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...Vincenzo Peruggia - the Hooblers spell it Perugia - an Italian house painter and carpenter living in France, though he was arrested for the crime - in December 1913 - in Florence. He had gone there with the painting after contacting a Florentine art dealer, Alfredo Geri, who he hoped would help him dispose of his hostage in a way that would bring him some cash. Geri played along, and even brought in the director of the Uffizi Gallery to authenticate the picture on the spot. When they were satisfied that Peruggia had brought them the real thing, they turned him over...
Though no one doubts that it was Peruggia who actually stole the painting, to this day there are questions as to whether he had help that night or if he was working for bigger operators. This is where both books dive headfirst into a huge pile of baloney. In 1932 a swashbuckling American journalist named Karl Decker published a piece in the Saturday Evening Post, in which he wrote that in 1914 in Morocco, he met an aristocratic con man, Marqués Eduardo de Valfierno, who told him that he had masterminded the theft as part of a scheme...
...some ways, the world is better prepared for a flu pandemic today than it has ever been. Thanks to concerns over H5N1 avian flu, the WHO, the U.S. and countries around the world have stockpiled millions of doses of antivirals that can help fight swine flu as well as other strains of influenza. The U.S. has a detailed pandemic preparation plan that was drafted under former President George W. Bush. Many other countries have similar plans. SARS and bird flu have given international health officials useful practice runs for dealing with a real pandemic. We can identify new viruses faster...
...Meanwhile, several countries are trying to help forge a truce - or at least a temporary suspension of fighting - so government troops can get the remaining civilians out of the war zone. The Sri Lankan president met with high-ranking officials from India, just after its government condemned the killing of Tamil civilians. The U.S. has also expressed concern over the dangers faced by civilians, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is expected to visit the country in the coming days. The Tigers have indicated their willingness to agree to a truce but, according to U.N. officials, are still preventing civilians...
...Should the Mahdi Army return to the streets, Mohsen doubts it could do so with the same strength it showed in past years. Iraqi security forces, with help from U.S. troops, now largely control areas that were once virtually untouchable militia havens such as Sadr City in Baghdad and the port city of Basra in the south of Iraq. The Mahdi Army dispatched gunmen nightly during the height of the sectarian violence. Yet Mohsen believes the odds of such a situation unfolding again are low, at least in Baghdad - given the myriad checkpoints, blast wall cordons and Iraqi security forces...