4 hours ago
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It took just eight minutes.
Thieves broke into the Louvre on Sunday while tourists were perusing art. They made off with jewelry said to be of incalculable worth.
My colleagues have been reporting on one of the most dramatic heists this century — how thieves pulled it off, why they did it and what precedents there are for this kind of brazen burglary. Here’s what we know.
How they did it
With a truck, a ladder, a disc cutter and some scooters.
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At 9:30 a.m., the thieves parked a truck under the windows of the Apollo Gallery. Then they climbed up an electric ladder from the back of the truck. (This truck-mounted ladder — a monte-meubles — may look odd or suspicious to non-French people, but it’s a pretty common sight on the streets of Paris, where it is used to lift bulky furniture through apartment windows.)
To break into the gallery, they carved the glass with the disc cutter, setting off the security alarm. They threatened guards with the disc cutter and smashed two display cases while the Louvre’s staff members evacuated the museum.
The robbers grabbed a royal sapphire necklace, a royal emerald necklace and a diadem worn by Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III. See their entire haul here.
By 9:38, the thieves had mounted two high-powered scooters waiting for them outside. They drove away.
Why they did it
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The thieves weren’t after oil masterworks. They stole only jewelry — tiaras, earrings and necklaces. Experts say that means they probably wanted the diamonds, stones and precious metals. (One tiara, which once belonged to Queen Hortense, contained 24 Ceylon sapphires and 1,083 diamonds.) Those are easier to offload. Emeralds can be reset in new pieces. Gold can be melted down.
In that sense, the Louvre heist wasn’t really art crime, Vernon Rapley, a former leader of the London police force’s art squad, told my colleague Alex Marshall. It was “commodity theft.”
Commodity thieves don’t worry about leaving some valuable pieces behind. The robbers at the Louvre didn’t bother with high-profile and easily identifiable pieces, like the Regent and Sancy diamonds, which would have been tricky to resell, even broken up.
The robbery has raised questions about whether the Louvre could have been better protected. Labor unions at the museum said they had previously warned about technical and staffing issues, particularly among security guards.
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Is this common?
It happens more often than you may think!
National Museum, Oslo, 1994: Like the burglars at the Louvre, two men climbed a ladder and broke a window. They stole Norway’s best-known painting, “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. It took them less than a minute, and they left a note: “A thousand thanks for your poor security.”
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2000: On New Year’s Eve, a thief (or thieves) dropped through a skylight, filled the gallery with smoke and left minutes later with Cézanne’s “View of Auvers-sur-Oise.” It has not surfaced.
Bode Museum, Berlin, 2017: Thieves stole a giant gold coin worth several million euros, rolling it out in a wheelbarrow.
CLOUD COVER
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Early yesterday morning, people around the world struggled to check in for flights, watch Hulu, wire money, play Fortnite, order McMuffins and, most important, read The Times. (Unbiased!) Our publishing software wouldn’t work, and one of my London colleagues, Claire, trekked to another colleague’s house to send Monday’s newsletter.
It doesn’t take much to crash the internet anymore. In this case, it was a glitch at Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud provider, at a site in Northern Virginia. Instead of managing their own servers, most businesses pay cloud companies like Amazon to do it. Much of the modern internet lives and dies by AWS; it supports more than a third of the 100,000 busiest websites in the world.
Yesterday’s disruption was the biggest digital-services outage since last summer, when a buggy software update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike grounded planes and shuttered businesses for days. The fallout then wasn’t limited to tech workers. Travelers missed trips; retailers couldn’t make sales; bystanders couldn’t call 911. Companies lost billions.
Meltdowns like these are possible only because the internet is more interconnected than ever. Thousands of companies use the same third-party programs (like CrowdStrike) and send their data to the same third-party cloud providers (like AWS). “People have been putting more and more of their eggs in the same basket,” said Mehdi Daoudi, founder of the web-monitoring company Catchpoint.
With infrastructure concentrated among just a few big players that seem to prioritize profit over security, users are vulnerable. An issue at a single one, in a single location, can paralyze the economy. — Evan Gorelick
THE LATEST NEWS
Troop Deployments
A federal appeals court said President Trump could deploy Oregon National Guard troops to guard an ICE center in Portland, for now. Further legal action is likely.
A judge in Chicago questioned officials about whether the government had violated a court order by using tear gas as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Trump is redefining how presidents use the American military, explains David Sanger, who covers the White House and national security. Click below to watch.
Government Shutdown
The transportation secretary said air traffic controllers should expect to stop getting a paycheck next week if the government shutdown continues.
Some states with Democratic governors have adopted a mirror image of a Trump administration tactic: They’re blaming Republicans for the shutdown on official websites.
More on Politics
The facade of the East Wing came crumbling down as construction began on Trump’s ballroom. The 90,000-square-foot ballroom will transform one of the most recognizable buildings in the world and nearly double the size of the structure.
The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to a federal law that bars drug users and addicts from having a gun.
The U.S. and Australia signed an agreement that would give the U.S. access to Australia’s rare earth minerals. China, which mines and processes most of the world’s supply, recently limited exports.
The administration offered to steer more federal money to a handful of universities if they signed a compact aligning with Trump’s priorities. Nearly all have said no.
Middle East
Vice President JD Vance is traveling to Israel, as the Trump administration rushes to shore up the fragile cease-fire deal in Gaza.
American officials said they were increasingly concerned that Benjamin Netanyahu could dismantle the Gaza cease-fire deal.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the aid distribution effort run by U.S. security contractors, suspended its operations. Since May, hundreds of Palestinians had been killed trying to retrieve aid from the group, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Business
Amazon has a plan to automate 75 percent of its operations, internal documents show. That would mean robots replacing more than half a million jobs.
As tech companies build A.I. data centers worldwide, vulnerable communities have been hit by blackouts and water shortages.
More Americans are struggling to make monthly car payments, a sign that lower-income consumers are under financial pressure.
Subscribers canceled Disney+ and Hulu at more than twice the usual rate last month, after Disney briefly pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air.
Other Big Stories
India and the Indian diaspora celebrated Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, yesterday. In New Delhi, it’s also the start of pollution season.
Japan is getting its first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. She’s a heavy metal drummer and a hard-line conservative.
OPINIONS
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SPORTS
M.L.B.: The Los Angeles Dodgers will take on the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series after Toronto eliminated the Seattle Mariners. The series begins on Friday.
N.F.L.: The former running back Doug Martin died in police custody in California this weekend. He was 36. His family members said they had sought medical assistance and help from local authorities before his death.
Soccer: The U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica announced a joint bid to host the 2031 Women’s World Cup.
HISTORY, RESHAPED
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Over the past decade, as states and cities have pulled down Confederate memorials, a debate has raged. Should the statues be preserved and studied? Thrown in a junkyard? “Monuments,” a blockbuster art exhibition in Los Angeles, offers a third option: Let artists treat them as their inheritance and use the material as they like.
At the center of the show is a work by Kara Walker, “Unmanned Drone,” constructed from a monument of the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson that once stood in Charlottesville, Va. Walker has merged Jackson and his horse into a 13-foot-tall monstrosity — “an American centaur,” writes our art critic Jason Farago, “American in its bones and in its burdens.”
More on culture
Michelin stars have the power to make (or crush) a restaurant’s finances. An Apple TV show explores the secretive process behind how they are awarded.
The late night hosts discussed the “No Kings” protests.
THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …
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Katrin Bennhold is the host of The World, the flagship global newsletter of The New York Times.
