The_Times__6_March_2020

the times | Friday March 6 2020 2GM 31

The World at Five

How Franco’s old regiment

is on the march again

In depth and online today at 5pm

thetimes.co.uk

The walk was shown

in a two-hour live

primetime special on

ABC in the US.

Wallenda comes

from a family of

tightrope-walkers. For

his last big stunt, he

walked over Times

Square in New York

on live TV.

He has also crossed

the Grand Canyon, but

first came to global

prominence in 2012

when he walked a

tightrope across

Niagara Falls.

The 2,083ft Masaya

volcano, 15 miles south

of the capital

Managua, is one of the

country’s most active

and continually emits

corrosive sulphur

dioxide gas.

back.” He practised for

the volcano, one of

only a handful in the

world with a lava lake,

by walking blindfold

while wearing a gas

mask on a wire in a

smoky room.

with a safety line, had
been hard to navigate.
“They were
unpredictable,”
Wallenda said. “There
was a time when I was
taking a step and I felt
like I got knocked

room for anyone else. I thought that

wasn’t right. But evidently I was wrong.”

Mrs Warren lamented that the race

had narrowed to a battle between two

older white men, calling the question of

gender a “trap” for any women. “If you

say, yeah, there was sexism in this race,

everyone says, ‘Whiner’. And if you say,

‘No there was no sexism’, about a bazil-

lion women think, ‘What planet do you

live on?’ ”

Kamala Harris, 55, a senator from

California who ended her own run for

the nomination in December, said

there was “still a lot of work to be done

to make it very clear that women are

exceptionally qualified and capable” to

become the president of the US.

Mr Sanders has called on some of his

supporters to stop their attacks on Mrs

Warren after numerous insults were

levelled at her on social media for fail-

ing to pull out before Super Tuesday to

leave the left-wing lane clear for him.

Although her pitch was aimed more

at liberal voters, a survey by Morning

Consult showed that Mr Sanders was

the second choice of 40 per cent of her

supporters at a time when several other

moderates were still in the race.

Mr Sanders stepped up his attacks on

Mr Biden, with polls suggesting that he

could struggle on Tuesday. “He has

more than 60 billionaires contributing

to his campaign,” Mr Sanders said,

pointing to the Wall Street rally after

Mr Biden did better than expected on

Super Tuesday, winning ten of the 14

states. “The stock market went way

up... and you know why? Because they

thought Biden had a good day.”

Mr Biden hit back in a separate inter-

view, calling the remarks “ridiculous”.

Mrs Warren’s departure set the stage

for a showdown between the two men

at the next TV debate on March 15.

President Trump took delight in try-

ing to stir up animosities between his

Democratic rivals, tweeting: “Elizabeth

‘Pocahontas’ Warren, who was going

nowhere except into Mini Mike’s head,

just dropped out of the Democrat Pri-

mary... THREE DAYS TOO LATE.

She cost Crazy Bernie, at least, Massa-

chusetts, Minnesota and Texas. Prob-

ably cost him the nomination!”

Mr Bloomberg is to fund Democratic

campaigns in six key battleground

states in an effort to oust Mr Trump, his

aides said. He is expected to finance the

operation through an independent

committee not linked to any contender.

“We’re not done with you yet, Donald,”

he tweeted yesterday.

Warren quits race and

refuses to back Sanders

Elizabeth Warren ended her bid to

become the first female US president

yesterday and disappointed Bernie

Sanders by refusing to endorse him in

his battle against Joe Biden.

Mrs Warren, 70, bowed out after

coming third in her home state of Mas-

sachusetts when she fell victim to Mr

Biden’s Super Tuesday surge and lost

out to Mr Sanders’s more revolutionary

appeal to left-wing Democrats.

Her decision not to endorse either of

the men left in a two-horse race will

hurt Mr Sanders most, as he would

have welcomed help to rein-in Mr Bid-

en’s “Joementum” going into six more

state votes next Tuesday, including the

key battleground of Michigan.

Mr Sanders, 78, sharpened his attacks

on Mr Biden, 77, yesterday, painting him

as a creature of the corporate and polit-

ical establishment that the firebrand

senator was trying to overthrow.

Mrs Warren followed Michael

Bloomberg, the media billionaire, out

of the race to become the Democratic

presidential candidate after a disap-

pointing Super Tuesday. After briefly

leading the field in the autumn with her

message of breaking up big corpora-

tions and taxing the wealthy to fund

universal childcare, she failed to finish

first or second in any of the 14 states.

She will be remembered for skewer-

ing Mr Bloomberg so badly in his first

TV debate last month that he never

recovered, and for the “selfie lines” that

formed after her events when she

would stay behind for more than an

hour to pose for photos with supporters.

She began to fade after backing the

abolition of private health insurance

proposed by Mr Sanders and then pull-

ing back from such a dramatic plan.

Speaking outside her home in Cam-

bridge, Massachusetts, with her hus-

band, Bruce, at her side, Mrs Warren

said: “I was told at the beginning that

there are two lanes — a progressive lane

that Bernie Sanders is the incumbent

for and a moderate lane that Joe Biden

is the incumbent for — and there’s no

United States

David Charter Washington

ABC NEWS; JEFF DALY/ABC/GETTY IMAGES

Banksy ‘organised theft’ of own Paris work

Banksy may have organised the theft of

one of his own street artworks in

central Paris, police believe.

A man charged with stealing the

image of Banksy’s trademark rat, right,

from the back of a parking sign outside

the Pompidou Centre of contemporary

art told police that he had carried out

the removal at the request of the artist,

according to Le Parisien.

The suspect, named as Mejdi R, was

arrested last month after CCTV video

showed men using a circular power saw

to remove the part of the sign that

carried the stencilled Rat with a box-

cutter, in the early hours of September

2. The subversive street artist had paint-
   ed it in 2018 to mark the 50th annivers-
   ary of the Paris student uprising.
   In a search of the suspect’s home,
   police found two other works possibly

property cannot steal it from himself,”

he said.

Prosecutors are facing a conundrum

because the removal of the graffiti may

not satisfy the definition of theft as

Banksy preaches the principle that

“copyright is for losers” and

his work belongs to every-

one. The Pompidou does

not claim ownership

and only reported

damage to the street

sign. Mejdi R has

been charged with

“theft of cultural

property from

urban furniture”.

Two other

Banksies have dis-

appeared in Paris,

including a stencil at

the Bataclan theatre in

tribute to those killed by

terrorists there in 2015.

by Banksy, but not the Pompidou rat.

Mejdi R told investigators that he had

taken the image at the request of the

artist, who was an acquaintance. “In-

vestigators now favour this theory,” Le

Parisien reported.

Snatching one of his own works

would be in keeping with the

pranks for which the

artist is known. In 2018

his Girl With Balloon

self-destructed just

after it was sold for

more than £1 mil-

lion at a London

auction.

Antoine Vey,

the suspect’s law-

yer, is contesting

the charges on the

grounds that Mejdi R

had acted at the request

of Banksy.

“The owner of a piece of

France

Charles Bremner Paris

his work b

one. The

not c

and

dam

sig

b

“

p

u

Ba

app

inclu

the Ba

tribute to

terrorists the

with the

the

018

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uest

piece of

Back home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband Bruce, left, looking

on, Elizabeth Warren lamented that the choice was between two older white men

STEVEN SENNE/AP

Nik Wallenda

found the view of

lava from 2,000ft

mesmerising but

had to wear

breathing

equipment and

eye protection to

cross the Masaya

volcano in

Nicaragua. High

winds added to

his discomfort

Thewalk