| Man accused of beheading duck |
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According to hotel staff, the 26-year-old Scott Clark cornered one of the hotel's domestic ducks and ripped its head off. Clark, from Denver, Colorado, was taken into custody by the security officer who later called police. The man is in jail on suspicion of felony animal cruelty and could face up to two years in jail and a $5,000 fine. He is scheduled to appear in court on Monday. |
Monday
Mad Mad Duck Ripper
A guest at the Embassy Suites hotel in St. Paul was accused of killing a duck on Saturday.
HOT PROPERTY: Spacious Missle Base as Your Home
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| Looking for a new home with a bit more space as well as a 1950s Cold War ambiance?
A US intercontinental ballistic missile base, equipped with a vast underground network of tunnels and rooms but no atomic warheads, is for sale in a remote corner of the United States. The warheads and missiles went when the US government abandoned the Titan bases in the 1970s. Located near remote Moses Lake in the northwest state of Washington, the former Larsen military base includes 4,000 square meters (43,000 square feet) of "usable" space on 23 hectares (56 acres) of land, and the owner is only asking for 1.5 million dollars -- which might buy a small home in Hollywood. The seller, Bari Hotchkiss, sees the base as a "gorgeous" property and potential resort. He has put it up for sale on the eBay auction site. "We used to use it as a summer camp, for our kids and their friends," he told AFP. "The only limit is imagination. We've always wanted to see it turn into summer camp or resort camp," he said. The Los Angeles investor bought the former base 10 years ago from owners who had purchased the property in the 1970s, when the US government concluded the Titan missiles had become obsolete. Hotchkiss said there are 18 former Titan bases and nearly all of them were sold off, but -- sounding like most proud property owners -- he said his base is in excellent condition. "Most of those former bases are much much smaller, and most all of them have water problems with water leaking in them. So they're filled with water or so wet there is terrible rust, and ours is dry, and portions of our missile base look like it's built last year," he said. "It is kind of like a big shopping center underground that needs to be refurbished," he said. To use the entire underground network, he said several million dollars worth of remodeling would be required. But a cheaper option was also possible. "If you only need one or a couple of the buildings to begin with, several hundred thousand dollars might do it," he said. |
Apes Blamed For Crime Spree
Apes Blamed For Crime Spree
South Africa's crime problem has taken a new twist.
A gang of baboons is being blamed for a series of break-ins.
Baboon lookout outside a house
The chacma baboons, which live wild in the Cape peninsula, have been raiding people's homes for food and causing thousands of pounds in damage. "People here are getting very angry," Dr Peter Kirsh said, as a baboon strutted along the street beneath his balcony. "They get into the kitchens, they know where the fridge is, they open it and take everything, and then they defecate everywhere." Dr Kirsch is just one of many victims of "baboon crime" in the Cape Peninsula. "I put these bars on my windows," John Lourens says, gripping the metal. "But still, the next thing I knew I had a baboon in my living room." The residents say the "invasions" happen almost daily and claim the baboons are aggressive as they search for food. Hundreds have signed a petition demanding that the animals be moved to a nature reserve. Some have gone even further and shot at them. The chacma baboons in the Cape are a protected species but, to the alarm of conservationists, at least twenty out of the population of 350 have been killed in the past two years. "Tammy lost her leg because her femur was shattered by a bullet," Jenni Trethowan told me, pointing out a three legged female hopping through the Cape scrub with her tiny baby. Ms Trethowan runs an organisation called Baboon Matters, which aims to educate people about the animals and reduce conflict. She employs a team of monitors who try to herd the baboon troops out of the villages and into the mountains, where instead of dining on supermarket food they eat a more natural diet of berries and leaves. She admits it doesn't always work but says that the residents should enjoy their visitors rather than harming them. "As humans we are privileged to be living alongside these animals," she said. They are certainly entertaining. Down by the roadside we saw a group of tourists being ambushed by one baboon as they stopped to admire him. The visitors had made the mistake of leaving their car unlocked and within seconds the big male had opened the door and was rooting around inside. Great fun, but it's the tourists who feed the baboons who are blamed for most of the problems. And the residents aren't laughing any more.
Sunday
Bilbao on the Nervion River 10 years on
Denis Doyle for The New York Times
The Guggenheim Bilbao along the banks of the Nervión River. The river was once polluted by industrial waste.
A LIGHT patter bounced off the titanium fish scales of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao as a tour bus pulled up beside “Puppy,” Jeff Koons's 43-foot-tall topiary terrier made of freshly potted pansies. A stream of tourists fanned out across the crisp limestone plaza, tripping over each other as they rushed to capture the moment on camera. After the frisson of excitement dimmed, they made their way down a gently sloping stairway and into the belly of the museum, paying 10.50 euros to see the work of an artist that most had never heard of.
Read more, interesting recap..... Lasso Link
Saturday
Cranes Stretch Up In Foggy Boom Boom Town
Boom Town
Morning fog rolls into the Dubai marina, where construction is underway on three man-made islands and the world's tallest building.
On sale for the first time: Van Gogh's final masterpiece
By: Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent Published: 22 September 2007
A Van Gogh masterpiece believed to be the artist's final piece of work is to be put on the public market for the first time, where it is expected to become one of the most highly-valued paintings ever auctioned. The Fields (Wheat Fields) was completed on 10 July 1890, just 19 days before Vincent Van Gogh died. It hung in his room as he bled to death in his bed, where he had staggered after shooting himself in a field. The work, only previously seen once in Britain, is one of just a few of Van Gogh's greatest works to remain in private hands and is celebrated for shedding significant light on the emotions felt by the artist in the days before his death.
The Fields will be unveiled at Sotheby's in London on 7 October and sold at auction in New York a month later with an estimated list price £17m. But due to its extraordinary provenance and the booming art market, it is likely to provoke one of the heaviest bidding wars in the auction house's history and greatly exceed this price. When the painting was exhibited in Amsterdam in 2001, as a privately owned work, there was an immediate, if vain, rush by buyers to place offers.
"As a unique work of art from the final days of the artist's life, the price will most likely be driven by passion. This is perhaps the last opportunity for a collector to acquire a landscape of this quality by Vincent van Gogh," said a spokeswoman for Sotheby's. Van Gogh's brother, Theo, was so emotionally attached to the painting that he kept it in the family collection for 20 years before his widow, Johanna, finally sold it to a private collector, Paul Cassirer, in 1907. Since then, it has remained in private collections, exchanging hands between collectors privately but never entering the public market. David Norman, executive vice-president at Sotheby's, said that after Van Gogh's death, much of his work was sold to collectors but had not gone to public auction.
There has been much debate over the years as to which was the last piece Van Gogh worked on before committing suicide. A number of respected experts, including Walter Feilchenfeldt, the Swiss collector and Van Gogh scholar, believe that The Fields was the final creative project that the tormented artist undertook. Many mistakenly believe Van Gogh's far more brooding painting, Wheat Field with Crows, which he also executed in the last year of his life, to be his final painting due to its gloomy overtones – which have led some to argue that it was Van Gogh's "suicide note". But although it conveys the melancholia that Van Gogh was feeling in his final weeks, there is evidence to suggest it was painted earlier. And in a letter written by Van Gogh to Theo on the 10 July, the artist described having just painted what experts believe to be The Fields, along with two other works. He wrote: "They are vast fields of wheat under troubled skies, and I did not need to go out of my way to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness. I hope you see them soon – for I hope to bring them to see you in Paris as soon as possible, since I almost think that these canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, the health and restorative forces that I see in the country," he said. If it was the final work, The Fields illustrates how Van Gogh was able to separate his deep inner turmoil and stormy emotions from the hope and celebration of life that is instilled in this painting, said Mr Norman.
"Here is an artist literally on the verge of taking his life and filled with tremendous despondency, yet he is still painting with lemon yellows, azure blues and emerald greens.
Loaned to various collections over the years; The Fields hung in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for six years alongside a series of moving landscapes painted in the final year of the artist's life. It was displayed in Britain for the first and only time in 1995 at a Royal Academy show.
Van Gogh had no formal artistic training and he did not embark on a career as a painter until 1880, spending his early life working for a firm of art dealers, and after a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with the artist, Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide.
On 8 May 1889 Van Gogh committed himself to the mental hospital in a former monastery in Saint Rémy de Provence, near Arles. On 27 July, at the age of 37, he walked into the fields and shot himself in the chest with a revolver and staggered back to the inn at Auvers, not realising he had fatally wounded himself. He died in his bed two days later, with Theo by his side, who is said to have reported his last words to be "La tristesse durera toujours" ("the sadness will last forever").
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