hStolen art recovered

hStolen art recovered
OSLO, Norway -- Three stolen works of art by Edvard Munch -- including a unique watercolor entitled "Blue Dress" -- were recovered Monday, less than 24 hours after thieves with crowbars pried them from the walls of an upscale restaurant. It was the second theft of the Norwegian master's work in less than seven months. Iver Stensrud, of the Oslo police, also said several arrests had been made. He declined to be more specific or say what condition the stolen watercolor and two lithographs were in. Munch's tortured tableaus have proven to be quite a draw for Norway's art thieves. In August, priceless Munch masterpieces "The Scream" and "Madonna" were stolen from a museum in a brazen daylight raid. They have yet to be recovered.
134 die in jail fire
HIGUEY, Dominican Republic -- Rival gangs battling over the drug trade in an overcrowded, vermin-infested prison set their bedding ablaze and blocked the entrance to their cellblock, killing at least 134 inmates in one of Latin America's worst jailhouse blazes. Some died in a stampede to escape the flames after guards forced open the jammed door in the cellblock known as Vietnam, one survivor said, while others were killed by smoke inhalation. Only 26 prisoners were rescued from the jail in Higuey, 75 miles northeast of the capital on the eastern tip of the island, said National Police Chief Manuel de Jesus Perez Sanchez. Eighteen were injured. The disaster underscored the terrible prison conditions in the Dominican Republic, which has the most overcrowded jails in the Western Hemisphere, according to U.N. figures. Officials gave varying figures for the prison population, with one saying Vietnam cellblock held as many as 182. The confusion over the exact numbers illustrated some of the problems of the prison system. Among the victims were four Americans from Puerto Rico convicted of cocaine trafficking. Two died and two were injured, officials said.
Renowned physicist dies
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Hans Bethe, a giant of 20th-century physics who played a central role in the building of the atomic bomb and won a Nobel Prize for discovering the process that powers the sun and the stars, has died at 98. Bethe, who died Sunday, stood alongside such figures as Enrico Fermi, Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard and Edward Teller as a member of the corps of scientists who ushered in the atomic age. During the World War II race to build the bomb, Bethe was head of the Manhattan Project's theoretical physics division at Los Alamos, N.M. Bethe, who fled Nazi Germany and joined the Cornell University faculty in 1935, also made major discoveries about how atoms are built up from smaller particles, about what makes dying stars blow up, and how the heavier elements are produced from the ashes of these supernovas.
U.S. defends 'rendition'
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday that before the United States hands over terror suspects to foreign governments, it receives assurances they won't be tortured. But he acknowledged that once a transfer occurs, the United States has little control. The Bush administration's program to send foreigners to other countries -- known as "extraordinary rendition" -- has been denounced by human rights advocates. They say it amounts to outsourcing torture to elicit information that could not be obtained legally in America. Gonzales defended the program and reiterated that the Bush administration does not condone torture. "Our policy is not to render people to countries where we believe or we know that they're going to be tortured," he said in an interview with The Associated Press and other news services. White House counselor Dan Bartlett offered a similar defense of U.S. policy Sunday. The attorney general said the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency obtain assurances that people will be humanely treated.
Associated Press