News

FRANCE: A French judge ruled on November 20 that Yahoo must take steps to prevent French Web-browsers from accessing sales of Nazi memorabilia on their American auction site.

UK: FOUR weeks of expert evidence and deliberation has ended with the Parliamentary Select Committee needing the chairman’s casting vote to keep the Kent Bill from being thrown out.

Sotheby’s have instigated a dramatic ‘restructure’ of their company after announcing net losses of $183m for the first nine months of this year.

FRANCE: POLICE today appealed for help in tracing up to 100 bronzes and other antiques which were stolen in a £1m burglary at a Paris Gallery in June 1998.

UK: Lot 1098 at the Leominster rooms of Brightwells auctioneers offered the clock trade the chance to purchase this rare late 18th century bracket clock by Thomas Berry of Ormskirk, 2ft 7in by 17in (79 x 43cm).

Sold at Sotheby’s, London sale (October 12-13) for £6500 was a rare example of a printed version of one of the letters exchanged by Napoleon and the Sherif of Mekkah, Ghalib ibn Musa’id, at the time of the French invasion of Egypt in 1798-99.

UK: The Voyage of H.M.S Beagle is a summary of fauna discovered by Charles Darwin on his travels through the Southern Hemisphere from 1831-6, and became crucial to the formulation of his brutal creed: “survival of the fittest”.