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Gustav Klimt portrait that played life-saving role in Holocaust sets modern art record of $236 million at auction

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A Gustav Klimt portrait painting that helped save the life of its Jewish subject during the Holocaust sold Tuesday for $236.4 million, a record for a modern art piece.

Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” sold after a 20-minute bidding war at Sotheby’s in New York, where the flashiest item of the night was a solid gold, fully functioning toilet that went for $12.1 million.

The 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) portrait, painted over three years between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of one of Vienna’s wealthiest families adorned in an East Asian emperor’s cloak. It is one of two full-length portraits by the Austrian artist that remain privately owned. The work was kept separate from other Klimt paintings that burned in a fire at an Austrian castle.

The colorful painting depicts the Lederer family’s life of luxury before Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938. Nazis looted the Lederer art collection, leaving only the family portraits, which were considered “too Jewish” to be worth stealing, according to the National Gallery of Canada, where the painting was previously on loan.

In an attempt to save herself, Elisabeth Lederer made up a story that Klimt, who was not Jewish and died in 1918, was her father. It helped that the artist spent years working meticulously on her portrait.

With help from her former brother-in-law, a high-ranking Nazi official, she convinced the Nazis to give her a document stating that she descended from Klimt. That allowed her to remain safely in Vienna until she died of an illness in 1944.

The portrait was part of the collection of billionaire Leonard A. Lauder, heir to cosmetics giant The Estée Lauder Companies. He died this year at 92, leaving behind an impressive collection worth more than $400 million.

Sotheby’s declined to share the identity of the portrait’s buyer. The sale topped a previous record for 20th-century art set by an Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe, which sold for $195 million in 2022.

Five Klimt pieces from Lauder’s collection sold at the auction for a total of $392 million, Sotheby’s said.

Pieces by Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch were among other notable sales.

Later in the evening, an 18-karat-gold toilet by Maurizio Cattelan — the provocative Italian artist known for taping a banana to a wall — hit the auction block. Cattelan has said the 223-pound (101-kilogram) piece, titled “America,” satirizes superwealth.

“Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise,” he once said.

The toilet, owned by an unnamed collector, was one of two that Cattelan created in 2016. The other was displayed in 2016 at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, which pointedly offered to lend it to U.S. President Donald Trump when he asked to borrow a Van Gogh painting.

Then the piece was stolen while on display in England at Blenheim Palace, the country manor where Winston Churchill was born. Two men were convicted in the toilet heist, but it’s unclear what they did with the loo. Investigators aren’t privy to its whereabouts but believe it was likely broken up and melted down.

“America” was exhibited at Sotheby’s New York headquarters in the weeks leading up to the auction. Sotheby’s called the commode an “incisive commentary on the collision of artistic production and commodity value.”



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Trump says ‘starting’ land strikes over drugs in latest warning

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President Donald Trump said the US would be “starting” land strikes on drug operations in Latin America, though again declined to provide details on when and where the escalation of his military campaign would actually begin, or if countries could still do anything to avert the threatened action.

“We knocked out 96% of the drugs coming in by water, and now we’re starting by land, and by land is a lot easier, and that’s going to start happening,” Trump told reporters Friday in the Oval Office.

The US president for days has been pledging to broaden the effort, which comes after the Pentagon has launched a series of attacks on what it has called drug-smuggling boats in international waters off the coast of South America.

While Trump’s posturing has largely been seen as a pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, he on Friday insisted the land targeting may not only impact Venezuela.

Read more: Trump Says US Eyes Land Strikes Next After Drug Boat Attacks

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be in Venezuela,” he said, adding that “people that are bringing in drugs to our country are targets.” 

Trump has justified the actions in part by framing the fight against drug smuggling as akin to combat operations. He told reporters that if overdose deaths were counted like combat deaths, it would be “like a war that would be unparalleled.”

Striking targets on land would represent a major escalation, and Maduro earlier this week said that if his nation came under foreign attack, the working class should mount a “general insurrectionary strike” and push for “an even more radical revolution.”

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Trump names Warsh, Hassett as top Fed contenders, WSJ says

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President Donald Trump said that Kevin Hassett and Kevin Warsh are his top choices to lead the US Federal Reserve and that he expects the next chair of the central bank to consult with him on interest rates.

Trump, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday, indicated that Warsh, a former Fed governor, has climbed up the short list of contenders to challenge Hassett, the White House National Economic Council head whom many had seen as the frontrunner for the job.

“I think the two Kevins are great,” he said. “I think there are a couple of other people that are great.”

Trump previously signaled that he already made up his mind, saying Monday he had a “a pretty good idea” of who to nominate. The president last month also said he knew who he would pick for the job. The latest comments suggest that the selection process remains in flux. 

Trump met with Warsh on Wednesday. It’s not clear if Trump plans to interview other candidates for the job.

Earlier: Trump Says He’ll Meet Warsh as Fed Chair Search Nears End

The president said Warsh told him that borrowing costs should be lower. 

Later in the Oval Office, Trump said the next Fed chair should consult with him on interest rates, a move that would upend a tradition of the Fed’s independence.

“I’ve been very successful, and I think my role should be at least that of recommending — they don’t have to follow what I say,” Trump told reporters, adding he expected to make a choice “over the next few weeks.”

“I think my voice should be heard, but I’m not going to make the decision based on that,” he continued.

Trump has moved to assert control over the central bank in his second term, regularly expressing frustration that the Fed has not more aggressively reduced borrowing costs under Chair Jerome Powell.

Trump, in the Journal interview, called for aggressively lowering rates, saying they should be “1% and maybe lower than that.”

The Fed on Wednesday lowered its benchmark rate to between 3.5% and 3.75%, its third cut in as many meetings. Three central bank officials dissented from the decision and the Federal Open Market Committee remains undecided about further reductions.



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32-year-old’s death on Universal roller coaster was accidental despite deep forehead gash, investigation finds

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The death of a 32-year-old man after riding a high-speed roller coaster at the Universal Epic Universe theme park was accidental, and an investigation has been closed, according to a Florida sheriff’s office report released this week.

Meanwhile, a medical examiner’s report released Friday showed that the left side of Kevin Rodriguez Zavala’s forehead had a deep gash, and the bony ridge above his eye was fractured. He had bleeding above his skull, bruises on his abdomen and arms, and his nose and right thigh bone were fractured, the medical examiner’s report said.

The medical examiner in Orlando previously had ruled the death an accident, saying Zavala died of blunt-impact injuries. The investigative report by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Orlando said that workers at Epic Universe followed procedures and weren’t careless or neglectful.

Epic Universe is the newest theme park at Universal Orlando Resort.

Security video showed Zavala “engaged and well” at the start of the ride but unresponsive and slouched over in his seat at the end, according to the sheriff’s office report.

When the ride came to a stop, Zavala was bleeding from the face, and his body was slumped over, according to witnesses.

Anna Marshall, a medical doctor who was standing in line to board the ride, said Zavala was slouched over and surrounded by blood when the coaster returned to the boarding platform. His arm was hanging over the ride, and his thigh bone was broken in half and resting on the back of the ride chair, she told investigators.

Zavala used a wheelchair. As Marshall rendered aid, Zavala’s girlfriend, Javiliz Cruz-Robles, who was beside him on the ride, told the doctor that he had metal rods in his back from a previous spinal surgery.

“Dr. Marshall explained that she did not believe that just because Kevin Rodriguez-Zavala didn’t have use of his legs that that was the sole reason why this occurred,” the report said.

Zavala’s family said the condition leading to his disability, which they described as spinal cord atrophy, didn’t cause his death on Sept. 17. The media office for attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Zavala’s family, didn’t return an emailed inquiry about the sheriff’s office report on Friday.

Zavala had severe facial trauma when the ride stopped. He was still secured in his ride seat by a lap bar, which ride operators had difficulty releasing for 10 minutes, Universal paramedic Sebastian Torres told sheriff’s office investigators.

“’The guest was stuck on the ride vehicle face down, falling out of his seat, with legs inverted,’” Torres wrote in a statement included in the report.

Cruz-Robles told investigators that a ride operator had to push Zavala’s lap restraint down several times before it was safely in place when they first got on the ride, and she thought the restraint bar was positioned too low on their laps. When the coaster began the first downward movement, she said Zavala flew forward and hit his head on the restraint bar. During the ride Zavala hit his head several times more, and Cruz-Robles said she tried but was unable to hold him back.

“Javiliz was crying for help, but due to being in the middle of the ride, no one heard her screaming for help until the train cart was getting close to the station,” the report said.

The sheriff’s office report noted there were warning signs posted at the ride’s entrance telling patrons about sudden drops and accelerations. The signs said guests shouldn’t go on the ride with certain conditions, including “back, neck or similar physical conditions,” or if they’ve had recent surgeries or conditions that could be aggravated by the ride.

Zavala’s parents told investigators that their son had previously fractured a thigh bone that required surgery in 2020 and had a hip dislocation that required surgery in 2010.

The dual-launch coaster reaches speeds up to 62 mph (100 kph) and debuted officially in May when Universal Orlando Resort’s newest theme park opened to the public.



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