A pan-European car-jacking gang is believed to be behind a weekend burglary at the Riviera home of Juventus midfielder Patrick Vieira, who was knocked out with gas during the raid, police said.
Six eastern Europeans, including a woman and the two suspected gang leaders, were taken into custody on Wednesday after they were caught red-handed stealing a luxury car from a villa in the Riviera town of Biot, police said.
The gang is suspected of breaking into Vieira's villa near Cannes last Saturday night, making off with jewelry and the player's Mercedes SUV.
Vieira and his wife, Cheryl, complained of violent headaches the following morning, suggesting the gang had pumped sleeping gas into their home.
The couple were unharmed in the incident, and Vieira was able to join the rest of the French football team in the Alpine resort of Tignes on Sunday, where they are following an intensive World Cup training program.
Vieira's car was recovered in Nice on Monday, and Le Parisien newspaper said police had discovered a garage lined with luxury Mercedes, Audi and Nissan vehicles, allegedly intended for resale in eastern Europe.
Police said the network -- which had been under watch for several weeks -- was suspected of a string of similar cases, including three on the Riviera.
The stolen cars were left at drop-off points, where they were picked up and trafficked abroad -- mostly to Slovenia via Italy, police said.
French police said that car-jacking by organized criminals was a major new problem on the Riviera, with the number of cases rising "exponentially."
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed