BRAZIL:Thieves who stole a valuable Picasso painting from a Brazilian art museum this week didn't have to work very hard. On Friday, officials admitted there wasn't much of a security system in place at the cash-strapped museum.
Thieves broke into the Sao Paulo Museum of Art - home to one of Latin America's most important collections - before dawn on Thursday and grabbed Pablo Picasso's Portrait of Suzanne Bloch and Brazilian painter Candido Portinari's The Coffee Worker. In just three minutes, they used a hydraulic jack to prise open the main door and a crowbar to smash a glass door.
The museum, known as MASP, had no alarm system. Video security cameras captured some of the raid but, since it had no infrared capability, the images were obscure. Four unarmed guards were changing shift at the time.