From the AP:The FBI said Monday that it has recovered a 1778 painting by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya that was stolen as it was being taken to an exhibition earlier this month.
"Children with a Cart," which disappeared en route from the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City and was valued at about $1.1 million, appeared to be unharmed, said Les Wiser, agent in charge of the Newark, New Jersey FBI office.
Steven Siegel, a spokesman for the FBI, said the bureau recovered the painting Saturday in New Jersey, but would not be more specific about where or how it was located. No arrests were made, but the case remains under investigation, he said.
The FBI said extensive news coverage of the theft led to tips that enabled the agency to recover the painting.
The painting was taken from an art transporter's truck that was parked overnight in a hotel parking lot in Stroudsburg, Pa., on Nov. 8, authorities said. It had been scheduled to be displayed in the exhibition "Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History," which opened at the Guggenheim on Nov. 17.
Siegel said the thieves apparently did not know what was inside the truck when they broke into it. "It was a target of opportunity. They probably thought it was a truck full of PlayStations," he said.
The image of four children at play was insured for about $1 million and was to be exhibited with about 135 paintings by Spanish masters.
The insurer had offered a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the recovery of the artwork.
By Kenneth Barry from Reuters:Imagine you could walk up to Bill Gates or even a historical figure like financier J.P. Morgan and ask them what was the secret to their success.
The Museum of American Finance, which is readying new, larger quarters on Wall Street for next year, will allow you to do just that in a "Great Entrepreneurs" interactive exhibit.
In its current cramped space, the museum can hardly begin to tell the tales of bankers and tycoons, booms and busts that over the years formed the world's largest economy.
When it moves, the museum aims to tell its story with a mix of the educational and the entertaining, says Executive Director Lee Kjelleren.
"The challenge is to make a dynamic, engaging and interactive museum yet also not make it Disneyland," Kjelleren said. Today, people are more responsible for their financial wellbeing and need to understand financial matters more than ever before, he said.
In its new space at 48 Wall Street the museum hopes to fill a need that arose after September 11, 2001, when the New York Stock Exchange closed its doors to visitors for security reasons. The nonprofit museum, located a block away, is talking with the NYSE to have live feeds on large video screens that will show the exchange floor action. Video from foreign stock exchanges may be added later, Kjelleren said.
The "Great Entrepreneurs" exhibit will feature large mirrors in which, as you approach, an image of an American captain of industry will "come to life." You can pose questions, such as how he or she got started, what were the entrepreneur's background and education, what were the obstacles and what accounted for his or her success.
The entrepreneur will answer and describe the risks and rewards of the particular enterprises. "It's entertainment with a purpose," Kjelleren said.
The museum is moving from rooms a few blocks away at 28 Broadway in what was formerly John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Building. The new site was once the home of the Bank of New York, the city's first bank, founded in 1784 by Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury secretary.
With its grand marble staircase, 30-foot ceilings and Palladian windows, the new site will expand the museum's size tenfold to 30,000 square feet. One corner will be an office furnished in the 18th-Century style that would be familiar to Hamilton. The museum has an early U.S. Treasury note, which features the first use of the dollar sign and was sold to and signed by President George Washington.
Hamilton was instrumental in securing investor confidence in the United States' creditworthiness and advocated tariffs and excise taxes to fund the national government. Richard Sylla, an economics professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, said America's economic success was largely due to Hamilton.
"He managed a financial crisis and injected liquidity into the market back in the 1790s the way (former Federal Reserve Chairman) Alan Greenspan managed our crises," said Sylla.
Fund-raising for the museum has begun with a goal of $10 million. The target to open the new space is spring of 2007.
From the APJapanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of hind legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.
Fishermen captured the four-finned dolphin alive off the coast of Wakayama prefecture (state) in western Japan on Oct. 28, and alerted the nearby Taiji Whaling Museum, according to museum director Katsuki Hayashi.
Fossil remains show dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestor as hippos and deer. Scientists believe they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and their hind limbs disappeared.
Whale and dolphin fetuses also show signs of hind protrusions but these generally disappear before birth.
Though odd-shaped protrusions have been found near the tails of dolphins and whales captured in the past, researchers say this was the first time one had been found with well-developed, symmetrical fins, Hayashi said.
"I believe the fins may be remains from the time when dolphins' ancient ancestors lived on land ... this is an unprecedented discovery," Seiji Osumi, an adviser at Tokyo's Institute of Cetacean Research, said at a news conference televised Sunday.
The second set of fins — much smaller than the dolphin's front fins — are about the size of human hands and protrude from near the tail on the dolphin's underside. The dolphin measures 8.92 feet and is about five years old, according to the museum.
Hayashi said he could not tell from watching the dolphin swim in a musuem tank whether it used its back fins to maneuver.
A freak mutation may have caused the ancient trait to reassert itself, Osumi said. The dolphin will be kept at the Taiji museum to undergo X-ray and DNA tests, according to Hayashi.
From redorbit.comPORTLAND, Maine -- The earliest confirmed autopsy in North America was conducted more than 400 years ago by French colonists desperate to determine what was killing them as they endured a rugged winter on St. Croix Island, scientists concluded.
A team of forensic anthropologists from the United States and Canada confirmed that the skull of a man buried on the island over the winter of 1604-05 showed evidence of having undergone an autopsy, scientists said.
Nearly half of the 79 settlers led by explorers Pierre Dugua and Samuel Champlain died over that winter from malnutrition and the harsh weather.
The skull in question was discovered during excavations by the National Park Service in June 2003. The top of the skull had been removed to expose the brain; the skull cap was replaced before the body was buried, the scientists said.
"This is the same procedure that forensic pathologists use to conduct autopsies today," said Thomas Crist from Utica College in upstate New York, who led the team of forensic anthropologists analyzing the remains.
The conclusion, announced by the National Park Service, will be the subject of a program on the Discovery Health Channel series "Skeleton Stories" on Nov. 10.
The findings fit with the writings of Champlain, who described a dire situation in his memoirs published in 1613. He wrote that his barber-surgeon was ordered to "open several of the men to determine the cause of their illness."
Dugua, a nobleman known as Sieur de Mons, chose the small island in the St. Croix River that separates what's now Maine and New Brunswick. The settlers cleared a site, planted gardens and erected dwellings including a kitchen, storehouse, blacksmith shop and chapel.
But the winter was harsh, with the first snow falling in October, not long after Champlain returned from a historic voyage to Mount Desert Island. Thirty-five of the settlers died and were buried on the island.
Scientists using modern techniques have concluded that the French settlers died from scurvy, which is caused by a lack of vitamin C.
A ship arrived in June with supplies. Dugua then moved the settlement to Nova Scotia at a spot Champlain named Port Royal.
The St. Croix settlement turned out to be short-lived but it gave the French credit for beating the English to establish a permanent presence in the New World.
The graves were originally excavated in 1969 by a team from Temple University. Decades later, the remains were re-interred by the National Park Service after consultation with the French and Canadian governments.
The excavation project, in 2003, was led by Steven Pendery from the National Park Service's Northeast Region Archaeology Program.
It was during that process of reburial that the team members were at the site discussing Champlain's journal reference to autopsy, said Marcella Sorg, Maine state forensic anthropologist, who was part of the team.
Sorg said she looked down and noticed the skull with the autopsy cuts that apparently had been overlooked during previous excavations. "It was beautifully done, a very straight cut, and very accurate," she said.
There have been written references suggesting earlier autopsies as Jacques Cartier explored what's now Quebec in the 1500s, but there's no skeletal evidence, said Sorg, who works with the University of Maine's Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.
In addition to Sorg, Crist was assisted by his wife Molly Crist, also a professor at Utica College. The other team member was Robert Larocque, physical anthropologist from Universite Laval in Quebec.
St. Croix Island is protected by the National Park Service as part of Saint Croix Island International Historic Site.
Delegates from the United States, Canada and France gathered in 2004 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the settlement.
