Month: October 2024

NEW ORLEANS — On the eve of World War II, Nazis in Austria seized a pastel by renowned impressionist artist Claude Monet, selling it off and sparking a family’s decadeslong search that culminated Wednesday in New Orleans. At an FBI field office, agents lifted a blue veil covering the Monet pastel and presented Adalbert Parlagi’s granddaughters with the artwork over 80 years after it was taken from their family. Helen Lowe said she felt that her grandfather would be watching and that he would be “so, so proud of this moment.” Monet’s 1865 Bord de Mer depicts rocks along the shoreline …

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new york — Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, who was President Vladimir Putin’s top political opponent before his death in February, believed he would die in prison, according to his posthumous memoir, which will be released October 22. The New Yorker published excerpts from the book Friday, featuring writing from Navalny’s prison diary and earlier. “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” he wrote on March 22, 2022. “There will not be anybody to say goodbye to … All anniversaries will be celebrated without me. I’ll never see my grandchildren.” Navalny had been serving a 19-year …

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STOCKHOLM — Meta Platforms said on Friday that it had removed a network of group accounts targeting Russian speakers in Moldova ahead of the country’s October 20 election, for violation of the company’s policy on fake accounts. Authorities in Moldova, an ex-Soviet state lying between Romania and Ukraine, said they had blocked dozens of Telegram channels and chat bots linked to a drive to pay voters to cast “no” ballots in a referendum on European Union membership held alongside the presidential election. Pro-European President Maia Sandu is seeking a second term in the election and called the referendum on joining the …

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london — The U.K. government was urged Friday to raise the case of jailed pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai with China, after reports that David Lammy, the foreign minister, is heading to Beijing.  Lai, 76, is the founder of the now-shuttered popular Chinese-language tabloid Apple Daily, which supported mass pro-democracy protests in the economic hub.  Detained in 2020, he is awaiting trial on charges including colluding with foreign forces and sedition.  In London, his legal team said they hoped Lammy would put Lai’s case “front and center” during his visit, which has not been confirmed by his department.  Lawyer Caoilfhionn Gallagher …

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paris — Scientist Jim Wild has traveled to the Arctic Circle numerous times to study the northern lights, but Thursday night he needed only to look out of his bedroom window in Lancaster, England. For at least the second time this year, sky-gazers in many parts of the world were treated to colorful auroras at latitudes beyond the polar extremes where they normally light up the skies.  The dazzling celestial shows were caused by a gigantic ball of plasma — and an accompanying magnetic field — that erupted from the sun earlier this week.  When this eruption, called a coronal mass …

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zurich — Two months before FIFA is set to confirm Saudi Arabia as the 2034 World Cup host, the soccer body was urged again Friday to allow independent scrutiny of the kingdom’s human rights obligations for the tournament. A group of law and human rights experts plus Saudi activists abroad want FIFA to mandate ongoing reviews — and a potential termination clause — into the 2034 World Cup hosting contract. The advisers who came to Zurich on Friday want FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is closely tied to Saudi political and soccer leaders, to learn from how Qatar was picked to …

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