BRUSSELS (Reuters) -EU climate ministers will make a last-ditch attempt to pass a new climate change target on Tuesday, in an effort to avoid going to the U.N. COP30 summit in Brazil empty-handed.
Failure to agree could undermine the European Union’s claims to leadership at the COP30 talks, which will test the will of major economies to keep fighting climate change despite opposition from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Countries including China, Britain and Australia have already submitted new climate targets ahead of COP30.
But the EU, which has some of the world’s most ambitious CO2-cutting policies, has struggled to contain a backlash from industries and governments sceptical that it can afford the measures alongside defence and industrial priorities.
EU members failed to agree a 2040 climate target in September, leaving them scrambling for a deal days before European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meets other world leaders at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, on November 6.
“The geopolitical landscape has rarely been more complex,” EU climate policy chief Wopke Hoekstra told a gathering of climate ministers in Canada on Saturday, adding that he was confident the bloc would approve its new goal.
“The European Union will continue to do its utmost, even under these circumstances, in Belem to uphold its commitment to multilateralism and to the Paris Agreement,” he said.
A MORE FLEXIBLE EU TARGET
The starting point for talks is a European Commission proposal to cut net EU greenhouse gas emissions by 90% from 1990 levels by 2040, to keep countries on track for net-zero by 2050.
Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic are among those warning this is too restrictive for domestic industries struggling with high energy costs, cheaper Chinese imports and U.S. tariffs.
Others, including the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, cite worsening extreme weather and the need to catch up with China in manufacturing green technologies as reasons for ambitious goals.
The draft compromise ministers will discuss, seen by Reuters, includes a clause demanded by France allowing a weakening of the 2040 goal in future, if it becomes clear EU forests are not absorbing enough CO2 to meet it.
Brussels has also vowed to change other measures to attempt to win buy-in for the climate goal. These include controlling prices in an upcoming carbon market and considering weakening its 2035 combustion engine ban as requested by Germany.
A deal on Tuesday will require ministers to agree on the share of the 90% emissions cut countries can cover by buying foreign carbon credits – effectively softening efforts required by domestic industries.
France has said credits should cover 5%, more than the 3% share originally proposed by the Commission. Other governments argue money would be better spent on supporting European industries than buying foreign CO2 credits.
Support from at least 15 of the 27 EU members is needed to pass the goal. EU diplomats said on Monday the vote would be tight and could depend on one or two flipping positions.
Ministers will try first to agree the 2040 goal, and from that derive an emissions pledge for 2035 – which is what the U.N. asked countries to submit ahead of COP30.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Alexander Smith)
PARIS (AP) — The dragnet tightened around the Louvre thieves on Thursday. Five more people were seized in the crown-jewels heist — including a suspect tied by DNA — the Paris prosecutor said, widening the sweep across the capital and its suburbs.
Authorities said three of the four alleged members of the “commando” team, as French media have dubbed the robbers, are now in custody.
The late-night operations in Paris and nearby Seine-Saint-Denis lift the total arrested to seven. Prosecutor Laure Beccuau told RTL that one detainee is suspected of belonging to the brazen quartet that burst into the Apollo Gallery in broad daylight on Oct. 19; others held “may be able to inform us about how the events unfolded.”
Beccuau called the response an “exceptional mobilization” — about 100 investigators, seven days a week, with roughly 150 forensic samples analyzed and 189 items sealed as evidence.
AP AUDIO: 5 more arrests as Louvre jewel heist probe deepens and key details emerge
AP correspondent Karen Chammas reports on the latest arrests in the Louvre museum heist.
Even so, she said the latest arrests did not uncover the loot — a trove valued around $102 million that includes a diamond-and-emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise as a wedding gift, jewels tied to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, and Empress Eugénie’s pearl-and-diamond tiara.
Only one relic has surfaced so far — Eugénie’s crown, damaged but salvageable, dropped in the escape.
Beccuau renewed her appeal: “These jewels are now, of course, unsellable… There’s still time to give them back.”
Experts warn the gold could be melted and the stones re-cut to erase their past.
From Louvres to the Louvre: Planning a 4-minute crime
Key planning details have snapped into focus. Nine days before the raid, a mover who owns a truck-mounted lift — the kind movers use to hoist furniture through Parisian windows — was mysteriously booked for a “moving job” on the French classifieds site Leboncoin, a site similar to Craigslist, Beccuau said Wednesday.
When he arrived in the town of Louvres, north of Paris, around 10 a.m. on Oct. 10, two men ambushed him and stole the lift truck.
On the day of the heist itself, that same vehicle idled beneath the Paris museum’s riverside façade.
Online observers have noted a remarkable coincidence: How a plot that began in Louvres ended at the Louvre.
At 9:30 a.m. the basket lift rose to the Apollo Gallery window; at 9:34 the glass gave way; by 9:38 the crew was gone — a four-minute strike. Only the “near-simultaneous” arrival of police and museum security stopped the thieves from torching the lift and preserved crucial traces, the prosecutor said.
Security footage shows at least four men forcing a window, cutting into two display cases with power tools and fleeing on two scooters toward eastern Paris. Investigators say there is no sign of insider help for now, though they are not ruling out a wider network beyond the four on camera.
The reckoning over security
French police have acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defenses, turning an audacious theft — carried out as visitors walked the corridors — into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.
Paris police chief Patrice Faure told senators the first alert to police came not from the Louvre’s security systems but from a cyclist outside who dialed the emergency line after seeing helmeted men with a basket lift. He acknowledged that aging, partly analog cameras and slow fixes left seams; $93 million of CCTV cabling work won’t finish before 2029–30, and the Louvre’s camera authorization even lapsed in July. Officers arrived fast, he said, but the delay came earlier in the chain.
Speaking to AP, former bank robber David Desclos characterized the heist as textbook and said he had warned the Louvre of glaring vulnerabilities in the layout of the Apollo Gallery. The Louvre has not responded to the claim.
Who’s charged already
Two earlier suspects, men aged 34 and 39 from Aubervilliers, north of Paris, were charged Wednesday with theft by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy after nearly 96 hours in custody. Beccuau said both gave “minimalist” statements and “partially admitted” their involvement.
One was stopped at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport with a one-way ticket to Algeria; his DNA matched a scooter used in the getaway.
French law normally keeps active investigations under a shroud of secrecy to protect police work and victims’ privacy. Only the prosecutor may speak publicly, though in high-profile cases police unions have occasionally shared partial details.
The brazen smash-and-grab inside the world’s most-visited museum stunned the heritage world. Four men, a lift truck and a stopwatch turned the Apollo Gallery’s blaze of gold and light into a crime scene — and a test of how France guards what it holds most dear.
PARIS (AP) — French authorities have warned they may block access to Shein after it emerged that the online fast fashion giant had been selling sex dolls with a childlike appearance.
France’s consumer watchdog, the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control, said last week it had discovered the dolls on Shein’s website, noting that their descriptions and categorization left little doubt as to their child-pornographic nature.
The agency has referred the case to public prosecutors, and Economy Minister Roland Lescure said on Monday he would seek to ban Shein from the French market if such incidents were to occur again.
“This is provided for by law,” he said. “In cases involving terrorism, drug trafficking, or child pornographic materials, the government has the right to request that access to the French market be prohibited,” Lescure told BFM TV.
The law authorizes French authorities to order online platforms to remove clearly illegal content such as child pornography within 24 hours. If they fail to comply, authorities can require internet service providers and search engines to block access and delist the site.
The watchdog said it has issued a formal notice urging the platform to take urgent corrective measures.
Shein said in a statement that it has banned all sex-doll products, and temporarily removed its adult products category for review. It added that it has launched an investigation to determine how these listings bypassed its screening measures.
“The fight against child exploitation is non-negotiable for Shein,” said Executive Chairman Donald Tang said in the statement. “These were marketplace listings from third-party sellers, but I take this personally. Trust is our foundation, and we will not allow anything that violates it.”
He noted that every related product has been removed and that “We are tracing the source and will take swift, decisive action against those responsible.”
FILE – A page from the Shein website is shown in this photo, in New York on June 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
An advertising poster of Shein hangs outside the BHV Marais departement store in Paris, Monday, Oct. 3, 2025, where Shein is due to open its first permanent physical store world wide. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)
People protest outside BHV Marais department store in Paris, Monday, Nov. 3, 2025, where Shein is due to open its first permanent physical store world wide. Poster right reads, “Shein is involved in child sexual abuse”. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)
People protest outside BHV Marais departement store in Paris, Monday, Oct. 3, 2025, where Shein is due to open its first permanent physical store world wide. Poster right reads, “Shein is involved in child sexual abuse”. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)
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FILE – A page from the Shein website is shown in this photo, in New York on June 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
Meanwhile, a parliamentary fact-finding mission on the inspection of products imported into France announced it will summon Shein officials for questioning.
“No economic actor can consider themselves above the law. A retailer who sold such an item would have had their store immediately closed by a prefectoral order. Shein must provide an explanation,” said the mission rapporteur, Antoine Vermorel-Marques.
Under French law, the distribution via electronic communication networks of child-pornographic materials is punishable by up to seven years in prison and a 100,000 euro ($115,000) fine.
The watchdog also noted that Shein sells other pornographic products including adultlike sex dolls without effective age-filtering measures to prevent “minors or sensitive audiences from accessing such pornographic content.”
Shein was founded in China in 2012, and the low-cost online retailer is now based in Singapore. Reaching customers mainly through its app, it has enjoyed a meteoric rise to become a global leader in fast fashion, shipping to 150 countries. The company has faced criticism over its labor practices and environmental record.
Lescure’s comments came just days before Shein is due to open its first permanent physical store in Paris, located inside the BHV Marais department store in the heart of the French capital city. The opening has sparked controversy, with an online petition protesting Shein’s arrival gathering more than 100,000 signatures.
Frederic Merlin, president of Societe des Grands Magasins, which owns BHV, called the sale of the dolls on Shein’s platform “indecent” and “unacceptable,” adding that “no product from Shein’s international marketplace” will be sold at the department store.
Meanwhile, the child-protection NGO Mouv’Enfants staged a protest at BHV. “As long as these dolls are available somewhere in the world, the company will remain an accomplice to a system that enables sex crimes against children,” co-founder Arnaud Gallais said.
The European debt crisis of the early 2010s created an image of a continent cleaved in two: The fiscally responsible core countries led by Germany versus the spendthrift southern periphery of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain—disdainfully dubbed PIGS.
Nowadays, there has been a role reversal. Europe’s three biggest economies are stuck in a cycle of weak growth, leading to widening budget deficits. France is the epicenter of this shift and remains mired in a budget and political crisis, while the U.K. is eyeing tax hikes to try to narrow the gap and avoid spooking markets. Famously frugal Germany and the Netherlands are taking on debt, albeit from lower levels.
The Paris prosecutor said Sunday that two of the suspects in the Louvre jewels heist had previously been convicted in a theft case together 10 years ago, as three alleged members of the team of four are now in custody.
Laure Beccuau said the DNA of a 37-year-old man who was charged Saturday was found inside the basket lift that was used to reach the museum’s window. He was handed preliminary charges of theft by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy.
His criminal record contained 11 previous convictions, 10 of them for theft, Beccuau said.
The criminal record of a 39-year-old suspect who was handed similar preliminary charges on Wednesday mentions 15 convictions including two for theft, Beccuau said.
“What’s interesting about these records, when we compare them, is that … we see that they were both involved in the same theft case, for which they were convicted in Paris in 2015,” Beccuau said.
Another man aged 34 suspected of being part of the “commando” team, as French media have dubbed the thieves, was also charged this week.
A 38-year-old woman who was handed preliminary charges of “complicity” on Saturday is the longtime partner of the 37-year-old suspect, Beccuau said, noting some “closeness” between all suspects.
All four are being held in custody.
Beccuau declined to answer a question about whether investigators are getting closer to finding the jewels.
“We are examining all the possibilities on the parallel market for selling this jewelry, which I hope will not happen anytime soon. … It could be used for money laundering, it could be used for trade, all leads are being explored,” she said.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said he remains “optimistic” about the investigation, in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper Saturday.
“There are four perpetrators, at least one of whom remains at large, plus possibly the one or those who ordered the crime and the jewelry,” Nuñez said.
“I have great confidence in the work of the police, so I’m optimistic. But my optimism doesn’t extend to thinking that the loot will be recovered quickly,” he added.
The Paris prosecutor said Sunday that two of the suspects in the Louvre jewels heist had previously been convicted in a theft case together 10 years ago, as three alleged members of the team of four are now in custody.
Laure Beccuau said the DNA of a 37-year-old man who was charged Saturday was found inside the basket lift that was used to reach the museum’s window. He was handed preliminary charges of theft by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy.
His criminal record contained 11 previous convictions, 10 of them for theft, Beccuau said.
The criminal record of a 39-year-old suspect who was handed similar preliminary charges on Wednesday mentions 15 convictions including two for theft, Beccuau said.
“What’s interesting about these records, when we compare them, is that … we see that they were both involved in the same theft case, for which they were convicted in Paris in 2015,” Beccuau said.
Another man aged 34 suspected of being part of the “commando” team, as French media have dubbed the thieves, was also charged this week.
A 38-year-old woman who was handed preliminary charges of “complicity” on Saturday is the longtime partner of the 37-year-old suspect, Beccuau said, noting some “closeness” between all suspects.
All four are being held in custody.
Beccuau declined to answer a question about whether investigators are getting closer to finding the jewels.
“We are examining all the possibilities on the parallel market for selling this jewelry, which I hope will not happen anytime soon. … It could be used for money laundering, it could be used for trade, all leads are being explored,” she said.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said he remains “optimistic” about the investigation, in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper Saturday.
“There are four perpetrators, at least one of whom remains at large, plus possibly the one or those who ordered the crime and the jewelry,” Nuñez said.
“I have great confidence in the work of the police, so I’m optimistic. But my optimism doesn’t extend to thinking that the loot will be recovered quickly,” he added.
The Paris prosecutor said Sunday that two of the suspects in the Louvre jewels heist had previously been convicted in a theft case together 10 years ago, as three alleged members of the team of four are now in custody.
Laure Beccuau said the DNA of a 37-year-old man who was charged Saturday was found inside the basket lift that was used to reach the museum’s window. He was handed preliminary charges of theft by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy.
His criminal record contained 11 previous convictions, 10 of them for theft, Beccuau said.
The criminal record of a 39-year-old suspect who was handed similar preliminary charges on Wednesday mentions 15 convictions including two for theft, Beccuau said.
“What’s interesting about these records, when we compare them, is that … we see that they were both involved in the same theft case, for which they were convicted in Paris in 2015,” Beccuau said.
Another man aged 34 suspected of being part of the “commando” team, as French media have dubbed the thieves, was also charged this week.
A 38-year-old woman who was handed preliminary charges of “complicity” on Saturday is the longtime partner of the 37-year-old suspect, Beccuau said, noting some “closeness” between all suspects.
All four are being held in custody.
Beccuau declined to answer a question about whether investigators are getting closer to finding the jewels.
“We are examining all the possibilities on the parallel market for selling this jewelry, which I hope will not happen anytime soon. … It could be used for money laundering, it could be used for trade, all leads are being explored,” she said.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said he remains “optimistic” about the investigation, in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper Saturday.
“There are four perpetrators, at least one of whom remains at large, plus possibly the one or those who ordered the crime and the jewelry,” Nuñez said.
“I have great confidence in the work of the police, so I’m optimistic. But my optimism doesn’t extend to thinking that the loot will be recovered quickly,” he added.
The Paris prosecutor said Sunday that two of the suspects in the Louvre jewels heist had previously been convicted in a theft case together 10 years ago, as three alleged members of the team of four are now in custody.
Laure Beccuau said the DNA of a 37-year-old man who was charged Saturday was found inside the basket lift that was used to reach the museum’s window. He was handed preliminary charges of theft by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy.
His criminal record contained 11 previous convictions, 10 of them for theft, Beccuau said.
The criminal record of a 39-year-old suspect who was handed similar preliminary charges on Wednesday mentions 15 convictions including two for theft, Beccuau said.
“What’s interesting about these records, when we compare them, is that … we see that they were both involved in the same theft case, for which they were convicted in Paris in 2015,” Beccuau said.
Another man aged 34 suspected of being part of the “commando” team, as French media have dubbed the thieves, was also charged this week.
A 38-year-old woman who was handed preliminary charges of “complicity” on Saturday is the longtime partner of the 37-year-old suspect, Beccuau said, noting some “closeness” between all suspects.
All four are being held in custody.
Beccuau declined to answer a question about whether investigators are getting closer to finding the jewels.
“We are examining all the possibilities on the parallel market for selling this jewelry, which I hope will not happen anytime soon. … It could be used for money laundering, it could be used for trade, all leads are being explored,” she said.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said he remains “optimistic” about the investigation, in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper Saturday.
“There are four perpetrators, at least one of whom remains at large, plus possibly the one or those who ordered the crime and the jewelry,” Nuñez said.
“I have great confidence in the work of the police, so I’m optimistic. But my optimism doesn’t extend to thinking that the loot will be recovered quickly,” he added.
France’s anti-fraud unit said on Saturday it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance”.
The DGCCRF watchdog said in a statement that the “description and categorisation” of the items on Shein’s website “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content”.
Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry.
On its website, the Le Parisien daily published a photo of one of the dolls sold on the platform, accompanied by an explicitly sexual caption.
The dolls measure around 80 centimetres (30 inches) in height. In the photo, it was pictured holding a teddy bear.
“Imagine a child randomly clicking on and coming across these products while browsing the site looking for a doll,” DGCCRF official Alice Vilcot-Dutarte was quoted as saying by Le Parisien.
The news comes in the wake of Shein’s announcement in October that it intended to set up shop in a prestigious department store in central Paris — its first physical outlet.
Its outlet is due to open on Wednesday at BHV Marais, an iconic building that has stood across from Paris City Hall since 1856.
That decision provoked outrage among other clients of the upmarket store, BHV Marais, with some top fashion brands pulling their products from its shelves.
– Three fines in France –
Shein, which was originally founded in China, has faced consistent criticism over working conditions at its factories and the environmental impact of its ultra-fast fashion business model.
Yet the company, now headquartered in Singapore, has seen its share value skyrocket while overtaking many traditional fixtures of high street shopping in recent years.
The DGCCRF warned that “the dissemination, via an electronic communications network, of child pornography is punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 euros ($116,000)”.
It said it had reported the case to French prosecutors and to Arcom, France’s online and broadcasting regulator.
France has already fined Shein three times in 2025 for a total of 191 million euros.
Those were imposed for failing to comply with online cookie legislation, false advertising, misleading information and not declaring the presence of plastic microfibres in its products.
The European Commission is also investigating Shein over risks linked to illegal products, while EU lawmakers have approved legislation aimed at curbing the environmental impact of fast fashion.
PARIS (Reuters) -A woman and a man were placed under formal investigation over the $102 million Louvre Museum jewel heist, the Paris prosecutor said on Saturday, bringing the total number charged in the case to four.
The man, 37, known to police for previous thefts, was charged with organised theft and criminal conspiracy. The woman, 38, was charged with complicity in organised theft and criminal conspiracy.
Three other people who had been arrested on October 29 along with the man and the woman were freed without charge, the prosecutor’s office said.
The two new suspects were brought before investigating judges and remain in pre-trial detention, the prosecutor said. Both deny involvement in the heist.
The prosecutor gave no further details about them, but French media reported that the woman was from La Courneuve, a hardscrabble suburb north of Paris.
The prosecutor said last week that the first two suspects charged in the case had “partially admitted” their involvement.
They included a 34-year-old Algerian who has lived in France since 2010 and was detained by police as he tried to board a flight to Algeria, and a 39-year-old who was already under judicial supervision in an aggravated theft case. Both live in Aubervilliers, a low-income neighbourhood in northern Paris.
The prosecutor said that investigations are continuing. So far, no trace has been found of the stolen jewels.
Two weeks ago, two hooded thieves used a movers’ lift to reach a second-floor window, smashed the jewels’ display cases using power tools, and fled on the back of scooters driven by two accomplices. The heist has sent shockwaves around the world as it exposed security flaws at the world’s most-visited museum.
(Reporting by Geert De ClercqEditing by Peter Graff)
The Paris prosecutor said Saturday two new suspects were handed preliminary charges for their alleged involvement in the crown jewels heist at the Louvre museum, three days after they were arrested by police as part of the sweeping investigation.
Laure Beccuau, the prosecutor, said a 37-year-old suspect was charged with theft by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy. He was known to authorities for previous thefts, the statement said.
The other suspect, a 38-year-old woman, was accused of being an accomplice. They were both incarcerated.
They both denied involvement, the prosecutor said.
The lawyer for the woman, Adrien Sorrentino, told reporters his client is “devastated” because she disputes the accusations.
“She does not understand how she is implicated in any of the elements she is accused of,” he said.
Jewels have not been recovered
Officials said the jewels stolen in the Oct. 19 heist have not been recovered — a trove valued around $102 million that includes a diamond-and-emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise as a wedding gift, jewels tied to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, and Empress Eugénie’s pearl-and-diamond tiara.
Five people were arrested by police on Wednesday in connection with the case, including one tied to the heist by DNA. That person is suspected of belonging to the team of four who used a freight lift truck to enter the Louvre. The prosecutor did not specify whether the person was among those charged on Saturday.
The three others have been released without charges, Beccuau said.
Two earlier suspects, men aged 34 and 39 from Aubervilliers, north of Paris, were charged this week with theft by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy.
Beccuau said both gave “minimalist” statements and “partially admitted” their involvement. The two are believed to be the men who forced their way into the Apollo Gallery. One was stopped at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport with a one-way ticket to Algeria; his DNA matched a scooter used in the getaway.
About 100 investigators involved
Neither names nor extensive biographical details about the suspects have been made public.
Information about investigations is meant to be secret under French law, to avoid compromising police work and to ensure victims’ right to privacy, a policy known as “secret d’instruction.″ Only the prosecutor can speak publicly about developments, and violators can be prosecuted.
Earlier this week, Beccuau praised an “exceptional mobilization” — about 100 investigators seven days a week, with roughly 150 forensic samples analyzed and 189 items sealed as evidence.
It took robbers less than 8 minutes to steal the jewels. The team of four used a freight lift, allowing two of them to force a window and cut into two display cases with disc cutters, before the four fled on two scooters toward eastern Paris. Only the “near-simultaneous” arrival of police and museum security stopped the thieves from torching the lift and destroying crucial evidence, the prosecutor said.
Investigators said there is no sign of insider help for now, though they are not ruling out a wider network beyond the four on camera.
In a separate case, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said six people were arrested on Thursday soon after a robbery at a gold refining laboratory in the city of Lyon during which thieves used explosives. The loot, which was estimated to be worth 12 million euros ($13.9 million) has been recovered, Nuñez said on X.
The hunt is still on for the four thieves who stole $102 million worth of French crown jewels from the Louvre on Oct. 19, right after the museum opened.
This week’s trial of three undercover operatives, accused of helping the Kremlin to wage a hybrid warfare campaign to “destabilise” France, sounds like a surefire recipe for drama, sophistication, and intrigue.
If only.
Over the course of three days, in a spacious, pine-panelled courtroom on the northern edge of Paris, the case against three seemingly unremarkable Bulgarian men, seated behind glass and shadowed by three police officers who seemed absorbed with their own mobile phones, unfolded with all the panache and excitement of a half-whispered lecture in a library.
“I had absolutely no idea where we were.”
“I did it for the money.”
“In the future I plan to get involved in charity work.”
These few lines from the men’s testimony may help convey the general tone.
All three were jailed on Friday for two to four years.
But to bemoan the barely audible banality of it all – the dull motives, the mumbled attempts to shift blame, the sullen complaints about prison life and unsatisfactory psychiatric evaluations – is to miss the truth.
The banality is the whole point.
Like the cheap drones that both Russia and Ukraine now use to patrol their front lines, the three men on trial in courtroom 2.01 at the Palais de Justice in Paris represent a low-budget evolution of modern hybrid warfare.
Improvised and startlingly effective.
The Wall of the Righteous in Paris was vandalised with red hand prints in May 2024 [AFP via Getty Images]
Rising in turn inside their glass cage, Georgi Filipov, Nikolay Ivanov and Kiril Milushev admitted carrying out the acts, but denied working for a foreign power as well as antisemitism.
Early one morning in May 2024, on the banks of the River Seine in the heart of Paris, the three men conspired to spray red paint – and filmed themselves doing so – on the Wall of the Righteous, a monument to those who saved French Jews from the Holocaust during World War Two.
Thirty-five red handprints were left on the Shoah memorial. Five hundred more were painted elsewhere.
It was the first in a series of symbolic attacks in France: pigs’ heads placed outside mosques (an act blamed on a group of Serbians); coffins left ominously by the Eiffel Tower; Stars of David painted around the capital.
News of each event was swiftly broadcast around the world – not just by regular media outlets, but by the automated army of Russian social media trolls which, according to the French agency monitoring such activity, routinely seeks to weaponise each sliver of news that might raise doubts about the stability of French society, and the strength of Europe’s democracies, its institutions, and its values.
France is seen as a particularly tempting target for the Kremlin, given its current political and social divisions, its often ambiguous attitude to Nato, its large Muslim and Jewish populations, the increasing popularity of the far right, and a history of close ties to Moscow on both extremes of the political spectrum.
French politics is increasingly divided – a perfect opportunity for the Kremlin [AFP via Getty Images]
In another era, the Kremlin might have used its own deep undercover agents to carry out acts of sabotage or vandalism.
But – to make the drone warfare comparison again – why rely solely on valuable assets like highly trained spies, giant ballistic missiles, or submarines used to cut undersea cables, when for a few thousand euros you can, through discreet and easily deniable channels, recruit your own disaffected army of petty criminals, or unemployed wannabe fascists?
“I had absolutely no idea where we were,” said Georgi Filipov, as he tried to play down his alleged role in the “red hands” operation, arguing that he had travelled from Bulgaria simply to make a little money to help with child support payments for his nine-year-old son.
He was allegedly paid €1,000 (£875) plus travel expenses.
In the dock, Filipov, 36, cut a gaunt but muscular figure, twitching slightly like a boxer before a fight as he attempted to defuse awkward questions about his tattoos. In particular, the swastika on his chest and the social media photos showing him giving a Nazi salute and wearing a t-shirt that claimed Hitler “was right”.
“I made bad choices in the past,” Filipov explained, and pointed out that he had already removed several tattoos.
The Paris criminal court sentenced him to two years in jail.
Having been successfully extradited from Bulgaria and Croatia to face trial in France, the men all sought to place the blame on a fourth man, Mircho Angelov, who remains at large but is alleged to have links to a Russian intelligence officer. He was given a three-year term in absentia.
The second defendant, Kiril Milushev, 28, said he had only come to France because he had broken up with his partner, was struggling with a bipolar disorder, and wanted to keep his friend, Mircho, company. He was given two years.
Seated beside Milushev, Nikolay Ivanov creased his forehead as he denied any links with Russia.
He spoke of his grandparents’ role in saving Jews during World War Two and said his ambition now was to obtain a master’s degree in law, and to be reunited with his girlfriend – if she’d still have him, when all this was over.
Considered the mastermind behind the plot, he was given the heaviest jail term of four years.
As for Russia’s alleged role in the red-hands affair, even the defence lawyers openly admitted that “we suspect” Moscow’s hand.
But they insisted, as did their clients, that they were unwitting pawns, proxies – one might even say “drones” – in a shadow war against the West.
“The World as a Labyrinth” probes how Contreras’s work is attuned to a universal consciousness shared across eras and geographies. Courtesy the artist and Bibliothèque Polonaise de Paris
Different authors converge on the notion of a collective subconscious to explain the recurrence of symbols and archetypes across time and space. The work of Mexican artist Alejandro García Contreras is deeply attuned to that flow of universal consciousness shared by humanity across eras and geographies—a collective subconscious that, as Carl Jung described, is not a static archive but a living field of imagination continually reshaping itself through the “original instructions” already embedded in the human psyche.
The best art often begins with this kind of soul call, transforming creation into a mission. For Contreras, that call came early, through an image he encountered as a child in a book given to him by his grandfather—a mystical man and shaman. The book, an encyclopedia of the occult exploring timeless questions through myth and enigma, became, as the artist describes it, “a kind of guide or amulet for my imagination.” In the chapter on Vampirism and Lycanthropy, Contreras discovered a terrifying yet seductive image: a harpy-like woman attacking a naked man. “That image would never leave me,” he tells Observer. “That erotic undertone—imperceptible to me at the time—was etched into my memory.”
The image, however, bore no signature or caption. Only years later, thanks to Google, did Contreras learn it was a painting by Bolesław Biegas, a visionary Polish artist from the early twentieth century. His connection to Biegas deepened when, during an Art Explora residency in Paris, Contreras found himself—by both chance and intention—at the Polish Library in Paris (Bibliothèque Polonaise de Paris). Walking through the Biegas Museum, he experienced a profound sense of reconnection that would later inspire his latest exhibition.
Contreras spent hours in the museum that day, piquing the curiosity of the staff. After hearing his story, they introduced him to Agnieszka Wiatrzyk, one of the museum’s curators. The exhibition that emerged from this encounter stands as a testament to that journey and the spiritual connections it nurtured—one of those rare stories that renew faith in art’s power to connect the soul to something greater, beyond the confines of individual existence.
Alejandro García Contreras. Courtesy of the artist
With “The World as a Labyrinth,” soon-to-close at the Polish Library in Paris, Contreras presents his ceramic cosmologies, enigmatic bronze narratives and visionary cosmic paintings in a dialogue that spirals through the evocative connections between Bolesław Biegas and the symbolism of Gustave Moreau. Set within the historic Polish Library—one of the oldest and most significant Polish cultural institutions outside Poland, a trove of artifacts and archives celebrating the genius of the fin-de-siècle Polish diaspora from Biegas to Chopin—the exhibition provides a profoundly poetic setting for Contreras’s exploration of spiritual lineage and universal consciousness.
“These artists come from completely different contexts of space and time than me, but that’s exactly where the connection happens,” Contreras reflects as he walks us through the show. “What I’ve been trying to do through my own practice is to explore this idea of non-time—a space where symbols and archetypes resist chronology. It’s something that persists within a kind of collective imaginary, the shared language of the human soul,” he adds. “I love thinking of it that way—what Jung called the collective unconscious. That’s what connects us all. We’re each channeling something ancient and shared, even if we’re doing it from different places, in different eras, or for different reasons.”
Blending contemporary pop culture with Mexican folklore, ancient mythology, occultism and religion, Contreras constructs a syncretic continuum of cultures and traditions as an imaginative attempt to grasp the mystery of the universe’s origin and the soulful essence of human existence. The multilayered narratives alchemically shaped within his intricate glazed ceramics combine the rich symbolic heritage of his homeland with cross-cultural philosophical concepts and the Japanese pop and underground cultures of manga and anime, revealing the timelessness of themes, dramas and questions that accompany human life. His art becomes a living expression of what Michael Meade describes as the mythic realm—something circular rather than linear—a non-chronological space where symbols are not relics but living presences, constantly re-entering the world through imagination.
Though his art draws first from his lived experience as a deeply sensitive soul navigating a terrestrial, time-bound realm, Contreras approaches his practice as both alchemist and shaman, mediating between the visible world and the unseen structures of the spirit. His conjurations of symbolic references span the entire course of civilization, uncovering recurring psychological and narrative patterns. Ancient and contemporary symbols converge to reveal, within the dialectic of time, enduring messages and meanings that embrace the circle of life and the open, deeply rooted relationship Mexican culture holds with life, death and rebirth.
A childhood encounter with Biegas’s painting became the seed of Contreras’s lifelong fascination with the unknown. Courtesy the artist and Bibliothèque Polonaise de Paris
While studying Biegas’s archives, Contreras discovered many of the motifs and forms he had instinctively explored in his own work. A vitrine displaying Biegas’s drawings of dinosaurs is paired with similar early sketches and works by Contreras, creating a play of resonances and echoes that runs throughout the exhibition—a dialogue born not of imitation but of an unconscious, spontaneous connection across time. This mirroring extends beyond formal affinities to a shared cosmology, turning myth into a mirror for the psyche, where divinity and desire, the physical and celestial, the individual and collective coexist. The thread of visionary mystical continuity finds another echo in Gustave Moreau, whose symbolist and allegorical compositions anticipated the mystical sensuality that animates, in distinct ways, both the work of Biegas and Contreras.
Common among all three artists is a timeless fascination with the femme fatale, used here as a cosmic principle exposing, much like the Romantics’ sublime, humanity’s confrontation with its own limits and mortality. The heroines that populate Contreras’s works stand fiercely against subjugation to the male gaze, echoing how Biegas’s androgynous figures often carry a predominantly masculine energy despite their traditional depiction as feminine muses.
Drawing from the vast repertoire of manga and anime—which reinterpret ancient myths and tales—Contreras revives the power of archetypes, celebrating the deconstruction of female stereotypes while infusing them with agency and desire. Aware of their seductive force, as in Biegas’s paintings, these heroines stand in opposition to their male counterparts—often faceless spirits or demons who pursue, crave and depend on them for their own pleasure, becoming ensnared by their desires.
“What I’m trying to do is connect different symbolic universes,” Contreras explains, citing the example of a devil woman conceived by a great manga artist from Japan called Kōna Guy. “Her representation looks almost identical to one of Biegas’s figures: wings sprouting from her head, a sensual, otherworldly presence,” Contreras explains. “I’ve been playing with these connections, linking manga—which I’ve come to understand more deeply after spending time in Japan—and the broader field of contemporary pop culture with ancient myths.” As Contreras notes, manga have become one of the most influential and innovative visual languages shaping our collective imagination today, sharing the same symbolic world-building power that ancient tales, myths and oral traditions once held.
From Moreau’s Parisian refinement to Biegas’s Slavic mysticism and Garcia Contreras’s metaphysical roots in the Mayan jungle, three worlds converge in the exhibition. Courtesy the artist and Bibliothèque Polonaise de Paris
At the same time, in his portrayal of the femme fatale, Contreras intentionally reveals the vulnerability embedded in sexual instinct and its longing for balance and love. His figures often exist within the tension of unresolved emotion, an energy that likewise pulses through Biegas’s paintings. Yet luminous in their esoteric charge, the works of both artists gesture toward a nonhuman, nonterrestrial rhythm—an access point to the collective consciousness, where natural elements and creatures coexist beyond the confines of civilization, society and religious taboo.
In three-dimensional form, Biegas’s bodies are elongated, twisted and torqued—often caught in uneasy postures that suggest ecstasy, suffering, or transfiguration—embodying the soul’s yearning to escape the limits of the physical body and resist strict categorization. Similarly, Contreras’s heroines freely merge references, becoming symbolic figures that appear to belong to another world, one guided more by spirit than by sensory impulse.
At the heart of all three artists’ work lies a meditation on the primordial force of Eros, the vital energy from which all things emerge and to which all things return in the endless cycle of matter and transformation it sustains. Echoing Michael Meade, here Eros transcends romantic love or physical desire and is expressed—through earthly symbology—as a cosmic current of connection, the animating energy that binds life and fuels creation and imagination. In this sense, Contreras, like Biegas, revives the ancient Greek conception of Eros as the principle that draws separate entities into relation, forging unity from multiplicity: the adhesive of the cosmos, the thread binding soul to soul, human to world, myth to meaning—moving toward wholeness, creativity and beauty, not as sentiment but as sacred vitality.
Embracing this shared symbolic language, for Moreau as well as for Biegas and Contreras, figuration is never portraiture or realism—it is a vessel of metaphysical energy, an incarnation of inner states, cosmic forces and psychic archetypes. For all three, art functions as revelation—a bridge between the visible and invisible realms.
The show brings together forty-four works including paintings, drawings and sculptures in porcelain, plaster, clay and wax. Courtesy the artist and Bibliothèque Polonaise de Paris
Animating compositions that oscillate between harmony and chaos, drawn with a line that is at once delicate and forceful, their figures operate on both psychological and spiritual planes: they externalize emotions, instincts and dreams—what both Biegas and Contreras describe as “the invisible life of things.”
The works of these three artists, this exhibition reveals, resonate with Jacobo Grinberg’s Syntergic Theory, which proposes that experience emerges from the interaction between the energetic field created by the brain (the neuronal field) and the energetic structure of the universe—a liminal space where life and destruction converge and where the mystery of creation can be reawakened.
Biegas’s works from around 1900-1910 already envision the human form as a microcosm of the universe: faces dissolve into stars, limbs unfurl into spirals or vegetal motifs in his Cosmic Cycle, depicting figures intertwined with planetary and astral forms. Humanity here is part of a universal choreography—just as in Contreras’s paintings, where texture and brushwork magmatically shape symbolic visions that seem to recreate within the canvas the same formative process governing all existence: matter, atoms, energies and forces converging into new life. In both artists, the physicality of form dissolves into the ceaseless motion of evolution and transformation, as art becomes a liminal threshold between matter and spirit—a portal to other extensions of the human soul.
This connects to another recurring theme in both artists’ work: the Island of the Dead, a motif inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s Symbolist painting Die Toteninsel (1880s), which haunted many European artists of that era. Yet while Böcklin’s island symbolized the passage between life and death—a romantic vision of eternity—Biegas and Contreras reinterpret it as a metaphysical landscape of transformation rather than finality, a site of passage where matter and spirit merge. That island, like the artwork itself, becomes a center of consciousness, embodying the belief that human existence is cyclical—part of a universal rhythm binding life, death and creation into one continuous flow.
This exhibition reveals how the symbolism of Alejandro García Contreras—like that of Moreau and Biegas—is ultimately a holistic, syncretic ode to our potentially infinite individualities, urging us to embrace a renewed spiritual universality that awakens the soul to its place within a greater cosmic whole. Their art becomes an exploration of the invisible territories of transformation, where life, memory, ancient myth and contemporary consciousness converge to uncover luminous truths about what it means to exist, to create and to harness the power of mythic imagination to access other dimensions. That mythic imagination—the primordial act, as Mircea Eliade described it, and the world’s original language, in Michael Meade’s words—remains capable of restoring coherence and meaning in a fractured age.
The show offers a revised history of Symbolism in a single time and place; here, the distinction between modern and contemporary art, with its ambivalences, dissolves. Courtesy the artist and Bibliothèque Polonaise de Paris
PARIS—The thieves had prepared a jerry can of gasoline to quickly set fire to the truck-mounted lift and other equipment they had just used to penetrate the Louvre Museum and steal France’s crown jewels.
A blaze might have destroyed evidence linking them to the crime. But the clock was ticking. Security forces were closing in. So the thieves made a critical decision: They left the truck intact and jumped on their scooters to make a getaway along the Seine River.
(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military on Thursday to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons after a gap of 33 years, minutes before beginning a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
How many nuclear weapons tests have there been, why were they stopped – and why would anyone start them again?
The United States opened the nuclear era in July 1945 with the test of a 20-kiloton atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July 1945, and then dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to force Japan to surrender in World War Two.
The Soviet Union shocked the West by detonating its first nuclear bomb just four years later, in August 1949.
In the five decades between 1945 and the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), over 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out, 1,032 of them by the United States and 715 of them by the Soviet Union, according to the United Nations.
Britain carried out 45 tests, France 210 and China 45.
Since the CTBT, 10 nuclear tests have taken place. India conducted two in 1998, Pakistan also two in 1998, and North Korea conducted tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016 (twice) and 2017, according to the United Nations.
The United States last tested in 1992, China and France in 1996 and the Soviet Union in 1990. Russia, which inherited most of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, has never done so.
Russia held nuclear drills last week and has tested a nuclear-powered cruise missile and a nuclear-powered torpedo but has not tested a nuclear warhead.
WHY WAS NUCLEAR TESTING ENDED?
Concern mounted about the impact of the tests – above ground, underground and underwater – on human health and the environment.
The impact of the West’s testing in the Pacific and of Soviet testing in Kazakhstan and the Arctic was significant on both the environment and the people. Activists say millions of people in both the Pacific and Kazakhstan had their lands contaminated by nuclear testing – and have faced health issues for decades.
By limiting the Cold War bonanza of nuclear testing, advocates said, tensions between Moscow and Washington could be reduced.
The CTBT bans nuclear explosions by everyone, everywhere. It was signed by Russia in 1996 and ratified in 2000. The United States signed the treaty in 1996 but has not ratified it.
In 2023, President Vladimir Putin formally revoked Russia’s ratification of the CTBT, bringing his country in line with the United States.
WHY WOULD YOU TEST AGAIN?
To gather information – or to send a signal.
Tests provide evidence of what any new nuclear weapon will do – and whether older weapons still work.
In 2020, the Washington Post reported that the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump had discussed whether or not to conduct a nuclear test.
Apart from providing technical data, such a test would be seen in Russia and China as a deliberate assertion of U.S. strategic power.
Putin has repeatedly warned that if the United States resumed nuclear testing, Russia would too. Putin says a global nuclear arms race is already underway.
WHAT ARE BIG POWERS DOING WITH THEIR NUCLEAR WEAPONS?
The exact number of warheads each country has are secret but Russia has a total of about 5,459 warheads while the United States has about 5,177, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Those number include deployed, stockpiled and retired warheads.
The Washington D.C.-based Arms Control Association says the United States has a stockpile of 5,225 nuclear warheads and Russia has 5,580.
Global nuclear warhead stockpiles peaked in 1986 at over 70,000 warheads, most in the Soviet Union and the United States, but have since been reduced to about 12,000, most still in Russia and the United States.
China is the third largest nuclear power with 600 warheads, France has 290, the United Kingdom 225, India 180, Pakistan 170, Israel 90 and North Korea 50, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Russia, the United States and China are all undertaking major modernisations of their nuclear arsenals.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Five more people have been arrested in the investigation into the theft of crown jewels from the Louvre Museum, but the treasures remain missing, the Paris prosecutor announced Thursday.
The five were detained late Wednesday night in separate police operations in Paris and surrounding areas, including the Seine-Saint-Denis region, Prosecutor Laure Beccuau told RTL radio. She did not release their identities or other details.
One is suspected of being part of the four-person team that robbed the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery in broad daylight Oct. 19, the prosecutor said. Two other members of the team were arrested Sunday and given preliminary charges Wednesday of criminal conspiracy and theft committed by an organized gang. Both partially admitted their involvement, according to the prosecutor.
“Searches last night and overnight did not allow us to find the goods,” Beccuau said.
It took thieves less than eight minutes to steal the jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102 million), shocking the world. The robbers forced open a window, cut into cases with power tools and fled with eight pieces of the French crown jewels.
French police have acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defenses, turning the dazzling daylight theft into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.
One of those who has been charged is a 34-year-old Algerian national who has been living in France since 2010, Beccuau said. He was arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport as he was about to fly to Algeria with no return ticket. He was living in a suburb north of Paris, Aubervilliers, and was known to police mostly for road traffic offenses. His DNA was found on one of the scooters used by robbers to leave the scene, she said.
The other suspect, 39, was arrested at his home in Aubervilliers. The man was known to police for several thefts, and his DNA was found on one of the glass cases where the jewels were displayed and on items the thieves left behind, she added.
Video surveillance cameras showed there were at least four people involved, Beccuau said.
Four of the suspects arrived onboard a truck equipped with a freight lift that two of them used to climb up to the museum’s window. The four of them left onboard two motor scooters along the Seine River toward eastern Paris, where they had some other vehicles parked, she said.
Beccuau said nothing suggests that the robbers had accomplices within the museum’s staff.
She made a plea Wednesday night to those who have the jewels: “These jewels are now, of course, unsellable … Anyone who buys them would be guilty of concealment of stolen goods. There’s still time to give them back.”
Information about investigations is meant to be secret under French law to avoid compromising police work and to ensure victims’ right to privacy. Only the prosecutor can speak publicly about developments, and violators can be prosecuted. Police and investigators are not supposed to divulge information about arrests or suspects without the prosecutor’s approval, though in high-profile cases, police union officials have leaked partial details.
Five more people have been arrested in the investigation into the theft of crown jewels from the Louvre Museum, but the treasures remain missing, the Paris prosecutor announced Thursday.
The five were detained late Wednesday night in separate police operations in Paris and surrounding areas, including the Seine-Saint-Denis region, Prosecutor Laure Beccuau told RTL radio. She did not release their identities or other details.
One is suspected of being part of the four-person team that robbed the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery in broad daylight Oct. 19, the prosecutor said. Two other members of the team were arrested Sunday and given preliminary charges Wednesday of criminal conspiracy and theft committed by an organized gang. Both partially admitted their involvement, according to the prosecutor.
“Searches last night and overnight did not allow us to find the goods,” Beccuau said.
It took thieves less than eight minutes to steal the jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102 million), shocking the world. The robbers forced open a window, cut into cases with power tools and fled with eight pieces of the French crown jewels.
French police have acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defenses, turning the dazzling daylight theft into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.
One of those who has been charged is a 34-year-old Algerian national who has been living in France since 2010, Beccuau said. He was arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport as he was about to fly to Algeria with no return ticket. He was living in a suburb north of Paris, Aubervilliers, and was known to police mostly for road traffic offenses. His DNA was found on one of the scooters used by robbers to leave the scene, she said.
The other suspect, 39, was arrested at his home in Aubervilliers. The man was known to police for several thefts, and his DNA was found on one of the glass cases where the jewels were displayed and on items the thieves left behind, she added.
Video surveillance cameras showed there were at least four people involved, Beccuau said.
Four of the suspects arrived onboard a truck equipped with a freight lift that two of them used to climb up to the museum’s window. The four of them left onboard two motor scooters along the Seine River toward eastern Paris, where they had some other vehicles parked, she said.
Beccuau said nothing suggests that the robbers had accomplices within the museum’s staff.
She made a plea Wednesday night to those who have the jewels: “These jewels are now, of course, unsellable … Anyone who buys them would be guilty of concealment of stolen goods. There’s still time to give them back.”
Information about investigations is meant to be secret under French law to avoid compromising police work and to ensure victims’ right to privacy. Only the prosecutor can speak publicly about developments, and violators can be prosecuted. Police and investigators are not supposed to divulge information about arrests or suspects without the prosecutor’s approval, though in high-profile cases, police union officials have leaked partial details.
The Paris prosecutor said Wednesday that none of the French crown jewels stolen in the brazen daytime robbery of the landmark Louvre Museum had been located 10 days after the heist, and that the only two men detained so far in connection with the crime had partially admitted to a role in the theft.
“I want to remain hopeful that (the jewels) will be found and they can be brought back to the Louvre, and more broadly to the nation,” Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters.
She said the two suspects in custody were to be charged with theft and criminal conspiracy after “partially admitting to the charges.”
The jewels date back hundreds of years and are considered national treasures with an estimated value of some $102 million. Experts have told CBS News the elaborate pieces of jewelry may have already been broken down into their component parts, greatly diminishing their value, and they may never be found.
French police officers stand next to a furniture elevator used by robbers to enter the Louvre Museum, on Quai Francois Mitterrand, in Paris on Oct. 19, 2025.
DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
At least four people in total were seen on security camera video taking part in the robbery on Oct. 19, and Beccuau said at a news conference in the French capital on Wednesday afternoon that her office could not rule out the culprits being part of a larger criminal gang.
Dozens of detectives have been on the trail of the four thieves, who used a cherry-picker lift and cutting gear to break into a first-floor gallery at the world-renowned museum and then fled with the jewels.
But few details have emerged so far about how investigators have managed to track down the culprits, some of whom wore balaclavas and high-visibility vests.
The two men who were arrested Saturday in connection with the heist could be held only until Wednesday evening without being formally charged under French judicial rules, and Beccuau said they would be brought before magistrates with a view to “charging them with organized theft, which carries a 15-year prison sentence,” along with criminal conspiracy, punishable by 10 years.
A source close to the case this weekend said the men in their 30s were known to the police for committing thefts, and Beccuau said they were believed to be the ones who actually broke into the museum gallery, based in part on DNA evidence.
The two men hailed from Seine-Saint-Denis, a region just outside Paris, and one was arrested as he was about to board a plane for Algeria, the source said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
After media reports of the detentions, Beccuau said authorities had “carried out arrests on Saturday evening,” and confirmed that “one of the men arrested was about to leave the country” from the capital’s Charles de Gaulle airport.
PARIS (AP) — The robbery at the Louvre has done what no marketing campaign ever could: It has catapulted France’s dusty crown jewels — long admired at home, little known abroad — to global fame.
One week on, the country is still wounded by the breach to its national heritage even as authorities Sunday announced arrests tied to the haul.
Yet the crime is also a paradox. Some say it will make celebrities of the very jewels it sought to erase — much as the Mona Lisa’s turn-of-the-20th-century theft transformed the then little-known Renaissance portrait into the world’s most famous artwork.
In 1911, a museum handyman lifted the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece off its hook. The loss went unnoticed for more than a day; newspapers turned it into a global mystery, and crowds came to stare at the empty space. When the painting resurfaced two years later, its fame eclipsed everything else in the museum, and that remains so today.
That’s the uneasy question shadowing Sunday’s robbery: whether a crime that cut deep will glorify what’s left behind.
“Because of the drama, the scandal, the heist, the Apollo Gallery itself and the jewels that remain will likely receive a new spotlight and become celebrities, just like the Mona Lisa after 1911,” said Anya Firestone, a Paris art historian and Culture Ministry licensed heritage expert. She toured the gallery the day before the robbery and did not think it looked sufficiently guarded.
Bringing celebrity through theft
The heist has electrified global media. Nightly newscasts from the U.S. to Europe and across Latin America and Asia have beamed the Louvre, its Apollo Gallery and the missing jewels to hundreds of millions — a surge of attention some say rivals, or even surpasses, the frenzy after Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s 2018 “Apeshit” video filmed inside the museum. The Louvre is once again a global set.
For generations, the British monarchy’s regalia has captured the popular imagination through centuries of coronations and drawing millions every year to their display in the Tower of London. Meanwhile, France’s jewels lived in the shadow. This week’s heist tilts the balance.
One early emblem of that celebrity effect could be the survivor piece itself — Empress Eugénie’s emerald-set crown, dropped in the getaway and studded with more than 1,300 diamonds — which may now become the gallery’s most talked-about relic.
“I’d never even heard of Eugénie’s crown until this,” said Mateo Ruiz, a 27-year-old visitor from Seville. “Now it’s the first thing I want to see when the gallery reopens.”
Among the treasures that escaped the thieves’ grasp are storied gems still gleaming under glass — the Regent Diamond, the Sancy and the Hortensia. Authorities say one other stolen bejeweled piece, besides Empress Eugénie’s damaged crown, has since been quietly recovered, though they have declined to identify it.
The heist has not dented the Louvre’s pull. The palace-museum reopened to maximum crowds Wednesday, even as the jewels remain missing. Long before the robbery, the museum was straining under mass tourism — roughly 33,000 visitors a day — and staff warn it cannot easily absorb another surge, especially with the Apollo Gallery sealed and security resources stretched.
Jewels represent French history itself
For France, the loss is more than precious stones and metal totaling over $100 million; it is pages torn from the national record. The Apollo Gallery reads as a timeline in gold and light, carrying the country from Bourbon ceremony to Napoleon’s self-fashioned empire and into modern France.
Firestone puts it this way: The jewels are “the Louvre’s final word in the language of monarchy — a glittering echo of kings and queens as France crossed into a new era.” They are not ornaments, she argues, but chapters of French history, marking the end of the royal order and the beginning of the country France is today.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez called the theft an “immeasurable” heritage loss, and the museum says the pieces carry “inestimable” historic weight — a reminder that what vanished is not just monetary.
Many also see a stunning security lapse.
“It’s staggering that a handful of people couldn’t be stopped in broad daylight,” said Nadia Benyamina, 52, a Paris shopkeeper who visits the gallery monthly. “There were failures — avoidable ones. That’s the wound.”
Investigators say the thieves rode a basket lift up the building’s Seine-facing façade, forced open a window, smashed two display cases and fled on motorbikes — all in minutes. Alarms sounded, drawing security to the gallery and forcing the intruders to bolt, officials say. The haul spanned royal and imperial suites in sapphire, emerald and diamond — including pieces tied to Marie-Amélie, Hortense, Marie-Louise and Empress Eugénie.
In Senate testimony, Louvre director Laurence des Cars acknowledged “a terrible failure,” citing gaps in exterior camera coverage and proposing vehicle barriers and a police post inside the museum. She offered to resign; the culture minister refused. The heist followed months of warnings about chronic understaffing and crowd pressure points.
Drawing crowds to see what isn’t there
Outside the blocked doors, visitors now come to see what cannot be seen.
“I came to see where it happened,” said Tobias Klein, 24, an architecture student. “That barricade is chilling. People are looking with shock and curiosity.”
Others feel a flicker of hope. “They’re ghosts now — but there’s still hope they’ll be found,” said Rose Nguyen, 33, an artist from Reims. “It’s the same strange magnetism the Mona Lisa had after 1911. The story becomes part of the object.”
Curators warn that recutting or melting the jewels would be a second violence. In museums, authenticity lives in the original: the mount, the design, the work of the goldsmith’s hand — and the unbroken story of who made, wore, treasured, exhibited and, yes, stole the object.
Whether loss now brings legend is the Louvre’s uneasy future.
“In the strange economy of fame, even bad news becomes attention — and attention makes icons,” Firestone said.
PARIS—French courts have delivered one shock ruling after another this year, testing the balance of power between the country’s fiercely independent judiciary and its political leadership.
In March, a court banned far-right leader Marine Le Pen from running for office for five years after finding her guilty of embezzling European Union funds. Then, on Tuesday, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy became the first former president to see the inside of a prison cell, after judges sentenced him to five years for conspiring to obtain campaign funds from Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
