Picasso sketchbook stolen from museum

Paris — A red notebook of 33 pencil drawings by Pablo Picasso has been stolen from a specially locked glass case in the Paris museum that bears the painter’s name, authorities said Tuesday.

The book is believed to be worth $11 million, a police official said.

The theft took place between Monday and Tuesday morning at the Picasso Museum, removed from a glass case that “can only be opened with a specific instrument,” the Culture Ministry said.

A museum employee discovered the notebook missing Tuesday morning from the second-floor display case, the police official said anonymously, as police are not authorized to discuss cases publicly. The museum is closed on Tuesdays.

There was no surveillance system in the room where the notebook was displayed, the police official said.

The stolen sketchbook, shiny red with the word “Album” inscribed in gold on the front, dated from 1917 to 1924, the Culture Ministry statement said. It measured 6.3 inches by 9.5 inches.

‘Poor Richard’ almanac auction nets $557K

New York — When members of the local historical society in Berwick, Pa., found a dusty, long-ignored copy of Benjamin Franklin’s 18th-century “Poor Richard” almanac on their shelves a few months ago, they decided to find out whether it could be real.

The answer was yes — emphatically confirmed on Tuesday at the Sotheby’s auction house, where an anonymous bidder paid $556,500 for the 1733 edition, the second highest price ever for a book printed in America.

That was big news in Berwick, an old manufacturing city of 10,000 residents about 95 miles northwest of Philadelphia, where Franklin, using the pseudonym Richard Saunders, printed thousands of copies of his almanac between 1733 and 1760, dispensing advice and aphorisms along with “lunations, eclipses, judgment of the weather” and other data relevant to the 40-degree latitude “from Newfoundland to South Carolina.”

The celebration for historical society members began on the 150-mile trip home from New York.

“We’re on the second bottle of champagne,” historical society president Thomas McLaughlin said when reached on his cell phone aboard the bus taking 14 society members back to Berwick.

McLaughlin said that when the society inquired of experts about the almanac’s value, the first estimate was $7,000 to $10,000, but it rose sharply after the Library Company of Philadelphia, which Franklin founded, determined the book not only was real but also was one of only three 1733 copies known to exist.

Tyson marries 2 weeks after child’s death

Las Vegas — Boxer Mike Tyson has married for a third time, two weeks after his 4-year-old daughter died in a tragic treadmill accident.

The owner of the La Bella Wedding Chapel at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel-casino told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the former heavyweight champion and his bride, Lakiha Spicer, exchanged vows Saturday in a short, private ceremony.

Chapel owner Shawn Absher says the couple wed about 10 p.m. after arriving at the hotel from the Clark County marriage bureau in a chapel-owned limousine.

County marriage records in Las Vegas show the 42-year-old Tyson and 32-year-old Spicer got a marriage license about 30 minutes before their ceremony.

Tyson’s daughter Exodus died in May. The girl suffocated after she either slipped or put her head in the loop of a cord hanging under a treadmill’s console in her Phoenix home. Tyson’s agent, Harlan Werner, told the AP that Spicer is not Exodus’ mother.

Tyson and Spicer, a resident of suburban Henderson, asked for a simple ceremony with nothing special, Absher said.

“They just wanted to say the vows and be married,” he said. “It was very sincere.”

Tyson was previously married to actress Robin Givens in 1988 and Monica Turner in 1997.

Report: Lambert talks about sex, drugs, ‘Idol’

New York — “American Idol” runner-up Adam Lambert has landed the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, where he talks about sex, drugs and his “Idol” experiences.

The 27-year-old singer from San Diego acknowledges in an interview that he’s gay, and says it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

“I’m proud of my sexuality,” he says. “I embrace it. It’s just another part of me.”

Lambert says he was inspired to audition for the Fox network singing competition after having a “psychedelic experience” at the Burning Man festival in Nevada. There, he says, he experimented with “certain funguses.”

“I knew that it was my only shot to be taken seriously in the recording industry, because it’s fast and broad,” he says of “Idol.”

Lambert emerged as an early front-runner and judge favorite, thanks in part to his soaring vocal range.

He says he worried that a public announcement would overshadow his singing, so he decided not to respond and largely kept his personal life under wraps on the show.

“I’m an entertainer, and who I am and what I do in my personal life is a separate thing,” he says. “It shouldn’t matter. Except it does. It’s really confusing.”

Lambert says he isn’t interested in being the poster child for gay rights. “I’m trying to be a singer, not a civil-rights leader.”