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A wartime spy described as Winston Churchill's favourite has finally been remembered with a blue plaque. Christine Granville, who was born Krystyna Skarbek in Warsaw, joined British intelligence in 1939 and is said to have inspired Ian Fleming's spy character Vesper Lynd. She struggled after the war and was given cheap lodgings at a London hotel run by the Polish Relief Society. It was her home until she was murdered by a stalker in 1952, aged 44. The English Heritage Blue Plaque has been unveiled at the former Shelbourne Hotel (now 1 Lexham Gardens), in Kensington, and is inscribed with...

A previously unknown militant group claimed responsibility on a militant Web site for the slaying of a U.S. diplomat in Sudan on New Year's Day, according to an intelligence group monitoring extremist groups. "We can't authenticate this communique, which is posted by a member of the forum, but at the same time, because there is a claim of responsibility, we chose to send it out to our subscribers," Rita Katz told The Associated Press. Katz is the director of monitoring institute, SITE Intelligence Group. Katz added that she had never heard of the group before. The group calls itself Ansar...

KHARTOUM, Sudan - An American diplomat and his driver were shot to death Tuesday in the Sudanese capital, the U.S. Embassy said, a day after a joint African Union-United Nations force took over peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur region. It was not immediately known if the motive for the attack was political or a random crime. "This afternoon, the American officer succumbed to his injuries and passed away," said Walter Braunohler, the spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. Braunohler said the diplomat, whose name was not released, worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry identified...

Text of report by state-owned Sudanese TV on 9 February Security authorities today arrested two suspects over the killing of a US diplomat working for USAID, John Michael Granville and his Sudanese driver Abd-al-Rahman Abbas at the beginning of January this year. They are accused of murdering the two shortly after opening fire on their car injuring some security men and one civilian. Police sources said that the arrest was made this morning after getting information on the movement of the two suspects in Al-Futihab area in Omdurman. Source: Sudan TV, Omdurman, in Arabic 1900 gmt 9 Feb 08

TAMPA, Fla. - Robert R. Granville, an FBI agent in New York who headed the team that arrested Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in a sensational Cold War espionage case, has died at a hospital. He was 89. Granville, who lived in Crystal River, died April 12 after suffering a stroke two weeks earlier, said his son, Army Col. Robert R. Granville Jr., M.D. Granville began working for the FBI in 1940 and was promoted to field supervisor of Soviet espionage in the New York office six years later. On July 17, 1950, he and fellow agents arrested Julius Rosenberg in...