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SALT LAKE CITY -- A California ministry has again predicted the end of the world is at hand.
The Oakland-based Family Radio International that stirred a global frenzy when it predicted the rapture would take 200 million Christians to heaven on May 21, now says the cataclysmic event will destroy the globe on Friday.
But the world on Friday was undergoing its usual give and take with no signs of such an event.
Calls to the ministry in Oakland Thursday went to voicemail and were unreturned. Several followers who were contacted also declined comment.
The ministry and its 90-year-old leader, Harold Camping, have avoided the media and perhaps a repeat of the international mockery that followed when believers awoke on May 22 to find themselves still on Earth.
In other religion news
1. Megachurch investigated Federal officials say they're investigating issues surrounding investment seminars hosted by a metro Atlanta megachurch after some former members say they lost their retirement savings.
U.S. Secret Service spokesman Mark Ritchie says agents have seized laptops from employees at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia.
WSB-TV first reported details of the federal probe.
1. Muslim drivers fired
More than two dozen Somali Muslim drivers for Hertz at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are being fired after refusing to clock out for daily breaks during which they normally pray, according to media reports Thursday.
The 26 workers drive the company's rental cars to and from the airport for cleaning and refueling. They are among 34 Hertz employees suspended Sept. 30 for failing to clock out before breaks.
1. Jobs gave up Christianity
A new biography portrays Steve Jobs as a skeptic who gave up religion because he was troubled by starving children.
"Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, to be published Monday, says Jobs gave up Christianity at age 13 when he saw starving children on the cover of Life magazine. He asked his Sunday school pastor whether God knew what would happen to them.
Jobs never went back to church, though he did study Zen Buddhism later.
