January 9th, 2005, became a "black Sunday" for the Dutch city of Hoorn. On that day the local museum was stripped of 24 rare paintings. Ten years later, some of the stolen masterpieces resurfaced in Kiev, and Dutch investigators believe that the rest are still in the hands of Petro Poroshenko's corrupt elite.

Westfries Museum hostess Marjam Faber said that the 2005 robbery was a shock to locals. She said that one of the museum's artifacts - the coffin of Hoorn's 17th-century vice-admiral Peter Floris - was turned by criminals into a "Trojan horse."

The whereabouts of a stolen art collection, which includes paintings from the Dutch Golden Age by Jan van Goyen, Jan Linsen and Jacob Waben remained unknown for a decade. And its reappearance has made the story even more complicated, turning a plain old-fashioned burglary into a political thriller with "fake news" on the side.

Elon Musk has settled with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which had sued him for fraud over his tweets about taking Tesla private. Musk will have to step down as chairman, but gets to keep his CEO status.

According to the settlement filing, Musk has 45 days to step down as chairman of the board of directors of Tesla, and is banned from holding the position for three years. He will also have to pay a $20 million fine.

And since the whole affair started over a tweet, either careless or intentionally misleading, Musk is required to receive pre-approval for anything he says or posts about Tesla, "in any format, including, but not limited to, posts on social media (e.g., Twitter), the Company's website (e.g., the Company's blog), press releases, and investor calls."

Another $20mn will be paid by Tesla to settle claims it had failed to vet Musk's initial tweet.

The SEC complaint accused Musk of misleading investors with his August 7 tweet which said he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share, boosting the company's stock by more than 10 percent. Musk soon recanted, saying he would keep Tesla private and triggering investors' fury. The SEC ruled Musk's initial words "were false and misleading because they lacked any basis in fact."

Years of media scrutiny surrounding UK Labour and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, over accusations of alleged anti-semitism have boiled to a frenzy in recent months.

The left-wing politician and his support for the Palestinian cause has made him the target of the international pro-Israel lobby, who have accused him of participating in and tolerating what has been dubbed the "new anti-Semitism": criticism of the Israeli state for its human rights abuses and war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory.

After the Labour party adopted in July a new version of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism that specifically excludes portions conflating anti-Israel activism with anti-Semitism, criticism of Corbyn is at an all-time high.

Days before a provincial election in Quebec, a center-right party promising to slash immigration and to kick out all immigrants who fail tests of "values" and the French language is in a dead heat with the incumbent Liberals who have governed the province for most of the past 15 years.

The Coalition Avenir Quebec, a party led by businessman Francois Legault, is tied with premier Philippe Couillard's Liberals, with each party supported by 30 percent of decided voters, according to a poll by Ipsos for La Presse and Global News. That makes it likely the Oct. 1 election will produce a minority government.

This year's contest will be the first in nearly six decades where the "national question" - whether French-speaking Quebec should separate from the rest of Canada - is not a campaign issue. But those bitter independence battles have morphed into acrimonious fights over immigration and perceived threats to Quebec's francophone identity.

"Young Quebecers are less attuned to independence, so the old nationalist discourse on sovereignty is not as strong," said Chedly Belkhodja, a professor at Concordia University's School of Community and Public Affairs in Montreal. "The big questions now are about identity and what Quebec will look like."

The hot-button topic of immigration emerged as a significant issue two weeks into the election campaign when Legault - then the clear front-runner - detailed his immigration platform.

The public is demanding an investigation after a report that British think tanks, advocating Brexit, received lavish funding from American donors.

The "analysis" carried out by the Guardian paper established that the US fundraising bodies, which provide donations to the British think tanks, had received $5.6 million (£4.3 million) since 2008.

This money was used to support four UK organizations - the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Adam Smith Institute, Policy Exchange and the Legatum - that played and keep playing a key role in the Brexit debate.

Those conservative think tanks have been advocating free trade deals with less governmental control, which is a stance "likely to benefit big American businesses" that oppose the EU tight regulations, imposed after the 2008 financial crisis, the Guardian wrote.

Tommy Robinson said he doesn't care if he "incites fear" against Muslims as long as he stops "children from getting raped," in a heated interview with Sky News.

Speaking to the broadcaster following a court's decision to adjourn the retrial of Robinson - real name: Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon - on contempt of court charges, Robinson was questioned on why he doesn't campaign against white pedophiles. He said: "To be honest with you, I don't care if it incites fear [against Muslims] as long as it educates the children and prevents them from being raped."


Speaking to Sky News' Jason Farrell, Robinson stated: "If I believe I'm morally right then I'm not bothered about what your law says."

English Defence League (EDL) founder Robinson has largely turned away from street protests. Now a self-styled activist-journalist, he has been covering cases of so-called 'grooming gangs' - groups of Muslim males targeting and sexually abusing underage girls.

At least four people, including a candidate for the head of the Russia-backed formation called the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), have been injured in an explosion in Donetsk.

The explosion on September 29 took place in a building where the local Communist Party held a meeting, officials in Ukraine's separatist regions said.

Igor Khakimzyanov, a candidate for the post of heading the DPR who was nominated by the Communist Party, said he was entering the building when the explosion happened.

"We were entering the building with one of my campaign staff. An explosion thundered as we were entering [the building]," he told reporters.

Separatist Telegram channels posted pictures online that appeared to show his injuries.

German Navy's newest frigate should have been commissioned in 2014 to replace ageing Cold War-era warships, but it won't be there until at least the next year due to faulty systems and snowballing cost, local media reported.

Commissioning of the 'Rheinland-Pfalz', the lead ship of the brand new Baden-Wuerttemberg-class frigates, has now been postponed until the first half of 2019, according to Die Zeit newspaper citing a military spokesman. The vessel should have joined the Navy in 2014, but the troubling post-delivery issues plagued the fate of the ambitious project.

The four Baden-Wuerttemberg-class vessels the Navy ordered back in 2007 will come as replacement to the ageing Bremen-class frigates. It is understood they will feature a powerful cannon, an array of anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles as well as some stealth technologies, such as reduced radar, infrared and acoustic signatures.

Gideon Levy is a bit of a philosopher king although, sitting in his postage stamp garden in a suburb of Tel Aviv, straw hat shading mischievous dark eyes, there's a touch of a Graham Greene character about Haaretz's most provocative and infamous writer. Brave, subversive, sorrowful - in a harsh, uncompromising way - he's the kind of journalist you either worship or loathe. Philosopher kings of the Plato kind are necessary for our moral health, perhaps, but not good for our blood pressure. So Levy's life has been threatened by his fellow Israelis for telling the truth; and that's the best journalism award one can get.

He loves journalism but is appalled by its decline. His English is flawless but it sometimes breaks up in fury. Here's an angry Levy on the effect of newspaper stories: "In the year of '86, I wrote about a Palestinian Bedouin woman who lost her baby after giving birth at a checkpoint. She tried at three different [Israeli] checkpoints, she couldn't make it and she gave birth in the car. They [the Israelis] didn't let her bring the baby to the hospital. She carried him by foot two kilometres to the Augusta Victoria [Hospital in east Jerusalem]. The baby died. When I published this story - I don't want to say that Israel 'held its breath', but it was a huge scandal, the cabinet was dealing with it, two officers were brought to court..."

Then Levy found ten more women who had lost babies at Israeli checkpoints. "And nobody could care less any more. Today, I can publish it and people will yawn if they read it at all. [It's] totally normalised, totally justified. We have a justification now for everything. The dehumanisation of the Palestinians has reached a stage in which we really don't care. I can tell you, really, without exaggeration, if an Israeli dog was killed by Palestinians, it will get more attention in the Israeli media than if 20 Palestinian youngsters would be shot dead by snipers on the fence - without doing anything - in Gaza. The life of Palestinians has become the cheapest thing. It's a whole system of demonisation, of de-humanisation, a whole system of justification that 'we' are always right and we can never be wrong."

Last year, Desiree Collins, a 52-year-old St. Paul resident, learned the hard way what can happen when a K9 officer loses control of his dog. St. Paul police officer Thaddeus P. Schmidt claims he lost control of his K-9, Gabe, when it attacked Collins, ripping her arm into shreds. The entire incident was caught on the body cameras of the officers involved and now, the taxpayers of St. Paul are shelling out over a half million to pay for the officer's negligence.

The City Council and Collins' attorny, Andy Noel met behind closed doors this week to discuss and reach the settlement, according to the Star Tribune.

"She's pleased and she's glad that she can put this lawsuit behind her and move on with life," Noel said.

According to the Tribune, the deal was compelled by a decision issued by U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in August finding that police violated Collins' civil rights, said St. Paul City Attorney Lyndsey Olson. The City Council will formally vote to approve the settlement at a future meeting.