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Obama will win, he can relax, says expert US forecasterwww.telegraphindia.com – Wed 23 May, 2012 Allan Lichtman introduces "the world's only do-it-yourself prediction" to a select audience in Calcutta. The prediction model ' based on 13 keys ' forecasts the reelection of Barack Obama in the US presidential election to be held on November 6. To convince the audience, Lichtman took them through all the 13 keys asking them to ascertain if they were true or false. The audience judged 11 out of the 13 keys to be true, a sure shot that Obama would be reelected as six or...

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in Montana when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust. The driver, a young man in a Brioni® suit, Gucci® shoes, RayBan® sunglasses and YSL® tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?" Bud looks at the man, who obviously is a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, why not?" The yuppie parks...

The threat posed by a missile attack on Israel is not as terrible as people think, according to Haim Rosenberg, the former head of long-term planning at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. In a paper published by the BESA Center at Bar Ilan University, Rosenberg explains that at this time, missile attacks by Muslim countries would only be able to inflict limited physical damage on Israel. He further argues that it would be a mistake to prepare mostly for missile strikes, when a future war could also involve ground attacks. "Recent discussions around a preemptive strike on Iran have included...

Renowned Arab affairs expert Dr. Guy Bechor told Arutz Sheva Sunday that there is no reason for undue alarm at the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's elections. The peace treaty with Israel is on no real danger, he said. The Islamists "have no solution" for Egypt's woes, he explained. "They lack the abilities and connections" to solve the country's problems and therefore, he predicted, "the patience will wear out in a few weeks and riots will begin soon." Hundreds of thousands of citizens are expected to protest on Wednesday, he added, in expectation of "magic solutions that no...

A day after reports that Noble Energy had begun its natural gas drilling off the coast of Cyprus, amid threats from the Turkish government that it was considering deploying naval escort ships to protect exploration areas north of the country, an Israeli expert on the situation deemed the threats grave to both Cypriot and Israeli concerns. (Snip) Meanwhile, following a statement from Cypriot President Demetris Christofias that drilling was about to begin, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had threatened on Monday that Turkish aircraft, frigates and torpedo boats would be sent to watch over the eastern Mediterranean, Reuters said

Prosecutors are reportedly set to ask a judge to abandon the case against Dominique Strauss Kahn. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is preparing to ask that all charges against the former head of the IMF accused of attempting to rape hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo are dropped Tuesday. Such requests from the DA 'are never denied', an expert told the New York Post meaning Strauss-Kahn could finally return to his home country after being forced to remian in the U.S for months.

Richard Falk is a “9/11 Truther” who has worked for the UN for quite a while, holding positions of great importance. He is currently serving in the third year of a six-year term as the United Nations Special Rapporteur “on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” The offensive cartoon posted below was published in late June on Mr. Falk’s blog:

One of the participants in the Israel Democracy Institute’s 19th annual Caesarea Conference was Professor Niall Ferguson of Harvard University.

Terror expert and author Marc Thiessen told Bill O’Reilly tonight that Obama eliminated the enhanced interrogation tool from our counter-terrorism arsenal his second day in office. So the tool that got us the information that led us to Osama Bin Laden is no longer in use. The US has not cpatured and detained and tinterrogated a single high level detainee since Barack Obama moved into office.

It didn’t take long for some of President Obama’s doubters to claim the long-awaited birth certificate posted online by the White House on Wednesday had been altered or might be a fake. But a leading software expert says there’s no doubt about its authenticity, and he dismisses claims of fraud as flat-out wrong. The doubters have latched onto the idea that Adobe Illustrator — the premier program for computer graphic artists — “reveals” evidence of document manipulation in the Obama birth certificate. They note Illustrator reveals nine separate layers of the document, and claim it’s “proof” the file has been...

Steven Emerson is executive director of the nonprofit research group the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which has labeled some American Muslim leaders as radicals. And he's furious now at being excluded as a witness in upcoming congressional hearings on the "radicalization" of American Muslims. New York GOP Rep. Peter King, who is organizing the hearings, says he never told Emerson he was going to be a witness, according to Politico's copy of the angry correspondence between the two men. "That you have caved in to the demands of radical Islamists in removing me as a witness, in light of the...

Attorney Burt Odelson, a noted elction-law expert, is predicting Rahm Emanuel will be ineligible for mayor because he is not a legal resident of Chicago. Odelson told Roe and Roeper on WLS Radio that when Emanuel leased out his Chicago home he could no longer claim he is a resident. “He rented his house out in Sept 09 and has not been back since and has no residency in Chicago,” Odelson said. Odelson says he has been involved in several residency cases in Illinois that “the law is clear.”

Everything you always wanted to know about AfghanistanKabulIf you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter. Either that or you’re President Obama. I called my wife. She said, no, she certainly is not vacationing at government expense in some jet-set hot spot with scads of her BFFs. Looks like I’m not President Obama. But I am a reporter, fresh from Kabul. What do you want to know about...

Under pressure from Freedom of Information requests, top global warming proponent Dr. Phil Jones now claims to have "lost" all the critical data on which the infamous "hockey stick" chart was based. He is also suddenly making shocking concessions devastating to the alarmist war on science...

A British nuclear expert who fell from the 17th floor of a United Nations building did not commit suicide and may have been hurled to his death, says a doctor who carried out a second post-mortem examination. Timothy Hampton, 47, a scientist involved in monitoring nuclear activity, was found dead last week at the bottom of a stairwell in Vienna...

Human Rights Watch's employment of a man who trades and collects Nazi memorabilia as its "senior military expert" is a "new low" for the organization that frequently criticizes Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's policy director Ron Dermer said Wednesday. Netanyahu's policy director,... "I thought that nothing could top a human rights organization trying to raise money in Saudi Arabia, but I was apparently wrong," said Dermer, referring to HRW's fundraising efforts in the kingdom earlier this year, using its reports against Israel as a sales pitch. "A war crimes investigator who is an avid collector and trader in Nazi memorabilia...

Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars has put out a call for help. It's important, so I'm doing what I can to help amplify his voice. Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America needs to find an expert witness for "a pending legal case." Here's what Larry sent Mike: Do you know of a reference to the Camp Perry matches where they have gunsmiths to handle malfunctions? Or any other such venue where they are used to shooters having guns that malfunction by firing a burst and then jamming? Time is of the essence on this. Mike asks us to...

WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's nominee to fix Pentagon purchasing problems vowed Thursday to root out cost overruns in major arms programs, fearing the $150 billion arms-procurement budget may be on its way to becoming unaffordable. Ashton Carter, a physicist, international-security expert and Harvard University professor, told his Senate confirmation hearing he expected funding for big-ticket programs to be under "increasing pressure in the future." If confirmed as expected, Carter would become under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. He said he would go program by program to "see if there isn't more to that...

The abduction of a U.S. anti-kidnap expert in northern Mexico last month remains a mystery with no clues to the man's whereabouts and no ransom demanded by his captors, police said on Monday. Gunmen abducted Felix Batista,a Cuban-American credited with negotiating the release of hostages held by Colombian rebels in past years, in the relatively safe industrial city of Saltillo,Coahuila state,on Dec 10. "We have not had contact with Batista or those who took him," an official at the Coahuila attorney general's office said. Another official said last month the attorney general suspected drug gangs who wanted to show their...

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexican gunmen have kidnapped a U.S. security consultant who negotiated the release of dozens of kidnap victims in Latin America. Gunmen abducted Felix Batista outside a restaurant last Wednesday in the relatively safe northern industrial city of Saltillo in Coahuila state, Mexican authorities and his employer, security consultancy ASI Global, said on Monday. Batista, a Miami-based Cuban American credited with negotiating the release of victims abducted by Colombian rebels, was snatched after he stepped outside the restaurant, answering a call on his cellular phone, Mexican media said. The U.S. embassy in Mexico City said it was...

Studies show as many as 15 percent of children in wealthy nations are physically abused by guardians each year, but the alleged torture of a boy who stumbled into a Tracy fitness club battered, half-starved and in chains last week stands out for its cruelty, a leading child abuse expert says. Cases that severe are "not a very common thing." But they continuously pop up, said Carole Jenny, a pediatrics professor at Brown University's medical school. Underfunding and a lack of resources for child protective services is a huge problem, said Jenny, who called what authorities say happened to the...

January 31, 2008 -- An expert on domestic violence, who has appeared on several national TV shows, was busted for roughing up his wife, Florida officials said yesterday. Cops near Tampa responded to the home of Dean Tong, 51, after receiving a frantic call from his wife the night of Jan. 21, according to law-enforcement records. Tong was booked for alleged domestic violence and tampering with a witness. He was released on $1,000 bail.

Expert sceptical of sacred Roman cave By Silvia Aloisi in Rome November 24, 2007 A LEADING Italian archaeologist said that the grotto whose discovery was announced this week in Rome is not the sacred cave linked to the myth of the city's foundation by Romulus and Remus. The Culture Ministry and experts who presented the find said they were “reasonably certain” the cavern is the Lupercale - a sanctuary worshipped for centuries by Romans because, according to legend, a wolf nursed the twin brothers there. But Adriano La Regina, Rome's superintendent of archaeology from 1976 to 2004, said ancient descriptions...

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A Navy investigator testified Wednesday that a computer disk seized from the brother of a Chinese-born engineer accused of stealing U.S. defense technology secrets contained encrypted files. Nicholas Mikus, an investigative computer specialist for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said the files could only be unlocked with a specific "key," a chain of 113 letters that was stored on a floppy disk. Mikus was the latest witness called by the government in its case against Chi Mak, an engineer accused of passing sensitive military information to the Chinese government for more than 20 years. Mak, a...

WASHINGTON, March 7, 2007 – Afghan and coalition forces have captured suspected terrorists and destroyed a car rigged with explosives in operations in Afghanistan over the past three days. A suspected al Qaeda facilitator and improvised-explosive-device expert was captured today, along with five other suspected terrorists, during an assault by Afghan and coalition forces on a compound near Jalalabad, in the Nangarahar province of Afghanistan. No shots were fired, and no civilians or forces were injured during the assault. The suspected terrorist was an alleged IED expert and logistics officer for the “Tora Bora Front,” which facilitates the movement...

FORT COLLINS, Colo. - The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season should have above-average activity, with three major hurricanes and a good chance at least one of them will make landfall, a top hurricane researcher said Friday. Colorado State forecaster William Gray predicted 14 named storms and a total of seven hurricanes next year. He and fellow researcher Philip Klotzbach said there is a 64 percent chance of one of the major hurricanes — with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater — coming ashore. The long-term average probability is 52 percent, they said. Still, they said fewer hurricanes are likely to...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2, 2006 -- The irony stung worse than the scorpion. Army Capt. Stephen Garvin, an entomologist with the 981st Medical Detachment supporting 3rd Army/U.S. Army Central in Kuwait, was stung by a deadly scorpion. U.S. Army photo  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. A soldier dedicated to studying dangerous wildlife recently got attacked by one of the aggressive fat-tailed scorpions he spent months warning other soldiers to avoid. Army Capt. Stephen Garvin, an entomologist with the 981st Medical Detachment supporting 3rd Army/U.S. Army Central in Kuwait, made a routine visit to a portable toilet at Camp Buehring...

Nutritional "Boost" Making Westerners Taller, Healthier, Expert Says Erica Lloyd for National Geographic News October 2, 2006 It's no secret that in the past few centuries people in Western nations have been getting taller and living longer. But now experts say that today's Westerners are the product of an accelerated spate of growth that is unique in human history. People in the developed world are taller and more robust than their great, great, great grandparents probably ever imagined. Robert Fogel, director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago, notes that Westerners are about 50 percent larger...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27, 2006 – Afghan and coalition forces captured a known makeshift bomb expert and terrorist cell leader today during an operation south of Asadabad, U.S. military officials reported. The terrorist was the leader of a cell that planned bomb attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in the Konar region. He was also responsible for placing bombs in various locations in the Pech Valley region. Intelligence indicated that the terrorist was planning to attack coalition and Afghan security forces in the immediate future, officials said. “This improvised explosive device builder posed an imminent threat to the safety of not...

GENEVA - Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday. Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, made the remarks as he was presenting a report on detainee conditions at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay as well as to brief the U.N. Human Rights Council, the global body's top rights watchdog, on torture worldwide. Reports from Iraq indicate that torture "is totally out of hand," he said. "The situation is so bad...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Defense lawyers in a major South Florida terror case want to make sure jurors never hear from witness Evan Kohlmann. The proposed government expert on al-Qaida is simply no expert, lawyers say. He has no Ph.D., no faculty position and no real-life experience in the Middle East. Plus there's the age thing. Kohlmann, who has testified five times for the government already, is just 27. He's been called the "Doogie Howser" of terrorism. One critic cracked that prosecutors have been using Kohlmann "since he was a zygote." Kohlmann has fought off such attacks before. The Fort...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Legislatures around the country are passing state laws to get tough on illegal immigration, but legal experts say many of those laws will turn out to be unconstitutional. More than 550 bills relating to illegal immigration were introduced in statehouses this year, and at least 77 were enacted, according to a survey presented last week at the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures. However, NCSL analyst Ann Morse told lawmakers at the conference that a 1986 federal law forbids states from enacting stricter criminal or civil penalties for illegal immigration than those adopted by...

SOFIA, Bulgaria - An almost 7,000-year old stone tablet found in Bulgaria bears carvings that might turn out to be one of the world's oldest inscriptions, a prominent Bulgarian archaeologist said Thursday. "These signs are unique and apparently bear a meaning," Nikolai Ovcharov told a press conference. Ovcharov said he had received the tablet from a private collector who had unearthed it 20 years ago. The collector asked to remain anonymous, because he risked criminal prosecution for looting or criminal possession of antiquities. The tablet, about three inches, carries five distinct signs each made up of two elements, Ovcharov said....

HOUSTON, July 20, 2006 – A new program aims to help military students develop leadership skills, patriotism, commitment to selfless service, and intellectual and problem-solving capacity. The "Student 2 Student Initiative," under the auspices of the Frances Hesselbein Student Leadership Program, is a student-led, school-managed program designed to help students moving from one school to another focus on the positive aspects of their new experiences. The Military Child Education Coalition, a nonprofit group that advocates on issues facing military families, sponsors the program. "The leadership program will develop our leaders of the future, who are our hope," Frances Hesselbein...

QUITO (AFP) - Tungurahua, a volcano in southern Ecuador, erupted for a fourth day, burying thousands of farms in ash and threatening to "boil over" and dump lava on a nearby town, officials said. Explosions were heard for days, said Geophysical Institute engineer Pablo Samaniego, who compared the volcanic activity to a "pot of milk waiting to boil over at any moment". Lava threatens to run downhill, toward Banos, with 15,000 residents, he said. "This has happened before and could affect Banos," he said. "The town will have to make its decisions" on whether to evacuate," he said. So far,...

INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. (Army News Service, May 18, 2006) - Soldiers can serve on the battlefield with confidence knowing the world’s best medics are there to help if they become injured. The best of the best of these Soldiers wear a badge that identifies them as the cream of the Army's medical crop - the Expert Field Medical Badge. Only 18 of 250 candidates earned the badge at the Army’s largest EFMB testing session, which took place May 12 at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa. The low number might seem alarming, but it is a testament to the badge's demanding criteria....

A computer expert has described his astonishment at seeing the BBC's 24-hour news channel interview supposed taxi driver Guy Goma in the mistaken belief it was him. Guy Kewney - a white, bearded technology expert - was astonished to see himself appear on screen as a black man with an apparent French accent. He was even more shocked to see himself unable to answer basic questions about the legal battle between the Beatles' Apple Corps and Apple Computer over the use of an apple symbol.

Expert: H5N1 Worst Flu Virus He's Ever Seen Thursday, May 04, 2006 SINGAPORE — A leading expert said Thursday the H5N1 virus is the worst flu virus he's ever encountered, and far too many gaps in planning and knowledge persist for the world to handle it in the event of a pandemic. The virus is a vicious killer in poultry, moving into the brain and destroying the respiratory tract, said Robert G. Webster, a virologist at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. "I've worked with flu all my life, and this is the worst influenza virus that...

CAVE JUNCTION, Ore. - John Roth shined his flashlight on a black streak flowing through the cream-colored marble forming the walls of the Oregon Caves. The graphite line is graphic evidence of dramatic global warming that consumed so much oxygen that it nearly wiped out all life on the planet 247 million years ago, said the natural resources specialist for the Oregon Caves National Monument. "It was the biggest extinction by far of all time," he said. "Geologists and paleontologists all agree on that. ... The extinction that killed the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, that wasn't anything compared...

NEW YORK - An expert on ancient Egyptian texts is predicting that the "Gospel of Judas" — a manuscript from early Christian times that's nearing release amid widespread interest from scholars — will be a dud in terms of learning anything new about Judas. James M. Robinson, America's leading expert on such ancient religious texts from Egypt, predicts in a new book that the text won't offer any insights into the disciple who betrayed Jesus. His reason: While it's old, it's not old enough. "Does it go back to Judas? No," Robinson told The Associated Press on Thursday. The text,...

One exciting thing about the free market is that you can't predict what the market will create. Big-government advocates tell you exactly what will happen when their plans work (as if they actually would work!), but we who trust the free market can only say that people will compete and good ideas will win. We do know that competition works. It works because it gives people the chance to be creative...

Guitarist Jeff Baxter is a founding member of Steely Dan and a member of the Doobie Brothers. The 56-year-old Baxter has eight platinum albums and two Grammy’s but he likes to call himself a hippie rock guitarist with top secret clearances. Now, believe-it-or-not, he is one of the top counter-terrorism experts in the United States.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13, 2005 – A human rights specialist from Europe has accepted the U. S. offer to visit the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, a senior Defense Department official said here today. Anne-Marie Lizin, a Belgian politician and a representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, will be able to tour the facility and ask questions of its command and staff, but she'll not be permitted to visit with detainees, DoD spokesman Bryan Whitman told Pentagon reporters. "She'll have access similarly to what you guys have when you go down there and observe...

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed Friday that four Iraqis, including a husband and wife, carried out the suicide bombings against three Amman hotels, and police arrested 120 Jordanians and Iraqis in the hunt for anyone who might have aided them. If their involvement is confirmed, the husband and wife would be the first married couple yet known to take part in a suicide bombing, a top Israeli counterterrorism expert said. Thousands of Jordanians protested in Amman for a second straight day, condemning the attacks that killed 57 people, excluding the bombers, and denouncing al-Qaida in Iraq's leader,...

LONDON (Reuters) - Do you have memories of being abducted by aliens and whisked away in a spaceship?You wouldn't be alone. Several thousand people worldwide claim to have had such close encounters, researchers say. But in a new study, a psychology expert at London's Goldsmiths College says these experiences are proof of the frailty of the human memory, rather than evidence of life in other galaxies. "Maybe what we're dealing with here is false memories, and not that people are actually being abducted and taken aboard spaceships," says Professor Chris French, who surveyed 19 self-proclaimed alien abductees. Several of the...

Can anyone generate a large, good quality closeup of just Lee Harvey Oswald's face in this picture? I'm doing it to play a practical joke on a liberal friend of mine (too much of an inside joke to fully explain), and I've scoured the Internet for hours looking for a closeup of his expression in this picture. Don't know anything about Photoshop, but know that there are many wizards here. Thanks to any who respond.

GENEVA (AFP) - A UN human rights expert sharply criticised major African leaders, saying their failure to condemn President Robert Mugabe's housing demolition campaign in Zimbabwe was tantamount to a "cover-up." The UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, said Zimbabwe was heading towards a disaster if the government failed to change course on the forcible eviction of about 700,000 people from shantytowns. "The silence of major governments in Africa continues to be shocking," Kothari told journalists. "And of influential individuals like Nelson Mandela, I don't understand why they don't speak out," he added, referring to...

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - U.N. human rights experts have begun an investigation into U.S. detention facilities for terrorist suspects and allegations that there are secret prisons, one of the project leaders said Wednesday. Manfred Nowak, the U.N.'s special expert on torture, said some undeclared holding areas could include U.S. Navy ships in international waters. He said there were "serious" allegations to that effect from Amnesty International and other non-governmental human rights groups. "I have heard these rumors and we have to follow them up," he told The Associated Press, urging Washington to cooperate with the investigation. Officials at the U.S....

NEW YORK (AP) - The FBI arrested a Florida doctor and a New York martial arts expert on federal terrorism charges, saying they conspired to treat and train terrorists, prosecutors announced Sunday. Rafiq Abdus Sabir, a Boca Raton physician, and Tarik Shah, a self-described martial arts expert in New York, were both charged in Manhattan federal court with conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaida, according to the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. New York police spokesman Paul Browne said Shah was arrested early Friday. Florida authorities said Sabir was arrested Saturday. Both are American...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) - With another 20 million Californians expected by 2050, a state water official said changing sea water into tap water must play a more significant role to make sure there's enough drinking water for the burgeoning population. "We're living on finite water resources. I don't know where we're going to get that. To me, desalination in all its forms is going to have to play a much larger role," Pete Silva, vice chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, told scientists Monday. Silva, speaking at the International Salinity Forum at the Riverside Convention Center, said the...