Paintings by greats such as Vincent Van Gogh and Camille Pissarro from the art collection of late Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor are to be sold.

A total of 38 of the actress’s artworks are to come under the hammer next month at Christie’s in London. They include the Van Gogh, which dates back to 1889 and is expected to fetch up to £7 million. The work, Vue de l’Asile de la Chapelle de Saint-Rémy (see picture), was completed the year before his death.

Also included is Pissarro’s Pommiers d’Eragny which is estimated to go for up for £1.2 million.

Other leading works from her collection include a self-portrait by Edgar Degas which should fetch up to £450,000, while an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir is valued at up to £250,000.

Sheep shearing as sport

The New Zealand Farmers Federation has called for sheep shearing to become an Olympic sport, hailing top wool-clippers as world-class athletes.

With the World Shearing Championships set to be held in the North Island town of Masterton in March, federation spokeswoman Jeanette Maxwell said shearing was now a bona fide sport that deserved international recognition.

“Surely, time has come to elevate shearing’s sporting status to the ultimate world stage?” she said in a statement. “One way would be to make shearing a demonstration sport at a Commonwealth Games, if not, the Olympics itself.”

Maxwell said competitive shearers clip up to 700 sheep over an eight-hour period, in a feat that has been likened to running two marathons back-to-back.

“I can also testify to the physical effort shearing takes . . . (top shearers) are athletes who take it to another level,” she said.

The New Zealand’s government’s elite sports funding body, SPARC, already recognises shearing as a sport, providing it with grants to help run competitions.

Escapes in underwear

A prisoner serving 23 years for attempted murder was on the run yesterday after escaping from a penitentiary in Hiroshima clad only in white underwear, Japan’s first jailbreak in more than two decades.

Li Guolin was exercising in a prison yard when he stripped off his convict’s uniform and used scaffolding erected by builders to climb over a five-metre perimeter fence. A security guard said Mr Guolin “fell on his rear and turned over. Then he ran off at a steady trot”.

At the time the temperature was around 4 degrees C (39 degrees F).

Mr Guolin, 40, was sentenced to 23 years in 2005 for breaking into a house and shooting at a police officer.

Tunnel dug to raid ATM

Thieves spent six months digging a tunnel to steal money from an automatic teller machine – but probably only got away with €7,200.

The gang excavated the 30-metre long tunnel under a car park and part of a shop in Manchester, England, in order to raid the cash machine inside the building. They installed lighting and roof supports, and were also believed to have drilled tiny holes into the floor of the store through which they poked telescopic cameras to check their progress.

“In all my years of service, I have never seen anything quite as elaborate as this... These people had obviously spent a long time plotting this crime,” a police detective said.

But a source at the store told Britain’s domestic Press Association news agency that there was only just over £6,000 in the machine.