Witnesses report seeing nothing unusual...

Four armed men stole several famous paintings on Friday, including a Picasso and a Monet, from a Rio de Janeiro museum and then slipped away in a crowd of Carnival revelers.

Officials of the Chacara do Ceu museum in downtown Rio de Janeiro said among the stolen paintings were Pablo Picasso's "Dance," Claude Monet's "Marine," Henri Matisse's "Luxemburg Garden," and Salvador Dali's "Two Balconies."

The men, who were suspected of carrying a grenade, forced the guards to turn off the internal television circuit. One of the guards was manhandled.

"They took advantage of a Carnival parade passing by the museum and disappeared into the crowd," said Vera de Alencar, director of the museum, which is administered by the federal government.

Museum officials did not say how many paintings were stolen or place a value on them.

The thieves also walked away with the belongings of several visitors, including three foreign tourists.

The Federal Police are investigating the case and taking measures to prevent the paintings from leaving the country.


Here are the paintings:

Picasso: Dance


Matisse: Luxemburg Garden


Monet: Marine
Dali: Two balconies

Man sentenced for ride-by bottom slap

A Colombian man has been sentenced to four years' house arrest for slapping a woman's bottom as he rode by her on his bicycle, sparking debate on whether the punishment fit the crime.

Showing re-enactments of the incident, television news shows were filled on Friday with legal experts offering opinions about the judgment handed down earlier in the week by Bogota's district court.

Some said that to confine bicycle messenger Victor Garcia to his home for four years for smacking Diana Marcela Diaz's buttocks was excessive. Others said it would deter other men.

One program showed three models having their denim clad bottoms smacked so hard by a phantom hand it could be clearly heard by television viewers.

The women said that while the punishment seemed extreme, they hoped the case would mean they would be safer while on foot.

"It happened to me once," one of the models said. "I was walking very relaxed and a guy rode by on his bicycle and, 'ta!' He smacked me. I took off my shoe to hit him with it but he was already too far away".

Japan's blondes vanish as women turn to dark side

It's a case of the vanishing blondes.

Ten years ago, a stroll through central Tokyo could leave travelers wondering what country they were in as they watched a parade of tanned, fair-haired women walking tall in precarious platform shoes.

Now fashion has moved on and hairdressers say bleached blonde tresses are going the way of fake tans, although a dark brown tint still seems more popular than natural black.

The only fair-haired women to be seen on the covers of Japanese fashion magazines nowadays are foreign models.

Even Ayumi Hamasaki, the Japanese pop world's answer to Madonna, has dyed her trademark platinum locks sleek black to stay ahead of the curve.

"What's seen as attractive now is to look well groomed and cute," said hairdresser Yuko Shimizu of the afloat-f salon in Tokyo's trendy Aoyama district. "People want natural-looking shiny hair, whereas dyeing it blonde tends to damage it."

Neighboring countries are providing inspiration, with popular actresses Zhang Ziyi of China and Choi Ji-woo of South Korea often seen showing off their glossy dark hair in TV commercials that emphasize their Asian identity.

Japanese women of a certain age have long tinted their tresses to cover the grey.

Light-colored hair was popular because it was believed to make the face appear brighter and to be easier to coordinate with Western-style fashions, hairdressers say.

Admiration for European hair made even mousy brown tones a more desirable option than black, while younger Japanese of both sexes sought to express individuality with a palette of colors.

While brassy blonde is out, hairdressers say few fashion-conscious Japanese women are prepared to go completely natural, since many feel poker-straight black hair is unflattering.

"Black hair simply doesn't suit Japanese women any more, because their complexions are fairer than they used to be," said Kenichi Uehara, a veteran stylist at the Double salon in Harajuku, an area popular with young people.

"Magazines put forward the idea of black hair, but women aren't actually taking it up," he added. "The idea is to find a color that's not too light but not too dark".

Americans work more, seem to accomplish less

Most U.S. workers say they feel rushed on the job, but they are getting less accomplished than a decade ago, according to newly released research.

Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products.

The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say.

"Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically," said John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

"We never concentrate on one task anymore. You take a little chip out of it, and then you're on to the next thing," Challenger said on Wednesday. "It's harder to feel like you're accomplishing something."

Unlike a decade ago, U.S. workers are bombarded with e-mail, computer messages, cell phone calls, voice mails and the like, research showed.

The average time spent on a computer at work was almost 16 hours a week last year, compared with 9.5 hours a decade ago, according to the Day-Timer research released this week.

Workers typically get 46 e-mails a day, nearly half of which are unsolicited, it said.

Sixty percent of workers say they always or frequently feel rushed, but those who feel extremely or very productive dropped to 51 percent from 83 percent in 1994, the research showed.

Put another way, in 1994, 82 percent said they accomplished at least half their daily planned work but that number fell to 50 percent last year. A decade ago, 40 percent of workers called themselves very or extremely successful, but that number fell to just 28 percent.

"We think we're faster, smarter, better with all this technology at our side and in the end, we still feel rushed and our feeling of productivity is down," said Maria Woytek, marketing communications manager for Day-Timers, a unit of ACCO Brands Corp.

The latest study was conducted among a random sample of about 1,000 people who work at least part time. The earlier study surveyed some 1,300 workers.

Expectations that technology would save time and money largely haven't been borne out in the workplace, said Ronald Downey, professor of psychology who specializes in industrial organization at Kansas State University.

"It just increases the expectations that people have for your production," Downey said.

Even if productivity increases, it's constantly outpaced by those expectations, said Don Grimme of GHR Training Solutions, a workplace training company based in Coral Springs, Florida.

"The irony is the very expectation of getting more done is getting in the way of getting more done," he said. "People are stressed out."

Companies that are flexible with workers' time and give workers the most control over their tasks tend to fare better against the sea of rising expectations, experts said.

Businesses that have moved to 24-hour operations, bosses who micro-manage and longer commutes all add to the problem, they said, while downsizing leaves fewer workers doing the work of those who left.

Finally, there's a trend among companies to measure job performance like never before, said Challenger. "There's a sense that no matter how much I do, it's never enough," he said.

Injured woman can sue Postal Service

A woman who tripped and fell over letters, packages and periodicals left on her front porch can sue the U.S. Postal Service for damages, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

The 7-1 ruling was a victory for Barbara Dolan, who said she suffered wrist and back injuries when she fell in 2001 in front of her Glenside, Pennsylvania, home.

She said postal employees acted negligently by leaving the mail on her porch. No further details were available on the circumstances of her fall.

The justices said a U.S. appeals court had been wrong to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that federal law provided immunity to the Postal Service over lawsuits claiming negligent mail delivery or placement.

In the court's majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy rejected the federal government's argument that Congress in adopting the law must have intended to insulate the Postal Service from liability over delivery-related lawsuits.

The Postal Service delivers about 660 million pieces of mail each day, and government lawyers had raised the specter of frivolous slip-and-fall lawsuits inundating the Postal Service if the high court ruled against it.

But Kennedy rejected that argument and said the risk of lawsuit is shared by any business that makes home deliveries.

Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the ruling.

Dart injuries rise as beginners get the point

A wave of international victories for Dutch darts players has prompted an increase in the number of injuries as people take up the game at home, according to the Dutch consumer safety association.

Over-eagerness caused some of the most injuries, said a spokeswoman for the group, with players hurling their darts before opponents had finished retrieving their own.

Poorly hung dartboards also posed problems. "Often the board falls down on someone's foot or worse on someone's head," she added.

About 120 people are admitted to hospitals each year with injuries sustained during darts, with pierced fingers and wrists most common. Eye injuries were rare, the association said.

"Maybe it is national pride that when one of us is good at a sport, we all want a go," the spokeswoman said.

Last month 21-year-old Dutchman Jelle Klaasen wowed audiences at the World Darts championship, with a victory over fellow Dutchman Raymond van Barneveld, to become the youngest ever world champion and a national hero.

Stripping away the mystery

Amsterdam's famed red light district held its first ever "open day" Saturday as its peep-shows and brothels gave crowds of wide-eyed visitors free entry to help shed the area's increasingly negative reputation.

Armed with a list of 25 establishments opening their doors and flinging back their red curtains, hundreds of tourists and locals seized the opportunity to see a prostitute's bedroom, watch a brief live peep-show or chat to a lap dancer.

Harrowing reports of forced prostitution and human trafficking have caused a public outcry in recent months and even prompted calls from councillors for the 800-year-old red light district to be shut down, to the fury of many sex workers.

Stories of petty crime and gang violence also dominate.

"The open day is partly to promote the red light district but also to help change the image of the area because we think it is too negative," said organizer Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute who now runs an information center on the district.

"There are not just problems here," she added.

Prostitution has been fully legal in the Netherlands since 2000, and sex workers are self-employed and subject to tax.

However one rights group estimates that around 3,500 women are trafficked to the Netherlands each year from eastern Europe and Asia to work in secret brothels or illegal escort agencies, where they are often held captive and abused.

Tourist authorities admit the district -- a clutch of narrow alleys and canals lined with sex shops, brothels and neon signs -- is as big an attraction as Amsterdam's museums and coffee shops, where marijuana is freely smoked and sold.

Every night visitors throng the streets, agog at the scantily clad women sitting behind huge red-lit windows, but only a fraction venture inside.

"GOOD IDEA"

"This is a very good idea," said 28-year-old Dutchman Maarten Ritsema, grinning after experiencing his first ever lap-dance at the Bar La Vie en Proost.

"I've never been inside anywhere like this before ... it's pretty casual, not as tense or hostile as I imagined," he said.

Many of the area's sex workers also took the chance to explain more about their work and dispel myths.

Candy, a 39-year-old dancer from France, sat in her usual position behind the counter of the Banana Bar, joking with visitors and posing for photographs.

"People out today see it's fun, that this is entertainment."

There may have been less flesh on display than usual for the non-paying public, but visitors, mostly drawn by curiosity, didn't seem to mind. "It was still sexy and you can use your imagination," said 31-year-old Rob Jansen, on leaving the Casa Rosso theater.

Amsterdam resident Ina van Leyan, 49, said she hoped the area would never be closed down: "It belongs to Amsterdam. Its for the tourists, it's for the men without wives, it's a key part of the city."

Those goats are back, honey -- get the tiger poop

A tiger's roar might be scary, but Australian researchers have found that the predator's poo is just as potent.

Researchers at the University of Queensland said Friday they had successfully tested a tiger poo repellant, warding off wild goats for at least three days.

"Goats wouldn't have seen a tiger from an evolutionary point of view for at least 15 generations but they recognize the smell of the predator," repellent creator Peter Murray said in a statement.

"If we can show this lasts weeks ... we've just tapped into probably a billion-dollar market. It's enormous," he said.

Murray said the repellant, made of fatty acids and sulphurous compounds extracted from tiger excrement, also worked on feral pigs, kangaroos and rabbits and might deter deer, horses and cattle too.

In an average year pest animals cause about A$420 million (US$311 million) worth of agricultural damage in Australia the government has said. Others put the cost in the billions, mostly from European imports such as rabbits, foxes and crop-choking weeds.

Girl's prosthetic legs stolen for second time

For the second time in three months, a 16-year-old California girl who lost a leg in an accident has had her artificial limbs stolen.

Melissa Huff, an Arcadia High School student who uses a $16,000 prosthetic limb to play softball for the school team and another one, valued at $12,000, for everyday use, said both were taken from her bedroom Tuesday.

"I was picking up my little brother from school when my mom called me and asked where I left the two prosthetic legs," Huff, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Temple City, told Reuters in an interview.

"I knew right then that it had happened again."

Lisa Huff, her mother, said she came home around midday on Tuesday and found the room shared by Melissa and her older sister a mess. Only the prosthetic limbs were missing.

Police say they were talking to the girl's friends, neighbors and relatives for information about the missing legs.

In November, thieves broke into the Huff residence and took just her prosthetic limb. After that incident, Melissa's prosthetist and a local real estate company donated about $16,000 for a new limb.

The stolen limb was discovered in the teenager's backyard about a month ago, apparently thrown there by the thieves.

Melissa lost her real leg two years ago when a driver accidentally ran into her as she stood in front of her middle school.

She said she intends to get back on the field this week and just practice throwing until she gets another prosthetic limb.

Great Wall of China wards off ravers

Beijing has called up a team of dedicated Great Wall monitors to protect it from damage from tourists, adventurous hikers and party revelers, the China Daily said Thursday.

The Great Wall, which snakes its way across more than 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) of China, receives an estimated 10 million visitors a year, mostly to a few miles of wall opened to tourists at Badaling, the nearest stretch to Beijing.

All that traffic had taken a heavy toll on the structure, prompting the move to employ local villagers to keep watch, the report said.

Less than 20 percent of the original facade of the wall near the capital had been preserved well, Yu Ping, deputy director of Beijing's cultural heritage administration, was quoted as saying.

"Almost every brick at Badaling has been carved with people's names and graffiti," the newspaper said.

More adventurous visitors climbed wilder, crumblier sections that are not officially open to the public, making them potentially dangerous and more susceptible to damage.

Stretches of the wall near the capital have also become popular sites for summer raves.

Last July, "some participants were involved in such indecent and illegal activities as urinating and drug abuse on the wall," the China Daily said of a party that was widely reported and sparked a public uproar.

The Great Wall was begun in 221 BC during the Qin dynasty as an earthen structure to ward off invaders, though much of the existing structure was built much later.

The United Nations listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1987 and it is protected against development by Chinese law.

But it is not clear how effective the new wall-watching team will be -- the same villages that will provide the monitors have been exploiting the wall for their own gain for years.

Locals set up ladders at unopened stretches, allowing visitors to climb on to the wall for a price, and have used its heavy bricks to build their own homes.

Singer's body exhumed 39 years after death

Italian prosecutors exhumed the body of a popular singer Wednesday and said they had laid to rest suspicions that he had been murdered.

Luigi Tenco, one of Italy's most famous modern singers, was found dead in his hotel room with a single gunshot wound to the head on January 27, 1967, hours after learning that his song had been eliminated from a national music competition.

A hand-written note found near Tenco said he had decided to kill himself as a protest against the jury and members of the public who had voted against him.

Yet doubts over his death have lingered for almost 40 years as no autopsy was carried out at the time and, although a pistol was found next to Tenco, the bullet that killed him was not.

But Mariano Gagliano, the Sanremo magistrate who ordered the exhumation, told reporters Wednesday that an examination of the body proved that Tenco had died of a gunshot wound.

"The Tenco case is definitively closed. Checks have confirmed that it was suicide," Gagliano was quoted as saying by the Italian media.

He did not give any further details, nor explain why he was so certain that the gunshot wound had been self-inflicted. State television said it would take four months to draw up a full report.

The doubts surrounding Tenco's death was a typical Italian controversy in a land where nothing is taken at face value and where mysteries shroud countless tragedies and crimes.

Tenco was only 29 when he died but had already made his name as a headstrong protest singer whose songs were often censored by state broadcaster RAI.

In 2003, an investigation by three journalists highlighted the inconsistencies in the case and called for prosecutors to reopen their probe and consider the possibility of murder.

Grocery shopping? Take your rubber gloves!

Shopping cart handles are the most bacteria-infested items among some commonly used objects while doorknobs on public bathrooms are not as bad as might be expected, according to a survey conducted in South Korea.

The Korea Consumer Protection Board tested six items that are commonly handled by the public and ran tests for their bacteria content.

Shopping cart handles led the way with 1,100 colony forming units of bacteria per 10 sq cm (1.55 sq inches) followed by a mouse used on computers in Internet cafes, which had an average of 690 colony forming units.

"The reason that shopping cart handles had so much bacteria is because the area is larger than the others and people have more space to place their hands," Kwon Young-il, an official at the consumer body, said by telephone.

Hand straps on buses were next with 380 units, followed by bathroom doorknobs at 340.

Rounding out the list were elevator buttons at 130 colony forming units and hand straps on subways at 86.

The report released this week said washing hands with soap removes almost all of the bacteria.

Morality police send bored city to sleep

Nightlife in India's entertainment capital has become deadly dull, youngsters in Mumbai complain, as the authorities continue a crackdown on discos and bars that they accuse of corrupting impressionable young minds.

The city's nightlife -- not so long ago pulsating, risque and never-ending -- has become a non-event, they say, ever since officials declared a war on adult fun in August, forcing hundreds of popular dance bars to shut their doors saying they bred crime and prostitution.

After the ban, thousands of dancers found themselves out of work, with many moving to other states to earn a living. Others are reported to have become prostitutes.

As if that was not bad enough for Mumbai's party set, police are now reining in the city's ordinary watering holes, asking them to obtain a dozen licenses, pull down the shutters at midnight, and make their guests behave.

"This is moral policing at its best and we don't need any of this," said Sebastian Ambrose, a computer professional and a regular pub-goer. "They say this city never sleeps. Now Mumbai sleeps by 12. This is boring."

More than 30 pubs have closed in the last two weeks, with the police often kicking out drinkers as they relaxed after work, and many more look set to follow unless the authorities relent.

Anyone hoping to serve alcohol needs to spend more time in government offices than pouring drinks, with permits for parking, pest control, the playing of music (one each for live or recorded sets) and many others needed before opening time.

"A pub owner here has to go from table to table seeking more than a dozen licenses that may take more than a year to obtain," said Kamlesh Barot, secretary of a hotels and restaurants association.

While only four of the permits have been introduced recently, in the past many licenses were more often than not overlooked. But not any more.

Bar owners say the crackdown is just an excuse for government officials and the police to collect bribes.

"We don't mind licenses but the wait for getting them should not be endless. Files don't move till officers' palms are greased," said Jehani Farhang, the director of a south Mumbai pub.

NO FUN, PLEASE

It is not just the bar owners who are coming under pressure. Police are stepping up patrols outside popular nightspots.

"We feel like criminals with police watching over outside the pubs and nightclubs. They have to stop being a bully," said Sanjay Khadas, a young advertising executive.

"The dance bars are gone. Now they are after the bars to ensure there is no entertainment in Mumbai," said Paritosh Sehgal, a college student.

For pub owners, the early hours of the morning are when they do their best business, and early closures are hitting them hard.

The police are unapologetic. "We are targeting only those that don't comply with rules. All of them have to get licenses," said Ashutosh Dumbre, deputy police commissioner.

Local newspapers have gone to town protesting police "excesses," saying officers were spending more time watching over pub and nightclubs than solving murders or catching rapists and fraudsters.

"For cops, public is public enemy No.1," said a headline in Times of India Thursday. "Moral policing is easy to do and gets policemen and politicians a lot of cheap publicity. Never mind that the public enemy number one becomes the public itself," the newspaper said.

Ban rock concerts and football games?

An Iowa sheriff's decision to hand out tickets instead of arrests for small amounts of marijuana invited a lawmaker's slap that it would be simpler to ban rock concerts and football games.

Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek, who oversees the University of Iowa in Iowa City, told a legislative committee he would treat possession of small amounts of marijuana like a traffic violation, allowing hundreds of students arrested each year to graduate without a criminal record.

"The guy that's carrying 50 bales of marijuana ... that's a different animal," Pulkrabek said, adding he favored rounding up intoxicated people in a locked "detox center" in lieu of the crowded jail.

But Republican legislator Clel Baudler, a former state trooper, shot down the notion as sending the wrong message to drug users and abusers.

"We could simplify law enforcement's job if we didn't have rock concerts. We could simplify their job a lot quicker if we just didn't have football games there where we arrest hundreds of drunks over the weekend." Baudler said.

Burglar steals police car from station

Detectives in Germany were dumbstruck after a man they had just booked for burglary walked out of the police station and drove off in one of their cars, authorities said Wednesday.

"It's not just unusual, it's embarrassing," said a spokesman for police in the central town of Eschwege.

Police said the 27-year-old must have pocketed the key of the car during his interrogation. After he was charged and released, officers were stunned to see the man easing out of the station in the unmarked vehicle and immediately gave chase.

Three cars, including the stolen vehicle, were damaged in the ensuing pursuit. It ended with the man's re-arrest.

Max the dog loves trams but has no ticket

A Staffordshire bull terrier hopped onto the number 6 tram in
The Hague and traveled for 20 minutes before passengers saw he was alone and called police to make him get off.

The 7-year-old black and white dog has a penchant for traveling solo on the trundling trams, his owner Ben told a Dutch daily newspaper Wednesday.

"He got so used to traveling by tram, I always have to stop him from jumping in without me," Ben said. "I'll have to put him on the leash more often."

Police spokesman Leo Maat noted that Max, who did not want to get off the tram, had traveled several stops without a ticket.

Rails missing; it's hard to keep track...

Thieves have dismantled and carted away some 5 kms (3 miles) of disused rail track close to the German town of Weimar, railway operator Deutsche Bahn said on Friday.

The railway operator said the thieves would probably sell the tracks as scrap metal with the damage amounting to at least 200,000 euros ($241,500).

Deutsche Bahn said it had noticed the missing track after the mayor of a town alongside the train line phoned in to check if the dismantling was planned.

"This was a major criminal operation, because you cannot simply take the tracks and carry them away," said a spokesman for the rail operator.