AFP

New York prosecutors have seized five Egyptian antiques from the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of an international trafficking investigation involving the former head of Paris’s Louvre Museum.

The artifacts — which include a group of painted linen fragments, dated between 250 and 450 BC, depicting a scene from the Book of Exodus — are worth more than $3 million, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

A New York state judge ordered their confiscation on May 19, a court document shows.

“The pieces were seized pursuant to the warrant,” a spokesperson for the district attorney told AFP on Thursday.

He added that they are “related” to the investigation in Paris in which Jean-Luc Martinez, who ran the Louvre from 2013 to 2021, was charged last week with complicity in fraud and “concealing the origin of criminally obtained works by false endorsement.”

The fraud is thought to involve several other art experts, according to French investigative weekly Canard Enchaine.

The five pieces seized from the Met were purchased by the famous museum between 2013 and 2015, according to The Art Newspaper, which first reported the news.

When contacted by AFP, a Met spokesperson referred to a previous statement in which the museum said it was “a victim of an international criminal organization.”

In 2019, the museum returned the gilded sarcophagus of the priest Nedjemankh to Egypt after New York prosecutors determined it had been stolen during the revolts against ex-president Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

The Met had purchased the coffin in 2017 and later said it had been a victim of false statements and fake documentation.

French investigators are also seeking to establish whether pieces looted during the Arab Spring protests were acquired by the Louvre’s branch in Abu Dhabi. 

Several of the individuals charged in the case — including Roben Dib, owner of a gallery in Hamburg and who is currently in custody — were involved in the sarcophagus’s sale to the Met, according to a 2019 report by the Manhattan district attorney.

The Book of Exodus painting is valued at $1.6 million. Also among the five works is a painted portrait of a woman dated from between the years AD 54 to 68 worth $1.2 million.

Coco Gauff became the youngest Grand Slam finalist in 18 years at the French Open on Thursday and used her landmark performance to demand action on mass shootings in the United States by writing “peace, end gun violence” on a courtside TV camera.

American star Gauff, 18, will face world number one Iga Swiatek in the final on Saturday after defeating Martina Trevisan 6-3, 6-1 in her semi-final.

Before penning her plea for gun control at home, she insisted that recent tragedies mean she will treat victory or defeat in the championship match with equal equanimity.

“Yeah it’s a Grand Slam final but there are so many things going on in the world, especially in the U.S. — I think it’s not important to stress over a tennis match,” she said in her on-court TV interview.

Gauff was talking just hours after a gunman killed at least four people at a hospital building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, — the latest in a string of mass shootings across the United States in recent weeks.

The killings come as Texas families bury their dead after a school shooting left 19 young children dead just eight days earlier.

Winning players at the French Open are invited to write messages on the courtside TV camera. Usually they are light-hearted, often bland declarations.

However, Gauff seized her chance in front of a global TV audience, hoping that her gun control message will “get into the heads of people in office to hopefully change things”.

“The first thing my dad said to me after I got off court, I’m proud of you and I love what you wrote on the camera.”

Gauff said she had not planned to write the message should she have won the match on Roland Garros’ showpiece Philippe Chatrier Court.

“It just felt right in that moment and to write that. I woke up this morning and I saw there was another shooting, and I think it’s just crazy.”

Gauff hoped that being in Europe will help get her message home to a wider audience.

“I know people globally around the world are for sure watching,” she said.

Gauff explained that the deaths of 17 students at the hands of a teenage gunman in the Parkland school shooting in Florida in February 2018 had already brought the issue sharply into focus on a personal level.

Some of her close friends were present at the time.

“Luckily they were able to make it out of it. I just think it’s crazy, I think I was maybe 13 or 14 when that happened, and still nothing has changed.”

Gauff insisted that she will continue to speak out on political and social issues now that she has passed her 18th birthday and has the right to vote.

“Since I was younger, my dad told me I could change the world with my racquet. He didn’t mean that by like just playing tennis. He meant speaking out on issues like this.”

US authorities have charged a former manager at a digital exchange platform with fraud and money laundering, in what they said was the first insider trading case involving non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

Nathaniel Chastain was working as a product manager at New York-based OpenSea last year when he secretly bought dozens of NFTs that were about to be featured on the platform’s home page, federal prosecutors said in a statement Wednesday.

Chastain, 31, went on to sell the NFTs for two to five times the initial price after they got star billing at the OpenSea website, the criminal case against him states.

NFTs are tokens linked to digital images, collectable items, avatars in games or objects in the burgeoning virtual world of the metaverse.

“NFTs might be new, but this type of criminal scheme is not,” US attorney Damian Williams said in a release. “Nathaniel Chastain betrayed OpenSea by using its confidential business information to make money for himself.”

Chastain was arrested in New York on Wednesday on charges of wire fraud and money laundering that each carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, prosecutors said.

US media reported that he was later released on bail after entering a non-guilty plea.

The arrest was touted by prosecutors as the first-ever insider trading bust involving digital assets.

“With the emergence of any new investment tool, such as blockchain supported non-fungible tokens, there are those who will exploit vulnerabilities for their own gain,” FBI assistant director-in-charge Michael Driscoll said in the release.

Part of Chastain’s job was to pick NFTs to be featured on OpenSea’s homepage, with the choices kept secret because prices typically jumped after they got top billing, the criminal complaint said.

The likes of Paris Hilton, Gwyneth Paltrow and Serena Williams have boasted about owning NFTs and many under-30s have been enticed to gamble for the chance of making a quick profit.

Prices have fallen and the reputation of the industry has been hammered for much of the year.

The gunman who shot dead four people at a hospital in the US state of Oklahoma killed the surgeon whom he blamed for pain after back surgery, police said Thursday.

The suspect, identified as Michael Louis, stormed into the Saint Francis hospital in the city of Tulsa on Wednesday with a rifle and a handgun, in the latest mass shooting in the United States in recent weeks.

Louis had recently been operated on by surgeon Preston Phillips at the hospital and had called the clinic to complain of continuing back pain, Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin said during a press conference.

Police found “a letter on the suspect, which made it clear that he came in with the intent to kill Dr. Phillips and anyone who got in his way,” Franklin said.

“He blamed Dr. Phillips for the ongoing pain following the surgery.”

As well as Phillips, the other victims included another physician, a receptionist and a patient.

“They stood in the way and Lewis gunned them down,” Franklin said, adding Louis then shot himself.

The suspect purchased an semi-automatic gun at a local gun shop shortly before the shooting, police said.

The killings come as families in Texas bury their dead after a school shooting left 19 young children and two teachers dead last week.

The tragedies have prompted calls for tighter gun control legislation but US lawmakers have failed to pass significant new laws despite years of worsening gun violence.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 233 mass shootings this year in the United States. It defines mass shootings as when four or more people are injured or killed in a single event, not including the shooter.

Russian forces hammered Ukrainian positions in the Donbas region on Thursday, as Kyiv said Moscow was in control of 20 percent of Ukrainian territory on the eve of the war’s 100th day.

Vladimir Putin’s troops have set their sights on capturing eastern Ukraine since being repelled from around the capital Kyiv after their invasion began on February 24.

While their advance has been much slower than Moscow expected, Russian troops have expanded their control beyond the 43,000 square kilometres (16,600 square miles) taken when Russia seized Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014.

“Today, about 20 percent of our territory is under the control of the occupiers,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address to Luxembourg lawmakers.

The invasion, which enters its 100th day on Friday, has allowed Moscow to capture territory that was “much greater” than the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg combined, added the president.

Thousands of people have been killed and millions forced to flee, with Ukraine’s east now bearing the brunt of Russia’s assault which Zelensky said was killing up to 100 Ukrainian soldiers every day.

Street fighting was raging in the industrial hub of Severodonetsk in Lugansk, part of the Donbas.

The strategic city is a key target for Moscow which already controls 80 percent of the area, but Lugansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday vowed Ukrainian forces would fight “until the end”.

Severodonetsk’s Azot factory, one of Europe’s biggest chemical plants, was targeted by Russian soldiers who fired on one of its administrative buildings and a warehouse where methanol was stored.

– ‘Shooting is everywhere’ –

Ukrainian troops were still holding an industrial zone, Gaiday said, a situation reminiscent of Mariupol where a huge steel works was the south-eastern port city’s last holdout until Ukrainian troops finally surrendered in late May.

In the city of Sloviansk, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Severodonetsk, residents recounted constant bombardments by Russian troops. 

Paramedic Ekaterina Perednenko, 24, said she had only just returned to the city five days ago but realises that she will have to leave again.

“It’s very difficult here. Shooting is everywhere, it’s scary. No water, electricity or gas,” she said.

Retiree Leonid, 79, said he was also leaving the city and would seek refuge elsewhere in Europe.

“I feel pain. The most prominent feeling I have is that we didn’t deserve this. We don’t understand why we are punished like this,” he told AFP.

Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces assessed that “the most difficult situation is in the Lugansk region, where the enemy is trying to displace our units”. 

He pleaded for modern armaments from NATO, telling France’s top general, Thierry Burkhard that “the enemy has a decisive advantage in artillery.”

“It will save the lives of our people”.

– Financial squeeze –

Bridget Brink, the new US ambassador to Kyiv, promised Thursday that the United States would “help Ukraine prevail against Russian aggression” after presenting her credentials to Zelensky.

Earlier this week, US President Joe Biden announced that Washington was sending more advanced, Himar multiple rocket lunch systems to Ukraine.

The mobile units can simultaneously launch multiple precision-guided missiles up to 80 kilometres away.

They are the centrepiece of a $700 million package that includes air-surveillance radar, more Javelin short-range anti-tank rockets, artillery ammunition, helicopters, vehicles and spare parts.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Washington of “adding fuel to the fire,” although US officials insist Ukraine has promised not to use them to strike inside Russia.

Beyond plying Ukraine with armaments, Western allies have also sought to choke off Russia’s financial lifeline in a bid to get Putin to change course.

Ramping up an already long list of embargoes, the United States blacklisted Putin’s money manager and a Monaco company that provides luxury yachts to Moscow’s elite.

Washington hit Sergei Roldugin, labelled “Putin’s middle-man,” Roldugin’s opera singer wife Elena Mirtova, and Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova with sanctions, as well as several large yachts in which Putin allegedly has an interest, the Treasury said.

Across the Atlantic, EU nations agreed new sanctions that would halt 90 percent of Russian oil imports to the bloc by the end of the year. 

– Hunger crisis –

Russia warned that European consumers would be the first to pay the price for the partial oil embargo.

EU ambassadors dropped, however, the leader of Russia’s Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, from a proposed blacklist to win over opposition from Hungary.

But some relief was in view for the overheated oil market as top producers including Saudi Arabia agreed to add 648,000 barrels per day to the market in July, up from 432,000.

The war has wrecked Ukraine’s economy, forcing the central bank to more than double its key interest rate in an unprecedented action on Thursday to prop up the hryvnia. 

But it carries far wider consequences too, with risks that it could trigger a global food crisis growing.

Ukraine — one of the world’s main producers — will likely export only half the amount of grain that it did in the previous season, the Ukrainian Grain Association said.

The conflict was already translating into higher costs for consumers purchasing essentials from cereals to sunflower oil to maize, with the poorest among the hardest hit.

The head of the African Union, Senegalese President Macky Sall, is to visit Russia on Friday for talks with Putin.

The visit is aimed at “freeing up stocks of cereals and fertilisers, the blockage of which particularly affects African countries”, along with easing the Ukraine conflict, Sall’s office said. 

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