fooled and rebel. More often, however, the failed prophecy actually makes their belief stronger. In the case of cults, members have invested their money, time, lives, and sometimes even children in the cult leader. It’s very difficult to suddenly reject all
that, since their very identity is often linked to the beliefs.

Believers may rationalize away the failure in one or more of the following ways: They may decide that the end is in fact near, but that the time or date was simply misinterpreted and move the true end-times date forward (as Wayne Bent did); they may decide that their faith and prayer actually saved the world and averted disaster; or they may believe that the end of the world did in fact occur, but nobody else noticed it because it was a mystical or spiritual apocalypse, not a physical one. For more on the psychology of failed apocalyptic predictions, see Leon Festinger’s classic book “When Prophecy Fails.”

The latest fad in end-times predictions is for the year 2012, which (depending on which “expert” you listen to) will supposedly bring about either a new age of global spiritual awakening, or the end of the world. Or maybe something in between.

There are several Web sites dedicated to cataloging hundreds of past doomsdays. One of the best is A Brief History of the Apocalypse. Check the site in 2013 to see what it says.

DAISETTA, Texas (AP) — Geologists said a 260-foot-deep sinkhole that grew to the length of three football fields over just two days seemed to be slowing down Thursday, but it could take months before it’s clear whether surrounding areas are stable.

The Daisetta, Texas, sinkhole quickly grew to 260 feet deep and 900 feet long.

The 900-foot-long sinkhole, with crumbling dirt around its edges resembling sharp teeth, has swallowed oil tanks and barrels, tires, telephone poles and several vehicles in Daisetta, a once-booming oil town of about 1,000 residents about 60 miles northeast of Houston, Texas.

Residents feared the appetite of the sinkhole, which began as a 20-foot hole in the ground on Wednesday, would continue unabated Thursday and threaten nearby homes. But by Thursday afternoon officials and
geologists allayed those concerns.

“We’re not sure it has completely stopped. We’re confident it has slowed down,” said Tom Branch, coordinator of the Liberty County Office of Emergency Management. “We feel a whole lot better today.”

A day earlier, Branch, other officials and residents had watched as large chunks of earth, as well as the oil field equipment, trees and vehicles tumbled into the crater. The mixture of oil and mud at the bottom of the sinkhole made it look like a tar pit.

Carl Norman, a geologist working with officials, said he planned to measure the change of ground elevation around the sinkhole over the next few days to try to determine whether it is still growing or is stabilized. But he added, “It will be at least three months before we can say if it’s stable or not.”

Jayme Downs, whose home is about 300 yards from the sinkhole, said she wasn’t sure if her nerves can hold out that long.

“I’m very worried,” Downs said as she and her 5-year-old daughter stood in front of the local high school, about a quarter of a mile from the sinkhole. Classes were in session Thursday.

“You don’t know what is going to happen. There’s no way to tell. The whole town could cave in. You never know,” she said.

Officials said any further growth of the sinkhole probably would be very slow and if nearby homes were in danger, there would be warning. There are about 100 homes in the immediate area.

Cpl. Hugh Bishop with the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office said no homes had been evacuated and there had been no reports of injuries.

Officials are still trying to figure out what caused the sinkhole.

Daisetta sits on a salt dome, a natural formation created below the ground over millions of years where oil brine and natural gas accumulate. Oil drilling in the area, still dotted with working oil derricks, might have weakened the dome and caused it to collapse, Norman said.

But the sinkhole might also be a natural occurrence caused by groundwater leaking into the salt dome and dissolving parts of it.

Don Van Nieuwenhuise, a geosciences professor at the University of Houston, said oil production usually doesn’t affect the integrity of a salt dome. He said he thinks the sinkhole is probably related to saltwater waste that is being stored underground in the area. The saltwater is a byproduct of oil production and has to be stored underground so it won’t contaminate water supplies and the environment.

“It probably fractured part of the salt dome and it’s leaking out,” he said.

Investigators with the Texas Railroad Commission were checking pipelines and trying to determine if any regulations have been violated. Officials with Texas Natural Resources and Conservation were monitoring air and water quality. So far, no pollutants have been detected.

Petroleum refiner Sunoco Inc. secured two 6-inch crude oil pipelines near the sinkhole that had started to leak Wednesday.