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– They anticipated the first burglary, just not the second. While reporting on the epidemic of car break-ins in SanFrancisco, Inside Edition crew members watched as a man broke into a bait car fitted with hidden cameras. Reporter Lisa Guerrero began Wednesday's report by parking a car near San Francisco's Alamo Square with a designer purse and $250 speaker in full view. It wasn't long before a man smashed a rear window and grabbed the items, which had hidden GPS trackers. The purse, thrown to a female companion who slipped away at a subway station, was eventually found in a trash can, but Guerrero discovered the speaker still in the man's hand, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. "Five million people are gonna see you steal that," Guerrero told him. When he dropped the speaker and walked away, Guerrero went to interview a neighborhood resident whose surveillance camera captured the burglary, which he described as a daily occurrence. But Guerrero returned to the crew's SUV to find "we actually got hit twice in one day." The same surveillance camera spotted thieves smashing two of the vehicle's windows and making off with "thousands of dollars worth of equipment," Guerrero said. Per Inside Edition, "the problem has reached epidemic proportions, with car break-ins happening an average of every 17 minutes" in the city. Desperate residents have actually taken to leaving notes for would-be burglars, the Fresno Bee reports, via a reporter's tweet.

The Bay Area is struggling with vehicle break-ins -- in 2017, there were more than 31,000 reported break-ins, with just 2 percent resulting in arrests, according to SFGate.

 It’s gotten to the point where area residents have taken to leaving notes for would-be thieves, begging them not to smash their windows, as revealed in a tweet by ABC7’s Melanie Woodrow.

 Enter the TV show Inside Edition.

 Be the first to know. No one covers what is happening in our community better than we do. And with a digital subscription, you'll never miss a local story. SIGN ME UP!

 Reporter Lisa Guerrero led a crew to San Francisco with the intent of using surveillance gear to catch a thief in the act. Instead, the Inside Edition camera crew vehicle ended up being another statistic.

 Guerrero used a car loaded with “bait” in the form of a $250 speaker and a purse, both of which were rigged with GPS trackers, according to the Inside Edition video segment.

 “And for our last trick, we rigged this car with hidden cameras,” Guerrero told the camera, before leaving the bait parked in San Francisco’s famous Alamo Square.

 As Inside Edition footage showed, a man was seen smashing a window and grabbing the purse, which he was seen tossing to a woman who was with him; the man then grabbed the speaker and walked away.

 A man who lives nearby, and declined to give his name to Inside Edition, said his own surveillance system caught the burglary in action.

 “It all lasted maybe 20 seconds,” he said, according to the Inside Edition video.

 Guerrero and her crew then tracked down the man and confronted him.

 “5 million people are going to see you steal that,” Guerrero warned the man in the video.

 The man set the speaker down and walked away; Guerrero said her team later found the purse in a trash can.

 But it was while reviewing surveillance footage of the bait car break-in that Guerrero received an unpleasant revelation, according to the video.

 “Hey, wait a second, that car looks familiar. It’s our crew car,” Guerrero said, as she watched footage of a second break-in happening.

 “Unbelievably, when we were inside conducting the interview (with the man who lives nearby), thieves came out here and they broke into our crew truck,” Guerrero said in the segment. “And they stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment.”

 But if there’s any consolation for Guerrero and her camera crew, at least the thieves didn’t kill their pet Chihuaha.

 A San Francisco woman recently was sentenced to three years in prison after she threw a Chihuahua off of a seven-story parking garage to its death after she found it in a vehicle she was breaking into, as McClatchy reported Sept. 7. ||||| It’s an issue all over the country: thieves smashing vehicle windows to steal anything left inside. They’re called smash and grabs, and in San Francisco, the problem has reached epidemic proportions, with car break-ins happening an average of every 17 minutes.

 Inside Edition’s Chief Investigative Correspondent Lisa Guerrero wanted to see first-hand how bad the thefts are, so she used a $250 speaker and a Michael Kors purse as bait to lure thieves to a car rigged with hidden cameras.

 What the would-be burglars didn’t know was that Guerrero and her team also hid GPS tracking devices inside the speaker and the purse.

 Guerrero then drove up and parked the bait car at the renowned Alamo Square in San Francisco, where tourists flock to take pictures of the famous "Painted Ladies" row of Victorian homes.

 It wasn't long before a couple of Bonnie and Clyde wannabes strolled up and peered inside the vehicle.

 They waited for the sidewalk alongside the park to clear before one of them threw up his hood and tried to bust out the front passenger window with a special glass puncher. When it didn't break, he punched at the back window, which instantly shattered.

 He first reached in and snatched the purse. After tossing the bag to his female accomplice, he went back in for the speaker. He struggled to pull it out at first, but finally got it out and walked off in broad daylight.

 Guerrero then activated the GPS units and pursued the thieves through the streets of San Francisco with the help of a smartphone app.

 The GPS showed the suspects had hopped on a local bus. When it came to a stop, Guerrero took off after them.

 She eventually caught up with them at a subway entrance.

 “Hey you guys, what's going on? I'm Lisa Guerrero with Inside Edition," she said. “You've got my speaker right there. You just broke into my car.”

 “What?” the guy said.

 “We've got it on camera,” she told him.

 She followed him as he retreated into the subway.

 “Five million people are gonna see you steal that," she said. "So you can choose to give it back or not."

 He refused to give it back and pushed Inside Edition's camera away.

 “You know what? I’m just gonna call my mother,” the man said.

 “You should call your mother; that is awesome,” Guerrero replied. “Can I talk to your mom?”

 He said no, and then left the speaker on the floor and walked off.

 Next, Guerrero turned her attention to the female thief, who had fled in the opposite direction when Guerrero first approached them near the subway entrance. The tracking device led her to a trash can, where Guerrero recovered the purse; the GPS device was still inside.

 An area resident, who did not want to be identified, showed Guerrero how his nearby security cameras captured the whole smash-and-grab theft go down.

 “It all lasted maybe 20 seconds,” he said, adding that he sees smash-and-grab robberies every day.

 Remarkably, as Guerrero was conducting the interview, a car belonging to the Inside Edition crew was broken into, resulting in two broken windows and the theft of thousands of dollars' worth of equipment. That robbery was also caught on by surveillance cameras.

 "We actually got hit twice in one day," Guerrero declared.

 Police are still investigating, but of the 31,000 car break-ins reported in San Francisco last year, less than two percent have been prosecuted, according to police.

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 Inside the Wild Stunt Driving Trend That Is Taking America's Streets by Storm ||||| TV crew reporting on car break-ins in SF has both bait car and camera crew vehicle robbed

 Shattered glass from a recent car break-in remains on the sidewalk on Bay Street near Kearny Street in San Francisco, Calif. on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015. Police officials say auto burglaries have doubled from last year, especially along Bay Street in Fisherman's Wharf, Union Square and the Embarcadero. less Shattered glass from a recent car break-in remains on the sidewalk on Bay Street near Kearny Street in San Francisco, Calif. on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015. Police officials say auto burglaries have doubled from ... more Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle 2015 Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle 2015 Image 1 of / 27 Caption Close TV crew reporting on car break-ins in SF has both bait car and camera crew vehicle robbed 1 / 27 Back to Gallery

 A television production crew investigating the car break-in issue in San Francisco inadvertently played themselves when thieves broke into not just a bait car, but the camera crew's vehicle as well.

 Inside Edition, a CBS-affiliated news program, brought a car to Alamo Square with a Michael Kors purse and a $250 speaker in plain view inside. Both items had been fitted with GPS tracking devices. As anticipated, the car was broken into by a woman and a man soon after they parked. The crime, they later noted after reviewing footage, took about 20 seconds.

 The two allegedly fled to a bus before ending up at the 16th Street Mission BART station, where Inside Edition Chief Investigative Correspondent Lisa Guerrero approached the man. Speaker still in hand, the man then attempted to head into BART.

 "Five million people are gonna see you steal that," Guerrero said on camera. "So you can choose to give it back or not."

 After being further pressed, the man told Guerrero he was going to call his mother before putting the speaker down on the BART platform and walking away. Guerrero later traced the purse to a garbage can nearby on Mission Street.

 The reporter later caught up with an Alamo Square resident whose surveillance camera caught the break-in. But, to Guerrero's shock, the story continued; Inside Edition's camera crew van was broken into while she was conducting an interview inside the neighbor's residence.

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 "They stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment," she said, opening the SUV door to shattered glass. "We actually got hit twice in one day."

 San Francisco and Oakland are currently fighting a car break-in epidemic. In 2017, break-ins hit a historic high, with 31,122 reported incidents. Only 2 percent of cases saw arrests.

 Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.

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CLOSE Johnny Manziel's ex-girlfriend shares details of her alleged assault by the Cleveland Browns' quarterback. USA TODAY Sports

 Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel exits the field after a game vs. the New York Jets. (Photo: Ed Mulholland, USA TODAY Sports)

 A woman who describes herself as the ex-girlfriend of Johnny Manziel said that Manziel struck her several times and that the Cleveland Browns quarterback appeared as if he “were on some kind of drugs” during their altercation in the Dallas area early Saturday, according to a Fort Worth police report released Thursday.

 The NFL issued a statement Thursday that said, “Our review of this incident began when it happened. We are aware of the police report.”

 A television station in Dallas also reported Thursday that the former Heisman Trophy winner told Colleen Crowley, “shut up or I will kill us both” after forcing her into a vehicle, hitting her and dragging her by the hair, sources told WFAA-TV/News 8.

 Manziel on Thursday told TMZ Sports that he did not strike his girlfriend, saying, “It didn’t happen.” TMZ Sports also reported that Manziel denied threatening to kill himself during the altercation, adding that “I’m completely stable. I’m safe and secure.”

 Manziel's agent did not respond to a phone call by USA TODAY Sports.

 The Dallas Police Department said in a statement Manziel would not be charged.

 "The Dallas Police Department has conducted the appropriate investigative follow-up to the report forwarded to us by the Ft. Worth Police Department regarding an alleged incident involving Johnny Manziel," the statement read. "Investigative efforts to date have not resulted in the filing of a criminal complaint and the incident is determined to be closed. No further statement is expected at this time.

 Crowley and Manziel spent time earlier that evening with a group of friends at the Zaza Hotel in Dallas, according to police. After the friends dispersed for the evening, Manziel and Crowley were left alone at the hotel, the report says.

 Crowley told police that is when Manziel began to become aggressive toward her. Crowley was adamant to police that Manziel was not intoxicated. She told police that Manziel struck her left ear.

 The police report stated that Crowley described the incident at the hotel in vague terms.

 Crowley and Manziel then proceeded toward the exit of the hotel and Manziel told her that he was going to drive her home because he did not want her to drive while intoxicated. Crowley told police that Manziel appeared as if he were “on some kind of drugs.”

 Crowley said that Manziel drove her in her vehicle toward Fort Worth, where she resides. During the drive, Manziel shouted angrily and struck her several times.

 The report states that Crowley “again was somewhat vague on the details of the assault.”

 Crowley became irritated with further questioning by officers at her apartment. Crowley did not report an assault at her apartment, and she told officers that “she was running in and out of her apartment through the front door in an attempt to get away from Jonathan.”

 She told officers that she “finally rushed out of the apartment and ran to a nearby neighbor’s door to seek help.” Manziel then fled the area on foot, the report said.

 As the police investigation continued, Crowley became “increasingly uncooperative," stating that she did not want to answer any more questions or fill out a statement or make a report.

 Officers notified Air One to conduct a fly over search of the area in an attempt to locate Manziel.

 A Fort Worth police officer attempted to call Manziel on his cell phone but the call was not answered. Officers were unable to locate Manziel after searching the area.

 Because the location of the alleged assault was in another city’s jurisdiction, in addition to Crowley’s apprehensiveness about making a report, police said an “information only” report was completed.

 This was the latest incident involving Manziel, who was also pulled over by police in Ohio in October after an altercation with Crowley while driving on an interstate. He admitted he had been drinking earlier in the day. He was not arrested and not disciplined by the NFL for that incident.

 WFAA-TV/News 8 also reported Thursday that, according to sources, that Crowley is afraid of her safety and has drafted an order of protection to be presented to a Tarrant County district court judge.

 Manziel is not expected to return to the Browns next season. After the incident was initially reported last weekend, the Browns issued a statement indicating they are likely to part ways with Manziel in coming months. But because of the way the Browns managed their salary cap last season, with all $20 million of their space rolled into 2016, the team could not afford to take the salary cap hit it would cost to release him before the new league year opens on March 9.

 “We've been clear about expectations for our players on and off the field. Johnny's continual involvement in incidents that run counter to those expectations undermines the hard work of his teammates and the reputation of our organization. His status with our team will be addressed when permitted by league rules,” Browns executive vice president Sashi Brown said last week.

 That leaves the Browns, as well as the NFL, unable to truly address the issue at this time.

 The functions the league put in place in 2014 to address players accused of domestic violence, with the commissioner’s exempt list serving like a paid suspension, applies only during the regular season.

 The Browns on Thursday told Cleveland.com: “We're aware of the report and have nothing to add to our previous statement at this time.''

 PHOTOS: Johnny Manziel's career ||||| CLEVELAND, OH - DECEMBER 13: Quarterback Johnny Manziel of the Cleveland Browns walks off the field during on December 13, 2015 game in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo: Custom)

 NEWS 8 EXCLUSIVE

 DALLAS - The ex-girlfriend of NFL quarterback Johnny Manziel told police that the Heisman Trophy winner told her "shut up or I'll kill us both" after forcing her into a car, hitting her, and dragging her by the hair.

 On Thursday, News 8 learned harrowing details of last week's alleged assault of Colleen Crowley by Manziel, who is currently on the Cleveland Browns roster, but is not expected to return next season.

 After News 8 broke this story Thursday afternoon, Manziel denied wrongdoing in a published report.

 “We've been clear about expectations for our players on and off the field,” said Sashi Brown, the Browns executive vice president of football operations, in a statement Tuesday.

 “Johnny's continual involvement in incidents that run counter to those expectations undermines the hard work of his teammates and the reputation of our organization,” Browns statement reads. “His status with our team will be addressed when permitted by league rules. We will have no further comment at this time.”

 "We're trying to get our son better," Manziel's father, Paul Manziel told News 8. "We're not there yet."

 The NFL released a statement later Thursday saying it is aware of the police report.

 #NFL statement regarding Johnny Manziel: “Our review of this incident began when it happened. We are aware of the police report.” — Mike Leslie (@MikeLeslieWFAA) February 5, 2016

 Crowley has told authorities that, according to sources, she is afraid for her safety and has drafted an order of protection to be presented to a Tarrant County district court judge.

 Crowley and Manziel dated for two years and lived together for four months before breaking up in December, sources said.

 Sources say in her affidavit, Crowley outlines the details of an alleged assault that she said began in Manziel's hotel room in Dallas in the early morning hours of Saturday, Jan. 30.

 Sources say on Friday night, Crowley and three friends started the evening off at Victor Tangos, a swanky restaurant in the Knox-Henderson neighborhood in Dallas.

 Crowley and friends bar-hopped for a few hours before she met Manziel in his room at Hotel ZaZa in Uptown Dallas.

 Sources say while in his hotel room, the two of them argued over another girl. Crowley told police she tried to leave the room, but that Manziel wouldn't let her.

 Crowley told police Manziel "restrained" in some manner and "led" her down a back stairway to the valet area.

 "I was crying and begged the valet, 'Please don't let him take me. I'm scared for my life!'" she told police. The valet reportedly told her, "I don't know what to do" and let Manziel leave with her.

 Sources say Manziel then drove her about a half-mile to her car, which was parked near the Concrete Cowboy bar off Cedar Springs Road. She claims she jumped out of the car and tried to hide from Manziel, but he found her in some nearby bushes.

 "He grabbed me by my hair and threw me back into the car and got back in himself," she reportedly told police. "He hit me with his open hand on my left ear for jumping out of the car. I realized immediately that I could not hear out of that ear, and I still cannot today, two days later."

 Crowley then reportedly hit Manziel several times, hoping to get out of the car, but, she told police, Manziel "threw me off of him" and she hit her head on the car window. She told police he would not give her her phone.

 Sources say Manziel then got on Interstate 30 and began driving to her apartment in Fort Worth. While en route, she claims, she yelled at him, "I hate you!" He allegedly replied that "he was going to drop me off, take my car and go kill himself," sources said.

 She says she thought he was on drugs or maybe having a psychotic break. She told police she then began telling him she loved him.

 She says at that time Manziel "started laughing" and then reportedly yelled at her to "shut up or I'll kill us both."

 She says they finally made it to her Fort Worth apartment where the argument continued.

 Crowley claims Manziel became angry, and smashed her phone. He then went outside and started "pacing," she told police. While she was alone, she tried to use her computer to contact her parents through Apple's FaceTime video chat system.

 She said Manziel came back into the apartment, checked her computer, and realized she had tried to contact her parents.

 "I was in my kitchen, so out of fear for my life, I pulled a knife out of my knife block and advanced toward him," Crowley told police.

 "He ran out of the apartment," she said. When she saw him in the parking lot, she said she banged on a neighbor's door and screamed for help. Manziel fled on foot, she told police.

 Dallas Police said in a statement later Thursday that "appropriate investigative follow-up" had been done and the case was closed:

 The Dallas Police Department has conducted the appropriate investigative follow-up to the report forwarded to us by the Ft. Worth Police Department regarding an alleged incident involving Johnny Manziel. Investigative efforts to date have not resulted in the filing of a criminal complaint and the incident is determined to be closed. No further statement is expected at this time.

 Manziel burst onto the national sports scene in 2012 while a freshman at Texas A&M University. That season, he led the Aggies to 11 wins, including a victory over top-ranked Alabama.

 The win over the Crimson Tide and his dazzling play in college football’s toughest conference positioned Manziel to become the first ever freshman to win the Heisman Trophy.

 He left Texas A&M after his sophomore season and entered the NFL draft. Manziel’s past legal problems and concerns over his size led NFL executives to question whether he could compete at the professional level.

 Manziel wasn’t taken until the 22nd overall pick by the Cleveland Browns. Over his two seasons in the NFL, Manziel has played in 14 games for the Browns.

 Copyright 2016 WFAA |||||

– Johnny Manziel's ex-girlfriend claims the NFL quarterback forced her into a car, hit her, dragged her by the hair, and threatened to kill them both during last weekend's altercation in Dallas. Though a police report notes Colleen Crowley "was somewhat vague on the details of the assault," sources tell WFAA that the pair—who dated for two years before breaking up in December—met in Manziel's room at Hotel ZaZa on Saturday and started arguing about another woman. Crowley told police Manziel "restrained" her then "led" her down a back stairway to the valet after she tried to leave. "I was crying and begged the valet, 'Please don't let him take me. I'm scared for my life!'" she reportedly told police. She said the valet responded: "I don't know what to do." USA Today reports Manziel told her she was too buzzed to drive, so he would take her home. Sources say Manziel—who Crowley told police seemed to be "on some kind of drugs"—drove her to her car at a local bar but dragged her back to his vehicle by her hair when she tried to hide in some bushes. "He hit me with his open hand on my left ear for jumping out of the car,” Crowley reportedly said, adding she couldn't hear two days later. Crowley claimed Manziel then threatened to kill himself, later adding, "Shut up or I'll kill us both." The altercation ended at Crowley's Fort Worth apartment where she says she grabbed a knife and Manziel fled, sources say. A police report notes Crowley became "increasingly uncooperative" during an investigation, and no charges were filed. Manziel tells TMZ that he didn't hit Crowley or threaten suicide. "It didn't happen," he says. "I'm completely stable."


– A nude painting considered too obscene to display in Paris a century ago sold at an auction in New York City for $157.2 million Monday night, setting a new record for Sotheby's auction house but not for artist Amadeo Modigliani, the Guardian reports. Nu couche (sur le cote gauche), the Italian-born artist's largest painting, is one of only five of his nudes ever to hit the auction block. When it was first displayed in Paris a century ago, in Modigliani's first and only solo show, police immediately shut the exhibition down, the AP reports. The artist died three years later at the age of 35. (Another Modigliani nude sold for $170 million in 2015.)

Expand this summary.

This 1917 oil painting, "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" by Amedeo Modigliani, was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York for more than $157 million, in their Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale Monday,... (Associated Press)

 This 1917 oil painting, "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" by Amedeo Modigliani, was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York for more than $157 million, in their Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale Monday, May 14, 2018. Sotheby’s says the painting had the highest pre-auction estimate for an artwork at... (Associated Press)

 This 1917 oil painting, "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" by Amedeo Modigliani, was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York for more than $157 million, in their Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale Monday, May 14, 2018. Sotheby’s says the painting had the highest pre-auction estimate for an artwork at... (Associated Press) This 1917 oil painting, "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" by Amedeo Modigliani, was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York for more than $157 million, in their Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale Monday,... (Associated Press)

 NEW YORK (AP) — A 1917 painting by Amedeo Modigliani of a reclining nude woman that was once considered obscene in Paris sold for over $157 million at an auction in Manhattan on Monday.

 "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" was the highlight of Sotheby's "Impressionist & Modern Art" sale featuring Pablo Picasso works spanning seven decades, and paintings by Claude Monet, Edvard Munch and Georgia O'Keeffe.

 Modigliani shocked Europe at the turn of the 19th century with his series of 22 nudes reclining in every possible position. When the Italian-born, Jewish artist's nudes were unveiled at a Paris gallery, police demanded that it be shut down, offended by the unflinching strokes of his oil brush that thrust art's nude figure into the modern era.

 In the past half-dozen years, prices for Modigliani's works have soared, from $26 million the current owner paid for "Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)" in 2003 to as much as $170 million.

 Picasso's "Le Repos," an image of his lover and "golden muse," Marie-Therese Walter, sold for $40 million. It was one of 11 Picasso works that were offered Monday evening.

 Claude Monet's "Matinee sur la Seine" (Morning on the Seine), part of a lineup of river landscapes he painted while on a boat, capturing the changing light from sunrise to a lightning storm, brought in $20.6 million.

 Both Munch's "Summer Night" and O'Keeffe "Lake George with White Birch" each fetched over $11 million.

 Modigliani's painting, which had the highest pre-auction estimate at $150 million, was still well short of the record for the most expensive painting ever sold.

 Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi" sold last year at Christie's for $450 million. ||||| The painting, one of only five nudes ever auctioned, gave Sotheby’s its highest price yet but failed to set a new record for the artist

 Nu couché (sur le côté gauche), a reclining nude by the modernist master Amadeo Modigliani, fetched $157.2m in New York on Monday night – the highest price in Sotheby’s history. But it failed to beat the $170m record set for the artist three years ago.

 Sotheby’s auctioneer Helena Newman led a packed salesroom bidding that started at $125m but stalled at $139m, well short of the 2015 record of $170m (including fees) for another nude, Nu couché (Reclining Nude), at rival Christie’s.

 The painting, one of the largest works Modigliani ever made and one of only five of his nudes ever to come up for auction, was hoped to be able to reassure the market that in an industry increasingly concerned with contemporary painters early 20th -entury masterpieces are again finding favor.

 That was emphatically true for Modigliani, whose prices have for years lagged behind peers like Picasso and Monet.

 Rockefeller art collection breaks 22 world records at auction Read more

 After a successful $833m sale of items from David Rockefeller’s estate last week, Nu couché was widely predicted to be a singular star of the New York spring auction season.

 Painted in 1917, three years before Modigliani’s death at the age of 35, the picture caused a scandal when exhibited at Modigliani’s first and only solo show at Galerie Berthe Weill in Paris that year.

 When a crowd formed outside the gallery to gawp at the works, the police demanded the immediate closure of the show.

 The painting was reportedly consigned by the Irish horse breeder and trainer John Magnier, who’d picked up the work in 2003 at Christie’s for $26.9m. On that occasion it was placed at auction by the casino mogul Steve Wynn.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Sotheby’s preview of the sale on 4 May. Photograph: Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images

 It was recently included in Tate Modern’s blockbuster exhibition of the artist’s work in London, which brought together 12 of his nudes, the largest number ever assembled in Britain.

 Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s worldwide co-head of the impressionist and modern art department, said it “reimagines the nude for the modern era”.

 Modigliani has proved a problematic artist for top collectors. Last summer, Italian police closed down a Modigliani exhibition in Genoa after it was claimed the majority of the show was comprised of fakes.

 However, last nightSotheby’s confidently put the highest estimate ever placed on a work of art at auction.

 It exceeded the $100m estimate Christie’s placed on last year’s Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (which sold to a Saudi prince for $450m) and the $140m placed on Pablo Picasso’s Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’).

 Magnier was not present at the sale. Though he has not confirmed that he owned the work, there have been strong hints. Magnier has a three-year old colt named Modigliani. Modigliani expert Kenneth Wayne told Artnet News the colt was so named for an association with “excellence and success”. |||||


– What do you do if you're a federal agent who's part of an undercover operation to bust up a booming black-market drug-dealing website? One thing you don't usually do is skim a goodly portion of said site's digital currency into your pockets, but two former federal agents are accused of doing just that during their investigations that eventually led to the 2013 Silk Road sting, USA Today reports. Ex-DEA agent Carl Force and ex-Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges were charged with wire fraud and money laundering in a complaint unsealed today, the New York Times reports. The document for the recent bitcoin probe mentions that both agents were part of a Baltimore-based task force that ended up securing an indictment for Silk Road's "Dread Pirate Roberts," aka Ross Ulbricht. Force, a 15-year DEA veteran who resigned in 2014 when his alleged actions came to light, "stole and converted to his own personal use a sizable amount of bitcoins," the complaint notes, per the Times; he allegedly did so by fabricating online personas, adds USA Today. Bridges allegedly took $800,000 of the investigation's bitcoin under his jurisdiction, dumped it into a Mt. Gox account, then withdrew the funds from the Japanese currency exchange right before he went after the exchange with a seizure warrant; he had been with the Secret Service as a special agent for six years before resigning on March 18. Meanwhile, 25-year-old BitInstant co-founder Charlie Shrem became the first bitcoin felon to report to prison, starting his two-year sentence today at Pennsylvania's USP Lewisburg facility, Fortune notes.

Expand this summary.

When charges were announced against Mr. Ulbricht in October 2013 and the website was shut down, the authorities called Silk Road “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet.”

 Several thousand drug dealers and other vendors used the site from January 2011 through its closing to sell hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and other illicit goods to more than 100,000 buyers, according to charges filed in Manhattan.

 The site generated over $213 million in revenue during that period, and Mr. Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, took millions of dollars in commissions, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged.

 Much of Silk Road’s allure to buyers and sellers was anonymity: The website operated on a hidden part of the Internet, out of the glare of law enforcement officials, and transactions were made in Bitcoins, which can be as hard to trace as cash.

 Mr. Dratel, the defense lawyer, argued during the trial that his client was not Dread Pirate Roberts, the name of a character in the book and movie “The Princess Bride.” He conceded that Silk Road had been his client’s idea, but that Mr. Ulbricht had turned the website over to others before being lured back as a “fall guy” to be arrested.

 Mr. Ulbricht was convicted on Feb. 4 of multiple counts; four of the charges, including distributing narcotics on the Internet and engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, carry potential life sentences. He is to be sentenced on May 15.

 At the trial, the government also accused Mr. Ulbricht of commissioning the murders of five people whom he saw as threats to his enterprise. Although the prosecutors said they found no evidence that anyone was harmed, they cited the murders for hire as evidence that Mr. Ulbricht was willing to use violence to protect his lucrative operation. ||||| In February, after a trial that lasted 13 days, Ross Ulbricht was convicted of running the online drug marketplace Silk Road, which utilized the digital currency bitcoin for its payments. The media coverage of the trial, and the final result, could be seen as bad for bitcoin. It fed into an image that many in the public still have of the currency: that it is unsafe, and is used for crime.

 But while Ulbricht was the most prominent case thus far and is the reigning symbol of bitcoin’s darker uses (he even had the ominous alias “Dread Pirate Roberts”), a different defendant pleaded guilty to bitcoin-related crimes two months earlier than him: Charlie Shrem.

 Shrem was no shadowy figure, operating in the dark. He was a known name and an early advocate in the bitcoin community. In 2011 he founded the bitcoin exchange BitInstant, which had a range of legitimate investors, including the Winklevoss brothers. But in January, 2014, he was arrested (in dramatic fashion, at New York’s JFK Airport) and, last April, charged with failing to report suspicious banking activity, laundering money from BitInstant accounts (some $1 million) for use by Silk Road customers, and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.

 That latter charge is significant moving forward, as the New York Department of Financial Services is currently still at work revising BitLicense, its proposed set of regulations that will govern bitcoin businesses that are transmitting money on behalf of others. The Times wrote that Shrem, “has come to symbolize the government’s crackdown on the virtual currency,” but in fact, there has been, for now, very little crackdown, though some bitcoin supporters worry that it is on the way in earnest.

 While the salacious headlines that follow the prosecution of a bitcoin entrepreneur are unquestionably a negative for the community, some in that world see the prosecution itself as a positive sign. “Silk Road and [other crimes] are obviously a negative, but there’s a silver lining in the sense that when people do bad things and think they can do it because it’s in bitcoin, and they get arrested, there’s a message there that you’ll still get caught,” says Tyler Winklevoss. “What I take away from it is that traditional law enforcement tactics and measures are working, even in the bitcoin world. Technologies aren’t good or bad, they’re neutral. People use email for bad things, people use U.S. dollars for bad things.”

 Shrem pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of aiding and abetting an unlicensed money transmitting service, and was sentenced in December to two years in prison. Today, the 25-year-old reports to USP Lewisburg, in Lewisburg, Penn. It is a high-security federal prison, but Shrem will be in the minimum-security satellite camp. (If you suspect that Shrem will have a cushy time of it there, read our exclusive, revealing interview with a white-collar inmate at a minimum-security prison.)

 Since the moment he was sentenced, Shrem has been upbeat about his fate. On the day of sentencing, he tweeted: “Considering I was facing 30 years, justice has been served.” He then added that he was happy the judge in the case “admires my brainpower.” He has claimed as his own the title of bitcoin’s “first felon” and added the phrase to his Twitter bio, in which he also calls himself a “pioneer,” “crusader,” and “dreamer.”

 Last week, Shrem agreed to a phone interview with Fortune, but had to cancel. He has appeared on radio shows and spoken to the press, and discussed his expectations in an extensive blog post from earlier this month entitled, “So, I’m going to prison—reflections from bitcoin’s first felon.” In the post, Shrem writes, “I don’t look for sympathy, I did the crime and I will do the time.” He says that the prison facility where he’s headed “seems like a nice place, it offers outstanding recreational facilities including a walking track; a basketball court; softball fields and exercise equipment.” And on his Twitter account, he has appeared to even relish the imminent experience. On Sunday he posted a countdown (“21 hours until prison…”) and said, enthusiastically, “Follow my twitter when I check in to prison tomorrow! A few people will be running it, will post updates from behind the walls.”

 In Shrem’s blog post, he recounts the many ways he remained involved in bitcoin in the past year, including while he was on house arrest. He served as a consultant to a couple bitcoin companies, made speeches, and met with venture capitalists. He remains a diehard bitcoin believer. It appears extremely likely that he will return to the bitcoin world the moment he emerges from prison. The question is where the technology will be by then, and how much the landscape will have changed—and whether increased regulation to guard against crimes like Shrem’s will have had a major impact. ||||| Products allegedly available through the Silk Road site. (Photo: AP)

 A Secret Service agent and a DEA agent with lead roles in the investigation to take down the Internet drug bazaar Silk Road allegedly stole proceeds from the underground site and hid their booty in offshore accounts.

 Former DEA agent Carl Force, 46, of Baltimore, the task force agent charged with going undercover to communicate online with Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht, known as Dread Pirate Roberts, allegedly used several online aliases to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin from Ulbricht, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Monday. Force is charged with money laundering, wire fraud, theft and conflict of interest.

 Prosecutors also charged Shaun Bridges, 32, of Laurel, Md., a former special agent with the U.S. Secret Service, who allegedly accessed Silk Road accounts using password information from a Silk Road customer service representative arrested in a drug sting. Bridges, who joined the Secret Service in 2009, is charged with wire fraud and money laundering.

 The FBI shut down Silk Road and arrested Ulbricht on Oct. 2, 2013. Silk Road, a dark Web black market that traded in illegal drugs, counterfeit IDs and computer hacking software, required its buyers and sellers to do business in bitcoin, an anonymous digital currency that is difficult to trace.

 A federal jury in New York convicted Ulbricht last month on drug conspiracy charges. Ulbricht, who will be sentenced in May, was also the target of an investigation in Maryland. Force and Bridges worked on the Maryland investigation.

 Prosecutors say Force, in addition to his official undercover identity as "Nob," created several unauthorized online aliases, so he could conduct complex bitcoin transactions to steal from the government and Ulbricht.

 In one transaction, Force, using his second alias, allegedly demanded Ulbricht pay him $250,000 in bitcoin not to disclose information to the government. Posing as a woman named Carla under the alias "French Maid," Force allegedly offered to sell Ulbricht information about the government's investigation in exchange for $100,000 worth of bitcoin.

 Ulbricht paid the money, and Force deposited it into a personal account, IRS Special Agent Tigran Gambaryan wrote in an affidavit. Force allegedly converted some bitcoin to dollars and wired the money to his personal overseas bank account in Panama, the affidavit said.

 Force also worked for and invested $110,000 in the California-based digital currency exchange company CoinMKT while still working for the DEA. The company featured Force in its pitches to venture capital investors as CoinMKT's anti-money laundering and compliance officer.

 E-mails between Force and CoinMKT's CEO indicated that Force planned to stay at the DEA until the bitcoin exchange "hits it 'big time.' "

 "I have a lot of down time at DEA so I am confident that I can handle all that needs to be done regarding Legal and Compliance on a daily basis," Force wrote.

 Prosecutors say Force used his position at the DEA to steal money from accounts at CoinMKT. In one instance, Force allegedly directed CoinMKT to freeze a customer account. He then seized 223 bitcoins worth about $297,000 and transferred them to his personal Bitstamp digital currency account. He then exchanged the bitcoins for dollars and put the money in his personal checking account, court papers say.

 This April 3, 2013 file photo shows bitcoin tokens in Sandy, Utah. (Photo: Rick Bowmer, AP)

 Force, who earned about $150,000 a year as a DEA agent, made $757,000 in deposits to his personal bank account from April 2013 to May 2014, court papers show. During that time, Force paid off his mortgage and a government thrift savings loan while investing in real estate and bitcoin businesses, court papers say.

 Authorities arrested Force on Friday. Force, a 15-year veteran, resigned from the DEA in May. He is in jail and will appear in court Thursday for a detention hearing.

 Bridges, the computer forensics expert on the Baltimore investigation, allegedly stole more than $800,000 worth of bitcoin that he controlled during the Silk Road investigation and placed it into an account with Mt. Gox, a digital currency exchange in Japan. Silk Road reported a massive bitcoin theft Jan. 25, 2013, the same day Bridges attended an interview with the Silk Road administrator caught in the sting.

 Bridges allegedly wired the funds to a personal U.S. investment account through nine transfers from March 6, 2013, to May 7, 2013. The final transfer on May 7, 2013, came two days before he personally sought a $2.1 million seizure warrant for Mt. Gox's accounts, court papers say.

 Bridges, who joined the Secret Service in 2009, resigned from the Secret Service on March 18. He surrendered to authorities Monday and was released under pretrial supervision.

 Bridges intends to fight the charges, his attorney Steven H. Levin said. Bridges "had an unblemished career in law enforcement for several years. He maintains his innocence," Levin said.

 A bitcoin logo is displayed at the Inside Bitcoins conference and trade show April 7, 2014, in New York. Bitcoin users exchange cash for digital money using online exchanges, then store it in a computer program that serves as a wallet. The program can transfer payments directly to merchants or individuals around the world, eliminating transaction fees and the need for bank or credit card information. (Photo: Mark Lennihan, AP)

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News article:

The Mets fan is flushing away everything but the memories of his childhood friend.

 Queens native Thomas McDonald has decided to pay tribute to his Mets-loving buddy and master plumber Roy Riegel with a novel burial: flushing his ashes down baseball stadium toilets.

 McDonald, 58, has dropped some of the cremated remains of his friend in 16 Major League Baseball parks to date — and he’s got one more pilgrimage to go before his strange journey ends.

 “I’ve been doing this for seven or eight years,�? said McDonald, a retired NYC Transit worker.

 Noah Syndergaard tweets statement about injury, love for Mets

 When Riegel, his best friend since childhood died April 8, 2008, McDonald was at the last home opener at Shea Stadium.

 As boys, he and Riegel grew up in its shadow and spent one particularly memorable season there in 1973.

 McDonald’s mother called him at the game to say that Riegel, 48, had passed away.

 “One saving grace to me was he didn’t have to see Shea torn down,�? McDonald said.

 Sandy Alderson calls criticism of Mets’ medical staff ‘unfair’

 “We grew up since I was in the Cub Scouts when I was a little kid, known him since I was about 8. Was as big a Mets fan as I know.�?

 One Mets fan is honoring his friend by spreading his ashes at different MLB ballparks. (Al Bello/Getty Images)

 McDonald, a poet in his spare time, started taking small containers of Riegel’s ashes with him on his regular trips to ballparks around the country.

 At first he found discreet places outside to sprinkle Riegel’s ashes. But then, during one night at an Irish bar in Minnesota, a better idea came to him.

 “I went to the bathroom and I was like, I know what to do, because he was ... the best plumber you ever saw,�? McDonald told the Daily News. “He was a master.�?

 He also carried some of the ashes with him to the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland — one of McDonald’s favorite haunts.

 So far, McDonald has made it to Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit and Baltimore, among others. He even flushed Riegel’s ashes in the toilet of his hotel room inside the Rogers Center in Toronto.

 McDonald has also established strict rules, such as that a game must be in progress when he puts a bit of the ashes into the toilet from a small plastic bottle, which he’s wrapped in old Mets ticket stubs.

 Now, there’s only enough ashes for McDonald’s final stop: Durham Athletic Park in North Carolina, where the movie “Bull Durham�? was filmed.

 “They give tours of the old park that they were still using when they filmed the movie in the 1980s still there, (so I’m) going to try and do that one there,�? he said. ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City man is on a mission to flush the cremated remains of his lifelong friend — a plumber — down ballpark toilets around the country.

 Tom McDonald tells The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/2qodwCS ) that it's a fitting tribute for Roy Riegel.

 The two baseball fans were childhood friends in Queens, not far from — wait for it — Flushing Meadows, where the Mets play.

 Like baseball, this endeavor has rules. The game has to be in progress when McDonald sprinkles the ashes into the toilet from a little plastic bottle.

 So far, he's done the deed at 16 stadiums.

 Riegel also was a music fan: In Cleveland, McDonald flushed ashes at both Progressive Field and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

 In Chicago, McDonald did his duty at a White Sox game, skipping Wrigley Field because the Cubs are longtime rivals of the Mets.

 "I know people might think it's weird, and if it were anyone else's ashes, I'd agree," McDonald said. "But for Roy, this is the perfect tribute to a plumber and a baseball fan and just a brilliant, wild guy."

 Riegel's family agreed to share a portion of the ashes after his death in 2008. McDonald spoons out a little each time, from an old peanut can, wrapped in Mets ticket stubs, that he keeps next to World Series highlight videos and his collection of 149 baseball Hall of Fame autographs.

 Hank Riegel, of Waterloo, New York, said his brother would appreciate the offbeat gesture.

 "He'd be like, 'Oh, yeah, do that,'" Riegel said. "He would definitely approve of it. Never once did Roy follow the rules."

 McDonald has enough ashes left for one more tribute. He hopes to do it at Durham Athletic Park in North Carolina, where the 1988 movie "Bull Durham" was filmed. ||||| He rubbed the ashes tenderly into the asphalt of the schoolyard at Public School 70 in Astoria, where the two had played pickup baseball, football and roller hockey. He smudged them proudly onto a marker on Lower Broadway commemorating the city’s ticker-tape parade for the Mets after their 1969 World Series victory. He dusted them onto Shea’s original home plate location, which is designated by a marker in Citi Field’s parking lot.

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 But scattering the ashes at some stadiums posed problems. Mr. McDonald’s first attempt, at a Pittsburgh Pirates game in 2009 at PNC Park, was met with a gust of wind, recalled Adam Boneker, 46, a friend who has accompanied Mr. McDonald on many of his trips to ballparks to dump the ashes.

 “It was awkward,” Mr. Boneker recalled, adding that they resolved to try it at a Minnesota Twins game at the Metrodome in Minneapolis but, once there, realized that an indoor stadium was not an appropriate setting.

 Afterward, at a nearby Irish pub, a frustrated Mr. McDonald excused himself to use the bathroom. He returned smiling and declared triumphantly, “‘I just took care of Roy,’” Mr. Boneker recalled.

 Mr. McDonald had flushed the ashes in the bathroom.

 “Right there, it hit me,” Mr. McDonald said. “After that, it just took on a life of its own.”

 In the years that followed, he — often with Mr. Boneker — flushed ashes in stadiums in Arizona, Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City, Mo., Toronto, Detroit, Cincinnati, Baltimore and elsewhere.

 Photo

 In Cleveland, Mr. Riegel’s ashes were flushed at both Progressive Field and at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, because Mr. Riegel was a devout rocker. In Chicago, Mr. McDonald flushed them at a White Sox game but not at a game of the Cubs, the Mets’ old National League nemesis.

 “It’s funny — not in a joke way — but funny that it was exactly like Roy would have wanted it,’’ Mr. McDonald said.

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 Over the years, a wide circle of Mr. McDonald’s friends have gotten updates on the latest disposals.

 Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

 “It became kind of an inside joke: What’s the best place for Roy’s ashes?” said Mr. McDonald, whose friendship with Mr. Riegel stretched back to Pack 65 of the Cub Scouts and through adulthood as the fun moved into local bars.

 Mr. Riegel was “a major partyer,” Mr. McDonald said, and “walked that tightrope between genius and insanity.”

 The fast life caught up with him, and he died at age 48 on April 8, 2008, the day of the home opener of the Mets’ final season at Shea. Mr. McDonald attended the game without Mr. Riegel and returned home to find out his friend had died. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– "I went to the bathroom, and I was like, I know what to do," Tom McDonald tells the New York Daily News. Roy Riegel, McDonald's childhood friend and fellow New York Mets superfan, died in 2008 at the age of 48. McDonald kept Riegel's ashes in a peanut can wrapped in Mets ticket stubs next to his collection of baseball autographs and World Series highlights, but he wasn't sure exactly what to do with them, the AP reports. According to the New York Times, the answer presented itself after a trip to a bar's men's room: flush his friend's ashes down the toilet. Since McDonald's stroke of genius, he's flushed scoops of Riegel's ashes at 16 Major League stadiums around the country. McDonald calls it the "perfect tribute" to his friend, "the best plumber you ever saw" who "walked that tightrope between genius and insanity." Hank Riegel agrees, saying his brother "would definitely approve of it." There are rules to McDonald's tribute to Riegel: a baseball game must be in progress when the ashes are flushed, and if McDonald also has to use the facilities, "I always flush in between." McDonald has flushed Riegel's ashes in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago (though not at Wrigley Field due to the Cubs' rival status), to name a few. McDonald says he has enough ashes left for one final flush, which he plans to do at North Carolina's Durham Athletic Park, where the movie Bull Durham was filmed.


During Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, all of us living in besieged West Beirut were aware that the Israeli military was seeking to eliminate the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and had no qualms about killing large numbers of civilians in the process. We knew this from the aerial bombardment of the area around Beirut's Arab University, where the PLO had many of its offices. Dozens of apartment buildings there had been reduced to rubble.

 Toward the end of Israel's ten-week bombardment and siege of Beirut, a building that housed refugees located several blocks from my home in the Sanayeh neighborhood was entirely destroyed from the air, killing dozens. Immediately after the attack, I surveyed the carnage with a friend. After leaving him to return home, I heard another huge explosion -- it was a car bomb, presumably set off close to the destroyed building in order to kill those trying to rescue survivors. My friend barely escaped with his life.

 This and other examples of the handiwork of the architects of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, preeminent among whom was Ariel Sharon, failed to make it into most of the hagiographic coverage of the man's passing in the American and Israeli media. We were instead told that Sharon was "controversial," and that Palestinians had criticisms of him, but that he was a "hero," a "staunch defender of Israel's security," and most grotesquely, "a peacemaker."

 In September 2012, the New York Times published an op-ed on the 30th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, during which the Israeli military stood by while their right-wing Lebanese allies murdered nearly 1,400 defenseless Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in a Beirut refugee camp. The article, which was based on newly uncovered documents in the Israel State Archives, revealed new details on Sharon's role in, and indirect American diplomatic responsibility for, these atrocities. The New York Times did not, however, feature this account in its coverage of Sharon's death. Instead, it re-ran online a 1983 apologia by Sharon for his invasion of Lebanon, during which there were nearly 50,000 casualties, most of them civilians.

 The Lebanon war that Sharon, then the defense minister, did more than anyone else to launch was an unmitigated catastrophe for the Palestinians, the Lebanese, and in the view of most Israelis at the time, Israel itself. Israel's subsequent occupation of South Lebanon until 2000, the consequent intensification of the Lebanese civil war, the slaughter of untold numbers of innocents, and the deaths of hundreds of Israeli soldiers and thousands of other combatants should all be laid in large part at Sharon's feet.

 Sharon's profound impact on the Middle East stretched far beyond Lebanon. If the creation of a truly sovereign, independent, contiguous, and viable Palestinian state is not possible today -- as most sober observers believe -- this is largely his achievement. From his appointment as agriculture minister in 1977 until his passing from the Israeli political scene after his stroke in 2006, he probably did more than any other Israeli leader to make Israel's colonization of the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem an astonishing success.

 Sharon flew over the region in a helicopter to select sites for new colonies, all the while pioneering novel means of stealing land from its Palestinian owners. As prime minister, he continued this expansion process, which has turned the occupied West Bank into a Swiss cheese patchwork thoroughly dominated by lush Israeli settlements on what seems to be every hilltop. Simultaneously, he engineered a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, while retaining draconian control over it from without, thereby turning it into the world's largest open-air prison.

 Vice President Joe Biden eulogized Sharon today as a "historic leader" who was dedicated to the pursuit of peace. The very idea is ludicrous. Sharon began his career as a military commander renowned for ruthless assaults on innocent civilians -- like the slaughter in the West Bank village of Qibya in 1953, when commandos of his Unit 101 blew up homes over the heads of their residents, killing 69 people.

 The attack led to the first ever U.N. Security Council condemnation of Israel. It was not an isolated incident: Indeed, it established a pattern of dozens of "eyes for an eye," and of the Israeli leadership's systematic deception about what was actually happening on the ground. This approach has characterized Israel's response to any resistance to its expansion since the foundation of the state.

 Sharon was emblematic of the Israeli refusal to accept that Palestinian resistance was an inevitable response to the forcible establishment of a Jewish state and the concomitant expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. In later years, he became one of the most sophisticated employers of the trope of "terrorism" to demean this resistance.

 The characterization not only of those who took up arms against Israel, but of all Palestinians, as "terrorists" can be seen in the transcript of a meeting between Sharon, other Israeli ministers, and U.S. envoy Morris Draper on Sept. 17, 1982, in the midst of the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

 Morris Draper: The hostile people will say, sure the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is going to stay in West Beirut and they will let the Lebanese go and kill the Palestinians in the camps. Ariel Sharon: So we'll kill them. They will not be left there. You are not going to save them. You are not going to save these groups of the international terrorism [sic]. MD: We are not interested in saving any of these people. AS: If you don't want the Lebanese to kill them, we will kill them.

 Everyone present at this meeting, American and Israelis, knew that there were no PLO fighters in the camps. More than 15,000 PLO personnel had been evacuated from Beirut weeks earlier in a deal brokered by the United States. Had any number of these hardened combatants -- who had resisted the Israeli siege of Beirut for nearly two months -- been present, the perpetrators of these massacres would not have been able to operate with total impunity.

 Nonetheless, during this 90-minute meeting with Draper, Sharon repeated the canard that thousands of "terrorists" had remained behind after the PLO evacuation. He used the term "terrorist" 39 times, as part of a ceaseless browbeating of Draper, who had been told to demand that the Israelis immediately withdraw their forces from West Beirut. Instead of complying with Draper's request, Sharon stonewalled, giving the butchers inside the camps many more hours to complete their gruesome work under the glow of star shells fired by Israeli troops to illuminate the killing ground.

 Today, the American and Israeli media are celebrating this very same man. It is hard to imagine this kind of kid-glove treatment of anyone else with such a list of atrocities to his name. But apparently, such inconvenient facts are not welcome. In a more just world, he would have ended up facing the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

 Yoav Lemmer-Pool/Getty Images ||||| Correction: An earlier version of this op-ed incorrectly stated that Ariel Sharon “withdrew troops from southern Lebanon.” Then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak withdrew Israeli troops from southern Lebanon in 2000. The following version has been updated.

 Henry A. Kissinger was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977.

 Arik Sharon started as a warrior. He ended his career on the way to being a peacemaker. On that journey from fighting in every one of Israel’s wars to lying comatose for eight years in a Jerusalem hospital, he symbolized the anguish and dilemmas of Israel. A people who had come to their historic homeland had established themselves, surrounded by a culture that never acquiesced in ceding what it considered Islamic patrimony. Even before the proclamation of the Jewish state, Israel found itself in a state of war that has never ended. It has always lacked the essential prerequisite for peaceful coexistence with its neighbors: their recognition of its existence, which everywhere else is the precondition of diplomacy, not its outcome.

 This state of affairs produced two aspects of the Israeli psyche: a hair-trigger response to security threats and an attitude toward the peace process both grudging and nostalgic. Israel’s margin of survival has been so narrow that its leaders felt they could not run risks about emerging military capabilities of countries that refused to accept and daily castigated the Jewish state. When threatened, preemption became its style of warfare. And it viewed the peace process both with reluctance to give up territory in an environment so rife with denunciation and with a definition of peace so sweeping as to be very difficult to achieve in a single negotiation.

 When he was struck down by a stroke in 2006 , Sharon as prime minister was in the process of putting before his people a vision of coexistence with the Palestinians. Many visionaries of peace in Israel were military men: Yitzhak Rabin won the 1967 war. Shimon Peres, though not a military man, went the same route: a hawk in his early career, a passionate advocate of the peace process in recent decades.

 Sharon had to undertake the longest journey to reach this insight. A daring commander, he conducted the battle that reversed the tide of the 1973 war; he was the principal advocate of the operations in Lebanon. For many years, he deplored America’s decision in 1973 to bring about a negotiated end of the war. I was secretary of state at the time, and he missed few opportunities to chide me.

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 The United States acted as it did then because we were convinced that, however vast the margin of victory, it would leave Israel with its historic challenge: how to translate victories over threats to its security into political coexistence with the societies it lived among. The Egyptian leader, Anwar Sadat, seemed to offer such a prospect.

 In our many discussions, I always respected, then grew to admire and eventually develop affection for, this dedicated man living on a farm at the edge of the Negev desert, a kind of symbolic outpost. I looked forward to his visits while he was out of office; he would arrive at our meetings with maps under his arm that he used to explain the minimum requirements of Israel’s survival.

 As prime minister, Sharon unexpectedly broadened his definition of security. He sought to bridge the gap between physical and political security with the same courage and decisiveness that had brought him victory in battle. He volunteered the largest withdrawal in Israel’s history. He ended the Israeli occupation of Gaza and returned it to Arab self-rule as a unilateral act without reciprocity, abandoning even the Jewish settlements that had been established there. These gestures were conceived as a test case for a negotiation about the future of the West Bank, which Sharon once had viewed as a permanent Israeli outpost. The man who had identified security with the acquisition of territory became willing to cede territory for an outcome to fulfill the hopes for peace.

 It cannot be said that the result justified this act of faith. Israel was threatened by missile attacks from non-state actors: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza. Politically, Sharon’s vision was under attack from all sides: from those in Israel who insisted on a larger state, from Arab leaders who denied Israel the right to exist altogether, and from non-state terrorist groups. Still, Sharon’s vision reflected an essential first step; it was a sacrifice on behalf of raising prospects for a lasting peace — to which both sides must make a contribution by taking concrete steps and not by largely symbolic acts alone.

 With another peace process underway, one needs to respect the courage of those who are willing to brave it in light of so many disappointments. It must be conducted both with commitment to the process and with a recollection of unfulfilled hopes. The vision of peace must be coupled with a determination not to permit the peace process to be turned into another form of warfare. An outcome must not only draw lines of territorial divisions but also bring a meaningful acceptance of the Jewish state by its negotiating partner as well as by key Arab states.

 The writer was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. |||||

Write a summary.

– Ariel Sharon's death has brought on a bout of hagiography. The American and Israeli media will call him "controversial," but then call him a hero. Joe Biden praised him for his pursuit of peace yesterday, while Henry Kissinger terms him a "peacemaker" in today's Washington Post, noting his late-life willingness to pull out of Gaza. It's a "grotesque" characterization, Rashid Khalidi argues at Foreign Policy. "It is hard to imagine this kind of kid-glove treatment of anyone else with such a list of atrocities to his name." Khalidi was living in West Beirut during Sharon's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and it was obvious Israel "had no qualms about killing large numbers of civilians" to get at the PLO. "A building that housed refugees located several blocks from my home … was entirely destroyed from the air, killing dozens," he writes. Soon after, a car bomb went off, presumably "in order to kill those trying to rescue survivors," nearly killing one of Khalidi's friends. Sharon characterized all Palestinians as terrorists, and did more than anyone to prevent a contiguous Palestinian state. "In a more just world, he would have ended up facing the International Criminal Court in The Hague." Click for the full column.


Here is a news article: NEW DELHI (AP) — Al-Qaida has expanded into India, the leader of the terror group said in a video released Thursday, vowing that its militants would bring Islamic law to the entire subcontinent and "wage jihad against its enemies."

 At least three Indian states with large Muslim populations have been put on alert in the wake of the video's release, local TV stations reported, though there was no indication of an increased security presence.

 The new group "is the fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian subcontinent into a single entity," al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri said in the video, which was seen online by the SITE monitoring group.

 While his comments raised concerns in India, al-Zawahri's message seemed largely directed at his own rivals in the international jihad movement, and with raising al-Qaida's profile in the wake of repeated successes by the Islamic State militant group.

 Al-Qaida has been increasingly overshadowed by the Islamic State, whose fighters have captured wide swaths of Syria and Iraq and recently beheaded two American journalists.

 Al-Qaida "is struggling for its legitimacy in the eyes of the radicalized Muslim world," said Ajai Sahni, a top Indian security analyst with the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management.

 "Osama bin Laden has been killed and (al-Qaida's) entire top leadership, apart from Zawahri and a few others, one by one have been decimated by the American drone attacks," he said.

 While al-Zawahri's statement referred to the "Indian subcontinent" — a term that most commonly refers to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal — his comments were widely seen as directed at India, a largely Hindu nation with a large Muslim minority.

 Al-Zawahri said the group, Qaedat al-Jihad in the Indian subcontinent, would fight for an Islamic state and laws across the region, "which was part of the Muslims' territories before it was occupied by the infidel enemy."

 The leader of the new group, Essam Omar, said in an audio recording released with the video, that Jews and Hindus — who he referred to as "apostates of India" — "will watch your destruction by your own eyes."

 Fighters will "storm your barricades with cars packed with gunpowder," Omar said, decrying what he called the region's "injustice toward Muslims."

 Until recently, India had largely seen itself as beyond the recruiting territory of international jihadists like al-Qaida. Over the past few months, however, the Islamic State has grown in prominence in India, and is increasingly believed to be gaining followers here. Last month, an Indian engineering student who had traveled to Iraq with friends, and who was thought to have joined the Islamic State, was reported killed.

 Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh met Thursday morning with top security and intelligence officials to discuss the threat.

 A spokesman for India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party said the statement was "a matter of serious concern. But there is nothing to worry about. We have a strong government at the federal level."

 India, though, has a notoriously underfunded and ill-trained security infrastructure. In 2008, a small group of Pakistani militants attacked Mumbai, India's financial hub, effectively shutting down the city for days and killing 166 people.

 New Delhi has also waged a long-running insurgency war in Kashmir, India's only majority-Muslim state, with militants fighting to bring independence to the Himalayan region or join it to neighboring Pakistan. The fighting has left thousands of people dead.

 ___

 AP Writers Ashok Sharma and Nirmala George contributed to this report. ||||| Al Qaeda's leader Ayman al-Zawahri speaks from an unknown location, in this still image taken from video uploaded on a social media website June 8, 2011.

 DUBAI Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahri on Wednesday announced the formation of an Indian branch of his militant group he said would spread Islamic rule and "raise the flag of jihad" across the subcontinent.

 In a 55-minute video posted online, Zawahri also renewed a longstanding vow of loyalty to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, in an apparent snub to the Islamic State armed group challenging al Qaeda for leadership of transnational Islamist militancy.

 Zawahri described the formation of "Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent" as a glad tidings for Muslims "in Burma, Bangladesh, Assam, Gujurat, Ahmedabad, and Kashmir" and said the new wing would rescue Muslims there from injustice and oppression.

 Counter-terrorism experts say al Qaeda's ageing leaders are struggling to compete for recruits with Islamic State, which has galvanised young followers around the world by carving out tracts of territory across the Iraq-Syria border.

 Islamic State leader Abu Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi calls himself a "caliph" or head of state and has demanded the loyalty of all Muslims.

 The group fell out with Zawahri in 2013 over its expansion into Syria, where Baghdadi's followers have carried out beheadings, crucifixions, and mass executions.

 As well being an indirect repudiation of Islamic State, the announcement could pose a challenge to India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi. He has already faced criticism for remaining silent about several incidents deemed anti-Muslim, underscoring fears that his Hindu nationalist followers will upset religious relations in the majority Hindi nation.

 However, while al Qaeda is very much at home in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, due to influential contacts and a long presence there, it is a minnow compared to local militant groups in terms of manpower and regional knowledge.

 SAFE HAVEN

 Over the years Zawahri and his predecessor Osama bin Laden, killed by U.S. forces in 2011, repeatedly pledged allegiance to Mullah Omar, in return for the safe haven he granted their followers in Afghanistan.

 The statement did not mention Islamic State or Baghdadi, but it appear to take a subtle dig at the group's efforts at administering areas it has seized in Iraq and Syria.

 Islamic State's effort at state-building is something never attempted by al Qaeda's central leaders, who traditionally have preferred to plot complex attacks on targets in the West.

 Zawahri called for unity among militants and criticised "discord" - echoing a common al Qaeda complaint against Islamic State's record of clashing with rival Islamist groups in Syria.

 The statement also warned al Qaeda's new wing against oppressing local populations - another complaint levelled against Islamic State by critics in Iraq and Syria.

 "If you said that you are doing jihad to defend the sanctities of the Muslims, then you must not transgress against them or their money or honour, and not even transgress your mujahideen brothers by word and action," he said.

 "Discord is a curse and torment, and disgrace for the believers and glory for the disbelievers," he said. "If you say that by your jihad you do not want but the pleasure of Allah, then you must not race for governance and leadership at the first opportunity."

 Muslims account for 15 percent of Indians but, numbering an estimated 175 million, theirs is the third-largest Muslim population in the world.

 Centuries of rule by medieval Muslim invaders drove a wedge between Hindus and Muslims. Tensions have grown since Pakistan was carved from Muslim-majority areas of India in 1947, a violent partition in which hundreds of thousands were killed. In the era of Washington's "war on terror", some Indian Muslims have begun to sympathise more with hardline pan-Islamic groups and causes.

 (Reporting by William Maclean; Editing by Alison Williams) ||||| Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has announced the formation of an Indian branch of his global armed group that he said would spread Islamic rule and "raise the flag of jihad" across the subcontinent.

 In a video spotted in online "jihadist" forums on Wednesday by the SITE terrorism monitoring group, Zawahiri said the new force would "crush the artificial borders" dividing Muslim populations in the region.

 Al-Qaeda is active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where its surviving leadership are thought to be hiding out, but Zawahiri said the group would take the fight to India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

 "This entity was not established today but is the fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian sub-continent into a single entity," he said.

 Founded by Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan by US commandos in May 2011, al-Qaeda has long claimed leadership of the self-declared jihadists fighting to restore a single caliphate in Muslim lands.

 But since the death of its figurehead, it has been somewhat eclipsed, first by its own offshoots in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and now by the so-called "Islamic State" fighting in Iraq and Syria.

 While still regarded as a threat to the West, the group has never managed carry out another attack on the scale of the September 11, 2001 attacks by hijacked airliners on New York and Washington.

 But, in launching "Qaedat al-Jihad in the Indian sub-continent," Zawahiri may be attempting to recapture some of the limelight for his group and to exploit existing unrest in Kashmir and Myanmar.

 "It is an entity that was formed to promulgate the call of the reviving imam, Sheikh Osama bin Laden, may Allah have mercy upon him," Zawahiri said.

 'Waging jihad'

 Zawahiri called on the "umma," or Muslim nation, to unite around "tawhid," or monotheism, "to wage jihad against its enemies, to liberate its land, to restore its sovereignty and to revive its caliphate."

 He said the group would recognise the overarching leadership of the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and be led day-to-day by senior Pakistani fighter Asim Umar.

 The 55-minute video begins with stock footage of the late bin Laden giving a sermon, before cutting to a satellite map of southwest Asia, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and the Horn of Africa.

 Then it cuts to a white-bearded Zawahiri, in a white turban and glasses, against the backdrop of a brown floral curtain and desk with hardback books and a tin holding ballpoint pens and prayer beads.

 Umar also speaks in the video - using the Urdu language of Pakistan rather than the Egyptian doctor Zawahiri's native Arabic - along with a new group spokesman identified as Usama Mahmoud.

 The video is produced by Al-Qaeda's usual media arm, the As-Sahab Media Foundation - "The Cloud" - and SITE reported that it had been widely distributed on jihadist online forums.

 'Policy statement'

 Meanwhile the Pakistan Taliban has distanced itself from the recently formed splinter group Jamaat-ur-Ahrar and the Islamic State.

 In a new "policy statement" released on Thursday, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Shahidullah Shahid termed both groups "suspicious" and "a conspiracy".

 He said TTP has expelled its former Mohmand Agency commander Omar Khalid Khorasani or Abdul Wali, who founded the Jamaat-ur-Ahrar recently.

 The Pakistan Taliban reiterated its allegiance to the Afghan Taliban and its leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar in a statement that comes on the same day as al-Qaeda announcing the formation of its new franchise in South Asia. |||||
A summary of this is?

– With an even more brutal group of Islamic extremists capturing the world's attention, is al-Qaeda feeling neglected? In what analysts see as an effort to grab the spotlight from ISIS, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has announced the formation of an Indian branch of the terror network that will "raise the flag of jihad" across the region, reports Al Jazeera. In a 55-minute video posted online, Zawahri called the new entity the "fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian subcontinent" and vowed to bring Islamic law to the entire region. Al-Qaeda disowned ISIS early this year, and while Zawahri didn't mention the former affiliate by name, he appeared to be taking swipes at it with comments like "Discord is a curse and torment, and disgrace for the believers and glory for the disbelievers," reports Reuters. Three Indian states with high Muslim populations have been placed on alert, though it's not clear how much of a threat the new entity is. Al-Qaeda "is struggling for its legitimacy in the eyes of the radicalized Muslim world," a top Indian security analyst tells the AP. Osama bin Laden is dead, and al-Qaeda's "entire top leadership, apart from Zawahri and a few others, one by one have been decimated by the American drone attacks," the analyst says.


News article:

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 NEW YORK — In a stunning lawsuit seeking to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for 9/11, the families of 800 victims have filed a lawsuit accusing the Saudis of complicity in the worst terror attacks on American soil.

 The legal action, filed in federal court in Manhattan, details a scenario of involvement by Saudi officials who are said to have aided some of the hijackers before the attacks.

 Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals and three of them had previously worked for the kingdom.

 The document details how officials from Saudi embassies supported hijackers Salem al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Mihdhar 18 months before 9/11.

 The officials allegedly helped them find apartments, learn English and obtain credit cards and cash. The documents state that the officials helped them learn how to blend into the American landscape.

 The suit also produces evidence that officials in the Saudi embassy in Germany supported lead hijacker Mohamed Atta. It claims that a Saudi official was in the same hotel in Virginia with several hijackers the night before the attacks.

 Many of the revelations in the lawsuit are culled from findings of an FBI investigation into the terrorist attacks. The suit filed by aviation law firm Kreindler & Kreindler claims some of the hijackers had special markers in their passports, identifying them as al-Qaida sympathizers.

 The lawsuit asserts that the Saudi royals, who for years had been trying to curry favor with fundamentalists to avoid losing power, were aware that funds from Saudi charities were being funneled to al-Qaida.

 Aviation attorney Jim Kreindler told PIX11 News: “The charities were alter egos of the Saudi government.”

 The lawsuit spells out how money was transferred from charities in Saudi Arabia to the terror group.

 Charities the lawsuit claims fronted for al-Qaida include the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, an organization that was designated by the U.S. as a sponsor of terrorism.

 Kreindler maintains that there was a direct link between all the charities and Osama bin Laden and that they operated with the full knowledge of Saudi officials.

 The legal document claims that the Saudis used a variety of means to conceal the money trail to al-Qaida.

 “The Saudis were so duplicitous,” Kreindler said. “They claim to be allies fighting with U.S. against Iran, while at the same time working with the terrorists. There’s no question they had a hand in the 9/11 attacks.”

 Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had resisted efforts to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. The kingdom is a key ally against Iran, and its oil interests are important to the United States.

 Last September, Congress overrode an Obama veto to pass JASTA — Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act — that would allow Americans to take legal action against countries that support terrorism.

 Kreindler wouldn’t put a dollar figure on the amount of damages being sought by the 800 families of those who died and 1,500 first responders and others who suffered because of the attacks.

 "This lawsuit is a demonstration of the unwavering commitment of the 9/11 families to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its critical role in the 9/11 attacks," Kreindler said. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

 / Updated By Alex Johnson

 At least seven lawsuits alleging Saudi government support and funding for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks have landed in federal courts in the six months since Congress opened the door to such litigation over the fierce opposition of former President Barack Obama.

 A suit consolidating some of those actions was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, representing the families and estates of about 800 of the 2,996 people killed in the attacks.

 It alleges that the Saudi government helped pay for the operation through its alleged funding of al-Qaeda terrorist camps and its logistical support for the group's transport of weapons, people and money around the world.

 The suit, which doesn't specify damages, alleges that the money and support were channeled through nine Saudi government-supported charities — including the Saudi Red Crescent Authority, part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

 Few if any of the allegations, many of which mirror accusations in other lawsuits filed since September, appear to be new, but they add details to the assertions of 9/11 victims' families that elements of the Saudi government, one of the United States' closest allies in the Middle East, secretly backed the attacks.

 For example, the consolidated suit alleges that officials in Saudi embassies helped some of the hijackers find homes and learn English so they could pass unnoticed in the United States.

 It alleges that Saudi authorities even applied a secret code to the passports of al-Qaeda members to facilitate their international travel and that such codes were discovered on the passports of at least three of the 9/11 terrorists.

 The lawsuits began rushing into the courts after Sept. 28, when Congress overrode Obama's veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, which provided an exemption to the legal principle of sovereign immunity so families could take the Saudi government to court.

 Firefighters and rescue workers undrape a large U.S. flag near a damaged area of the Pentagon on Sept. 12, 2001. Larry Downing / Reuters

 The Obama administration argued that providing the exemption would set a dangerous precedent, opening the door for other countries and their citizens to haul the United States into court.

 Most of the actions brought since the veto was overridden are on behalf of families of victims of the attack on the World Trade Center. One was brought by insurance companies seeking to recoup some of their losses.

 On Friday, a U.S. magistrate judge in Manhattan ordered lawyers for the plaintiffs and for Saudi Arabia to appear in court this Thursday to try to work out a way to coordinate the various cases.

 A representative for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could not be reached for comment on Monday evening. Country officials in the past have said they cannot comment on pending legislation. ||||| Senate Committee Any Committee Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry (70th-116th) Armed Services (79th-116th) Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (70th-116th) Budget (93rd-116th) Commerce, Science, and Transportation (79th-116th) Energy and Natural Resources (70th-116th) Environment and Public Works (79th-116th) Finance (70th-116th) Foreign Relations (70th-116th) Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (70th-116th) Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (70th-116th) Judiciary (70th-116th) Rules and Administration (79th-116th) Small Business and Entrepreneurship (81st-116th) Veterans' Affairs (91st-116th)

 State or Territory Indicated Any State or Territory Alabama Alaska American Samoa Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Guam Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Northern Mariana Islands Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virgin Islands Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

 Nomination Actions Any Nomination Action Placed on calendar as privileged nomination Committee requested information was received Referred to committee Hearings held Ordered reported Reported to Senate Committee discharged Placed on calendar Placed on calendar with footnote Considered by Senate Unanimous consent agreement Cloture motion Cloture invoked/not invoked Rereferred to committee Received message of withdrawal Returned to president Confirmed by Senate ||||| CLOSE The lawsuit, brought in the federal court that covers lower Manhattan, is years in the making. USA TODAY

 Lucy Smith, 6, and her brother Ryan, 2, of New Jersey look at the name of their uncle, Port Authority Police Officer Chris Amoroso, who was killed in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center during a memorial service for the attacks at Ground Zero. (Photo: Seth Harrison, The Journal News, via USA TODAY NETWORK)

 A lawsuit filed Monday in federal court on behalf of the families of 850 people who died and another 1,500 who were injured in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the U.S. holds the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia responsible for helping some of the attackers.

 The suit filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, in Manhattan, is being handled by Kreindler & Kreindler in New York City, an aviation law firm that has been working with the families for the last 16 years.

 The claim seeks unspecified monetary damages.

 "This lawsuit demonstrates ... the families are never going to give up until we establish that Saudi Arabia is accountable," said lawyer Jim Kreindler.

 The suit, which will be heard by U.S. District Judge George Daniels, alleges Saudi Arabia supported al-Qaeda in four ways, Kreindler told USA TODAY.

 Read more:

 The suit names several Saudi Arabian charities that were "alter egos of the government" that were staffed by the government, that ran terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and "the whole world knows they were dirty," Kreindler said. The charities worked with late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to open offices in Pakistan and Afghanistan and establish the terrorist organization, the suit alleges.

 The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia directly funded al-Qaeda, the lawyer said. Saudi Arabia supported the terrorists by supplying assistance such as passports and worldwide transportation, he said.

 And finally, the suit identifies Saudi officials who worked with the hijackers in Los Angeles, San Diego, Sarasota, Fla., Washington, D.C., and Virginia in the 18 months leading up to the attacks, Kreindler said.

 In September, Congress passed a measure allowing countries to be sued in terrorism cases even when the alleged act or acts take place outside of the United States — the Justice Against State Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) — which enables the suit to go forward.

 Another lawyer working with the plaintiffs said the families he represents are grateful to Congress and to President Trump, who has backed their efforts.

 "We just hope President Trump continues," Andrew Maloney said. "I would like to hear some continued expressions of support by the president."

 Michael Kellogg, a Washington-based lawyer representing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, did not respond to a message left at his office Monday evening.

 CLOSE The White House blasted what it called "rapid onset buyer's remorse" after House and Senate leaders conceded problems with the 9/11 lawsuit bill Congress just enacted into law over President Obama's veto. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., suggested that the House might take up a bill to fix problems with the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, after it comes back from its election recess. USA TODAY

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What is a shorter version of the above article?

– A lawsuit representing the families and estates of about 800 victims of 9/11 has been filed in Manhattan federal court, with the Saudi Arabian government in its sights, WPIX and NBC News report. Of the 19 plane hijackers that day, 15 were Saudi nationals, and three of those reportedly had employment history with the government there. Accusations in the newest consolidated complaint, compiled in large part via an FBI investigation, include embassy officials being instrumental in assimilating some of the 9/11 attackers into the US via English instruction, funding assistance, and help in finding a place to live. Saudi authorities also allegedly offered special passport codes to a handful of the terrorists that smoothed their way into the US. The suit also says Saudi royals turned a blind eye regarding money they donated to certain "charities," which was really being shifted to al-Qaeda. "The Saudis were so duplicitous," aviation attorney Jim Kreindler tells WPIX, noting while Saudi Arabia was putting up a good front as a US ally, it was secretly enabling terrorism. (USA Today notes Kreindler's law firm is handling the new suit, which is seeking unspecified monetary damages.) Per NBC, more than a half-dozen lawsuits against the Saudi government have filtered into federal court since September, when Congress rejected then-President Obama's veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which gave families of 9/11 victims a way to circumvent sovereign immunity to sue the Saudis. Obama was against JASTA, saying the tables could be turned so other nations can file suit against the US. Attorneys for families and the Saudis are to appear in court Thursday to hammer out the multi-case logistics. (The Saudis obviously don't like JASTA.)


Summarize this article:

BERKELEY -- Hotel guests and residents of the Berkeley City Club were evacuated from the historic building Tuesday afternoon after a woman used a toxic chemical in her room to commit suicide, authorities said.

 Police spokesman Officer Ethell Wilson said hazardous materials crews and bomb squad technicians responded to the call on the third floor of the six-story landmark shortly before 2 p.m. The victim reportedly left a suicide note outside her apartment alerting first responders to the hazardous situation, police said.

 The name of the victim, a woman in her 80s, was not released. Wilson did not know how many people were evacuated, but there were no reports of injuries Tuesday evening.

 Police closed Durant Avenue between Telegraph and Shattuck avenues for several hours while crews investigated. It was not immediately known if the toxic substance -- sodium azide -- had contaminated the entire building or the one unit.

 Check back for updates.

 Reach Kristin J. Bender at kbender@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow her at Twitter.com/kjbender. ||||| UPDATE, 9:10 p.m.: The person who committed suicide today at the Berkeley City Club was an 80-year-old woman who killed herself in her room using sodium azide, according to the Oakland Tribune. The woman lived in an apartment on the third floor of the landmark building, police officer Ethell Wilson said. The Tribune also reported that the woman left a note warning authorities of the dangerous situation. Sodium azide, a colorless salt, is the gas-forming component in many car airbag systems. When mixed with water it is acutely toxic.

 Despite this report, it is unclear, however, how, or if, the woman was affiliated with the Berkeley City Club. In an email to its members sent out just before 9 p.m., the club said “no Member, resident nor team members were involved nor in harm’s way.”

 ORIGINAL STORY: Berkeley Police are investigating a suicide that appears to have involved a potentially hazardous material at the Berkeley City Club on Durant Avenue.

 According to Berkeley Police Sgt. Joe Okies, three agencies — Berkeley Police, Berkeley Fire and the University of California Police Department — have been working in unison since around 2 p.m. today to remove the suspicious material before the coroner could come on scene.

 Okies could not say what the suspicious material was, or provide details about the deceased person, while the investigation was ongoing.

 Berkeley City Club, at 2315 Durant Ave., between Ellsworth and Dana streets, has been evacuated and all traffic and pedestrians are being forced to take detours from the 2300 block of Durant. AC Transit buses have also been diverted.

 The call about “a person down” came in at 1:56 p.m., Okies said. “Emergency services responded and discovered what appeared to be a suicide involving hazardous materials,” he said. “There was a coordinated effort to remove the material.”

 At 6:30 p.m the coroner was not yet on scene. The joint command was taking steps to make the building safe.

 “The known quantity of what appeared to be a hazardous material has been removed,” Okies said. He confirmed the suicide took place inside the Berkeley City Club, but said he could not be more specific.

 The death investigation was ongoing at 6:30 p.m. and the 2300 block of Durant was still closed, due mainly, said Okies, to the large quantity of vehicles and equipment situated there.

 Berkeley Fire also responded initially to the incident, according to Deputy Fire Chief Avery Webb. But, he said, “it was determined to be a component that made it a law enforcement situation, so [police] assumed control of the situation.”

 The Julia Morgan-designed Berkeley City Club is a hotel and private social club with an indoor swimming pool and a restaurant, as well as a hair salon and meeting spaces.

 This story is being updated as new information became available.

 Follow Berkeleyside on Twitter and on Facebook where we often break news. Click here to subscribe to Berkeleyside’s free Daily Briefing. |||||

– The landmark Berkeley City Club was evacuated yesterday after an 80-year-old resident used a toxic chemical to kill herself in her room. Police in the California city say Hazmat teams and bomb squad technicians were called in after a note was found outside the woman's third-story apartment warning of the danger, the Oakland Tribune reports. Police say a "known quantity of what appeared to be a hazardous material has been removed" and steps are being taken to make the building—which houses both hotel guests and residents—safe, reports Berkeleyside. The woman is believed to have used sodium azide, a colorless salt used as the gas-forming component in car airbag systems. It becomes extremely toxic when mixed with water.