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MOSCOW — It doesn’t take an astrologer to see that Dmitry Medvedev will become Russia’s next president. But that’s not stopping astrologers from predicting it anyway.
Russian astrologers looking toward 2008 are forecasting a future that could have been scripted by spin doctors from United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party that nominated Medvedev, a current first deputy prime minister.
That doesn’t mean, however, that they agree completely on what the future holds for Russia, which is, if you hadn’t guessed already, a typical Cancer.
Medvedev, meanwhile, is a Virgo. He is a flexible politician, said Yevgeny Volokontsev, a teacher at the Higher School of Astrology in Moscow who said Medvedev would be a successful president. President Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor is always learning and makes only sensible decisions, Volokontsev said.
“Maybe he will be even better than Putin,” Volokontsev said. “He is a very clever person, flexible and always developing.”
Having chosen a new president, Russia “will go quiet for four years,” astrologer Pavel Globa wrote last week in the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

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The troubled pop star Britney Spears was released on Saturday from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, The Associated Press reported. She had been taken there by paramedics on Thursday night, when the police were summoned to her home after a dispute with her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, about their sons, Sean Preston, 2 and Jayden, 1. On Friday a court commissioner suspended the right of Ms. Spears, 26, to visit the children and awarded sole physical and legal custody to Mr. Federline before scheduling another hearing for Jan. 14. Previously Mr. Federline had temporary custody, and Ms. Spears had court-monitored visitation rights. After seeing Ms. Spears in the hospital, Phil McGraw, the television psychologist, said, “My meeting with Britney and some family members this morning in her room at Cedars leaves me convinced more than ever that she is in dire need of both medical and psychological intervention.”

Two days ago