These were some of the bizarre claims made by speakers at the weekend's UFO Science and Consciousness conference in Johannesburg.

The author of Exopolitics, Alfred Lambremont Webre, had about 1000 delegates in awe when he said that teleportation would be in use by 2045.

"You will go to the Johannesburg teleport with your family and luggage and pop in. Forty-five minutes later you will pop out of the Paris teleport," he said yesterday, to mild applause.

Webre, who has written about "the science of relations between intelligent civilisations in the universe", said that there were already "some people who commute daily" from Nevada in the US to the Australian desert where they work.

Once teleportation is operational on a wide scale, Webre said, there would be "no need for aircraft, trains, cars, buses and highways".

Webre claimed that time travel was being used by the CIA to "hide military secrets in certain time loops" and for covert operations.

"US presidents are pre-identified by the CIA by time travel. They're identified 20 or 30 years in advance and pre-trained to use time travel".

Obama and George Bush Jr were told in their early 20s that they were destined to become presidents of the US and were prepared for the job in secret programmes, he said.