Stolen "Mona Lisa of sculptures" found in Austria

VIENNA, Jan 22: A famed Renaissance sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini stolen in spectacular fashion from a Vienna museum in 2003 was found in good condition in an Austrian wood police and local media said.

Investigators discovered the gold-plated Saliera, dubbed the ''Mona Lisa of sculptures'' by curators and worth 60 million dollar, a day after circulating security camera footage of a possible suspect in the theft who then reported to police, ORF television said yesterday.

''We have found the Saliera. It is now in police safekeeping,'' said a Vienna police spokesman. He said a suspect was in custody but declined to elaborate pending a news conference today.

In May 2003, thieves climbed scaffolding on Vienna's Art History Museum in the early hours, smashed a window to get inside and grabbed the 16th-century Saliera from its glass case, outwitting high-tech motion sensors and around-the-clock guards.

The heist of the delicately-carved, 26-cm (10-inch)-high masterpiece, which Cellini, a Renaissance goldsmith, made on commission from French King Francis I, was one of the most audacious in Europe for years.

The Saliera, an amalgam of gold, ebony, enamel and wax, depicts a bearded man with a trident, symbolising the sea, leaning back and resting upon the head of a horse. The man is looking at at a woman, symbolising the Earth, whose legs are intertwined with his.

Art historians say the Saliera was both a royal salt holder and an allegorical representation of the planet Earth.

APA new agency quoted Vienna criminal police chief Ernst Geiger as saying the Saliera ''looked pretty good'' when found in a crate buried in a snowy forest not far from Vienna.

The sculpture turned up hours after investigators released closed-circuit video of a man buying a mobile phone believed to have been used by the thieves to contact police in efforts to extract a multimillion-dollar ransom, local media said.

The man then presented himself to police at the urging of acquaintances who recognised him in the footage, they said.

''We're overjoyed that this unique artwork has been retrieved. It's a coup for the investigators,'' Thomas Schmid, spokesman for Education Minister Elisabeth Gehrer, told APA. (AGENCIES)

UN concerned over Sri Lankan Tamil refugees fleeing to India

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 22: Expressing concern over Sri Lankan Tamil refugees fleeing to India, the United Nations has said it was a sign of the deteriorating security situation in the island.

"Although small, this is the first arrival of refugees at Rameswaram reported since January 2003, and points to a worrisome deterioration of the security situation in the north and east of Sri Lanka," William Spindler, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said.

UNHCR is also closely monitoring the internal displacement situation, and is prepared to provide humanitarian relief assistance to new internally displaced when and if required, he told journalists.

Earlier this week, Secretary-General Kofi Annan had called on the country's Government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to support the ceasefire and resume talks, deploring a weekend attack on the facilities of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission.

The Mission was set up under the ceasefire agreement of February 2002 and aimed at ending two decades of fighting between the Government and separatist forces that has claimed some 60,000 lives. (PTI)

Pakistan for more US coordination in war on terror

ISLAMABAD, Jan 22: Pakistan called yesterday for more coordination with the United States to avoid any repetition of last week's US air strike in a tribal region that killed civilians and triggered outrage in the Muslim nation.

Eighteen civilians, including women and children, were killed in the strike on Damadola village in the Bajaur tribal region near the border with Afghanistan, which US officials said was aimed at Al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman-al-Zawahri.

Pakistani intelligence officials say Osama bin Laden's deputy was not present at the time of the strike but at least four al Qaeda figures, including a bomb expert with a 5 million dollar bounty on his head and a Zawahri son-in-law, had also died.

Yet Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz again denied there was evidence that al Qaeda members were at the attack site.

''What I'm telling you as Prime Minister of Pakistan is that there's no tangible physical evidence,'' he said in an interview with ABC News' weekend edition of ''Good Morning America''.

Aziz is expected to raise the matter at a meeting with President George W Bush early next week and said that every country's sovereignty ''needs to be protected and safeguarded.''

He also denied that bin Laden was likely hiding in Pakistan. ''He's not in our neighborhood,'' Aziz said.

The attack prompted rare formal protest by Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led war on terror, with Washington. It also sparked nti-US demonstrations in several Pakistani towns and cities.

Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri told visiting US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns that Pakistan was committed to fighting Islamist militancy.

''While reaffirming Pakistan's commitment to counter-terrorism, the foreign minister underlined the need for the two countries to work in a manner that precludes recent incidents like Bajaur,'' the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

''He (Kasuri) highlighted the prevailing public sentiment and stressed that such incidents were counter-productive,'' it added without elaborating.

The statement did not say what Burns' response was. (AGENCIES)

Bird flu may spread faster, new research

NEW YORK, Jan 22: Bird flu might spread from infected faeces or urine as well as coughed up droplets, a new study on infected cats show, raising fresh fears that it might be difficult to control the situation if human-to-human infection becomes a reality.

Researchers studying how the flu affects the body were quoted by Nature magazine that autopsy on infected cats shows that avian flu ravages tissues throughout the body.

The finding suggests that the virus might infect people's guts through what they eat, and spread via contaminated faeces.

Because of fears that the virus will spark a human pandemic, Nature said researchers want to know how it is likely to attack the body and jump between people. But they have had little opportunity to answer these questions, in part because only a handful of human victims have been autopsied.

So a team led by Thijs Kuiken at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, carried out detailed autopsies of infected cats and these mammals are thought to be a reasonable model for human infections. This allowed them to catch a glimpse of the virus at the peak of an infection, rather than waiting until after death.

The team, Natures recalls, first reported that H5N1 flu strain could infect domestic cats1 in 2004, a discovery that was startling because cats were previously thought to be immune to the flu. In a follow-up study, published in the US Journal of Pathology this month, they carefully probed the tissues of eight infected animals. (PTI)

One third of French don't speak English: Survey

PARIS, Jan 22: More than one third of French people do not speak English although more than half of them say that learning a foreign language at school is important, a survey published showed.

The IFOP survey for the weekly newspaper Dimanche Ouest France published yesterday showed that 34 percent of those questioned said they did not speak English.

Twelve per cent said they were fluent in English, six per cent said they understood and spoke it well, and 48 per cent said they ''more or less'' understood English but did not speak it fluently.

Fifty-five per cent said it was important to learn a foreign language.

Among the 33 per cent of those surveyed who believe learning a foreign language at school ''has priority'', most were between 50 and 64 years old, lived in the Paris region or were executives, the poll showed.

The poll was carried out by telephone on Jan. 19 and 20 and 1,004 people at least 15 years old were questioned.

About 750 million people are believed to speak English as a foreign language, according to the Web site of the British Council, which promotes British culture and the English language. (AGENCIES)