Mexico City - As the clock winds down to Dec. 21, experts on the Mayan calendar have been racing to convince people that the Mayas didn't predict an apocalypse for the end of this year.

Some experts are now saying the Mayas may indeed have made prophecies, just not about the end of the world.

Archaeologists, anthropologists and other experts met Friday in the southern Mexico city of Merida to discuss the implications of the Mayan Long Count calendar, which is made up of 394-year periods called baktuns.

Experts estimate the system starts counting at 3114 B.C., and will have run through 13 baktuns, or 5,125 years, around Dec. 21. Experts say 13 was a significant number for the Mayans, and the end of that cycle would be a milestone - but not an end.

Fears that the calendar does point to the end have circulated in recent years. People in that camp believe the Maya may have been privy to impending astronomical disasters that would coincide with 2012, ranging from explosive storms on the surface of the sun that could knock out power grids to a galactic alignment that could trigger a reversal in Earth's magnetic field.

Mexican government archaeologist Alfredo Barrera said Friday that the Mayas did prophesize, but perhaps about more humdrum events like droughts or disease outbreaks.

Election officials in six Florida counties are investigating what appears to be "hundreds" of cases of suspected voter fraud by a GOP consulting firm that has been paid nearly $3 million by the Republican National Committee to register Republican voters in five key battleground states, state officials tell NBC.

But the veteran GOP consultant, Nathan Sproul, who runs the firm, strongly defended his company's conduct, saying it has rigorous "quality controls" and blamed the alleged fraud on the actions of a few "bad apples," workers who were hired to register Republican voters for $12 an hour and then tried to "cheat the system."

The allegations of suspected voter fraud committed by Strategic Allied Consulting of Tempe, Arizona spread Thursday to counties throughout Florida. At the same time, the Republican National Committee said it had severed its ties to the firm altogether.

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  © UPPA Ltd.'Untouchable': Rantzen said Savile was made into a 'god-like figure'
  Alleged victim says: 'There was a little sort of couch and he would have me lie down on it and just do the sex act'
• Woman tells TV documentary he raped her in his dressing room
• 'We colluded with him as a child abuser, claims broadcaster Esther Rantzen
• She says people in TV 'blocked our ears' to rumours... Savile was made into a 'god-like figure'
• Sir Jimmy's nephew 'disgusted and disappointed' about allegations
• Personal assistant of 40 years claims accusers are starstruck fantasists

Five women have branded Sir Jimmy Savile a sexual predator who allegedly raped and abused them when they were underage schoolgirls.

The explosive sex grooming allegations are made in a documentary to be aired on national TV on Wednesday night.

The women, now in their fifties, claim Sir Jimmy was at the peak of his fame when he is said to have molested them in his Rolls-Royce, at a hospital, a school and the BBC Television centre

The BBC shelved a Newsnight investigation into allegations that Sir Jimmy Savile sexually abused a teenage girl in his dressing room at Television Centre, it has emerged.
The woman claimed that the presenter molested her when she was 14 or 15 after inviting her to recordings of Clunk Click, his 1970s BBC family show.

Newsnight tracked down several other women who claimed that Savile used his role on the programme to groom and abuse teenage girls.

Reporters on the current affairs programme were also told of claims that two other celebrities, both still alive, sexually abused girls at Television Centre in the 1970s.

The BBC had hoped to broadcast the Newsnight report in December, two months after Savile's death, but bosses ordered that the investigation be dropped.

Instead, the corporation screened two tribute programmes celebrating Savile's lengthy BBC career as presenter of Jim'll Fix It and Top of the Pops, and also as a Radio 1 DJ.

Updated at 12:34 p.m. ET: California has become the first state in the nation to ban therapy that tries to turn gay teens straight. Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed Senate Bill 1172, which prohibits children under age 18 from undergoing "sexual orientation change efforts." The law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, prohibits state-licensed therapists from engaging in these practices with minors.

"Governor Brown today reaffirmed what medical and mental health organizations have made clear: Efforts to change minors' sexual orientation are not therapy, they are the relics of prejudice and abuse that have inflicted untold harm on young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Californians," Clarissa Filgioun, board president of Equality California, said in a press release.

Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, added: "Governor Brown has sent a powerful message of affirmation and support to LGBT youth and their families. This law will ensure that state-licensed therapists can no longer abuse their power to harm LGBT youth and propagate the dangerous and deadly lie that sexual orientation is an illness or disorder that can be 'cured.'"

Madrid - On a recent evening, a hip-looking young woman was sorting through a stack of crates outside a fruit and vegetable store here in the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas as it shut down for the night.

At first glance, she looked as if she might be a store employee. But no. The young woman was looking through the day's trash for her next meal. Already, she had found a dozen aging potatoes she deemed edible and loaded them onto a luggage cart parked nearby.

"When you don't have enough money," she said, declining to give her name, "this is what there is."

The woman, 33, said that she had once worked at the post office but that her unemployment benefits had run out and she was living now on 400 euros a month, about $520. She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting "a little of everything" from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet.

Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution.

A report this year by a Catholic charity, Caritas, said that it had fed nearly one million hungry Spaniards in 2010, more than twice as many as in 2007. That number rose again in 2011 by 65,000.

As Spain tries desperately to meet its budget targets, it has been forced to embark on the same path as Greece, introducing one austerity measure after another, cutting jobs, salaries, pensions and benefits, even as the economy continues to shrink.

Most recently, the government raised the value-added tax three percentage points, to 21 percent, on most goods, and two percentage points on many food items, making life just that much harder for those on the edge. Little relief is in sight as the country's regional governments, facing their own budget crisis, are chipping away at a range of previously free services, including school lunches for low-income families.

The general strike was organized by Italy's two biggest unions.

The protesters demanded that the government give up its reform programme slashing government spending, including expenditures on social programmes.

The austerity measures also provide for tax increases and job cuts.

On May 13, in "Piezopoli, Italian thriller", we announced the discovery of a new form of energy extracted by fragmentation of stones and the transmutation of nuclear waste. To design and build a reactor capable of exploiting this energy, only one billion euros of public or private funds was needed. Today we are pleased to announce that the reactor is on sale thanks to the generosity of Francesco Fucilla, an industrialist head of a conglomerate, on which, as in the case of the Empire of Charles V, the sun never sets. This is because you can, by and large, find this particular empire only on the Internet.

The activities of the philanthropist - something of a Pico della Mirandola, i.e. 'shy and reserved' - include publications, awards, medals and degrees to honor scientists, partners and relatives whose creativity is a source of revolutionary innovations. With the participation of celebrated Italian researchers, or those who soon hope to be , Fucilla's group develops products that solve the problems of mankind. Based on resolutely 'alternative' scientific theories, these products include those that guarantee food security, multiply energy resources and treat almost every disease, known and unknown. The following is a brief world-view of the multinational Fucilla & Co., beginning with his 'man Friday', who is perhaps already familiar to some readers.

Three months after pledging to turn her life around and get a job, a lottery winner convicted of fraud has died from a suspected overdose.

In June Amanda Clayton pleaded no contest to fraud, having continued to collect state welfare handouts despite pocketing her $1 million prize.

She accepted her punishment and was said by her lawyer to be trying to move on. But on Saturday morning she was found dead at her Michigan home.

Ecorse police Sgt. Cornelius Herring confirmed that the 25-year-old's was discovered at about 9 am, thought to be the result of a drug overdose.

No further details were given and Clayton's relatives did not immediately return a phone message for comment.

Clayton won the Michigan Lottery in September 2011, continuing to collect $5,475 in food handouts over the subsequent months.

Brown signs open-carry ban on rifles and shotguns in cities, plus college, carpool bills.
Sacramento, California - Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Friday outlawing the open carrying of rifles and shotguns in cities across California.

The measure was among dozens of bills the governor approved that take effect Jan. 1, including proposals intended to help curb student fee hikes at the state's public universities and exempt hybrid drivers from toll charges in carpool lanes.

Brown also signed a measure banning state agencies from regulating Internet phone service - a priority for the tech industry - and took steps to establish a state-run retirement plan for low-wage, private-sector workers.

Brown vetoed bills that would have increased fines for Californians who use a cellphone while driving and required motorists to provide at least three feet of space between their vehicle and bicyclists they pass.

He has until the end of Sunday to act on proposals sent to him by the Legislature in the session that ended last month. Nearly 200 bills remain on his desk.

The gun measure sprang from the actions of gun rights advocates who toted long guns to coffee shops and other public places to declare their right to bear arms. It took on new urgency after the mass shootings at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater and a Milwaukee Sikh temple.