■IRAQ
Forces recover Picasso
Special forces have recovered a stolen Picasso and arrested a man planning to sell the painting during a raid of his house in the south, police said Wednesday. The painting, The Naked Woman, apparently had been among the artwork looted from Kuwait during Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion, police spokesman Major Muthana Khalid said. It was seized on Tuesday during a raid on the house belonging to the suspect near the mainly Shiite city of Hillah, about 95km south of Baghdad. Khalid said the man was trying to sell the painting for US$450,000, but some experts who saw the painting said it was worth US$10 million.
■RUSSIA
Help sought on ‘Arctic Sea’
Authorities said on Wednesday they would run the investigation into the alleged Arctic Sea hijacking, but would ask other nations to help solve the mystery of the cargo ship’s bizarre voyage. The Maltese-flagged freighter seemed to vanish after sailing from Finland on July 21 with a load of timber. A warship intercepted the vessel last week in the Atlantic, and eight suspected hijackers have been jailed in Moscow, facing charges of kidnapping and piracy. Sparse information has led to speculation the ship could have been carrying sensitive cargo. The Foreign Ministry said an initial search conducted shortly after the ship was intercepted revealed no suspicious cargo.
■SPAIN
Body refuses to go pale
Relatives of a dead man asked a doctor to confirm his death a second time because his body showed no signs of going pale hours after he passed away, local officials said on Wednesday. The 70-year-old died of a heart attack and his body was on display at a funeral home in Lorca, a city of some 90,000 people in the south, when his family noticed that it still had a healthy pink glow, a spokesman for the funeral home said. They then called in the doctor to confirm that their loved one was in fact dead. The doctor concluded that the man still had a healthy glow, despite having passed away, because the pacemaker he was wearing was still running.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Ball and chain unveiled
A locked ball and chain was on Wednesday unveiled as one of the most unusual items to have been pulled out of the mud of the river Thames in London in years. The question is: What happened to the prisoner? The shackle, beautifully preserved in the foreshore mud, went on temporary display at the Museum of London Docklands yesterday, where Kate Sumnall, the museum’s finds liaison officer, admitted its full story would never be known. The ball and chain was found in a barge bed in Rotherhithe, central London, by an official mudlark — there are many amateurs but only a few have permits to actually dig in the Thames foreshore — called Steve Brooker.
■LIBYA
Swiss businessmen freed
The government has agreed to allow two Swiss businessmen held in the country for more than a year to return home, the official news agency Jana reported yesterday. The government “decided to approve the accord” late on Wednesday and charged the foreign ministry with “taking measures necessary to implement” the text, Jana reported without providing further details. Tripoli last week promised to allow the two businessmen to leave the country after Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz apologized to the Libyan people for the arrest of one of leader Muammar Qaddafi’s sons.
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