News stories by Bill Berkowitz*

Two movies with doomsday scenarios highlight this year's pre-holiday releases - '2012', a special effects spectacular, is based on the Mayan calendar, whose end date - not to be confused with the end of the world, most scholars agree - is Dec. 21, 2012.

Earlier this month, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon went to Washington to introduce 'As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen', his autobiography that, according to the Moon-owned Washington Times, 'recounts the joys and challenges, the teachable moments and the monumental experiences of his life - much of it spent as a spiritual leader.'

Pastor Rick Warren would never be described as laid back. However, since delivering the invocation at President Barack Obama's inauguration in late January, he's been somewhat on the down low.

A recent report issued - and later withdrawn - by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis warned of the possibility of an up-tick in violent activities by right-wing extremist groups.

She’s a politically savvy history student at the University of California, Los Angeles who is appearing on countless conservative talk radio programmes and cable television news shows.

In December of 1773, colonists in Boston - then a town in the British colony of Massachusetts - protested against the British government after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain.

During a recent appearance on the Fox News Channel's 'Fox and Friends' programme, Mike Evans accused former President Jimmy Carter of everything from helping overthrow the Shah of Iran to causing the Russians to invade Afghanistan and provoking the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.

While the alleged Ponzi scheme of New York investment manager Bernie Madoff has claimed significant chunks of the fortunes of a number of well-known charities, celebrities and not-so familiar millionaires, over the years another outfit appears to have left a trail of a different sort - the broken dreams of thousands of wannabe entrepreneurs who were left with garages full of dust-gathering products, motivational tapes and how-to-get-rich-quick books.

For a president who had little to do but pardon turkeys on Thanksgiving and throw the switch on the national Christmas tree, little to look forward to but packing his bags and evacuating the White House, and less positive accomplishments to look back on than most presidents, this year's World AIDS Day was clearly a high point. And Pastor Rick Warren was there to share the spotlight with him.