Wednesday 18 December 2013  Doomsday fears go global as end of
Mayan calendar nears  FEARS that the end of the world is nigh
have spread across the world with only days until the end of the
Mayan calendar, when believers expect a cataclysmic end to the
Earth.  December 21 marks the conclusion of the 5,125-year "Long
Count" Mayan calendar and panic-buying of candles and essentials
has been reported in China and Russia, along with a rise in
sales of survival shelters in the US.  The precise manner of
Armageddon remains vague, ranging from a collision between Earth
and the mythical planet Nibiru, also known as Planet X, a crash
with a comet, or the annihilation of civilisation by a solar
storm.  In the US, Ron Hubbard, a manufacturer of survival
shelters, has seen sales take off.   In the French Pyrenees the
mayor of Bugarach, population 179, has attempted to prevent
pandemonium by banning UFO-watchers and light aircraft from the
flat-topped mount Pic de Bugarach. According to New Age lore it
is an "alien garage