World Briefs

An Andy Warhol portrait of Elizabeth Taylor is to go under the hammer at a New York City auction where it is estimated to fetch £13 million.

Liz (hash)5 is owned by hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The 1963 silkscreen will be sold at Phillips de Pury at its contemporary art sale on May 12.

The portrait shows the screen legend smiling and her eyelids covered in blue eye shadow.

It comes from Warhol’s 1960s series of pop culture icons like Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.

The Journal says Mr Cohen bought the portrait for an undisclosed sum from the estate of a major New York dealer. He declined to comment. (PA)

Roma hate killings

Four Hungarians went on trial under heavy security and an intense media spotlight yesterday for the murder of six Roma in a series of horrific racist attacks that shocked the country.

The men, aged between 29 and 43, face possible life sentences if convicted of the premeditated murders of a father and his five-year-old son, a sleeping woman, and three others over a 13-month period between July 2008 and August 2009.

Prosecutors accused the four - a cook, a pastry chef, a sound technician and a soldier - of shooting their victims at close range.

They are accused of carrying out nine attacks in all, which were planned with “military precision”, prosecutors at the Pest Country Court said.

Five more people were seriously injured in these and other shootings, and a further 55 were hurt when the men threw Molotov cocktails at their homes, the prosecutors said. (AFP)

‘Night Stalker’ jailed

A former British taxi driver dubbed the “Night Stalker” was jailed for life yesterday for a 17-year campaign of sexual assaults on elderly men and women.

Delroy Grant, 53, was told he will spend a minimum of 27 years behind bars as he was sentenced for raping and sexually assaulting 18 men and women, although police fear the real number of victims could be as high as 500.

Judge Peter Rook told Mr Grant he remained a “very dangerous man capable of committing heinous crimes and causing incalculable harm”.

He said he had considered giving Mr Grant a whole-life sentence normally reserved for murderers and noted that his crimes were so serious they were not covered by normal sentencing guidelines.

“Your offending is in a league of its own,” he said, passing sentence at Woolwich Crown Court in south London. (AFP)

Last laugh

Elizabeth Taylor had the last laugh: She was buried a day after her death, aged 79 – but exactly 15 minutes behind schedule, on her strict orders.

She was laid to rest at the Forest Lawn celebrity cemetery outside Los Angeles, where less than two years ago she attended the funeral of her long-time friend, pop icon Michael Jackson.

“The service was scheduled to begin at 2 p.m., but at Miss Taylor’s request started late,” said a statement by her publicist released after the closed-door service had finished.

“Miss Taylor had left instructions that it was to begin at least 15 minutes later than publicly scheduled, with the announcement: ‘She even wanted to be late for her own funeral’,” it added.

The hour-long ceremony included a recital of the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem “The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo” and other readings by her children and grandchildren. (AFP)

Lenin’s niece dies

Olga Ulyanova, a niece of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin who wrote several books about her uncle and family, has died in Moscow. She was 89.

She was the last known living relative of Lenin, who never had any children, according to the government in the Ulyanovsk region, which was named after her family.

Ulyanova, a chemist and a writer, died in Moscow yesterday, the government said. The cause of death was not given.

Her uncle, Vladimir Ulyanov, took the name Lenin in 1901 while in exile near the Siberian river of Lena.

Sixteen years later, Lenin headed the Bolshevik revolution.

After he died in 1924, Lenin’s embalmed body was placed in a mausoleum on Red Square, where it is still open to the public.

After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Ulyanova repeatedly demanded the body remain there. (PA)

‘Mini-Madoff’ caught

Spanish police said yesterday they have arrested a man known as the country’s “mini-Madoff” and suspected of defrauding more than 100,000 people in 110 countries.

The man, identified only by his initials G.C.S. is “the highest-level person in a network that defrauded people of more than $300 million” (€212 million), police said in a statement.

It said the “mini-Madoff” was arrested in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia.

Bernard Madoff, 72, who touted himself as one of New York’s most successful money managers, was arrested in late 2008 and sentenced in June 2009 to 150 years in prison in what was described as one of the biggest pyramid schemes ever. (AFP)