Sketch by Dutch painter worth £152,000 recovered 25 miles away from Los Angeles hotel where it was being exhibited A Rembrandt drawing stolen from a hotel in the Los Angeles area has been recovered at a church in nearby Encino. Owners of the drawing, known as The Judgment, verified that the recovered pen-and-ink artwork valued at $250,000 (£152,000) and measuring 28cm x 41cm (11in x 16in) was the original that had vanished from an exhibit on Saturday night , said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Los Angeles county police department. An anonymous tipoff led investigators to the church on Monday, and experts from the Linearis Institute, which owns the drawing, verified its authenticity, he said. There are no suspects in custody, and authorities are not commenting on how the drawing ended up at the church about 25 miles from Los Angeles. They also are not confirming the name of the church. The drawing was in “a building on the church grounds, not in the sanctuary”, Whitmore said. It wasn’t hanging on a wall or otherwise displayed, he said. “We got an anonymous tip because there was so much news coverage,” Whitmore told Reuters. “That really was the turning point. The news coverage led people to call us and say, ‘Hey, I’ve seen this, and this is where I’ve seen it.’ We responded, and they were right. There it was.” The drawing by the 17th-century Dutch artist disappeared on Saturday night from an exhibit at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey. The theft happened while the curator was being distracted by a person who “appeared to be buying something, and that required the attention of the curator”, Whitmore said. “As the curator turned away from the exhibit momentarily and then turned back, he saw that the Rembrandt was gone.” Hi-tech specialists are scouring hotel security video, and authorities may release a sketch or stills of the suspects later this week or next week, Whitmore said. Rembrandt Painting United States guardian.co.uk
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• Jobless numbers forecast to fall to 2.44 million • Unemployment benefit claimants expected to rise • Wage increases still muted . Official jobs figures are expected to show that unemployment in the UK fell again in the three months to June, but at a slower rate than in previous periods. The number of unemployed, including those not eligible for jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), is expected to have fallen by around 10,000 in the quarter to about 2.44 million. This compares with a drop of 26,000 in the three months to May and an 88,000 plunge in the quarter to April. This means the unemployment rate in the UK will remain around 7.7%. Elsewhere, the Office for National Statistics figures are expected to show an increase in those claiming JSA, with the count increasing by 19,900 in July, a rise of 4.8%. Average weekly earnings in the three months to June are expected to have increased at a mediocre 2.4% – a slight improvement on the previous increase of 2.3%. Muted wage growth in the UK is combining with soaring inflation – which increased to 4.4% in July from 4.2% in June – and squeezing household budgets. Victoria Cadman, economist at Investec, said: “Last month’s labour market report presented a diverging picture with the claimant count rising in June and data showing a fall in unemployment in the three months to May. “We tend to the view that this reflects the shift in the benefits system away from income support toward Jobseeker’s Allowance, thereby adding to the claimant count, which is measured by JSA. “We expect a similarly divergent story will play out in today’s report.” The UK’s employment rate is struggling to return to pre-recession levels, the TUC warned earlier this week. Employment levels across the UK in April 2011, the latest available figures, were down 0.5% on pre-recession levels, the TUC said. A report from the ONS last month revealed that the south east suffered the lowest rise in unemployment during the recession while the West Midlands was hit by the biggest increase. The jobless figures reached a low point in 2005 but every region of the UK saw unemployment rise during the 2008/9 recession. Unemployment and employment statistics Economics Job losses guardian.co.uk
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[h/t John V. Moore ] Texas Governor Rick Perry has opened his candidacy for the GOP nomination with dog whistles and bombast, hitting on Ben Bernanke and President Obama with equal fervor. But perhaps the best contrast between the two of them can be seen here, where each of them has someone heckling them for an answer in a hostile, crowded environment. Gov. Perry responds by poking his finger in the questioner’s chest and telling him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. President Obama responds by engaging and correcting the misstatements of the tea party activists who are in his face, and after a couple of minutes, leaves the conversation after observing that they don’t appear to be interested in listening. Of course they’re not. They were looking for the “media moment,” which they’ve gotten on Fox News. That exchange at the end is so characteristic of what TeaPublican politics has done to our discourse. After the president explains the context and meaning to them, they just start shouting him down by cheerleading their cohorts to “stay strong.” The final exchange is the equivalent of a middle school spat on their part. When the President says they’re not interested in listening their response is that he’s not listening to them. At that, I roll my eyes and play my violin for them. Please. As if they care if he listens or not. For the record, it seemed that he was listening since he actually answered their questions. President Obama’s heckler was Ryan Rhodes. Rhodes is the state chairman for the Tea Party Patriots who organized protests against the president in 2010, bringing in other activists from six states. I wonder if the Koch brothers paid the bus fees. He wanted the press coverage, and now he has it. As time goes on, I’m sure there will be more of this kind of disruption at President Obama’s town halls, and I’m sure all of the conservative media outlets will use the confrontations to stoke up even more anger at him over nothing. Personally, I think he shouldn’t feed the trolls. They managed to hijack this news cycle, leaving everything he said about issues or engagement with Congress floating on the wind. If he hopes to get his actual message out, it might be good for him to simply ignore the Republican plants in every town and stay on the message he’s trying to convey. Click here to view this media To support that idea, here’s a panel discussion on Megyn Kelly’s show this morning where Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation, a man who routinely ramps up the rhetoric to a level that borders on violent, paints the Tea Party as a demonized group. I especially love it when he says he wants to round up “real Americans” to “take back” the White House. This segment was the first of at least three. I’ve seen it on Megyn Kelly’s show, Neil Cavuto’s show, and now The Five. Clearly Fox News feels compelled to use this as a way to rehabilitate rudeness.
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[h/t John V. Moore ] Texas Governor Rick Perry has opened his candidacy for the GOP nomination with dog whistles and bombast, hitting on Ben Bernanke and President Obama with equal fervor. But perhaps the best contrast between the two of them can be seen here, where each of them has someone heckling them for an answer in a hostile, crowded environment. Gov. Perry responds by poking his finger in the questioner’s chest and telling him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. President Obama responds by engaging and correcting the misstatements of the tea party activists who are in his face, and after a couple of minutes, leaves the conversation after observing that they don’t appear to be interested in listening. Of course they’re not. They were looking for the “media moment,” which they’ve gotten on Fox News. That exchange at the end is so characteristic of what TeaPublican politics has done to our discourse. After the president explains the context and meaning to them, they just start shouting him down by cheerleading their cohorts to “stay strong.” The final exchange is the equivalent of a middle school spat on their part. When the President says they’re not interested in listening their response is that he’s not listening to them. At that, I roll my eyes and play my violin for them. Please. As if they care if he listens or not. For the record, it seemed that he was listening since he actually answered their questions. President Obama’s heckler was Ryan Rhodes. Rhodes is the state chairman for the Tea Party Patriots who organized protests against the president in 2010, bringing in other activists from six states. I wonder if the Koch brothers paid the bus fees. He wanted the press coverage, and now he has it. As time goes on, I’m sure there will be more of this kind of disruption at President Obama’s town halls, and I’m sure all of the conservative media outlets will use the confrontations to stoke up even more anger at him over nothing. Personally, I think he shouldn’t feed the trolls. They managed to hijack this news cycle, leaving everything he said about issues or engagement with Congress floating on the wind. If he hopes to get his actual message out, it might be good for him to simply ignore the Republican plants in every town and stay on the message he’s trying to convey. Click here to view this media To support that idea, here’s a panel discussion on Megyn Kelly’s show this morning where Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation, a man who routinely ramps up the rhetoric to a level that borders on violent, paints the Tea Party as a demonized group. I especially love it when he says he wants to round up “real Americans” to “take back” the White House. This segment was the first of at least three. I’ve seen it on Megyn Kelly’s show, Neil Cavuto’s show, and now The Five. Clearly Fox News feels compelled to use this as a way to rehabilitate rudeness.
Continue reading …Rep. Clyburn: The President is Going to Have to Lay the Jobs Problem at the Doorsteps of the Republican Leadership
August 16, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media CNN’s John King talked to the Assistant Minority Leader, Rep. James Clyburn about President Obama’s recent bus tour and his continued unwillingness to call the Republican leadership out directly for obstructing bipartisan legislation. Tons of bills that are pending in both houses of Congress to get Americans back to work. And I agree with the Congressman’s statement at the very end of the segment, after venting some of the frustration he and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus have had with the president for focusing on things like deficit reduction instead of jobs and for not going to some of the areas that have been hardest hit in this economy. KING: Do you prefer — you’re the assistant Democratic leader, you’re in the minority now. The Republicans control the House. Would you prefer the president not blame the people in Washington or the Congress and specifically say the Republicans? CLYBURN: Yes, I would prefer that and I’ve had those discussions with the president on other occasions — KING: And why won’t he get tougher with them? Why won’t he get tougher with them? CLYBURN: Well, I hope he will. I don’t know. I think the president by nature wants to be diplomatic. I’m the same way. I call myself a southern gentleman, but there are times when I put that aside and go right to the core of the problem. The problem is that the Republican leadership refuses to allow a jobs bill to come to the floor. I have one that’s got bipartisan support. It has a companion bill over in the Senate that has bipartisan support. The co- sponsorship is bipartisan. But we cannot get them to bring this to the floor. And I think the president sooner or later is going to have to lay this right at the doorsteps of the Republican leadership. We did not vote for all of these things that’s got us in this problem today. Democrats have supported his agenda and we still look forward to supporting him in the future. He needs to call the Republicans out. That’s who is stopping this legislation, not the Democrats. It looks like Clyburn and some of his colleagues are as frustrated as the rest of us with President Obama continuing to just take shots at the Congress as a whole, instead of identifying who is being unreasonable and obstructing and who has been willing to compromise, and in the eyes of most liberals out there, been willing to compromise too much. Full transcript below the fold. KING: Now he’s on a bus tour. Let me show you the map as we bring it out here, the president of the United States on a bus tour that started in Minnesota. It’s going down through Minnesota. He’s now in Iowa, he’s in Decorah (ph), Iowa now. He’ll go to Iowa again tomorrow, then he’s in some rural counties in Illinois there. That’s the president of the United States out here in the Midwest, three states that were critical to him back in the 2008 campaign, Illinois obviously his home state. The Congressional Black Caucus proposes a jobs tour. It’s on the schedule right now through Detroit, Cleveland, Atlanta, Miami and Los Angeles. You see the president out here largely in white rural America. The CBC saying let’s have a jobs focus in African-American and minority communities across America. So does the president’s focus on states critical to his re- election mean overlooking communities with a need for help is beyond critical? In Columbia, South Carolina tonight the highest ranking African-American in the Congress (INAUDIBLE) Democratic leader James Clyburn. Congressman Clyburn, let’s get straight to that. Would you prefer — I know you support the president and you know he needs to go to these electorally (ph) important states for him. But would you prefer if he’s going to do a jobs tour that he start in Columbia, South Carolina where unemployment among African-Americans is near 19 percent, maybe Selma, Alabama where it’s above 20 percent? CLYBURN: Well I don’t think that we have to worry about where he starts. The problem is where will the impact be of job creation? Will we get a jobs Bill out of the Congress? I understand that the president’s going to be coming forward in September with a comprehensive job bill. I hope that’s the case. I’m also hopeful that as we talk about deficit reduction, and those kinds of things that we can include job creation in those discussions as well. Because the quickest way to reduce the deficit, I believe, is to get people back to work. They’ll be paying taxes. They won’t be drawing unemployment. And they will, in fact, be contributing to deficit reduction. So I would love to see a comprehensive jobs program in the very near future because I think that’s what will get people’s confidence restored and get our communities back on the right track. KING: As you know, though, and you tend to be more diplomatic, especially on television, than some of your colleagues and I respect that, as you know there’s been some grumbling in the Black Caucus and in what I’ll call the progressive community at large about the president’s focus, whether the subject be deficit reduction or where he’s traveling right now focusing on jobs. The chairman of the CBC, Emanuel Cleaver from Missouri said this to “The Washington Post” just last week. “What the president is doing is not the same as what we’re doing. We have real jobs to give real people who are unemployed. This is not one of those deals where we go around and talk about jobs and hope somebody gives us some press attention.” That’s a pretty harsh criticism of the president of the United States, the first African- American president to the United States from a leading African- American in the Congress, is it not? CLYBURN: Well, I didn’t get that he was directly talking about the president there. I’m not too sure that there aren’t other tours taking place that might have been the point of reference. I was with Emanuel Cleaver over the weekend, and we had long talks about what’s going on with the Congressional Black Caucus tomorrow in Detroit, later on in Miami, Atlanta, and then out in Los Angeles. Just because we’re ending the tour in Los Angeles doesn’t mean the emphasis is not on Los Angeles as well. We started in Cleveland, Ohio, around 7,000 people showed up. I think around 2,200 people got connected with jobs. But I think that that’s what Cleaver was talking about, trying to do a jobs tour where we bring employers and potential employees in to the same room and see if we can get the confidence restored again because too many people have stopped looking. They’ve just dropped out of the process altogether. We want to get them back in. And the way you do that, I think, is the way the CBC is conducting this tour. I think that’s what he had reference to. KING: I want you to listen to some of the president on the trail today. He’s being a bit more populous (ph) and he’s the president of the United States. He holds the most powerful job in Washington. And yet he’s making the case — and I think you would understand his frustration — that he can’t get a lot of things done because he can’t get them through the Congress. I want you to listen to this and I want to you if you would choose the same words. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: People are doing the right thing. Well, if you can do the right thing, then folks in Washington have to do the right thing. And if we do that, there is not a problem that we face that we cannot solve. (END VIDEO CLIP) KING: Do you prefer — you’re the assistant Democratic leader, you’re in the minority now. The Republicans control the House. Would you prefer the president not blame the people in Washington or the Congress and specifically say the Republicans? CLYBURN: Yes, I would prefer that and I’ve had those discussions with the president on other occasions — KING: And why won’t he get tougher with them? Why won’t he get tougher with them? CLYBURN: Well, I hope he will. I don’t know. I think the president by nature wants to be diplomatic. I’m the same way. I call myself a southern gentleman, but there are times when I put that aside and go right to the core of the problem. The problem is that the Republican leadership refuses to allow a jobs bill to come to the floor. I have one that’s got bipartisan support. It has a companion bill over in the Senate that has bipartisan support. The co- sponsorship is bipartisan. But we cannot get them to bring this to the floor. And I think the president sooner or later is going to have to lay this right at the doorsteps of the Republican leadership. We did not vote for all of these things that’s got us in this problem today. Democrats have supported his agenda and we still look forward to supporting him in the future. He needs to call the Republicans out. That’s who is stopping this legislation, not the Democrats.
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Wife was sunbathing on the shore when 30-year-old, named locally as Ian Redmond, was attacked A British man on his honeymoon has been killed by a shark in the Seychelles, less than a fortnight after a French tourist was also fatally bitten in the waters off the same island. The 30-year-old, named locally as Ian Redmond, was attacked on Tuesday while his wife was sunbathing on the shore, according to reports. The shark struck in the waters off Anse Lazio beach on the island of Praslin, the second largest in the Indian Ocean archipelago and a popular destination with honeymooning Britons. A tourist in a dinghy dragged him on board and brought him ashore and another holidaymaker then tried to save his life, according to a report in the Daily Mail. “We heard screaming and people started running down the beach towards the water,” an American tourist was quoted as saying. “Someone had seen a fin sticking out of the water, and then we saw a dinghy pulling a man from the water. “I saw the swimmer, who was missing a huge chunk of flesh from his left leg, so much so that I could see the bone of his thigh. He was sickeningly pale, but still had his flippers on both feet.” “At this point a woman ran over and started screaming. She said: ‘That’s my husband! We were just married.’ “Someone grabbed her and tried to keep her away. People all over the beach were just hugging whoever was close to them or trying to keep any children from witnessing what was going on.” Authorities in the Seychelles have asked for help from shark experts in South Africa to identify the animal while a temporary ban on swimming or entering the waters around parts of Praslin has been ordered. The Seychelles minister for home affairs and environment, Joel Morgan, also held an emergency meeting in the capital Victoria as the government moved to try to limit the potential damage to the tourism industry, the country’s main source of foreign exchange. The Seychelles’ profile was given a boost in the UK when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge spent their honeymoon on North Island in May. Alain St Ange, the head of the Seychelles tourism board, told the Daily Telegraph: “It was a freak accident. We are closing the beaches pending the arrival of experts from South Africa.” Fatal shark attacks in the Seychelles are thought to be rare – prior to the death of the French tourist the last recorded fatal attack there was recorded in 1963 – according to local media reports. The Foreign Office said: “We can confirm the death of a British national in the Seychelles. We are providing consular assistance to the next of kin.” A French tourist who died while snorkelling on 1 August was named in the Seychelles media as Nicolas Francois Virolle, 36. Other tourists on the beach were said to have hauled his body from the sea but he died from a massive loss of blood. Seychelles Africa Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk
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A stage collapsed in high winds at the Indiana State Fair on Saturday, killing five concert-goers and injuring dozens more. Since then, officials, citizens and the media have been searching for explanations. Here are some questions they’ve been asking, and the answers they’ve received so far. What happened? Some 12,000 people were waiting for a
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Paul ‘Doug’ Peters, arrested in the US, is accused of attaching fake device after breaking into Sydney teenager’s family home The man accused of chaining a fake bomb to a teenager’s neck after breaking into her family home in Australia was tracked down using an email address on the ransom note, court papers reveal. Paul “Doug” Peters, 50, was arrested on Monday by an FBI Swat team at the home of his ex-wife in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky, in an operation involving Australian police. On Tuesday a US judge ordered the Australian father of three be remanded in jail pending an extradition hearing set for 14
Continue reading …Jersey murders suspect took overdose after wife’s affair, says family friend
August 16, 2011 No Comment
Suspect named locally as Damian Rzeszowski tried to kill himself a few weeks ago, according to Kasia Krajewska The man suspected of stabbing to death six people, including three young children, in Jersey had apparently taken an overdose recently after allegedly discovering his wife had had an affair. However, friends claimed that the couple had appeared to be reconciled. The 30-year-old, named locally as Damian Rzeszowski remains under police guard in the general hospital in St
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Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy are under pressure to come up with a structural answer to the euro’s problems rather than a stopgap solution First Britain, then the United States and now the eurozone. The message from the recent data is unambiguous: the big economies of the west slowed down to little more than stall speed in the spring of 2011. Tuesday’s data for the bloc of 17 countries that are part of monetary union was worrying for a number of reasons. Some slowdown in activity had been on the cards given the strength of output growth in the first quarter of the year, but the nugatory 0.2% increase in gross domestic product was far weaker than expected . More troubling perhaps was the evidence that the slowdown on the fringes of the single currency has now burrowed its way to the core of the eurozone. France had already announced that its economy was flat in the second quarter ; on Tuesday, Germany and the Netherlands said they had each registered expansion of just 0.1%. This matters for Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy because the only way they can hope to make up the growth shortfall from domestic austerity is by exporting to the rich countries at the heart of monetary union. If that proves impossible, as Tuesday’s figures suggest it might, that will put additional strain on the countries on the periphery, making further expensive bailouts more likely and increasing the chances of a break-up of the single currency. It is not hard to find explanations for the slowdown in the eurozone. As in Britain and America, consumers are being squeezed hard by rising energy and food prices; there have been supply problems for industry caused by the Japanese tsunami; and there has clearly been a loss of both consumer and business confidence caused by the inability of Europe’s leaders to get on top of the sovereign debt crisis. In the light of this, the European Central Bank’s decision to raise interest rates twice during the second quarter looks premature, if not downright stupid. With the eurozone’s economy barely growing and the single currency fighting for its very existence, any further increases in borrowing costs now look extremely remote. Politically, Tuesday’s data will no doubt add a bit of spice to the summit meeting between Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. The German and French leaders are now under increasing pressure to come up with a structural answer to the euro’s problems rather than – as has been the case all too often in the past – a stopgap solution. George Osborne repeated his call for greater fiscal integration in the eurozone in his exchange of letters with Sir Mervyn King about UK inflation , but the chancellor’s advice is unlikely to be heeded unless the debt crisis gets a lot worse. On the basis of this data, there is a good chance that it will. European debt crisis Europe Germany Europe Larry Elliott guardian.co.uk
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