■ Chile
Rodin sculpture recovered
A boy found a sculpture by French artist Auguste Rodin that had been stolen from the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts and delivered it to a police station. He found the US$515,000 sculpture in a park near the museum where The Trunk of Adele, a 26cm-by-45cm, 20kg bronze piece, was stolen Thursday. "When he saw the news on television and realized how important it was, he took it to police," said Clara Budnik, head of the National Archive and Libraries Department. "There is no doubt, it's the stolen sculpture," she said. "It has the stamp `AZ Rodin 6137' that identifies it."
■ United States
Ex-envoy caught in tax scam
A former envoy for Afghanistan's Taliban leadership pleaded guilty to cheating on his taxes and lying on a bank loan application. Noorullah Zadran, 53, once a top spokesman for the Taliban in the US, entered the plea to federal charges in Manhattan. He faces between two and eight months in prison at his sentencing in September. Zadran admitted that he failed to report US$1,541 in income on his 2000 federal tax return. He also said he wrote on a loan application that his wife was working when she was unemployed to get a lower interest rate. "This is a nothing case," said Zadran's attorney, Jared Scharf, outside court.
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