Around the world
RENOIR STOLEN: A thief cut a Renoir painting out of its frame and stole it from the National Museum in Belgrade before anyone noticed, Yugoslav media reported. The 1915 oil painting "The Woman Bathing" by the French impressionist shows a nude woman washing herself outdoors. It disappeared late Thursday from the museum. Museum officials refused to discuss details of the theft or even estimate the value of the 26-by-21-inch painting.CLOSURE LIFTED: Israel said Friday it was lifting the internal closure imposed on the West Bank after a wave of Islamic suicide bombings. But the army said the bar against Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and West Bank entering Israel would continue. The internal closure had restricted Palestinians to their towns.
Across the nation
DISINTERRED: The body of a woman killed in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing was disinterred Friday in New Orleans before her weeping family, as authorities tried to figure out whose leg was buried with her. The body of Air Force Airman Lakesha Levy, 21, was found in the building's rubble nine days after the April 19 bombing. More than a month later, searchers found a left leg, wearing a military-style boot and olive-drab strap used to tuck pants into the boot. The leg matched Mrs. Levy's DNA and footprints, the Oklahoma medical examiner's office said, raising the question of whose left leg was buried with her last May.
OFFICER KILLED: A police officer was killed and five people were wounded when suspected carjackers opened fire after being pulled over in the Bronx, New York. An off-duty Transit Bureau officer who was on his way to work stopped to help police and was shot and wounded in the gun battle. Three bystanders and one suspect also were wounded. A second suspect also was in custody while two others were at large today after the Thursday night shootout.
Other news . . .
A HELICOPTER carrying oil industry workers crashed in the Caspian Sea during a storm, killing all 13 people on board . . . DEPUTY KOBE MAYOR Takumi Ogawaa, a top official in the reconstruction of quake-devastated Kobe, Japan, committed suicide by setting himself ablaze, police said Friday. Officials believed he was distraught by an overwhelming work load . . . A FISHERMAN bled to death after being stabbed in the face by a leaping swordfish, police in Suva, Fiji, said Friday. Meli Kalakalu, 18, was night-fishing on a beach, where friends found him lying unconscious and bleeding from a face wound. Police said Kalakalu's friends reported that a small, surface-skimming swordfish known locally as a "saku" had been heard jumping in the area where the man had been fishing.