World news in brief
Stolen Edgar Degas painting worth £700,000 found on bus near Paris
A painting worth hundreds of thousands of pounds by 19th century French artist Edgar Degas has been found on a bus near Paris. Degas’s painting Les Choristes, or The Chorus Singers, dates back to 1877 and was stolen nine years ago from a museum in Marseilles. The artwork was discovered in a luggage compartment of a bus after police were carrying out random checks at a highway rest area about 20 miles east of Paris. None of the passengers on the bus claimed the painting, and its authenticity was confirmed by the Orsay museum.
The pastel painting is said to be worth approximately €800,000 (£700,000). France’s culture minister, Francoise Nyssen, said she was delighted by the recovery of a work “whose disappearance represented a heavy loss for the French impressionist heritage”. The French artist is most famous for his paintings and sculptures of dancers. He was born in Paris in 1834 and is credited as being one of the founders of Impressionism, the 19th century art movement characterised by small thin brush strokes which are used to
depict the visual impression of the moving effect of light and colour.
Couple alleged to have shackled and starved their children appear in court
A southern California couple suspected of starving and shackling some of their 13 children yesterday pleaded not guilty to new charges of child abuse. David and Louise Turpin previously entered not guilty pleas to torture and a raft of other charges, and are being held on $12m (£8.5m) bail. Louise Turpin also pleaded not guilty to a new count of felony assault. Louise Turpin, dressed in a blouse and blazer, looked intently at more than a dozen reporters in the courtroom. David Turpin, wearing a blazer, tie and blackrimmed glasses, kept his eyes on the judge during the hearing and both said little except to agree to a May preliminary hearing.
The couple were arrested last month after their 17-year-old daughter escaped from the family’s home in Perris, California, and called 911. Authorities said the home smelt strongly of human waste and evidence of starvation was obvious, with the oldest sibling weighing only 82 pounds (5.9 stone). The case drew international media attention and shocked neighbours who said they rarely saw the children, who appeared to be skinny, pale and reserved. Authorities said the abuse was so long-running the children’s growth was stunted. They said the couple shackled the children to furniture as punishment and had them live a nocturnal lifestyle. The children, who range in age from two to 29, were taken to hospital immediately after their rescue and since then Riverside County authorities, who obtained temporary custody over the adults, have declined to discuss their whereabouts or condition. AP
White House put on lockdown after car crashes into security barrier
The White House was last night placed on lockdown after a car struck a security barrier surrounding the complex. The Secret Service said a woman drove her car into the barrier at 17th and E streets, but did not breach it. No shots were fired and no law enforcement officers were hurt. The woman was immediately apprehended at the scene, the Secret Service said. Law enforcement sources told CNN that the woman crashed her car intentionally, but that she had not meant to target anyone in the White House. They added that the Secret Service knew of the woman beforehand. A witness told reporters at the scene he had seen a minivan crash into the barricade and attempt to push through. “His tires were burning rubber and a lot of smoke was coming up,” said witness Chris Bello.. “And then about 30 seconds after that the two security guards that were in the booth, you know, ordered him to stop doing what he was doing and he didn’t listen.”
Footage from the scene showed a white minivan with an American flag bumper sticker stopped near the barrier, its back window broken. White House reporters tweeted that the door to the briefing room was locked, and reporters were not allowed in during the lockdown. The incident came as President Donald Trump hosted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at the White House. The prime minister stayed inside the building while the incident was investigated. Officers responded to a suspicious vehicle near the White House two days earlier, but did not report any arrests. The nearby New Executive Office Building was briefly evacuated.
Lisa Marie Presley files $100m lawsuit against former business manager
Lisa Marie Presley, the only daughter of Elvis Presley, says she is facing financial ruin and has filed a $100m lawsuit accusing her former business manager of negligence and mismanaging her finances. Her ex-manager has filed his own lawsuit, accusing Ms Presley, 50, of squandering her father’s inheritance because of her lavish lifestyle. The lawsuit seeks $800,000 in unpaid bills. The lawsuits, filed earlier this week in Los Angeles Superior Court, follow the collapse in 2016 of Ms Presley’s fourth marriage and her announcement she was $16m in debt. Presley was just nine years old when Elvis died in 1977, leaving her his sole heir. Her affairs have been managed by Barry Siegel since 1993, when she came into her inheritance through a trust.
Her lawsuit said Presley’s “11-year odyssey to financial ruin” began in 2005 and alleged that as a result of Mr Siegel's actions, “Lisa has been damaged in an amount that has not yet been fully ascertained, but is believed to be in excess of $100m”. The 2005 deal she was referring to involved income from Elvis’s former home Graceland and his intellectual property rights. The lawsuit said that by 2016 the trust was left with $14,000 in cash and more than $500,000 in credit card debt. Mr Siegel’s lawsuit said Ms Presley has “twice squandered” her inheritance and she had been repeatedly told to curb “her spendthrift ways”. Mr Siegel’s attorney, Leon Gladstone, said in a statement yesterday that the 2005 deal Presley was complaining about “cleared up over $20m in debts Lisa had incurred and netted her over $40m cash and a multi-million dollar income stream, most of which she managed to squander in the ensuing years”.
Lisa Marie Presley launched her own career as a singer in 2003 and has released three albums. She is better known for her two-year marriage to singer Michael Jackson and her 108-day marriage to actor Nicolas Cage. Reuters