■ Mexico
More heads found
Police on Wednesday found two human heads in a backpack in the Pacific state of Guerrero, the latest decapitation victims in a wave of violence in the country. Guerrero Attorney General Eduardo Murueta said the heads found in Altamirano, a city on the border with the state of Michoacan, had not yet been identified. He said authorities were investigating whether they belong to two men who went missing on Tuesday in Michoacan. Both Michoacan and Guerrero have been hit by a wave of violence including killings, beheadings and grenade attacks police have blamed on a turf war between rival drug gangs fighting over smuggling routes and street corner dealing. In the last few months, police have found more than a dozen deca-pitation victims in Guerrero, Michoacan, the border state of Baja California and Monterrey.
■ United States
Judo, not a hostage situation
Police responding to a caller who mistook a judo class training exercise for a hostage situation at a gymnasium stopped a passing car and pulled their guns on the driver, her four children, her fiance and a family friend. The telephone caller saw someone wearing a ski mask enter the class inside the Young Men's Christian Association on Oct. 11 with a toy gun and order everyone down on the floor, police Major James Thorburn said. The caller told police the gunman fled in a car. Police pulled the car over about a block from the YMCA. The occupants of the vehicle were ordered out at gunpoint, and some police officers reportedly used profanity. No one in the car was part of the class, and police didn't know why the caller thought the gunman had got in that vehicle.
■ United States
A hole in Picasso
Picasso's famed Dream painting turned into a nightmare for Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn when he accidentally gave the multimillion dollar canvas an elbow. Wynn had just finalized a US$139 million sale to another collector of his painting when he poked a finger-sized hole in the artwork while showing it to friends at his Las Vegas office a couple of weeks ago. Director and screenwriter Nora Ephron said Wynn had raised his hand to show the group something about Picasso's 1932 portrait of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter. "At that moment, his elbow crashed backward right through the canvas," Ephron wrote, noting that Wynn has retinitis pig-mentosa, an eye disease that damages peripheral vision. "Smack in the middle ... was a black hole the size of a silver dollar. `Oh shit,' he said. `Look what I've done. Thank goodness it was me.'"
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