Paris robbery prompts £3m insurance payout to Royal Collection
Media reports at the time of the robbery last year claimed there had been losses of around a million euros - but a figure of £3,020,000 is shown in the annual report of the Royal Collection Trust as an insurance receipt, outlining this is "in respect of snuff boxes stolen whilst on loan to the Musée Cognacq-Jay".The trust, a charity that looks after the paintings, sculptures, furniture and jewellery in the Royal Collection, says in the report published on Tuesday that the money "will be placed into a designated fund to be used for the enhancement of the collection".The two stolen items from the Royal Collection are believed to be a snuff box with a cameo of the Birth of Venus, thought to have been made in Germany in the 18th Century, and a Fabrique Royale snuff box, made in Germany in the 18th Century, and encrusted with nearly 3,000 diamonds.The Fabrique Royale box had belonged to the Russian royal family before being seized by the Soviet authorities in 1917. It was later bought in 1932 by Queen Mary, wife of George V.The French newspaper Le Monde reported that the robbery had been perpetrated by four masked raiders who pulled up on scooters and then used an axe to break into display cases, in front of shocked visitors at the museum.As well as the stolen items on loan from the Royal Collection there were also exhibits from the Louvre museum and the Palace of Versailles in France.
The trust's annual report also showed record numbers of visitors to Buckingham Palace last year during its summer opening.There were 683,000 visitors, with more of the Palace being opened to visitors and for an increasing number of days. The East Wing, which overlooks the Mall, has been renovated and opened to tourists for the first time.But the biggest attraction remains Windsor Castle, which had almost 1.4 million visitors during 2024-25.Altogether there were 2.9m visitors to the royal palaces and exhibitions, with ticket sales contributing to an income of almost £90m, which produced profits of almost £14m.Among the ways of improving access this year has been £1 tickets for people on Universal Credit and a range of other benefits, with 19,500 of these tickets being sold in four months at Windsor Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.
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The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Kenyan doping is ruining athletics, so what can be done?
But the tsunami of positive doping tests that's been coming out of Kenya in recent years, and particularly recent months, is ravaging the sport, to such an extent that it will take years to repair. The list of Kenyan athletes who are currently serving a doping ban is astonishingly lengthy - almost 150 - and it's getting longer by the day. For decades, Kenya has been an athletics powerhouse. Some of the sport's true greats hail from this East African nation, including Eliud Kipchoge, David Rudisha, Kip Keino and Brigid Kosgei, plus many more. Eliud Kipchoge is one of the true athletics greats to hail from kenya But all that success has now been overshadowed by a doping epidemic that's threatening to rival the Russian doping scandal given how many athletes are being found to have cheated. The pattern over recent years has been that, every few weeks, and occasionally every few days, it's announced that a Kenyan athlete has committed an anti-doping violation. The most significant positive test result was announced last month, with the revelation of a suspension for Ruth Chepngetich. Her positive doping result sent shockwaves through athletics and has caused a significant dent in any trust that's left in the sport. In October of last year, at the Chicago Marathon, Chepngetich produced one of the most impressive performances the world of athletics has ever seen. The 30-year-old obliterated the women's marathon world record, running 2 hours 9 minutes 56 seconds, breaking the previous world record by almost two minutes and becoming the first female to break the 2:10 barrier for the distance. It was a remarkable run, particularly as it came from an athlete who has shown little potential to achieve such a remarkable time. From literally the minute Chepngetich crossed the finish line in Chicago, the scepticism in her performance was overwhelming, and the allegations were flying. Surely, observers said, Chepngetich's performance wasn't legitimate. That she had slashed four minutes from her own previous best also fuelled the doubt - improvements of that magnitude just don't happen in elite sport. The doubt over the legitimacy of Chepngetich's performance was entirely understandable and, as it's turned out, completely justified. Last month, it was announced that she had been suspended for an anti-doping violation. She tested positive for the banned substance, a diuretic called hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ), which was detected in a sample collected from her in March. Her suspension was announced last month. What was so jarring about Chepngetich's positive doping test was that yes, it was shocking, but it wasn't, in any way surprising. Firstly, her performance seemed too good to be true and when that's the case, more often than not, it is too good to be true. And secondly, the constant stream of positive test results coming out of Kenya means every single Kenyan athlete is looked upon with a degree of suspicion. And, all too often, that suspicion turns out to be justified. Ruth Chepngetich is the highest-profile Kenyan athlete to be suspended for doping (Image: PA) While Chepngetich may be the highest-profile athlete to fail a doping test and be banned from the sport (her world marathon record, however, will still stand as her positive test didn't come until after that performance), it seems she's merely a symptom of a far greater problem. And it's a problem that's threatening to cause irreparable damage to athletics, a sport which has already had more than its fair share of doping scandals with which to contend. Since Chepngetich's positive test just a few weeks ago, a further six Kenyan athletes have been handed suspensions for doping offences. While taking performance-enhancing drugs is far from restricted to athletics athletes, or far from restricted to Kenyan athletes, what is unusual is just how many high-profile Kenyan individuals have been suspended for testing positive. 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Such numbers points to a significant problem, and it's a problem that isn't only tainting Kenyan athletics, it's tainting the entire sport and every athlete involved in it. This has been going on for a number of years now - as far back as 2022, the Kenyan cabinet secretary for Youth Affairs, Sports and the Arts, claimed his country was in a 'serious war against doping' - and while there's suggestions things have improved somewhat, there can be little doubt that the Kenyan doping epidemic is still ravaging the sport. A recent New York Times expose of the Kenyan doping problem highlighted the high levels of poverty within the country, which results in the risks of doping being comfortably outweighed by the potential benefits of doping, one of which is earning significant financial rewards. To use the moral argument to discourage doping - that doping goes against the spirit of sport - is a difficult battle to win when an individual could potentially pull themselves and their family out of poverty if their doping gets the desired results. An outright ban for Kenya is the obvious solution, but those at the helm of World Athletics seem unlikely to make such a move. There is a belief within the global governing body that, unlike Russia which was issued with a complete ban just over a decade ago, Kenya's doping isn't state-run as it was in Russia. It may be a mere detail, but it is an important detail. So without an outright ban, the only path forward is the one that continues to try and fight the doping problem, and catch the doping cheats. Certainly, while the swathe of positive doping tests is a bad look for athletics, it does suggest that fewer athletes are getting away with it than in the past. Recently, the President of World Athletics, Seb Coe, said 'I believe in the future, we will have a drug-free sport.' I'm not, I'm sorry to say, nearly as optimistic. But we definitely need a reduction in drug cheats because if things continue in this current vein, with Kenyans bulldozing the reputation of athletics, pretty soon there'll be no sport to speak of.
Daily Mirror
14 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Evil couple kill 12-year-old daughter by drugging and suffocating her
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Leader Live
18 hours ago
- Leader Live
Three die as Ukraine and Russia exchange drone attacks
Russia's defence ministry said air defences intercepted or destroyed 112 drones across eight Russian regions and the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. A drone attack on the Rostov region, on the border with Ukraine, killed one person, acting governor Yuri Slyusar said. Further from the front line, a woman was killed and two other people wounded in a drone strike on business premises in the Penza region, according to regional governor Oleg Melnichenko. In the Samara region, falling drone debris sparked a fire that killed an elderly resident, regional governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said. According to the Ukrainian air force, Russia launched 53 drones and decoys at Ukraine overnight into Saturday. It said that air defences shot down or jammed 45 drones. Eleven people were wounded in an overnight drone strike on the Kharkiv region, governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Saturday. The reciprocal drone strikes followed a day of mourning in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Friday, after a Russian drone and missile attack killed 31 people, including five children, and wounded more than 150. The continued attacks come after US President Donald Trump on Tuesday gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a shorter deadline – August 8 – for peace efforts to make progress. Trump said on Thursday that special envoy Steve Witkoff is heading to Russia to push Moscow to agree to a ceasefire in its war with Ukraine and has threatened new economic sanctions if progress is not made.
