Ninety years after Bolshevik revolutionaries shot dead the last tsar, Russians are fighting over who to lionise: Tsar Nicholas II or Josef Stalin.
They are vying for first place in an online poll organised by Russian television to choose the greatest hero in the country's history. Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin is third.
By lunchtime yesterday, the last tsar led the survey with 419,476 votes, followed by Stalin with 381,361 and Lenin with 201,285. Some 2.8 million votes had been registered.
Russia's penchant for strong leaders is evident in the poll. Tsars Peter I and Catherine the Great feature in the top 10, along with crusading mediaeval prince Alexander Nevsky. Ivan the Terrible, who murdered his own son, is in 12th place.
Stalin, blamed by historians for 20 to 40 million deaths in political purges and agricultural famines during his 31-year rule, is popular with some Russians for defeating Nazi Germany, industrialising the Soviet Union and building a strong state.
€900 flushed down toilet
A Dutch woman who accidentally flushed €900 down the toilet got her money back after workers fished the bank notes from the drain.
The woman from Oldenzaal had just withdrawn €1,000 in €100 bills to spend on her forthcoming holiday.
Nine of the notes slipped out of her back pocket and into the toilet bowl while she was relieving herself.
Realising what she had done, she called the local council.
Using a mini-camera designed to detect blockages in drains and sewers, workers were able to find the nine bank notes, one of which had floated 15 metres from the house.
The woman hung the bills out to dry before heading off on holiday with her family.
Arrested for sex attacks on sheep
A Briton has been arrested on suspicion of carrying out a series of sex attacks on sheep, London police said yesterday.
The 27-year-old man was held at his home in Dulwich, south London, on suspicion of bestiality with sheep. He was also wanted in connection of the possession of drugs with intent to supply.
Detectives said the arrest followed allegations made to them in May and June.
"Two male joggers said they had observed a man molesting the sheep in a field at Botany Bay Lane, Chislehurst," police said in a statement.
"A similar incident was reported to police by a stables employee in the area."
Media reports said the man had been barred from visiting farmland while officers carried out their investigation.
Fake wife used to get divorce
An Indian man who took an impersonator to court to get a divorce faces legal action after his real wife found out, lawyers said yesterday.
Sanjib Saha presented a woman as his wife in a lower court in the eastern city of Kolkata this month. Both said they sought a mutual divorce, something the court granted immediately.
Mr Saha's real wife was then asked to leave the marital home. She has since appealed the ruling at a higher court, charged her husband with cheating and the original divorce was suspended. "The case exposed the legal loopholes in our system," Kaushik Chanda, lawyer of Mr Saha's real wife, said.
Loud music makes bar customers drink
Customers of bars that play loud music drink more quickly and in fewer gulps, French researchers said yesterday.
Their study, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, found that turning up the music spurred drinkers to down a glass of beer about three minutes more quickly.
To gauge the effect of sound levels on drinking, the team spent three Saturday nights visiting two bars, where they observed 40 men aged between 18 and 25 drinking beer.
"We have shown that environmental music played in a bar is associated with an increase in drinking," Nicolas Gueguen, a behavioural sciences researcher at the University of Southern Brittany in France, who led the study, said in a statement.
With help from the bars' owners, the team turned the music up and down and then recorded how much and how fast people drank. The customers did not know they were being observed.