Back to the freak show that is the world chess federation: “He claims that he can communicate with aliens. Once, he says, he was even taken on a tour of one of their UFOs. ‘The extraterrestrials put me in a yellow astronaut suit and showed me their spaceship. I was on the bridge. I felt quite comfortable in their company.’ And who is the lucky space tourist? None other than the president of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. […] lyumzhinov has ruled one Russia’s poorest republics, a dusty strip of land bordering the Caspian Sea, home to 290,000 people, since 1993. He assumed the presidency of FIDE two years later.” (story)