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The Harvard researcher behind a recent study correlating 2008 election results with racially charged Google searches neglected to disclose ties to a former senior member of the Obama administration, The Daily Caller has learned.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, an economics Ph.D. candidate, lists on his C.V. — publicly available through his website — that he was the research assistant of Peter Orzsag at the Brookings Institution from August 2005 to August 2006. Set to graduate in 2013, Stephens-Davidowitz entered the Ph.D. program at Harvard in 2007.

Orszag, currently the vice chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup, headed the Office of Management and Budget as an Obama appointee between January 2009 and July 2010. He was also the director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2007 to November 2008.

Whether this relationship between Stephens-Davidowitz and Orszag affected the outcome of the study, either directly or indirectly, is uncertain. Neither Stephens-Davidowitz or Orszag returned The Daily Caller’s request for comment.

“To my knowledge, Mr. Orszag has no idea of the contents of the study, nor do any of his former colleagues,” professor David Cutler, an adviser to Stephens-Davidowitz at Harvard, told The Daily Caller. “Seth wrote this paper at Harvard.”

Stephens-Davidowitz also thanked “three anonymous referees” along with various named sources in the first footnote of his study. Cutler, however, said that he believes Stephens-Davidowitz “appropriately thanks people who gave him advice on his paper.”

“Some people prefer not to be thanked, and he needs to respect their right to privacy,” Cutler added.

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The Obama administration said Tuesday that Russia is sending attack helicopters to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime and warned that the Arab country’s 15-month conflict could become even deadlier.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. was “concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria.”

She said the shipment “will escalate the conflict quite dramatically.”

Clinton’s comments at a public appearance with Israeli President Shimon Peres augured poorly for a peaceful solution to Syria’s conflict. Officials from around the world are warning that the violence risks becoming an all-out civil war, with Middle East power brokers from Iran to Turkey possibly being drawn into the fighting.

Diplomatic hopes have rested on Washington and Moscow agreeing on a transition plan that would end the four-decade Assad regime.

But Moscow has consistently rejected the use of outside forces to end the conflict or any international plan to force regime change in Damascus. Despite withering criticism from the West, it insists that any arms it supplies to Syria are not being used to quell anti-government dissent.

With diplomacy at a standstill, the reported shipment of helicopters suggests a dangerous new turn for Syria after more than a year of harsh government crackdowns on mainly peaceful protests and the emergence of an increasingly organized armed insurgency.

There was no immediate reaction from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Russia and Syria have a longstanding military relationship and Syria hosts Russia’s only naval base on the Mediterranean Sea. But in light of the brutal violence, the U.S. has repeatedly demanded that any further deliveries of weaponry be halted. Russian military support in the form of materiel as advanced as attack helicopters would deal a serious blow to efforts to starve the Syrian army of supplies.

Some 13,000 people have died, according to opposition groups, but the U.S. and its allies have been hoping that sanctions on Assad’s government and its increased isolation would make it increasingly difficult to carry out military campaigns. Attack helicopters are heavily armored and can carry machine guns, rockets, missiles or other weapons capable of firing at ground targets.

Asked why the Pentagon isn’t blocking Russian weapons shipments to Syria, Defense Department officials noted that the administration hasn’t declared an arms embargo. Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, accepted the argument that Moscow’s resupplying of helicopters enables the regime to kill its own people, but said the key issue is how the Syrians use the materiel.

“Let’s not let the Assad regime off the hook here,” he told reporters. “The focus really needs to be more on what the Assad regime is doing to its own people, than the cabinets and the closets to which they turn to pull stuff out. It’s really about what they’re doing with what they’ve got in their hands.”

In recent days, the State Department has decried what it calls “horrific new tactics” by Syrian forces, including helicopters attacks on civilians.

Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Clinton’s comments referred specifically to new helicopters that were being sent to Syria, and not already existing Russian-made or Soviet-made supplies being used by Assad’s government.

“We have been pushing the Russians for months to break their military ties with the Syrian regime and they haven’t done it,” she told reporters in Washington. “Instead, they keep reassuring all of us that what they are sending militarily to Syria can’t be used against civilians.

“But what are we seeing?” Nuland asked. “We are seeing the Syrian government using helicopters to fire on their own people from the air. So our question remains: How can the Russians conscience their continued military sales to Syria?”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged a tougher U.S. response. She accused Russia of enabling repression by Syria and its ally Iran.

“We must not give a U.S. blessing to Russia’s policies in Iran and Syria or we will simply invite Moscow to redouble its efforts to undermine U.S. interests around the world,” she said.

Clinton, as well, warned about a massing of Syrian forces near Aleppo over the last two days, saying such a deployment could be a “red line” for Syria’s northern neighbor Turkey “in terms of their strategic and national interests.”

“We are watching this very carefully,” she said.

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The concerns come as regime helicopters fired on rebel stronghold towns and raging violence killed more than 100 people on Monday.

It also follows the release of a UN report revealing how the Syrian army uses kids as “human shields”.

Government helicopter gunships strafed rebel positions in Al Heffa, as well as the opposition stronghold of Rastan in the central province of Homs.

An activist broke down in tears as she told how tanks were parked on the edge of Al Heffa, a town of 30,000 set in rugged countryside near Turkey.

“They have never come this close before,” Sem Nassar said. “There’s only one doctor working to treat the wounded in the town.” Most residents had fled, she said.

Such reports prompted Washington to voice concerns that Assad’s regime is planning to carry out new atrocities.

It comes after the massacre of 55 people last week in Al Kubeir and at least 108 near Houla on May 25-26.

“The United States joins Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan in expressing deep alarm by reports from inside Syria that the regime may be organising another massacre,” US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Nuland said the tactics showed the Assad regime, cracking down on the most severe threat to his family’s four-decade rule, was “increasingly desperate”.

“What government voluntarily uses helicopters and fires from them on their own civilians if they’re not desperate? What government depends on a bunch of thugs in trucks – irregulars – if they’re not desperate?” she asked.

But Nuland again ruled out US military intervention.

Russia has strongly opposed the prospect of force to remove Assad, whose family has been a key ally of Moscow since the Cold War.

“The concern has been that putting foreign military forces into this situation … will turn it into a proxy war,” Nuland said.

A spokesman for UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said he was “gravely concerned by the latest reports of violence coming out of Syria and the escalation of fighting” by both sides.

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The most popular puck around here is no longer Wolfgang. Our hottest skaters are no longer in bikinis.

Heaven has frozen over. The Kings are 2012 Stanley Cupchampions.

The first title in franchise history was earned on a monumental Monday in which a team’s skittishness became greatness while a city’s icy stare melted into tearful slush. Pushed to the edge of collapse, the Kings instead crunched and clinched, defeating the New Jersey Devils, 6-1, to win the Final series, four games to two.

After 45 years as a court jester, they are now Kings indeed, their coronation occurring at a Staples Center that has never been so loud, their celebration as emotionally raw as the ice under their suddenly shaky skates.

As the final seconds ticked off, the crowd of nearly 19,000 fans counted down — “five, four, three, two, one” — as if this were Times Square onNew Year’s Eve. At the final horn, silver streamers dropped from the sky while the Kings’ madly tossed sticks and helmets littered the ice.

In the stands, fans hugged and wept and cheered until it seemed as if the building would collapse of sheer joy. Down below, the players embraced each other’s giant pads and kissed each other’s sweaty cheeks with a defiant frenzy born of being hockey’s first eighth-seeded team to win a championship.

They won less than half of their regular-season games. They didn’t even make the playoffs until the season’s final week. A franchise that couldn’t even win with The Great One had just done it with the Amazing Ones.

“I don’t even believe this is happening,” said defensemanDrew Doughty in a whispery voice that was engulfed in the happy noise of history.

Eventually, the 35-pound Stanley Cup was rolled across a red carpet on to the ice and presented to captain Dustin Brown, who then displayed the sentimental bond that has fueled this team by handing it first to 35-year-old Willie Mitchell, the team’s oldest player who was touching his first Cup. Mitchell then passed it to Simon Gagne, who had spent the season valiantly battling concussion problems. Only after those two examples of grit had lifted the Cup was it finally passed to assistant captain Anze Kopitar.

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The scratching of Triple Crown contender “I’ll Have Another” from the Belmont wasn’t the only disappointing headline this week; so too was the perception that Fed chief Ben Bernanke may have scratched his easy-money policy from his tip sheet between now and the election.

Investors were hoping that the world’s most powerful central banker would provide Wall Street’s version of a Triple Crown, by signaling he was ready for a third round of money printing — known as quantitative easing — in order to jump-start a stalling economy here in the US and help a stock market that has lost much of its 2012 gains.

On the face of it, Bernanke demurred, guardedly insisting before the cameras that the Fed has no immediate plans to inject further juice into the banking system. It was the second-best television performance of the week, topped only by Jared Harris’ shocking exit on last week’s “Mad Men.”

Yes, don’t believe for a minute that Helicopter Ben isn’t ready, willing and able to drop dollars this summer everywhere from Baltimore to Barcelona. The fact that he didn’t telegraph that plan on Thursday, six days after a dismal employment report rocked the White House and five months before the election, shouldn’t be a surprise.

The politically attuned former Princeton professor is wise enough to know that there will be plenty of opportunities to fire up the printing presses in the weeks to come, without looking like he’s doing anything to affect the election outcome in November. The situation is especially dicey given the fact that GOP candidate Mitt Romney has signaled he’d likely replace Bernanke if he becomes president.

Indeed, the central bank is already setting the stage for its next move. While Professor Ben played coy, Janet Yellen, an Obama appointee to the Fed, laid out the case for an imminent easing. In what likely will become a familiar refrain by Democrats in the run-up to Election Day, Yellen notes that “the European situation is already having a meaningful effect here in the US, further weighing on prospects for US growth.”

This puts in play a scenario that will allow the Fed chief to make the best out of a sticky situation of easing thisclose to an election.

At the very least, the European crisis will force the Fed to flood the banking system with money to sop up losses by US banks from their dealings across the pond. As the foremost student of the Great Depression, Bernanke will act — more to protect his reputation than his job.

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Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime fall.

“The moment the regime there falls, we’ll be following these things, but at the end of the day it is very difficult to predict what will happen there,” Barak told a group of youths performing national service.

“The Assad family is slaughtering its people, with the support of the Iranians and Hezbollah and the world is silent,” the defense minister added.

Shelling of opposition strongholds continues

Syrian forces shelled opposition strongholds in the central province of Homs and eastern Deir al-Zor on Monday and clashed with rebels in violence which killed 29 people across the country, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The British-based Observatory, which monitors Syria through a network of sources inside the country, said six members of the security forces were killed in fighting with rebels in the town of Al-Ashaara in Deir al-Zor.

Video shows what activists say are helicopters firing missiles in Rastan.

A further five people, including an army defector, were killed in army shelling of the town, it said.

In the center of the country, where Free Syrian Army rebels have been intensifying attacks on forces loyal to Assad, the army shelled Rastan and the city of Homs and conducted army offensives in Hama and Idlib provinces.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu condemned the ongoing massacre of Syrian civilians by Assad, blaming the violence on the Axis of Evil: Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

“This axis is rearing its ugly head,” Netanyahu told his cabinet, “and the world must understand that this is the region we live in.”

Vice Premier Shaul Mofaz on Sunday accused Assad of committing genocide during his crackdown on a 15-month uprising, in an unusually harsh censure of the Jewish state’s Arab neighbor.

Soldiers and militias loyal to Assad have killed at least 10,000 people, according to UN figures. The Assad government puts its own losses at more than 2,600 dead. Assad has blamed unspecified foreign-backed terrorists for the violence.

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