Our favorite alien loving FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov visited his old pal Libyan dictator Kadhafi to play a game of chess. Why not? Nothing important is happening in the world right now, certainly not in Libya, right? Ilyumzhinov won; Kadhafi apparently has a poor end-game strategy. (source)

NYC police, apparently bored since actual crime has gone down in the city, made their first arrest for “sitting at a Chess table and not playing Chess”, which is forbidden according to these signs since 2008. A woman had been sitting completely not playing Chess for almost 10 minutes. And I thought the police would simply tell her to move along (note that source relates only the woman’s side of the story).

This comes on the heels of last year’s famous arrest of 7 guys actually playing chess – on designated chess tables – in a “no adults” area, i.e. too close to a playground. That charge was thrown out, as was this one. (source, via) Update: Police respond that the arrest was actually for a litany of other offenses. (source)

Master chess player caught cheating at German Chess Championship. (source)

NASA astronauts recently abandoned the second Earth vs Space chess match as the mission came to an end. (source)

ObSet: Time Life presents a Harry Potter Chess set, where each piece has some kind of special effect (glows red, falls apart when you smoosh it, etc). $250