■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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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