Secrets, spy tools and a 110-year-old lemon are on show in an exhibition from Britain's MI5.

A desiccated 110-year-old lemon that played a key role in espionage history is one of the star attractions of a London exhibition drawn from the files of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency.

Compact spy cameras, microdots in a talcum powder tin and a briefcase abandoned by fleeing Soviet spy Guy Burgess are also part of the show at Britain’s National Archives, which charts the history of a secretive agency that is -- slowly -- becoming more open.

MI5 Director General Ken McCallum told journalists at a preview on Tuesday that the organization’s work “is often different from fiction, whether that fiction is George Smiley or Jackson Lamb” -- the brilliant spymaster of John le Carre’s novels and the slovenly supervisor of MI5 rejects in Mick Herron’s “Slow Horses” series.

Many stories told in the exhibition, however, would not be out of place in a thriller.

The lemon, now black and shriveled, helped convict Karl Muller, a German spy in Britain during World War I. It was found by police in his dressing-table drawer, along with another in his overcoat pocket. Evidence at his secret trial showed their juice had been used to write invisible-ink letters detailing British troop movements.

Muller was executed by firing squad at the Tower of London in 1915.

In a coda that would not be out of place in “Slow Horses,” MI5 pretended Muller was still alive and wrote to his German handlers to ask for more money.

“The Germans duly sent more funds and MI5 used the funds to purchase a car,” exhibition curator Mark Dunton said. “And they christened the car `The Muller.’

“They then were reprimanded by the Treasury for unauthorized use of expenditure,” he added.

The show includes declassified records held by the National Archives and items loaned from the secret museum inside Thames House, MI5’s London headquarters.

It charts the changing role of an agency that was founded in 1909 as the Secret Service Bureau with an initial staff of two officers.

There are records of its World War II successes, when the agency used captured Nazi agents to send disinformation back to Germany, deceiving Adolf Hitler about the location of the looming Allied invasion in 1944.

Failures include the years-long betrayal of the upper-crust “Cambridge Spies,” whose members spilled secrets to the Soviet Union from the heart of the U.K. intelligence establishment. Recently declassified MI5 documents on display include the 1963 confession of Cambridge spy Kim Philby, who denied treachery for years before he was exposed and fled to Moscow.

The exhibition also reveals changing attitudes, not least to women. The exhibition includes a 1945 report by spymaster Maxwell Knight discussing whether women could make good agents

“It is frequently alleged that women are less discreet than men,” he noted, but declared that it was not so, saying that in “hundreds of cases of `loose talk”’ most of the offenders were men.

There are admissions of past mistakes. The exhibition notes that MI5 was slow to recognize the threat from fascism in the 1930s, and later spent too much time spying on the small Communist Party of Great Britain. MI5 didn’t need to break into the party’s offices -- it had a key, which is on display.

There are only a few items from the past few decades, showing how MI5’s focus has shifted from counterespionage to counterterrorism. Displays include a mortar shell fired by the Irish Republican Army at 10 Downing St. in 1991 while Prime Minister John Major was holding a Cabinet meeting.

MI5 only began releasing records to the U.K.’s public archives in 1997, generally 50 years after the events have passed. Even now, it controls what to release and what to keep secret.

“It would be a mistake to assume everything is in the exhibition,” said author Ben Macintyre, whose books on the history of intelligence include “Operation Mincemeat” and “Agent Zigzag.” But he said it still marks “a real sea-change in official secrecy.”

“A generation ago, this stuff was totally secret,” he said. “We weren’t even allowed to know that MI5 existed.”

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Mikhail Mishustin said that Russia is expanding logistical routes, "primarily in the direction of friendly countries, and financing appropriate infrastructure"

Members of Yemen’s radical Ansar Allah (#Houthi) movement attacked the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier three times in the last 24 hours, spokesman for the Houthi armed forces Yahya Saree said on Sunday.

"In the last 24 hours, our armed forces engaged in a battle with a group of enemy warships led by the US aircraft carrier Harry Truman three times in the Red Sea. The counteraction operation involved missile troops, unmanned aerial vehicles and naval forces that used several cruise missiles and drones," the Houthi spokesman said during a live broadcast on the Al-Masirah TV channel.

On March 15, US President Donald Trump announced the start of a military operation against the Houthi rebels that control about a third of #Yemeni territory. He explained the decision by the Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The US operation involves the Harry Truman carrier group based in the Red Sea. It regularly delivers strikes on the Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen.

Presidential election in Ukraine may be held in July — #The Economist
Vladimir Zelensky will attempt to catch his competitors by surprise, hoping that they will fail to arrange an efficient campaign within a short term, the source said.

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb would like to rely on the United States and not on the Ukrainian army of Europeans in the issue of security guarantees for Ukraine, Russia’s Permanent Representative at International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said.

The president of Finland sees the Ukrainian army with the support of Europe as the basis of security guarantees but considers necessary to provide for guarantees from the US, the Russian envoy said. "It evidences that the Finnish President does not tend to rely too much on the armed forces of Ukraine and Europeans. His dream is to somehow engage the US in the conflict situation," the diplomat wrote on his Telegram channel.

The Finnish president said earlier in an interview with the Politico news outlet that the "armed to the teeth" Ukraine should be in the basis of the deterrence policy.

The Kiev authorities are trying to derail the peace agreements with their strikes on Russia's energy infrastructure, which shows their lack of commitment, Russia's First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said.

"Kiev, having agreed in words to the energy ceasefire, continues to plan and carry out strikes on Russia's energy infrastructure, trying to deceive both us and the United States in this way. It is absolutely clear that through such actions it is trying to derail any peace agreements and clearly demonstrates its lack of commitment," he said at a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine.

According to the diplomat, Russia is fully ready for a military scenario of settlement of the conflict in Ukraine, but prefers to settle it by diplomatic means.

"Today, thanks to the efforts of the presidents of Russia and the United States, there is a real chance that this settlement will be diplomatic and that tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives of ordinary Ukrainians will be saved. Of course, the military scenario remains on the table. And we are also ready for its implementation. But we prefer peace and diplomacy," Polyansky emphasized.

A Venus flytrap wasp? Scientists uncover an ancient insect preserved in amber that snatched its prey.

NEW YORK — An ancient wasp may have zipped among the dinosaurs, with a body like a Venus flytrap to seize and snatch its prey, scientists reported Wednesday.

The parasitic wasp’s abdomen boasts a set of flappy paddles lined with thin bristles, resembling “a small bear trap attached to the end of it,” said study co-author Lars Vilhelmsen from the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

Scientists uncovered over a dozen female wasps preserved in 99-million-year-old amber from the Kachin region in northern Myanmar. The wasp’s flaps and teeth-like hairs resemble the structure of the carnivorous Venus flytrap plant, which snaps shut to digest unsuspecting insects. But the design of the wasp’s getup made scientists think its trap was designed to cushion, not crush.

Instead, researchers suggested the flytrap-like structure was used to hold a wriggly insect still while the wasp laid an egg, depositing a baby wasp to feed on and drain its new host.

It’s a playbook adapted by many parasitic wasps, including modern-day cuckoo and bethylid wasps, to exploit insects. But no known wasp or any other insect does so with bizarre flaps quite like this one.

“I’ve seen a lot of strange insects, but this has to be one of the most peculiar-looking ones I’ve seen in a while,” said entomologist Lynn Kimsey from the University of California, Davis, who was not involved with the research.

Scientists named the new wasp Sirenobethylus charybdis, partly for the sea monster from Greek mythology that stirred up wild whirlpools by swallowing and expelling water.

The new study was published in the journal BMC Biology and included researchers from Capital Normal University and the Beijing Xiachong Amber Museum in China.

It’s unclear when the wasp went extinct. Studying unusual insects like this one can help scientists understand what insects are capable of and how different they can be.

“We tend to think that the cool things are only found today,” said Gabriel Melo, a wasp expert at the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil, who had no role in the study. ”But when we have this opportunity, we see that many really exceptional, odd things already happened.”

#SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un observed tests of newly developed reconnaissance and attack drones this week and called for their increased production, state media said Thursday.

Kim has been emphasizing the development of drones, and the tests were the latest display of his country’s growing military capabilities.

Photos released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency showed Kim observing what appeared to be a large reconnaissance drone roughly resembling Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail airborne warning and control aircraft. Other images showed exploding drones crashing into military vehicles used as targets.

The agency said the test demonstrated the reconnaissance drone’s ability to track multiple targets and monitor troop movements on land and at sea, potentially enhancing North Korea’s intelligence-gathering operations and ability to neutralize enemy threats. The report said the new exploding drones are designed for various attack missions and feature unspecified artificial intelligence capabilities.

Kim expressed satisfaction with the drones’ performance and approved plans to expand production, emphasizing that drones and AI should be “top” priorities in efforts to advance his armed forces and adapt them to modern warfare, KCNA said. The agency said the tests took place as Kim visited a drone technology complex and an electronic warfare research group on Tuesday and Wednesday.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry didn’t immediately comment on the North Korean report.

Kim previously inspected other demonstrations of drones that explode on impact in November and August last year.

North Korea also last year accused South Korea of sending its own drones to drop anti-North Korean propaganda leaflets over the North’s capital of Pyongyang, and threatened to respond with force if such flights occur again. South Korea’s military refused to confirm whether or not the North’s claims were true.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have escalated recently as Kim continues to expand his military capabilities, which now includes various nuclear-capable weapons targeting South Korea and intercontinental ballistic missiles potentially capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

Kim is also aligning with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine, sending troops and military equipment to support Russia’s efforts. This has raised concerns that he may receive Russian technology transfers in return, further strengthening the threat posed by his nuclear-armed military.

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