PRESIDENT OBAMA has been caught in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a Washington, DC Hotel with a former campaign aide, sources say.

And now, a hush-hush security video that shows everything could topple both Obama’s presidency and marriage to Michelle!

A confidential investigation has learned that Obama first became close to gorgeous 35 year-old VERA BAKER in 2004 when she worked tirelessly to get him elected to the US Senate, raising millions in campaign contributions.

While Baker has insisted in the past that “nothing happened” between them, the ENQUIRER has learned that top anti-Obama operatives are offering more than $1 million to witnesses to reveal what they know about the alleged hush-hush affair.

Among those being offered money is a limo driver who says that he took Vera to a secret hotel rendezvous where the President was staying.

On the condition of anonymity, the limo driver said he took Baker “from a friend’s home in the DC area to the Hotel George where I learned later that Obama would be spending the night.”

The driver recalled that he “waited in the lobby while she went to change her outfit. 

“But to the best of knowledge she did not have a room at the hotel and she was not staying there so I thought that it was a bit odd.”

A computer game retailer revealed that it legally owns the souls of thousands of online shoppers, thanks to a clause in the terms and conditions agreed to by online shoppers.

The retailer, British firm GameStation, added the “immortal soul clause” to the contract signed before making any online purchases earlier this month. It states that customers grant the company the right to claim their soul.

“By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions.”

GameStation’s form also points out that “we reserve the right to serve such notice in 6 (six) foot high letters of fire, however we can accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by such an act. If you a) do not believe you have an immortal soul, b) have already given it to another party, or c) do not wish to grant Us such a license, please click the link below to nullify this sub-clause and proceed with your transaction.”

A firestorm over racially and ethnically charged incidents at several University of California campuses spread Tuesday as UC San Diego announced a KKK-style hood was found on campus and students in Los Angeles and Irvine demonstrated against intolerance.

“What kind of campus promotes an environment that allows people to think it’s acceptable to target people for their ethnicity, gender or sexuality?” said Corey Matthews, one of about 200 mostly minority UCLA students who held a lunchtime rally.

“It’s something about the tone of the environment that allows this.” At UC Irvine, about 250 people gathered for a “student solidarity speakout” to condemn the recent spate of racist incidents at UC San Diego that targeted black students and another incident last month at UC Davis, which targeted a Jewish student with a swastika carved on her door, said Marya Bangee, an event organizer.

The protests came on the same day UC San Diego announced the discovery of a white pillowcase fashioned into a KKK-style hood—the third racist incident around the campus in as many weeks—and a day after UC Santa Cruz officials found an image of a noose scribbled on the inside of a bathroom door.

Officials found the hood, which bore a hand-drawn circle and cross, on a statue of children’s book author Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, outside the main campus library late Monday. A rose had been inserted between the statue’s fingers.

Citing what he described as the “the persecution of a great hero who rid their land of Godless communists” as a possible cause, prominent TV evangelist and amateur seismologist Pat Robertson today argued that the 8.8 magnitude of the earthquake that struck Chile early this morning should serve as a warning to the population that “God is even angrier with them than he is with the people of Haiti.”

“If I had to guess, I’d say it must have to do with Chile’s persecution and attempted prosecution of their great former leader, and a personal hero of mine, Augusto Pinochet – who, it should be noted, had never been convicted of a crime when the Lord called him home three years ago.”

The popular host of ‘The 700 Club’ and longtime bingo circuit icon also added, “General Pinochet not only assisted the CIA in the overthrow of Chile’s Marxist government, but is widely credited with personally arranging the meetings of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his countrymen with Jesus.”

General Pinochet, who spent the last eight years of his life fighting prosecution on human rights and other charges before succumbing to congestive heart failure in December 2006, could not be reached for comment, even by Robertson.

The General–turned-Dictator has long been considered a transformative figure in the field of Crimes Against Humanity as a result of his landmark policy of ‘Forced Disappearance’, and was even honored in 1998 with the first-ever arrest warrant for a former head of state under the principle of ‘universal jurisdiction’ by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who is currently investigating former Bush Administration officials for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.

Hat tip to Kara!

Tiger Woods’ list of possible paramours grew to eleven Tuesday with the addition of a second porn star. The New York Post reports that Veronica Siwik-Daniels, aka Joslyn James, was linked to Tiger in a post on the sports website Deadspin.com.

The most recent women to have been linked to Tiger Woods. Here then is the list to date of the women linked to Woods.

TIGER’S RUMORED WOMEN

1.) Rachel Uchitel. The club hostess was the first of the women to be linked to Woods after the National Enquirer reported that she traveled to Australia to be with Woods during a golf tournament there. So far, she has denied the affair.

2.) Jamie Grubbs. The 24-year-old reality show contestant and cocktail waitress claims she carried on a 31-month-long affair with Woods until his crash last month. She offered a Woods voicemail to prove it.

3.) Kalika Moquin. The 27-year-old club manager from Las Vegas is reported to have had a brief sexual relationship with Woods. She would neither confirm nor deny the report.

4.) Cori Rist. The 31-year-old swimsuit model reportedly met Woods at a Manhattan club last year before they began a sexual relationship that led to Woods flying her out to various secret locations for hook-ups, and her introducing the golfer to her 7-year-old son.

5.) Jamie Jungers. The 26-year-old, who sold her story to a British newspaper, is a former employee of Trashy Girls Lingerie. She said she met Woods in Las Vegas.

6.) Mindy Lawton. The 33-year-old pancake house waitress from Orlando claims she was dumped by
Woods in 2007. According to the Post, it was her affair with Woods that was caught on camera by the National Enquirer, when he was snapped dropping her off at her trailer park. The threatening news later led to a Woods Men’s Fitness cover in exchange for the magazine’s silence about the alleged affair, the New York Post reports.

7.) Holly Sampson. The 36-year-old from Los Angeles is a former porn star, who has starred in such films as “OMG, Stop Tickling Me” and “Flying Solo 2.” According to the Sun, she has neither confirmed nor denied her affair with Woods.

8.) Unidentified Alleged Mistress No. 8. A former cocktail waitress from Orlando, Fla. does want to reveal her identity yet, according to her attorney Michael O’Quinn. But this she has said: at the time the affair allegedly began, she was 20 years old and met Woods at the Roxy in Orlando, where she was a VIP server.

9.) Unidentified Alleged Mistress No. 9 is reported to be a “sexy” British TV presenter who was single at
the time, but is now married.

10.) Unidentified Alleged Mistress No. 10. is reported in a UK paper to be a “sex-addicted cougar.”

11.) Joslyn James. The star of many, many porn videos was named on the sports blog Deadspin.com as a Tiger regular, but did not respond to the site’s call for comment.

Copenhagen’s Lord Mayor has written to all 500 climate change delegates pleading with them to abstain from using services of the city’s ‘unsustainable’ prostitutes.

The city council contacted 160 hotels asking them not to arrange prostitutes for guests attending the conference. Enlarge Copenhagen’s Ritt Bjerregaard said: ‘I think it’s deplorable that you can buy a woman for sex’

Together with the anti-trafficking organisation, The Nest International, and tourism group Wonderful Copenhagen, it issued postcards featuring the slogan, ‘Be sustainable – don’t buy sex’, which been distributed to hotels.

A sex workers interest organisation, SIO, has hit out at claims that sex tourism increases during high-level summits.

Washington, D.C., had the dubious distinction of beating all 50 states to post the highest rates in the nation for the sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, according to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

The District of Columbia had a Chlamydia rate of 1,177 cases per 100,000 people–almost three times the rate of its neighbors, Virginia (405) and Maryland (439). Mississippi was a distant second, at 728 cases per 100,000 people. By comparison, California’s rate was 407 cases per 100,000; New York came in at 458; New Mexico at 470; Utah at 377 and Maine’s rate was a mere 198 per 100,000.

For gonorrhea, D.C.’s rate was 451.5 cases per 100,000–almost twice that of second-ranking Mississippi (256.8); more than three times the rate of its neighbors Virginia (134) and Maryland (118); more than 13 times the rate of Oregon (32.5) and more than 25 times the rate of Utah (18). Other state rates for gonorrhea include: 160.9 for Illinois; 134 for Texas and 88.7 for New York.

D.C.’s nation-leading syphilis rate of 24.8 cases (including both primary and secondary syphilis) per 100,000 dwarfed second-place Louisiana’s 16.5 per 100,000 rate and third-place Alabama’s rate of 9.7 per 100,000. It and was nearly four times the rate of Maryland (6.7).

The bodies of four alleged gangsters, stuffed into a parked car near President Felipe Calderon’s compound in this capital city, carried a message of divine retribution: “The wicked are denied their light, and the upraised arm is broken,” proclaimed the biblical passage, Job 38:15.

Scrawled with a marker on the backs of three of the bodies, a single word — “Kidnapper.” The discovery of the dead men two weeks ago suggests to many Mexicans that despairing private citizens or even local officials may be exacting their own raw justice amid the unbridled crime sweeping the country.

Lynching and extra-judicial killings are far from unknown in Mexico, whose justice system often has proved woefully insufficient. Rural and poor urban communities beat or execute accused rapists and thieves. Local power brokers, known as caciques, employ private gunmen to deal with nettlesome opponents or criminals.

But the escalating drug turf wars, which have claimed most of the 14,000 people killed by gangland violence since December 2006, have also wrought more kidnapping, extortion and theft. And some in Mexico are pushing back.

A SECRETARY accidentally bit off the penis of her employer while giving him oral sex in a car.

Sin Chew Daily and China Press reported yesterday that while the 30-year-old woman was performing oral sex on the man, the car was hit by a reversing van.

The impact of the crash, China Press reported, caused the woman to bite off her lover’s organ.  The daily reported that the incident occurred in a Singapore park where the couple met after work.

To make matters worse for the woman, her husband had sent a private investigator to spy on her after suspecting that she was being unfaithful.

Praise to Sin Chew Daily for sharing this with us!

After months of flat-out lying to the public, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally copped to having a sleazy extramarital fling while his wife was battling breast cancer – but coldly denied ever loving the woman or fathering her daughter.

Edwards, 55, admitted in an interview that aired last night on ABC’s “Nightline” that he bedded Rielle Hunter, 44.

The well-coiffed cad said he told his wife and family long ago about the affair, but “had hoped that it would never become public.”

The NATIONAL ENQUIRER is releasing the photograph that the world has been waiting for – the first-ever picture of John Edwards and his love child!

The stunning “spy photo” shows the former presidential contender holding his infant daughter Frances Quinn Hunter at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles – where the ENQUIRER caught him visiting the baby’s mother, his mistress Rielle Hunter.

Edwards is holding his love child while standing in front of a distinctive striped curtain.

The same window covering hangs in each one of the hotel’s guest rooms – and is clearly visible in photos of guest rooms on the hotel’s Web site.

“These photos are damning proof,” said a source close to the situation.

“He’s been caught lying about his affair with Rielle and their love child for many months – and now the proof against him is piling up.

“His elaborate coverup is unraveling at the seams.”

Five young lives have been ended by lightning in less than a week, a deadly reminder of one of summer’s leading hazards.

“Typically, July marks the peak in lightning activity. It’s also the time when people are vacationing, so they are outside and they are vulnerable to lightning,” said John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert at the National Weather Service.

But why so many young people in a few days? “I don’t have an answer for that,” Jensenius said, “It’s all very sad.”

Landon Dillard, 16, of Macon, Ga., was riding a bicycle at a summer camp in Colorado when he was struck down on July 3.

Two days later, 19-year-old Korey Moore of Swansea, S.C., was riding a personal watercraft when hit. The next day lightning claimed Stephanie Dawn Kirpes, 23, of Woodbridge, Va., while she was jogging along the shore in Virginia Beach, Va.

And on July 7, two 16-year-olds were killed by lightning: Ben Richter on his family farm at Watertown, Wis., and Lucian Ellis of Sampson County, N.C., who was in a beach hut sheltering from a storm.

A Durham, N.C., Democratic official and her husband face criminal charges in connection with alleged satanic rituals.

Joy Johnson, 30, a third vice-chairwoman of the Durham County Democratic Party and vice chairwoman of the Young Democrats, was charged Friday with two counts of aiding and abetting. Her husband, Joseph Scott Craig, 25, was charged with second-degree rape, second-degree kidnapping and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon for incidents in January and May, the Raleigh News & Observer reported Tuesday.

Mark McCullough, an assistant district attorney, would not release details of the allegations. But in court on Monday, he acknowledged that “part of the allegations are that satanic worship is part of this case.”

Floods sweeping southern China seem to have fulfilled the final stanza of an Internet curse involving Beijing’s Olympic mascots, but censors have been quick to remove postings that might fuel the superstition.

After a devastating earthquake struck Sichuan province last month, Internet users tied four of the five “Fuwa” mascots to the calamities that have struck China in the run-up to the Games, which begin in August. One Fuwa is a panda, the totem of Sichuan.

The others resemble a torch, reminding netizens of the protests against the international Olympic torch rally; a Tibetan antelope tied to widespead demonstrations in Tibetan areas; and a swallow that looks like a kite, linked to a deadly train crash in Shandong province.

An Italian couple who caused outrage among many Christians when they were caught having sex in a confessional box during Mass have repented and been forgiven by the local bishop.

The couple, who are in their early thirties, were apparently drunk after a long night out when they stumbled into a cathedral in Cesena, in northern Italy, earlier this month.

When their urges overcame them, they went into a confessional box – the small booth usually reserved for the private admission of sins – and had sex.

Parishioners worshipping at Mass were alerted to their presence “by rustling and groaning” and the bishop called on police to intervene.

Now might be the time for New Yorkers to take advantage of the free condom campaign the city promotes. A new study by the city’s Health Department found more than a quarter of adult residents are infected with the herpes virus.

According to the study, 26 percent of city residents have the virus that causes genital herpes, an incurable sexually-transmitted infection that can cause painful genital sores and can double a person’s risk for HIV.

Nationally, 19 percent of the population has the infection, according to the department.

Dick Dickinson seemed like your typical youth football coach.

On and off for three decades, he taught teams of Orland Park Pioneers how to block, tackle and pass. And the Orland Park man was always there to cheer on his varsity players.

Dickinson became such a fixture in the youth league that the Pioneers decided to honor his dedication by holding an annual golf outing in his name.

Little did anyone know that the father of three now-grown children, who lived in the 14700 block of South Park Lane, had a secret penchant for young boys and violent child pornography.

“We were completely sidetracked,” Pioneer board member Dan McMillan said of learning the news last year that Dickinson was arrested for possession of child pornography. Federal agents revealed the varsity coach’s secret after closing in on him at his home – which is located just across the street from Doogan Park – in a child pornography sting.

Thieves seeking copper to sell as scrap may have stolen an 8-foot statue of Jesus Christ off a crucifix in Detroit. Problem is, it’s made of plaster.

The Rev. Barry Randolph said Wednesday that the statue at the Church of the Messiah is a green color and looks like copper, one of several metals coveted by thieves because of soaring scrap prices.

Thieves have damaged copper pipes and stolen aluminum gutters at the church over the past few months as the congregation has dwindled from about 350 members to just 50, congregation member Donya Ray-Gregg said.

Karl Marx suffered from a skin disease that can cause severe psychological effects such as self-loathing and alienation, according to a British dermatologist.

The father of communism’s life and attitudes were shaped by hidradenitis suppurativa, said Sam Shuster in the British Journal of Dermatology. One of its symptoms is alienation – a concept that Marx, a martyr to boils and carbuncles, put into words as he wrote Das Kapital.

The condition was described as early as 1839 by a French physician, Alfred Velpeau. But, Professor Shuster says, ideas crossed the Channel less readily than wine and Marx’s true condition was never diagnosed.

Hidradenitis suppurativa is a disease of the apocrine sweat glands, found in the armpits and the groins. The skin in the affected areas shows a mixture of blackheads, lumps that look like boils, spots and areas that leak pus. Doctors and Marx, who was born in Germany but lived most of his life in London, called them “furuncles, boils and carbuncles”, but Professor Shuster says that they were too persistent and recurrent for that. He searched Marx’s letters and found that he had started complaining of carbuncles in 1864, when he was 46, though it is possible that he had them earlier.

The cemetery next to the Flower Mound Presbyterian Church was a peaceful, well-kept place until Tuesday night. An overflow of voters trying to join the caucus next door ended up leaving muddy tire tracks through the cemetery. One vehicle’s tire actually got stuck in a recently filled grave.

Many voters parked on the shoulder of a gravel road winding through the cemetery, right next door to the church where the voting was taking place. One witness says motorists either didn’t notice — or didn’t care — they were parking just a few feet from buried bodies.

To make matters worse, recent rains left the ground soft, and the tires kicked up plenty of mud. Carved angels, flowers, mementos and other decorations on some of the graves were splattered with grit and dirt clods.

Jonathan McCullum was in perfect health at 155 pounds when he left last summer to spend the school year as an exchange student in Egypt.

But when he returned home to Maine just four months later, the 5-foot-9 teenager weighed a mere 97 pounds and was so weak that he struggled to carry his baggage or climb a flight of stairs. Doctors said he was at risk for a heart attack.

McCullum says he was denied sufficient food while staying with a family of Coptic Christians, who fast for more than 200 days a year, a regimen unmatched by other Christians.

Gennifer Flowers is putting the tapes of her recorded conversations with Bill Clinton during their 12-year affair on the auction block, Vegas Confidential learned Monday.

Flowers, who came forward during Clinton’s 1992 Presidential election campaign with details of the relationship, said she decided to part with the tapes after renewed interest surfaced. She was offered $5 million by a Japanese collector in the 1990s, she said.

Asked about the timing of her announcement coming out as Hillary Clinton continues to slide in her presidential bid, “I don’t need to hurt Hillary. She is doing a fine job of that herself, along with her idiot husband. Karma is an interesting thing. If these two don’t get elected, and they are a team, it will be karma coming back to visit them. It’s about time.”

When President Clinton denied the relationship during his presidential campaign, Flowers called a press conference played what she said were secretly recorded phone conversations.

A man accused of killing his wife says he was trying to exorcise a demon from her when the devil entered his body and caused her to die, according to a police probable cause statement.

Jan David Clark, 60, was arrested Friday after authorities went to his home and found Susan Kay Clark’s body wrapped in a bed sheet with a cross and sword on top of it.

Officers had gone to the home after being told that Clark had called a friend and said his 59-year-old wife was dead, said Sgt. Gary Duesler said the Ector County Sheriff’s Office.

Clark told investigators he had his wife pinned face down on a carpeted floor when she died.

Clark was charged with murder and remained in the Ector County jail on Sunday in lieu of $300,000 bail.

A former priest began a seven-year jail term Wednesday for murdering a young nun during an exorcism ritual when she was bound, chained to a cross and denied food and water for days.

Irina Cornici, 23, died from dehydration, exhaustion and suffocation during an ordeal that stunned Romania and prompted the Orthodox Church to promise reforms and psychological tests to screen potential clergy.

The former priest, Daniel Corogeanu, and four nuns were all convicted and sentenced in September but Corogeanu was freed pending an appeal, which he lost Tuesday. He was picked up by police in the remote northeast Wednesday and sent to jail.

Divorce leaves more than a trail of legal documents, stinging egos and uprooted kids. The split-ups wreak havoc on the environment.

A global trend of soaring divorce rates has led to a surge in the number of households with fewer people. The result: We collectively devour more space and gobble up more energy and water, say the authors of a new study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Not only the United States, but also other countries, including developing countries such as China and places with strict religious policies regarding divorce, are having more divorced households,” said co-author Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University. “The consequent increases in consumption of water and energy and using more space are being seen everywhere.”

So I was down in DC this past weekend and happened to run into a well-connected media person, who told me flatly, unequivocally that “everyone knows” The LA Times was sitting on a story, all wrapped up and ready to go about what is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate. “Everyone knows” meaning everyone in the DC mainstream media political reporting world. “Sitting on it” because the paper couldn’t decide the complex ethics of whether and when to run it. The way I heard it they’d had it for a while but don’t know what to do. The person who told me )not an LAT person) knows I write and didn’t say “don’t write about this”.

Dozens of people in St. Maarten are being treated for latent tuberculosis after health officials warned that they may have been exposed to the illness by a stripper infected with an active form of the disease.

At least 40 people tested positive after the health department treated an exotic dancer from the Dominican Republic several months ago and sent her home, according to a government news release issued Friday.

When Austrian authorities announced in February that they had uncovered an online child pornography ring, pedophiles around the world suddenly became potential targets of criminal investigations — but not the ring’s 63 customers in the Czech Republic, where downloading and possessing such images is not a crime.

The videos, which show at least one girl who appears to be 5 years old and include on-camera scenes of girls being raped, are characterized by Austrian police as “the most brutal form of sexual abuse.”

Listen to an iPod during a storm and you may get more than electrifying tunes. A Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player’s wires.

Last summer, a Colorado teen ended up with similar injuries when lightning struck nearby as he was listening to his iPod while mowing the lawn.

Emergency physicians report treating other patients with burns from freak accidents while using personal electronic devices such as beepers, Walkman players and laptop computers outdoors during storms.

Michael Utley, a former stockbroker from West Yarmouth, Mass., who survived being struck by lightning while golfing, has tracked 13 cases since 2004 of people hit while talking on cell phones. They are described on his Web site,

Contrary to some urban legends and media reports, electronic devices don’t attract lightning the way a tall tree or a lightning rod does.

In a move that will certainly set into motion hundreds of bloggers and journalists eager to unearth the next Washington sex scandal, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, aka the “DC Madam,” has posted 13 years worth of phone records on her website Monday afternoon. The records cover Palfrey’s time as head of “Pamela Martin & Associates,” a Washington, D.C.-based escort service. As Yeas & Nays noted last week, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler recently lifted the temporary restraining order prohibiting Deborah Jeane Palfrey from releasing those telephone records.

During an interview with Yeas & Nays last Thursday, Palfrey indicated that she had “every intention” of releasing her records to the public, but the move to post them on her website so quickly was not anticipated by many.

HUSTLER magazine in the United States is looking for some scandalous sex in Washington again – and is willing to pay for it.

“Have you had a sexual encounter with a current member of the United States Congress or a high-ranking government official?” read a full-page advertisement taken out by Larry Flynt’s pornographic magazine in Sunday’s Washington Post.

It offered $US1 million ($1.21 million) for documented evidence of illicit intimate relations with a congressman, senator or other prominent officeholder. A toll-free number and email address were provided.

The last time Flynt made such an offer was in October 1998 during the drive to impeach president Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

The bombshell sex probe of a Washington, D.C., madam that already has caught one Bush administration official with his pants down may soon focus on well-known political pundits who have appeared on TV.

“There are several thousand names, tens of thousands of phone numbers, from administration officials to lobbyists to advisers who are well known, people who appear on television,” said ABC News’ Brian Ross, to whom alleged madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey turned over her little black book.

In an interview with CNN, Ross refused to identify any more of the customers of Palfrey’s “escort service” and did not indicate whom he might name in a segment of ABC’s “20/20″ scheduled to air Friday.

The explosive revelation of the list has had powerbrokers quaking in their boots since Palfrey was pinched by the feds last month.

High-priced call girls always seem to have their little black books. Deborah Jeane Palfrey, accused of running an illegal escort service in the nation’s capital, has 46 pounds of phone records. And her offer – or threat – to turn them over to the media has some in Washington playing a guessing game as to whether any Beltway movers and shakers are on her list of up to 15,000 client phone numbers.

Superhero Captain America has been killed off after appearing in US comic books for 66 years. The character, who appears in the Captain America comic book, was created in 1941 to build up patriotic feeling during World War II. Co-creator Joe Simon told the New York Daily News: “It’s a hell of a time for him to go, We really need him now.”

Surrounded by a mob of news cameras, a group of smiling, well-dressed church members crowded into a South Beach storefront parlor on a recent muggy evening and got matching tattoos of their prophet’s symbol: 666.

 Members of Growing in Grace, a controversial religious sect headquartered in Doral, said they were following the example of their leader, Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda, who has claimed to be Jesus and recently declared himself the Antichrist.

Critics have called De Jesus a cult leader who manipulates followers. Church members say he has brought them happiness and spiritual fulfillment.

A Romanian priest has been jailed for 14 years for conducting an exorcism that led to the death of a nun who he believed was possessed by devils. Irina Cornici, 23, died after being starved and chained to a cross at a secluded convent in the north-east.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson predicted Tuesday a horrific terrorist act on the United States that will result in “mass killing” late in 2007. “I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”