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THE WORLD
WELLINGTON, New
Zealand — Authorities said
Monday that a measles epi-
demic sweeping through
Samoa continues to worsen,
with the death toll rising to
25, all but one of them young
children.
“We still have a big prob-
lem at hand,” Samoan Di-
rector General of Health
Leausa Take Naseri said in a
video statement.
He said more than 140
new cases of people con-
tracting the virus had been
recorded within the last day,
bringing the total to about
2,200 cases since the out-
break began last month. He
said about 20 critically ill
children remain in hospital
intensive care units.
Samoa declared a state of
emergency nine days ago,
closing all its schools, ban-
ning children from public
gatherings and mandating
that everybody get vacci-
nated. Teams of people have
been traveling the country
administering thousands of
vaccines.
The government also
shut down a private clinic
and is investigating how
hundreds of vaccines were
taken without authorization
and then sold for a fee.
The median age of those
who have died is 13 months,
according to government
figures.
The deaths include 24
children younger than 5,
11 of whom were younger
than 12 months. The other
fatality was a thirtysome-
thing patient.
In all, 679 people have
been admitted to hospitals
with the disease, accounting
for two-thirds of all recent
hospital admissions. A ma-
jority have been discharged,
with about 183 remaining in
hospitals.
“These hospitals are not
designed to deal with this,”
Dr. Scott Wilson told New-
shub in the capital, Apia.
“The minute you get hospi-
tals running at 200[%] to
300% capacity — I think it
speaks for itself. It’s incred-
ibly serious.”
Figures from the World
Health Organization and
UNICEF indicate that mea-
sles immunization rates
among Samoan infants have
fallen steeply from over
70% in 2013 to under 30% last
year.
Helen Petousis-Harris, a
vaccine expert at New
Zealand’s University of
Auckland, said the Samoan
government halted its im-
munization program for
several months last year af-
ter two infants died in
a medical accident involving
a vaccine.
Tonga, Fiji and New
Zealand have also reported
outbreaks of measles but on
a smaller scale than in
Samoa.
American Samoa, which
has declared a public health
emergency, is requiring that
travelers from Samoa and
Tonga prove they have been
vaccinated or are immune
from measles before being
allowed into the U.S. terri-
tory.Samoa measles
epidemic kills
24 children
The outbreak worsens
across the country,
with a total of about
2,200 cases reported.
associated press
collection in Europe have
jewels or sets of jewels been
preserved in this form and
quantity,” he said. “The val-
ue is really in the ensemble.”
Police said they were
alerted shortly before 5 a.m.
by unarmed museum securi-
ty guards who had spotted
two burglars inside the
downtown museum on video
surveillance cameras.
The first officers arrived
on the scene within minutes,
but the thieves had fled in a
waiting getaway car, which
managed to elude immedi-
ate attempts to find it in the
surrounding area and on theBERLIN — Thieves
broke into the Green Vault in
Dresden, Germany, one of
the world’s oldest museums,
early Monday, making off
with three “priceless” sets of
18th century jewelry that
German officials said would
be impossible to sell on the
open market.
The treasury of Augustus
the Strong of Saxony was es-
tablished in 1723 and today
contains about 4,000 objects
of gold, precious stones and
other materials on display in
Dresden’s Royal Palace.
Authorities said it ap-
peared the thieves had bro-
ken open only one glass case
containing three sets of
Baroque jewelry made up of
dozens of gems each.
“This is a bitter day for
the cultural heritage of Sax-
ony,” the state’s interior
minister, Roland Woeller,
told reporters.
He said the thieves “stole
cultural treasures of immea-
surable worth — that is, not
only the material worth but
also the intangible worth to
the state of Saxony, which is
impossible to estimate.”
Police said they have es-
tablished a special inves-
tigative team, code-named
“Epaulette” and comprising
20 specialist officers, to solve
the case. Museum officials
said the stolen sets included
intricate and dazzling
brooches, buttons, buckles
and other items.
Green Vault director Dirk
Syndram emphasized that
the collections in the muse-
um have “invaluable cultural
value” — particularly their
completeness.
“Nowhere in any othernearby highway, Dresden
police chief Joerg Kubiessa
said.
Police later confirmed
that an Audi A6 matching
the description of the get-
away car was found burned
in an underground parking
lot in Dresden.
“It’s not just the State Art
Collections that was robbed,
but us Saxons,” tweeted
Michael Kretschmer, the
governor of Saxony, where
Dresden is located. “One
can’t understand the history
of Saxony without the Green
Vault.”
Investigators suspectthat a fire at an electrical
junction box near the muse-
um, which took out the
streetlights at the time of the
theft, was linked to the
crime, police said. The out-
age affected lights in front of
a window through which the
thieves gained entrance,
somehow getting through
bars and safety glass to
reach the Jewel Room.
Security video released
by police shows two hooded
figures entering the room,
then smashing open the
glass case with an ax.
“In total, the entire crime
only took a few minutes,” po-
lice said in a statement.
Dresden’s State Art Col-
lections director, Marion
Ackermann, said it was im-
possible to estimate the val-
ue of the items.
“We cannot give a value
because it is impossible to
sell,” she said, appealing to
the thieves not to break the
ensembles into pieces. “The
material value doesn’t re-
flect the historic meaning.”
Woeller pledged that in-
vestigators would “do every-
thing in [their] power not
only to bring the cultural
treasures back, but to cap-
ture the perpetrators.”
Exhibition rooms at the
museum focus on treasures
featuring jewels, ivory, silver
and amber, among other ob-
jects.
One of its most famous
and precious treasures, the
Dresden Green Diamond, is
on loan with other valuable
pieces to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York
for an exhibit.
The 41-carat green dia-
mond was acquired by
Augustus III, the son of
Augustus the Strong, in 1742,
according to the museum.
The museum said the
purchase cost 400,000 tha-
lers, compared with the
288,000 thalers it cost to
build Dresden’s lavish Frau-
enkirche church around the
same time.Jewelry stolen from museum
Thieves snatch three
‘priceless’ sets with
cultural value from
a German palace.
GERMAN police at work in Dresden after the jew-
elry heist at the Green Vault. Police have set up a
special investigative team to solve the case.Photographs by Sebastian KahnertDeutsche Presse-AgenturTHE MUSEUM’Scollections were cultural treasures
made all the more invaluable by their completeness.associated press