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Necklace robbery via Shutterstock

French police arrest member of infamous 'Pink Panther' jewel-theft gang

The suspect had been on the run since breaking out of jail in Switzerland in May.

FRENCH POLICE HAVE arrested a suspected member of the infamous ‘Pink Panther’ gang of international jewel thieves who had been on the run since escaping from a Swiss prison in May.

Police and judicial sources said today that the 47-year-old, born in Montenegro but with French and Macedonian citizenships, was detained at his home in the southern town of Bedarrides, about 15 kilometres north of Avignon, on Monday.

A police source said the suspect tried, but failed to escape out a window during his arrest.

A former member of the French Foreign Legion, the suspect was wanted in several countries, including under two international arrest warrants issued by Switzerland, where he had been in prison for armed robbery.

A judicial source said judges in Nimes would examine the Swiss extradition request within 10 days.

Jailbreak

On May 14, the suspect escaped with four other prisoners from the Bois-Mermet prison, near Lausanne, using weapons and tools passed to them from accomplices on the outside.

Two of the escapees were detained the next day and two remain at large, including a 45-year-old Serb also believed to be a member of the Pink Panthers.

The Pink Panthers emerged from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia to become the most successful jewel thieves in the world.

According to Interpol, they have since 1999 snatched jewels with a value in excess of €330 million in heists that are often executed with breathtaking speed and precision.

Nickname

They gained their nickname with a raid on a London branch of Graff Diamonds in 2003, in which two of them posed as wealthy would-be customers, persuading staff to open doors for them before helping themselves to diamonds worth millions.

Although one of the robbers was overpowered at the scene and another later arrested, only a fraction of the diamonds were recovered, one of them hidden in a pot of face cream.

That was reminiscent of a scene from the 1975 film “The Return of the Pink Panther” and resulted in a nickname that the gang members themselves adopted, wearing pink shirts for a subsequent raid in Zurich.

Read: These are the world’s biggest jewel heists in the last decade >

Read: Cannes jewel heist worth over €100 million >

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    Mute John
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:20 AM

    We have duel climate control in the car and my wife still isn’t happy because apparently the cold air from my side keeps seeping over to her side. Bloody air doing what it wants.

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    Mute Jimmy Jim-Jim
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:41 AM

    Tell her that violates thermodynamics.

    149
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    Mute Dave Nolan
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:45 AM

    “Lisa, get in here! In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!”

    228
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    Mute Jimmy Jim-Jim
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:14 AM

    So in terms of air-conditioning it’s better for the environment to set it by female standards. Wouldn’t that mean in Winter it’s worse for the environment when more heating would be required? 6 of 1 etc.

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    Mute Neil
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:52 AM

    Shush with your logic. Logic has no place in these arguments.

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    Mute gkrell
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    Aug 4th 2015, 10:22 AM

    Air-conditioning is a social construct anyway. Men and women are equal.

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    Mute Deborah Behan
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    Aug 4th 2015, 11:13 AM

    Air conditioner? Pff, ’twas far from air conditioners I was raised! Never had air conditioners in any office I ever worked in :(

    53
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    Mute Jimmy Jim-Jim
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    Aug 4th 2015, 12:30 PM

    My office is currently a converted shipping container with a desk and a wobbly chair. Does a draft count as air conditioning?

    47
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    Mute Grot Master
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    Aug 4th 2015, 2:40 PM

    Ha, gkrell, poor auld Caitlin Jenner is in for a quare hop so. Or does the perceived colder temperature only kick in after the removal of the pump and toolbag?

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    Mute mr magoo
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:21 AM

    Journal are you deliberately trying to sabotage yourself ? All these ridiculous nonsense stories and no real news and the number of views are hugely down ? It seems people actually do want to kniow whats going on in the world and don’t want to be drip fed utter nonsense like morons. You’re definitely not a newspaper just another peddler of useless bullshit for the dumb plebs like an online Sun, but you seem to be making a concerted effort to push more in that direction. Guess I should delete the app.

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    Mute Jane Black
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:49 AM

    Look at the regular commentors to see who you’re dealing with. The Sun is superior which is some feat.

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    Mute Noran Mc Evoy
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:21 AM

    Sexist air conditioning? Jesus christ will you f*ck off

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    Mute John R
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:16 AM

    Fascinating. However running your air con at a higher temperature is not very energy efficient. The solution to feeling cold is to wear more clothes. An office temperature of 25C seems very high and would make most males very uncomfortable. Drop the temperature and dress more warmly. 19C seems about right!

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    Mute AntiTreeHugger
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:16 AM

    Really…. Fu€k off with this nonsense sexist bull sh!t. So we’ve to redesign air conditioning now because it’s sexist and not equal.

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    Mute John Curry
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:24 AM

    the only problem with ac is most women don’t know how to use the controls

    149
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    Mute Le Tigre
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:17 AM

    Like I wrote on the story about middle-eastern female body builders; there is literally nothing feminists won’t whinge about.

    Put a top on if you’re cold. People who are too hot can’t strip off in the office.

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    Mute neuromancer
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:18 AM

    Women are always cold, nothing to do with the air conditioning.

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    Mute Shane
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:10 AM

    First world problem non story

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    Mute Peter Gavin
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    Aug 4th 2015, 10:00 AM

    Jesus Aoife, you’re really scraping the bottom of the “feminist outrage” barrel with this one.

    113
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    Mute Stephen Bernard
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:19 AM

    I’d be more concerned that there are loser out there researching this. Maybe they could do something more productive – like scooping up leaves from people’s driveways for free.

    112
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    Mute Duck Knight
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:33 AM

    Come on now. How else are feminists going to be outraged? They need to be coddled.

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    Mute Lester Jeffcoat
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    Aug 4th 2015, 10:09 AM

    Fake tan is racist!

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    Mute Mark Ryan
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:38 AM

    Jesus Aoife do you ever do any real journalism.. your two efforts at it this morning are miserable gutter trash attempts at feminism… surely when your promoting the feminist agenda you should attempt to find actual cases where there is a problem, not where some clown doesn’t like a photo, and telling us air con( which helps you breath in an office ), is sexist

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    Mute Mark Ryan
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:51 AM

    Suggestions for your next few articles aoife….such sexist things as- ice cubes, snow, winter, cold wind. you can even start your own cute hash tag. #coldisbold

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    Mute David Grey
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:39 AM

    I prefer room temperature to be 18°c to 20°c- anything above this I find uncomfortable and get headaches!

    48
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    Mute Stephen M
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    Aug 4th 2015, 10:42 AM

    Men need to keep their balls cool for health reasons.

    So stick a jumper on or deal with a new trend of men going commando in a kilt and knee high desk fans humming under desks everywhere.

    Nobody likes sitting in ball soup.

    43
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    Mute Joanna
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:22 AM

    Huh. There’s a lady I work with who gets sick every time the aircon comes on. I wonder if that’s related. I think everyone fights over the room temperature though. Too hot for some, too cold for others. Can’t keep anyone happy.

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    Mute Jimmy Jim-Jim
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:45 AM

    It recirculates viruses and bacteria. it’s like being in a plane.

    40
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    Mute Stephen M
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:47 AM

    That generally has to do with dirty filters in the air con. They need to be serviced once per year usually but no one really does anything about them until they break.

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    Mute andrew haire
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    Aug 4th 2015, 10:03 AM

    And it’s a power hungry monster. Go to the back of any modern office block. They are huge and getting bigger.

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    Mute Seth Cheffetz
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    Aug 4th 2015, 11:41 AM

    It’s with noting that a female colleague can put on a jumper while us males cannot strip off our shirts. The that SHOULD be on the cooler side. This is not even taking in to account that in general the business dress code allows females to wear clothes that keep them much cooler.

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    Mute Micheal S. O' Ceilleachair
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:33 AM

    So in the office environment there will be either hot males and cool women or cool males and hot women.

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    Mute thejynxeffect
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:25 AM

    Air conditioning is the most sexist thing I’ve ever heard of!

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    Mute The Viking
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:09 AM

    C.N.S …… Possibly…

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    Mute The Viking
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:14 AM

    ( Cold nipple syndrome )

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    Mute Stephen Doyle
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:28 AM

    Nothing wrong with being sexy

    24
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    Mute John Fergus
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    Aug 4th 2015, 10:41 AM

    for f*** sake the politicly correct thought police must be running out of things to complain about if this is what they are dragging up.

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    Mute Arthur Pewty
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    Aug 4th 2015, 12:22 PM

    do writers on this site work on a view quota / comments quota? seems like pushing some sort of anti-male angle will smash that.

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    Mute Drew TheChinaman :)
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:33 AM

    Here they turn it down by an extra 5-7 degrees so women can make a statement about how much money their husbands make with expensive fur coats and Moncler ski jackets that it’s too warm to even consider wearing outside…

    It’s pretty sexist… Not to mention environmentally devastating

    20
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    Mute Martin Hayes
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    Aug 4th 2015, 10:31 AM

    I can’t agree with the assertion that offices in the 1960s would have been male dominated, the opposite would have been the case.

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    Mute John Mulligan
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    Aug 4th 2015, 9:51 AM

    Get an outdoor job!

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    Mute Fear Uisce
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    Aug 4th 2015, 11:25 AM

    if it’s too cold put more clothes on. simples.

    17
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    Mute The whistler
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    Aug 4th 2015, 10:07 AM

    Expect a campaign to bring an end to this outrage to start shortly

    It will be called “turn the headlights off”

    amirite?

    17
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    Mute Jack DaCosta
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    Aug 4th 2015, 12:36 PM

    Put on some clothes girls.
    Simple.

    16
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    Mute Michael O'connor
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    Aug 4th 2015, 11:22 AM

    jesus christ what next?

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    Mute catherine
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    Aug 4th 2015, 12:33 PM

    Actually picking a temperature and sticking with it as a norm makes sense. Women’s bodies change temperature wise during their monthly cycle and also during menopause. Both of these times women can usually prefer cooler temperatures. This is a biological fact. Most air conditioning is adjustable anyway. I worked in a predominately all female section a

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    Mute catherine
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    Aug 4th 2015, 12:35 PM

    Sorry phone went ape for a second and posted comment before I finished. Anyway in a mostly female section there was always open warfare about the temperature of the office. Older women wanted cool younger women wanted heat. I wanted peace but it never happened.

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    Mute Matt Connolly
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    Aug 4th 2015, 12:11 PM

    so they could come with a “hot-flush” setting?

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    Mute Mrs Shalakalananaka
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    Aug 4th 2015, 12:07 PM

    Not true according to Frozen.

    5
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    Mute Mrs Shalakalananaka
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    Aug 4th 2015, 12:20 PM

    But on a more serious note, what a stupid article, designed solely for the purpose of clickbait, so we can all have a good laugh at feminists(not that the article even has anything to do with feminism, but that’s where certain people are always going to go for a b*tch). It’s articles like this, and then the comments from the eejits who get predictably outraged about how awful feminism is that make any kind of progress in terms of gender equality(whether for women or men) next to impossible to achieve. And all for the sake of a few extra clicks into an article. I’ve stopped reading other websites for this type of crap, I actually expected a bit more from the Journal. Maybe that makes me the dope. =\

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    Mute Stephen M
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    Aug 4th 2015, 3:11 PM

    ” I actually expected a bit more from the Journal. Maybe that makes me the dope. =\ ”

    Yup. Especially when they run this article and then a few scrolls up the front page, there is one about ISIS setting market prices for sex slaves.

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    Mute Sue Cronin
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    Aug 5th 2015, 8:28 AM

    God Almighty this article is only telling us the results of this guys research and is clearly done in a tongue in cheek manner.
    Not every article about women has a feminist agenda yet inevitably these women centred articles attract guys who rant and rave to their hearts content about said women and feminism. Grow up fellas.

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    Mute Garwig
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    Aug 4th 2015, 1:21 PM

    Boil your head

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    Mute Darren Sweeney
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    Aug 4th 2015, 11:19 PM

    Some offices have placebo thermostats that lets people adjust temp to keep them satisfied but actually changes nothing. Fools

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