London

Thieves steal gold boxes from famed collection

Burglars have stolen more than 100 gold boxes and other valuable items from the Rothschild Collection of art at Waddesdon Manor in southern England.

“This is a very serious loss,” Lord Rothschild said Wednesday. “Waddesdon encapsulates generations of Rothschild collecting, and the gold boxes at Waddesdon are among the finest in the world.”

Neither the police nor Waddesdon would indicate the value of the stolen art.

Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, who came to England from Germany in 1859, bought 3,000 acres of land in Buckinghamshire and had the manor built. It is near Aylesbury, 50 miles northwest of London

The estate was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1957 by James de Rothschild but the family has maintained an interest in helping with the day-to-day running of the manor and the current Lord Rothschild has continued with this role.

London

Animal welfare group seeks slaughter ban

Ancient Muslim and Jewish animal slaughtering practices cause animals needless suffering and should be banned, an independent government advisory group has recommended.

The publicly funded Farm Animal Welfare Council’s report urged Britain to end a religious exemption to laws that require animals to be stunned unconscious before they are killed. The group said animals that are not stunned suffer unnecessary pain and distress during slaughter.

Jewish rules for kosher slaughter bar stunning before killing because they require that animals be uninjured before they are slaughtered. The traditional method of slaughter is to slit the animal’s throat and allow its blood to drain.

There is more room for interpretation for Muslims’ halal slaughter, but some also believe animals must not be stunned before being killed.

Cyprus

U.N. extends, enlarges peacekeeping mission

The U.N. Security Council extended the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Cyprus for six months on Wednesday and added 34 police to deal with the increasing travel between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot sides of the divided island.

Cyprus has been split into a Greek Cypriot-controlled south and a Turkish-occupied north since Turkey invaded in 1974 after a coup by supporters of union with Greece. The breakaway Turkish Cypriot state is recognized only by Turkey, which maintains 40,000 troops there.

The council resolution adopted unanimously Wednesday extends the mandate of the nearly 1,230-strong U.N. peacekeeping force monitoring a cease-fire between the two sides for another six months until Dec. 15.

It authorized up to 34 additional U.N. civilian police because of the increased workload since the easing of restrictions on islandwide freedom of movement. The U.N. force currently has a 35-member international police contingent.

Netherlands

Milosevic colleague extradited to tribunal

Slobodan Milosevic’s former state security chief was extradited Wednesday to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands and taken into U.N. custody, the court said.

Once a top security official of the former Yugoslav president and an expert in covert operations, Jovica Stanisic was flown on a commercial flight from Belgrade to the Netherlands, where he will stand trial for alleged atrocities in two Balkan wars.

U.N. prosecutors allege that under Stanisic’s command Serbia’s dreaded secret police committed atrocities against non-Serbs during the ethnic wars in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s.