■IRAQ
Forces recover Picasso
PHOTO: AP/SNOWMASS POLICE
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.
■UNITED STATES
Bear uses ladder to escape
A bear that wandered into an inground skateboard park and got stuck was rescued when officials lowered a ladder so it could climb out. The bear was discovered on Tuesday morning in the Colorado resort town of Snowmass, KUSA-TV reported. Officials say it apparently was in the park all night, and couldn’t get out because of the steep concrete sides. Workers from the Parks and Recreation Department lowered a long ladder. The bear eventually climbed the ladder and wandered away. No injuries were reported to people or the bear.
■UNITED STATES
Migrants crammed in truck
Police pulled over a refrigerated truck and found 97 illegal immigrants in the back among near-freezing produce on Wednesday. An officer stopped the truck on a highway a few kilometers north of the border city of Nogales, the Arizona Department of Public Safety said. An inspection found 97 adults and children from Mexico and Guatemala crammed into the trailer, which was heavily chilled. No one was harmed, and the immigrants were handed over to Border Patrol agents, who processed them for deportation.
■UNITED STATES
‘Skinniest’ house for sale
It’s 2.9m wide by 12.8m long and is billed as the narrowest house in New York City. But there’s nothing small about its asking price: US$2.7 million. Located in Greenwich Village, the red brick building was built in 1873 and sandwiched between two larger structures. It’s famous for other reasons, too. Corcoran real estate broker Alex Nicholas says anthropologist Margaret Mead and poet Edna St Vincent Millay once called it home. The three-story structure boasts plenty of light with large windows in the front and back and a skylight. The current owner bought it in 2000 for US$1.6 million.
■UNITED STATES
No real nudes at The Met
It seems the only nudes allowed at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art are the ones in the collection. Police say they arrested a 26-year-old woman who was posing naked for a photographer, and in full view of visitors, in the museum’s arms and armor department on Wednesday. Model Kathleen “K.C.” Neill faces a charge of public lewdness. Defense attorney Donald Schechter says the museum is full of nude art and to call what the model and her photographer were doing obscenity “is ridiculous.” Photographer Zach Hyman, who has gained fame in the city for photographing nude models on subways, directed the shoot.
■UNITED STATES
‘Thursday’ thief gets jail
A New Jersey man who robbed banks every Thursday has been sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison. Peter Bielecke pleaded guilty in June to one count of bank robbery but admitted five other holdups on consecutive Thursdays in January, February and March. He robbed banks in several cities including Brick, his hometown. He didn’t give a reason for choosing Thursdays. But authorities say the pattern made it easier to track him. The 40-year-old was arrested after a March 5 robbery in Old Bridge. He will also have to pay US$12,000 in restitution under the sentence handed down on Wednesday in the US District Court in Trenton.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese