Longtime regime opponents, too, were caught off guard.

Suddenly, however, this secular commitment is no longer so clear.

The revolts themselves caught seasoned observers, even Arab leaders, off guard.

I was caught off guard when Stephen Colbert asked me a profound question, a profound question.

The main advantage of going through an official rationing is that people are able to know when and at what time they ll have their water interrupted so they can take precautions and are not caught by surprise.

Early on the morning of 26 June, however, two speedboats appeared from nowhere and seized the ship and crew, after menacing them with rifle fire.

Indeed, Colombia s Juan Manuel Santos Calderón and Brazil s Dilma Rousseff both skilled and experienced politicians were utterly unprepared for their countries protests.

By its own admission, Al Qaeda has been caught off guard, no doubt because the group s central argument has been that the fall of oppressive Arab governments could come only through violence.

When what was a tranquil sea swallows up people, homes and long tail boats mercilessly, without warning and no one can tell you anything reliable about whether another one is coming, I'm not sure you'd want to calm down either.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's announcement that he plans to dismantle Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, as well as some settlements in the West Bank, has shocked and caught people off guard both in Israel and around the world.

The protests started after the Palestinian Authority declared an increase of about 8 in fuel and petrol prices in the West Bank, starting from the beginning of September.

Invaded by surprise by the Imperial German Army, which was approximately 600,000 men strong, the small, ill equipped, 117,000 strong Belgian army succeeded, for ten days, in holding the German army in front of Liège in 1914.

On the Republican side, hacks, spin masters, and many people who ought to have known better suddenly developed an extraordinary appreciation for something called the CPS Household Survey of Employment as a supposed guide to month to month changes in the labor market.

Longtime regime opponents, too, were caught off guard. For days after Egypt erupted, the Muslim Brotherhood did not know how to react, making it seem out of touch with the Arab street.

PARIS Why do revolutions so often take professional diplomats by surprise? Is there something in their DNA that makes them prefer the status quo so much that, more often than not, they are taken aback by rapid changes, neither foreseeing them nor knowing how to respond once they begin?

Large anti Japan demonstrations took place Saturday afternoon in the cities of Xi'an, Chengdu and Zhengzhou reportedly organized by university groups over the Internet through QQ and other social networking sites , the protests have taken many by surprise.