Pennsylvania State Senator Jane Orie and her sister, Judge Joan Orie Melvin, apparently asked for some help from a strange place after Sen. Orie became the subject of an investigation of corruption.

Affidavits included in the case against Sen. Orie and her sister, Janine Orie, show that Jane and another sister contacted Carolann Sano, a Philadelphia-based clairaudient, last November while under grand jury investigation.

It might sound weird, but even in 2010 the brooding Balkan countries can’t shake their addiction to psychics, clairvoyants, soothsayers and assorted ‘white witches’, all of which are still doing a roaring trade, from Bulgaria to Translyvania.

Every second Bulgarian who took part in a survey for the Sofia television channel BTV said they believed in supernatural powers, and especially feared a curse being put on them. Professor Ljubomir Halachev confirmed in the programme that “trust in psychic powers and second sight is widespread in Bulgaria”.

The apparently unchallengeable claim by Bulgarian clairvoyants and psychics to paranormal powers rests on the world-renowned reputation of their late peer, the seer Baba Vanga — who is claimed to have predicted, before her death in 1996, a number of world events, including the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the death of Princess Diana, the break-up of the Soviet Union, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US – “two American brothers would fall under attacks by birds of steel” – and the sinking of the Russian nuclear cruise-missile submarine Kursk.

A row has broken out between a ‘psychic surgeon’ who believes he once cured a man of cancer and a campaigner who says he is a con man.

Gary Mannion says he has been psychic since he was 13 but is furious a website called badpsychics.com ridicules his beliefs.

An Ontario mother is demanding an apology after the Children’s Aid Society began an investigation into sexual abuse allegations after a visit to a psychic.

She said she was told that her daughter Victoria’s teaching assistant had been to a psychic recently…

The advert on DD-India channel in Hindi said that Pandit Bharatraj Shastri was an expert in “palmistry, birth kundali (horoscopes), vastu expert, marriage issues, troubles in business, dissatisfaction at work, warding off affects of black magic, family problems”.

Mediums are fighting new EU rules designed to protect the public from dodgy traders, fearing that honest spiritualists could be targeted.

Sylvia Browne is famous for telling distraught parents where their missing children are – but she gets it wrong. A lot. So why does she still have such a massive following? Jon Ronson took a cruise with America’s most controversial psychic to find out.

Plenty of people are still skeptical, though the naysayers are losing ground.

Sophie Evon, 77, is wanted for allegedly bilking a love-lorn woman from Seattle out of her family’s savings of $220,000.

Uri Geller got rich insisting that his supernatural abilities were real, so a number of magicians and skeptics — most notably James “The Amazing” Randi — mounted a campaign to discredit the performer. Randi exposed Geller during numerous TV appearances, demonstrating that his mental feats were nothing more than trickery.

Norway’s Princess Märtha Louise, daughter of King Harald and Queen Sonja, has emerged as a clairvoyant, and is launching an alternative school aimed at training students to contact angels. Officials at the Royal Palace won’t comment on the princess’ latest business venture.

Geller’s tireless attempts to silence his detractors have extended to the popular video-sharing site YouTube, landing him squarely in the center of a raging digital-age debate over controlling copyrights amid the massive volume of video and music clips flowing freely online.

Lawyers have the bar exam. Accountants have the CPA exam. Should Salem’s fortunetellers have to pass a test of their own to prove they’re psychic?

The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation this week jumped into a legal battle involving efforts by self-described psychic Uri Geller – who is famous for claiming to bend spoons by mental forces — to censor video clips of him posted on YouTube.

Geller’s company, London-based Explorologist, filed a copyright lawsuit on Monday against a critic who is trying to debunk claims that the self-described psychic really is one.