UNITED STATES
Warhol smashes own record
The last of four in a series of Andy Warhol paintings depicting car crashes shattered the pop artist’s auction record on Wednesday, selling for more than US$105 million, Sotheby’s said. Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), signed and a part of his 1963 Death and Disasters series, fetched US$105,445,000 with three bidders vying for the buy in New York, the auction house said in a statement. The 2.43m tall and 4m wide work has two panels: to the left a series of 15 images of a car crash, and to the right, a large silvery rectangle. It is an imposing work experts describe as trailblazing and a cinematic allusion to death on a silver screen. The previous top sale for the enigmatic pop artist and son of Polish immigrants, who was born Andrej Varhola in Pittsburgh, was US$71.72 million, Sotheby’s said.
MALDIVES
EU warns of autocratic drift
The EU has warned that the country may drift back to autocratic rule, saying it will consider “appropriate measures” if the country cannot elect a resident in a rescheduled runoff vote on Saturday. In a declaration dated Wednesday, High Representative Catherine Ashton says any further delays or attempts to influence the outcome will be considered by the EU as actions made to prevent Maldivians from exercising their democratic rights. The statement comes after President Mohamed Waheed Hassan decided to extend his legal term by six days, purportedly to avoid a constitutional void after the country failed three times to elect a president.
UNITED STATES
Secret service agents fired
Two Secret Service agents have been removed from President Barack Obama’s security detail for alleged misconduct, The Washington Post reported late on Wednesday. The move came a year after the agency was involved in a prostitution scandal in Colombia. The Post said Ignacio Zamora Junior, who it said was in charge of about two dozen agents in the president’s security detail, was allegedly found last spring trying to re-enter a woman’s room at a luxury hotel near the White House after leaving behind a bullet from his service weapon. In a subsequent probe, the service found that Zamora and another supervisor, Timothy Barraclough, sent sexually suggestive e-mails to a female subordinate. The Post said the Secret Service has removed Zamora from his position and Barraclough was taken off the detail to a separate part of the division.
BRAZIL
Contest held for best rear end
Political correctness took a distant back seat late on Wednesday as the nation’s business hub of Sao Paulo played host to tabloid heaven with a contest honoring women’s rear ends. Namely, this year’s edition of Miss Bum Bum — in which 15 young women competed for the right to be crowned as the owner of the most delightful derriere. The winner, who got the vote of a half-male, half-female jury, was 25-year-old Dai Macedo from the central state of Goias for her 107cm of “bumbum.” Second was Eliana Amaral from Pernambuco in the north and, bringing up the rear, so to speak, was third-placed Jessica Amaral from the central northern region of Para. There was a report in daily O Dia of skulduggery amid suggestions an X-ray showing Amaral’s assets to be implant-free was a forgery. In recent days the Twitter sphere has been awash with catty remarks from some contestants denigrating each other — the dreaded word cellulite proving a favored insult — and the voting process.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of