Book-lovers around the world have been helping investigators trace thousands of rare volumes looted from one of Italy's oldest libraries by a gang of thieves including the librarian himself. While most have been recovered, a number of invaluable 15th and 16th Century books are still missing
Inside a 16th Century church complex in the heart of Naples, the Biblioteca Girolamini's wooden shelves rise up and up towards richly decorated walls and vaulted ceilings.

They once held works of extraordinary value. There was a 1518 edition of Thomas More's brilliant and mysterious Utopia. Galileo's 1610 treatise Sidereus Nuncius, containing more than 70 drawings of the moon and the stars. And Johannes Kepler's study of the motions of Mars, Astronomia Nova, described as one of greatest books in the history of astronomy.

But this magnificent piece of Italy's cultural heritage was methodically plundered. Thousands of antique texts disappeared.

"Our investigations found that there was a true criminal system in action," says Major Antonio Coppola, a police chief who is leading the operation to recover the stolen texts. "A group of people... carried out a devastating, systematic looting of the library."

Anyone looking at the "Duck Dynasty" uproar may wonder why A&E didn't warn Phil Robertson about the dangers of talking too much to reporters.

But it now looks like they did.

Robertson, the long-bearded patriarch of the clan of Louisiana duck-call merchants, is on "hiatus" from filming episodes of the No. 1-rated cable reality show after giving a GQ magazine interview where he made anti-gay remarks and questioned the need for the civil-rights movement. GLAAD and the NAACP, among others, condemned the comments. But thousands of fans - and even Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal - have rushed to his defense, touching off the latest skirmish in the national culture war. Late Thursday, the family said it might not want to continue the show without Phil.

The scandal has turned into the kind of tempest network executives feared all along. A&E knew of Robertson's controversial views - expounded in videotaped sermons and elsewhere - before the show premiered in spring 2012, and warned him not to overshare on hot-button topics such as gay rights and race relations, according to a producer familiar with the situation. Phil and other family members also probably signed contracts containing "morals clauses" in which they promised to, among other things, avoid anything that would embarrass or bring shame to A&E or the brand. Such clauses are standard in the entertainment and sports industries.

Dolphins swimming in the Gulf of Mexico near where a massive BP oil spill occurred in 2010 are showing signs of sickness so serious that many are not expected to survive, a new study has determined.

A team of government and academic researchers, veterinarian, biologists, and wildlife epidemiologists examined 32 dolphins in August 2011, one year after the largest oil spill in US history wiped out a swathe of the natural life in the Gulf.

The results, published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, found that nearly half of that 32 were found to be in "guarded or worse" condition according to the conditions spelled out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A quarter of the dolphins were underweight and 17 percent were in grave enough condition that they were "not expected to survive."

The most common problems were lung damage and low levels of adrenal stress-response hormones, a symptom that could hurt their fight-or-flight instincts.

"I've never seen such a high prevalence of very sick animals - and with unusual conditions such as the adrenal hormone abnormalities," lead author Dr. Lori Schwacke wrote in a NOAA press release.

TEPCO has found a record 1.9 million becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting radioactive substances at its No.2 reactor. Also radioactive cesium was detected in deeper groundwater at No.4 unit's well, as fears grow of a new leak into the ocean.

The level of beta ray-emitting radioactivity in groundwater around the crippled Fukushima reactor No. 2 reactor has been rising since November, NHK reported.

Previous the highest level - 1.8 million becquerels (bq/liter), of beta-ray sources per liter - was registered at reactor No.1 on December 13.

Meanwhile, TEPCO's latest examination of deeper groundwater beneath the #4 reactor's well has raised new concerns that there might be another source of radioactive substances leakage into the ocean.

For the first time, the analysis of water samples taken from a layer 25 meters beneath the No. 4 reactor's well that is facing the ocean has revealed radioactivity in groundwater.

TEPCO investigators detected 6.7 bq/liter of Cesium 137 and 89 bq/liter of strontium as well as other beta ray-emitting radioactive substances.

A vigil meant to commemorate the memory of a teenager who was fatally shot in the head while in police custody last month turned to panic Thursday night when police in full riot gear deployed tear gas to disperse the mostly peaceful crowd.

Jesus Huerta, 17, died of a gunshot wound to the head on November 19 in Durham, North Carolina. The police department has said that Huerta shot himself, an assertion that has become a subject of outrage in the community because Huerta was at the time handcuffed in the backseat of a patrol car when he was shot. The vehicle was parked behind a police building at the time of his death.

A police report filled out by Officer Samuel Duncan noted that Huerta had been searched at the time of his arrest, and no gun was found on him. Huerta is the third minority man to be killed in shootings involving city police within the past four months.

After 17 years of managing an organic vegetable garden in their front yard, a Miami Shores, Florida couple was forced to remove it due to a zoning violation.

Now, Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll are fighting back, suing the village after being threatened with a daily $50 fine.

"We are already feeling the impact of shopping for overpriced organic food," Ricketts said to the Miami Herald.

Village officials were not fans of the garden for a very simple reason: It was placed in the couple's front yard instead of the back, violating a local zoning ordinance. Despite the fact that the garden had been around for close to two decades, Ricketts and Carroll were told to dig it up by August 31 or face fines.

With the help of the nonprofit libertarian group Institute for Justice, the couple's lawsuit against argues that the new zoning codes violate the state Constitution, which gives residents the right to "acquire, possess, and protect" private property.

Seven people seriously hurt after part of Shaftesbury Avenue theatre ceiling collapses on to balcony during performance

More than 80 people were injured on Thursday night when part of a theatre in London's West End collapsed on to the audience during a performance.

Fire crews rescued people from the Apollo theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, which was showing The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. There were more than 700 people in the audience.

London ambulance service said there were 88 casualties, seven of whom were seriously injured, but none are thought to have life-threatening injuries. The Metropolitan police said they were not aware of any fatalities.

Some people were initially trapped inside the theatre, but all were rescued from the building soon after the collapse.

The wounded were taken into the foyer of the nearby Queen's theatre, which was turned into a makeshift treatment centre. Some were taken from there to hospital on board a red London bus, with a police escort.

Firefighters inspect the roof of the Apollo theatre following the collapse. Photograph: Sang Tan/AP

The collapse of part of the ceiling, which then brought down sections of a balcony, occurred at about 8pm. Part of the balcony started creaking before the collapse, and some audience members assumed that the noise was part of the show.

People were escorted out of the building covered in dust and debris, while others left crying, coughing and helping each other away.

Photographs from inside the theatre showed heavy beams and wood strewn across seats, which were coated in debris and dust. There were reports that after a storm earlier, water had begun dripping through cracks in the ceiling before it fell in, but this was not confirmed by authorities. A Westminster council surveyor was inspecting the building overnight to assess whether it was safe enough for a full inspection. The surveyor was expected to deliver a preliminary report on Friday morning.

The headlines haven't been particularly kind to America's most relentlessly greedy over the past year. In just the last month alone, the world's two most visible religious leaders - Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama - have once again dramatically denounced our global concentration of income and wealth. And the world's most powerful political leader, Barack Obama, has chimed in, too.

The impact on America's super rich - and super-rich wannabees? Not much. They haven't even deigned to slow their grabbing.

At "Too Much", the Institute for Policy Studies weekly on excess and inequality, we've been taking names. Lots of them. The greediest of them all? We think we can make a good case for the ten below. We hope you'll find some useful insights from our choices - and maybe even some new incentive to help make our world a more equal place.

10. Angela Spaccia: Pint-Sized Pilfering

We start this year's top ten with garden-variety greed, the sort that inevitably grows in the shadows of escalating grand fortunes. In that shade, people in positions of modest power and authority regularly - and clumsily - try to emulate the avaricious high and mighty they see all around them.

In Bell, a small Los Angeles County working class community, that modest power and authority once belonged to Angela Spaccia. As Bell's assistant city manager for a seven-year span that ended in 2010, Spaccia helped stuff hundreds of thousands of dollars into the pockets of the city's top officials, including herself. Spaccia in one year alone took in $564,000.

Prosecutors eventually caught up with Spaccia and her pals. Her boss, the Bell city manager, cut a plea deal in October to 69 corruption charges. He pulled in $1.18 million in his most lucrative year. Spaccia chose to go to trial instead, claiming she did nothing illegal. "Everyone's greedy," her defense attorney argued in November. "There's no crime in taking too much money."

Jurors disagreed. Last week, they found Spaccia guilty on multiple counts of criminal behavior, including one misappropriation of public funds designed to pump $15.5 million in pension checks to Spaccia and her boss.

Family members of victims of Wouter Basson have expressed relief that the apartheid-era doctor has been found guilty after a six-year trial.

Wouter Basson was found guilty on Wednesday of unprofessional conduct for acting unethically as a medical doctor during his time as the leader of the apartheid-era chemical and biological programme Project Coast and later Delta G in the 1980s.

Basson was not present at the hearing as he had an emergency with one of his patients in Cape Town, said his legal team.

However, the family members of his victims attended the judgment hearing.

Lizzie Sofolo's husband was abducted, drugged, tortured and killed in the late 1980s - with the use of drugs made by Basson.

"Today the truth has prevailed, it is clear that he used his knowledge as a doctor to kill innocent people," she said.

Maria Ntuli's son, Jeremiah, was one of 10 Mamelodi youths who left home to join the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, in 1987.

In 1996 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard that the group was drugged and put into a Kombi that was crashed into a tree and exploded.

"We just want this case to be over with now. It has been dragging on for years now, why doesn't it just end?" said Ntuli.

For the first time since the 1959 revolution, Cubans will have the right to buy new and used vehicles from the state without government permission, official media announced on Thursday, another step toward greater economic freedom on the communist-led island.

Under a reform introduced two years ago, Cubans can buy and sell used cars from each other, but must request authorization from the government to purchase a new vehicle or second-hand one, usually a relatively modern rental car, from State retailers.

The Communist Party newspaper, Granma, said the Council of Ministers approved new regulations on Wednesday that "eliminate existing mechanisms of approval for the purchase of motor vehicles from the state."

As a result, Granma said, "the retail sale of new and used motorcycles, cars, vans, small trucks and mini buses for Cubans and foreign residents, companies and diplomats is freed up."