At 4:30, when most of Wall Street is winding down, Walter Zimmermann begins a high-stakes, high-wire act conducted live before a paying audience. About 200 institutional investors—including airlines and oil companies—shell out up to $3,000 a month to catch his daily webcast on the volatile energy markets, a performance that can move hundreds of millions of dollars. "I'm not paid to be wrong—I can tell you that," Zimmermann says. But as he clicks through dozens of screens and graphics on ...

"You can tell a lie but you will give yourself away. Your heart will race. Your skin will sweat ... I will know. I am the lie detector." Thus began each episode of Lie Detector, a strange cross between a relationship counseling session and an episode of the Jerry Springer Show that ran on British daytime television last year. Against a backdrop of flashing computer screens and eerie blue light, participants--usually feuding couples but sometimes warring ...

THERE WAS SOMETHING SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ABOUT Harvard University President Larry Summers' speech on gender disparities in January. In his first sentence, he said his goal was "provocation" . He called for "rigorous and careful" thinking to explain the gender gap among top-tier tenured science professors. But he described his pet theory with something less than prudence. The most likely explanations, he said, are that 1> women are just not so interested as men in making the sacrifices required by high-powered jobs, ...

More than 200 Afghan election officials implicated in Afghanistan's tainted presidential election will be replaced before the runoff election in less than three weeks, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "We will make sure that first of all, the Independent Election Commission will have to visit all the polling stations throughout Afghanistan," Ban said Tuesday. "And we will make sure that those polling stations from which we have received complaints will be reviewed. "And we will try ...

Americans Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson won the Nobel Prize for economics for work on how community institutions can prevent conflict, the Nobel Committee announced Monday. Ostrom becomes the first woman to win the prize in its 40-year history. The award was a "great surprise... I'm still a little bit in shock," she said by phone at the news conference announcing the prize. Ostrom, a professor of political science at Indiana University, was praised "for ...

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who is scheduled to give a rare interview to CNN's Christiane Amanpour Thursday, is one of the most controversial world leaders of recent times. For many years Mugabe was viewed as an African liberation hero -- much like South Africa's Nelson Mandela. But more recently political rivals in Zimbabwe, as well as critics around the world, have accused Mugabe of turning a nation once known as the breadbasket of southern Africa into one wracked by hunger ...

More resources and personnel are needed to train Afghan security forces so they can become "masters in their own house," NATO's secretary-general said Tuesday. "We can't allow Afghanistan once again to become a safe haven for terrorists. Therefore, we must succeed," Anders Fogh Rasmussen told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an interview. The United States now has about 62,000 troops in Afghanistan, with NATO and other allies contributing about 35,000 more. The Pentagon currently plans to add 6,000 troops by year's ...

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday that he backs a recommendation from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan to boost American troop levels in the embattled Islamic nation. The call for more U.S. soldiers is "the right approach ... and we back it," Karzai said during an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour. He also criticized military allies for failing to attack al Qaeda and other extremists in sanctuaries beyond Afghanistan's borders. Karzai emphasized the need for greater protection of Afghan ...

"I am praying every day that I will see my parents before I die," the Lockerbie bomber wrote in a plea to be set free from a Scottish jail, previously secret documents released Tuesday by the Scottish government show. The handwritten letter from Abdelbeset al Megrahi to Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill was published as the Scottish and British governments fight back against allegations al Megrahi was released as part of a deal involving Libyan oil. Al Megrahi was released ...

Nearly 40 people were killed and up to 80 wounded Tuesday night when a truck bomb exploded in front of a construction company in Kandahar, Afghanistan, chief police commander Fazel Ahmed said. "I have to tell you that I was both angry and I was repulsed by the reception that a convicted bomber, guilty of a huge terrorist crime, received on his return to Libya," Brown said. Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was released from custody last week on compassionate ...