A few weeks ago Charles Schultz’s syndicated Peanuts cartoon went apocalyptic.

Don’t you love the Mike Water’s “Joyful ‘toon” cartoon Greg Offenback came across this week? Talk about one sophisticated sheep! Look at him (or is it, her). Catching some rays on his outdoor recliner and reading the latest “Sheep Digest” magazine—Mr.

I realize that the times call for a bit of creativity now and then—but this creative? In a Black Friday mad dash for an Xbox video game console on sale, a woman at a Los Angeles Wal-Mart last week neutralized her competition (twenty other shoppers) racing for that same electronic toy.

Nathaniel Philbrick, in Mayflower, his acclaimed history of the Pilgrims, recounts how William Bradford, the intrepid leader of that courageous band of Puritans, years later described “that first morning in America.” Recalling with wonder their landing on the salty, windswept shores of Cape Cod Bay on November 15, 1620, Bradford wrote: “But here I cannot stay and make a pause and stand half amaz

The sirens wailed by as I was out jogging early Tuesday morning. From their sounds, it appeared that not only our Oronoko-Berrien Springs volunteer fire department was responding, but units from nearby towns as well. Only later did I learn of the deadly fire that engulfed an apartment building not far from campus.

Remember that rhyme about Europe? “Austria was Hungary, very very Hungary, ate a bit of Turkey, dipped in Greece. Long-legged Italy, kicked poor Sicily, into the Mediterranean Sea.” (http://wiki.answers.com) Just an old memory device for school children? Perhaps. But for the nations clustered around the Mediterranean today neither rhyme nor reason seems to depict their plight.

Let me be quick to paraphrase the words of Amos, “I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet” (see Amos 7:14). Truth is, living in the 24/7 news cycle of these tumultuous times, it doesn’t require mega-doses of prescience to make the following prediction here in this Fourth Watch blog.

On Monday Rome issued a bold 18-page response to and proposal for the burgeoning financial crisis engulfing the world.

“Here’s a Fourth Watch story for you,” emailed one of the readers of this blog. And I agree. Early Sunday morning, June 25, 2006, Corporal Gilad Shalit, a nineteen year old soldier with the Israel Defense Forces, was kidnapped by Hamas militants on the Israeli side of its border with Gaza.

Let’s talk health and the end of the world for a moment. You probably would have to be a man to have paid much attention to the two recent headlines that have challenged the medical community. Headline #1—a government panel of physicians and researchers released their findings last week with the recommendation that the simple P.S.A.