Suspected stingray stab kills swimmer off Australia beach
Sydney: A swimmer has died after a stab to his stomach in a suspected stingray attack off an Australian beach, in a rare fatal encounter with the fish. The 42-year-old’s death came more than a decade after world-renowned “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was killed when a stingray barb punctured his chest while he was filming on the famed Great Barrier Reef. The man was in waters off Lauderdale Beach some 23 kilometres (14 miles) from Hobart in the southern island state of Tasmania on Saturday when he “sustained a puncture wound to his lower abdomen… possibly inflicted by a marine animal”, police said. He was brought onto the beach by friends but suffered a heart attack and was unable to be resuscitated, police added. “It’s consistent with (a stingray injury) but further investigation and examination of the deceased may be able to give a bit more of a concrete fact on that,” Tasmania Police Senior Constable Brett Bowering told the Sunday Tasmanian. “It’s a pretty traumatic incident to see.” Locals told the Tasmanian the man swam frequently at the beach. Commonly found in tropical waters, stingrays are a flattish, diamond-shaped fish that rarely attack humans But their barbs, at the end of their tails, are coated in toxic venom which they use to defend themselves when threatened. Most injuries result from people stepping on them in shallow water and getting a barb in the ankle, experts say. (AFP)
Stolen Picasso painting discovered in Romania six years later
Bucharest: A Picasso signed painting, which might be one of the artworks stolen in 2012 from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, was found in Romanian eastern county of Tulcea, the country’s anti-organized crime authorities announced on Sunday. “DIICOT investigates the circumstances in which a Picasso signed painting, worth about 800,000 euros ($905,000), was found on Saturday evening in Tulcea County,” said the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) in a press release. “The painting, which is part of a batch of seven works stolen in 2012 from a Dutch museum, is in the custody of the Romanian authorities and will be subject to expertise,” it added, Xinhua news agency reported. According to DIICOT, two people of Dutch nationality presented themselves at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bucharest on Saturday night with the painting believed to be “Tete d’Arlequin (Harlequin’s Head)” by Pablo Picasso stolen in 2012 by a group of Romanian thieves. The Home Affairs Attache of the Dutch Embassy soon notified the Romanian authorities. The person who found the painting is a Dutch writer of Romanian origin named Mira Feticu, who published in 2015 a novel inspired by the event at the Kunsthal Museum, dubbed “the theft of the century” by Dutch media. Feticu wrote on her social media account that she came specially to Romania to look for the painting after she received an anonymous letter in Romanian language indicating the place is where “Tete D’Arlequin” was hidden. The writer claimed that she reached the address indicated in the letter, searched in the bushes under a tree, and found under a stone a package containing the plastic wrapped painting. The Romanian thieves involved in the case were arrested and then sentenced in 2014, but the paintings were not found. The other stolen paintings were Matisse’s “La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune,” Monet’s “Waterloo Bridge, London” and “Charing Cross Bridge, London,” Gauguin’s “Femme Devant une Fenetre Ouverte,” Meijer De Haan’s “Autoportrait” and Lucian Freud’s “Woman with Eyes Closed.” (IANS)