Imposing a sentence that had been agreed to months earlier, at a Thursday hearing that gave victims a chance to make their feelings known, a federal judge in Manhattan gave Peter Madoff a 10-year prison term for his role in his brother Bernard Madoff's infamous Ponzi scheme.

An attorney by training, Peter Madoff, now 67, served as chief compliance officer for a swindle that reportedly cost investors nearly $20 billion in principal and previously earned mastermind Bernard Madoff, now 74, a 150-year term. The younger brother admittedly falsified books and records for the purported hedge fund that served as a front for the Ponzi scheme operated by Bernard Madoff's investment firm, but said he had no idea that a wholesale fraud was ongoing on his watch, according to Bloomberg, the DealBook page of the New York Times and Reuters.

As investigators found after the fraud came to light, the hedge fund, despite purportedly purchasing large amounts of stock, had made no trades whatsoever for years. Thus, any effort, either by Peter Madoff or the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which several times looked into the Madoff firm's operations, to spot-check claimed stock purchases should have revealed the swindle some time before Bernard Madoff confessed it to his sons in late 2008. By that time, the scheme's assets had dwindled to $300 million and Peter Madoff reportedly participated in a plan to pay out those funds to employees, family members and friends. However, Bernard Madoff's sons alerted authorities and the firm collapsed before the payouts were executed.

U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain also ordered Madoff to pay $143 billion in restitution, which will strip him of assets and, the judge said, assure his "financial ruination," although he has no realistic prospect of paying this amount.

Washington - The nation's most powerful gun-rights lobby called Friday for armed security guards in schools, saying that children had been left vulnerable in their classrooms.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, said that "the monsters and the predators of the world" have exploited the fact that schools are gun-free zones. Other important institutions - from banks to airports to sports stadiums - are protected with armed security, he said, but this country has left students defenseless.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," Mr. LaPierre said at a news conference Friday morning.

The comments were the most extensive statements the NRA has made since the Dec. 14 killings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and six adults dead. The gunman also killed his mother and himself. The organization issued a statement earlier this week expressing shock and sadness over the shootings.

In the aftermath of the attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School, much of the national conversation has focused on gun-control measures. But on Friday, Mr. LaPierre said that time should not be wasted on legislation that won't work.

Mr. LaPierre said that the media rewards monsters who would shoot school children by giving them the attention that they crave, and he suggested that some other deranged individual already is planning the next attack.

"The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters, people that are so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can ever possibly comprehend them," Mr. LaPierre said.

Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania - A prosecutor says four people are dead, including the suspected gunman, in a shooting along a rural road in central Pennsylvania.

Blair County District Attorney Rich Consiglio says three people were shot Friday morning in Frankstown Township, about 110 kilometres west of Harrisburg.

Mr. Consiglio says two men and a woman were shot and killed and the suspected gunman also died.

State police say one trooper was struck by gunfire but escaped serious injury because the shot struck his bulletproof vest.

Mr. Consiglio says a second trooper was hit by shattered glass and a third was in a crash involving the gunman.

He says the public isn't at risk. Township supervisor Mark Schroyer says nearby schools weren't placed on lockdown.

The identities of the victims and gunman weren't immediately released.

The shootings, exactly a week after a massacre of 20 children and six adults at a school in Connecticut, "happened over a large area" near Geeseyetown, in a remote part of the eastern U.S. state, Diane Meling, a spokeswoman for the Blair County Emergency Management Agency, told AFP.

Source: The Associated Press ; With a report from Agence France-Presse

Four people were killed, including the gunman, and three state troopers were injured Friday in a series of shootings over a wide area of central Pennsylvania, authorities said.

Blair County District Attorney Richard Consiglio told NBC station WJAC of Johnstown, Pa., that one of the troopers was shot, one was injured in a vehicle crash and one was injured by residue from gunfire. None sustained life-threatening injuries in the shooting incident, which occurred at multiple locations over several miles near Geeseytown.

Police and emergency officials told NBC News that they could give no other details. But the Blair County Emergency Management Agency said it was calling in counselors for the public to a command center they set up at the Geeseytown Fire Station.

In an article on Sott.net earlier this year entitled How is the World Going to End in 2012?, Laura Knight-Jadczyk wrote:

The world is ending in 2012. That is, the final implementation of the fascist, totalitarian New World Order will be accomplished this year and you will be in that "New World" that the global elite have designed for you, and planned to implement for a very long time now. Oh, indeed, similar New World Orders have been staged in the past on smaller scales, but this time it's global because they are all in on it together! Former 'New World Orders' didn't really fail, even if they ostensibly fell; they've just been passing the torch around for millennia, spreading the disease, growing the sickness in society, until finally, now, with global communication and incredible weapons of destruction in their hands, they are ready to finalize the Faustian bargain that you, the people, signed with your blood.

That's what 2012 is all about. It's not about some grand and glorious transformation or ascension to another existence! It's not about being 'raptured' to heaven at the right hand of Jesus because you helped to 'initiate the Eschaton'! It's not about 'Starseeds' being taken aboard spacecraft and getting airlifted to some other planet of the '5th dimension', but it is also not about 'life continuing on as normal'. Pure and simple, prophecy is coming true, it's just that it's going to be much more mundane and much less sensational than you might have imagined. It is the end of your world as normal, free human beings, and your reduction to pure grinding slave-hood, your children turned over to be sex toys or cannon fodder for psychopaths, and there's nothing you can do about it now.

Those are some pretty serious charges! Are they in any way an accurate description of human life on planet earth at the end of 2012?

Merida, Mexico - In the darkness before dawn Friday, spiritualists prepared white clothes, drums, conch shells and incense ahead of the sunrise they believe will herald the birth of a new and better age as a vast, 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan calendar comes to an end.

No one was quite sure at what time the Mayas' 13th Baktun would officially end on this Dec. 21. Some think it already ended at midnight Thursday. Others looked to Friday's dawn here in the Maya heartland. Some had later times in mind.

"Wait until the dawn on the 22nd; that is when we Maya will speak," Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu said earlier in Guatemala, another Maya area.

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History even suggested that historical calculations to synchronize the Mayan and Western calendars might be off a few days. It said the Mayan Long Count calendar cycle might not really end until Sunday.

Whatever the details, the chance to welcome a new time seemed to be the main concern among celebrants drawn to the Yucatan peninsula.

Many people who came to Yucatan for the occasion were already calling it "a new sun" and "a new era."

"The galactic bridge has been established," announced spiritual leader Alberto Arribalzaga at a "galactic connection" ceremony Thursday in Merida. "The cosmos is going to take us to a higher level of vibration ... where humanity is in glory, in joy,"

What nobody was calling it is the end of the world, as some people in recent years have interpreted the meaning of the end of the 13th Baktun - despite the insistence of archeologists and the Maya themselves it meant no such thing.

"We'll still have to pay taxes next year," said Gabriel Romero, a Los Angeles-based spiritualist who uses crystal skulls in his ceremonies.

If the chanting and dancing of a crystal skull ceremony held Thursday weren't end fears of an apocalypse, scientists chimed in, too.

Stop the world - I wanna get off!

A sexy swimsuit model and countless other lusty New Yorkers say tomorrow's predicted Mayan apocalypse is a great reason to have sex, and are turning to social media and doomsday-themed parties in hopes of fully experiencing humanity's steamy climax.

"If I die, I don't want to die on a dry spell!" declared model Niki Ghazian.

The sexy fashion plate, who works in New York and Los Angeles, told The Post she'll attend a fashion party with friends tonight to celebrate Doomsday Eve - and, hopefully, hook up with someone hot.

"Everybody should go out feeling satisfied," she told The Post. "If the world's gonna end, why hold back?"

All the horny hubbub has been caused by a doomsday prediction made by the ancient Mayan calendar, which predicts the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, at 11:11 a.m.

While some people around the world are arming themselves and digging into bunkers, many New Yorkers are simply hoping for a hot time.

If there's one government agency really looking forward to Dec. 22, it's NASA.


The space agency said it has been flooded with calls and emails from people asking about the purported end of the world - which, as the doomsday myth goes, is apparently set to take place on Dec. 21, 2012.

The myth might have originated with the Mayan calendar, but in the age of the Internet and social media, it proliferated online, raising questions and concerns among hundreds of people around the world who have turned to NASA for answers.

Dwayne Brown, an agency spokesman, said NASA typically receives about 90 calls or emails per week containing questions from people. In recent weeks, he said, that number has skyrocketed - from 200 to 300 people are contacting NASA per day to ask about the end of the world.

"Who's the first agency you would call?" he said. "You're going to call NASA."

The questions range from myth (Will a rogue planet crash into Earth? Is the sun going to explode? Will there be three days of darkness?) to the macabre (Brown said some people have "embraced it so much" they want to hurt themselves). So, he said, NASA decided to do "everything in our power" to set the facts straight.

No ... the World WON'T End on December 21st!

The Mayan 2012 end of the world "prophecy" is scaring the pants off numerous children and suicidal teeangers. CBS News Detroit reports today:

Thousands of students will have an extra long holiday break after school administrators in at least three Michigan counties decided to cancel classes because of talk surrounding the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut and rumors connected to the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world.

Five districts in Lapeer County and 20 districts in Genesee County posted announcements Wednesday evening cancelling classes Thursday and Friday.
***
Rumors connected to the Mayan calendar predicted end of the world on Friday have also surfaced," a letter from Matt Wandrie, Superintendent of Lapeer Community Schools said.

1-in-10 people believe that the Mayans have prophesied the end of the world (and see this). A Google search for "Maya 2012″ currently brings up hundreds of millions of hits (and see this and this).

Alistair Stewart, 53, pretended he was running a hedge fund in Switzerland

Harvard-educated Nina Siegenthaler fell for his sophisticated charms

Miss Siegenthaler told court Stewart is a 'cunning predator'

Stewart jailed for five-and-a-half years at Old Bailey

A Sotheby's executive yesterday told how she felt 'violated' after being seduced out of £800,000 by a benefits-claiming conman posing as a Goldman Sachs billionaire.

Harvard-educated Nina Siegenthaler, 37, fell for the sophisticated charms and 'A-list acting skills' of former Charterhouse schoolboy and Cambridge University drop-out Alistair Stewart.

She branded him a sociopath and said she had believed his 'countless lies' about being a hedge fund manager with properties worldwide.

She gave him her £630,000 life savings to invest, plus £154,000 for him to rent a luxury home for them in the Caribbean.

In reality, Stewart was orchestrating his fraud from a council flat in Burgess Hill, West Sussex, where he lived for most of the time on incapacity benefits.

He blew almost all her cash in four months on a £55,000 Mercedes, private jets, stays at the Ritz and Hyde Park Tower hotels, chauffeur-driven shopping trips to Harrods and jaunts in helicopters.

Yesterday, as 53-year-old Stewart was jailed for five-and-a-half years at the Old Bailey, Miss Siegenthaler called him a 'cunning predator'.

She said: 'He is one of the most intelligent, charismatic and seemingly generous people I have met.

'He is also a cunning predator, a man without conscience or moral compass. His ultimate aim is not to rob, though he certainly will do that, but to control and manipulate.'