British spies hired an astrologer during World War II, although many thought he was a fraud, and even sent him to the US on a propaganda mission, secret documents being released today revealed.
The documents - the latest in a trickle of British spy agency files being released over the past decade - provide both a cloak-and-dagger story worthy of a Hollywood script and serious insights into British World War II spycraft.
The files show that many British spy handlers had nothing but contempt for Louis de Wohl, a German-speaking novelist and astrologer who claimed to be descended from Hungarian nobility and called himself The Modern Nostradamus and managed to set himself up in a British government apartment in west London, which he called the Psychological Research Bureau.
$10 Women's Day gift
Women in the ex-Soviet state of Turkmenistan will receive $10 each from the state this week as a Women's Day present.
A decree signed by President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and published yesterday said that every woman would get a 200,000 manat ($10) gift on March 8 "as a sign of respect".
Mr Berdymukhamedov came to power promising change and reform in late 2006 when his autocratic predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, died after a 21-year rule. Women's day, marked on March 8, is a big holiday across the former Soviet world but its celebration was limited under Mr Niyazov who saw it as a legacy of his nation's Soviet past.
During his reign, Mr Niyazov ruled the gas-rich nation as a personal fiefdom and tolerated little freedom. The long list of his eccentricities included a ban on gold teeth, ballet and circus.
Tajiks tear down Soviet statue
Tajikistan has dismantled its last monument to Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, bidding farewell to another vestige of its Soviet past. The removal at the weekend followed last year's decision by President Imomali Rakhmon to rename Lenin park, where the statue was located, after Persian poet Rudaki. President Rakhmon, who has led Central Asia's poorest nation since 1992, has tried to stress his Persian roots and distance himself from the Soviet past with its heavy Russification, by dropping the Russian-style "-ov" ending from his surname.
The dismantling of the Lenin statue - the last surviving one of many erected in Tajikistan under Soviet rule - caused an outcry from the communists, the nation's second biggest party that supports Mr Rakhmon on most issues. "You can't do that. He was a great man," party official Subkhon Safialoyev lamented, sitting in a room decorated only by portraits of Lenin and his successor, Josef Stalin.
World's oldest voters
Malaysia has found nearly 9,000 people aged more than 100 on its electoral rolls as it heads for general elections next month, raising suspicions that the books are "contaminated" with dead voters.
The Election Commission has found the names of 8,666 registered voters with birth dates from a century or more ago, the New Straits Times reported. They included two 128-year-olds, the daily said.
The Election Commission says it relies on a dead voter's family or officials to notify it of the death and so rolls can be outdated, but it denies scope for electoral fraud whereby someone casts more than one ballot by impersonating a dead voter.
Malaysia has 10.9 million voters and its population has a life expectancy of about 72 years for men and 76 for women.
Voted namesake for President
Eighty residents of a Siberian village carrying the name of Russia's next President hope his election will rescue their dying community.
Medvedevka, a 300-year-old village at the base of the Altai mountains 4,000 kilometres east of Moscow, has no postal service and only one main street. Residents gather in one of two local grocery stores. It was there they collectively decided to vote for Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin's chosen successor and the victor in Sunday's elections.
"I voted for Medvedev, and other guys did the same. Maybe it's funny, but somewhere deep within our soul we believe he's one of us," local resident Vasily Berdnikov said. "The village has been orphaned in the last few years. Farms have gone bankrupt, young people have left for other towns. The last Medvedevs quit the village ten years ago for a village with better prospects." Villagers cast their ballots in the local school - a building with nine classrooms and only four students.
Ordered to buy 124,000 roses
An Iranian court has ordered a man to buy his wife 124,000 roses after she filed a complaint against her "stingy" husband to claim her dowry, a press report said yesterday. "After 10 years of marriage Hengameh had decided to claim her dowry of 124,000 red roses to punish her very stingy husband," the Etemad newspaper said.
"Shortly after marriage I realised that Shahin was very cheap. He even refused to pay for my coffee if we went to a cafe or restaurant," said the woman, identified only by her first name Hengameh. But Shahin told the court he could only afford five roses a day and complained that it was "her billionaire friends who had put such ideas in her head."
The court has seized his apartment worth 600 million rials (€43,668) until he has bought her the entire 124,000 roses. A long stemmed red rose costs 20,000 rials (€1.36) in Tehran.