PARIS (AP) — Kim Kardashian will testify in person at an upcoming trial over a 2016 heist in Paris in which armed robbers allegedly tied her up and locked her in a bathroom while they stole millions of dollars' worth of jewelry, her lawyer said Tuesday.
Ten suspects accused of armed robbery, kidnapping or other criminal charges are going on trial in Paris from April 28 through May 23. The October 2016 robbery took place in a Paris apartment where Kardashian was staying for Paris Fashion Week.
“We can confirm that Ms. Kardashian will be testifying in person at the upcoming French criminal trial involving the 2016 incident in which she was bound and robbed at gunpoint by a number of masked assailants," lawyer Michael Rhodes said in a statement provided to the AP.
The reality TV star and entrepreneur has ″tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system″ and ″wishes for the trial to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case," the lawyer said.
FILE - Kim Kardashian arrives to the Serena Williams fashion show during Fashion Week in New York, Sept. 10, 2019. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
MOSCOW (AP) — Zurab Tsereteli, a prominent Georgian-Russian sculptor known for colossal, often controversial, monuments, died early on Tuesday at 92.
His assistant Sergei Shagulashvili told Russia’s state news agency Tass that Tsereteli suffered cardiac arrest.
Tsereteli was born on January 4, 1934, in Georgia, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time, in the capital Tbilisi.
In the 1970s, Tsereteli became an art director with the Soviet Foreign Ministry, traveling the world and decorating Soviet embassies. In between, he worked on Mikhail Gorbachev’s summer house in Abkhazia.
“I don’t know why they chose me,” he said in a 2013 interview. “But I went through a good school - maybe that’s why. A school that synthesised architecture and monumental art! I had good teachers.”
In 1989, a monument designed by Tsereteli was erected in London. In 1990, another one was unveiled in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Tsereteli moved to Moscow and built a rapport with then-mayor Yuri Luzhkov. The relationship guaranteed him regular and lucrative commissions. He designed several squares and two metro stations in central Moscow and put up a dozen massive monuments around the city.
Tsereteli’s distinctive style prompted much criticism over the years, both in Russia and abroad. Critics argued his pieces were too colossal and didn’t fit in the city's architecture.
One of his most controversial monuments was in 1997 when a 98-meter-tall Peter the Great standing on a disproportionally small ship was erected a block away from the Kremlin, prompting protests from Muscovites.
Tsereteli tried to put up a similar monument of Christopher Columbus in New York. Russian media reported in 1997 that current U.S. President Donald Trump supported his plans at the time, but city authorities rejected them. After being turned down by Columbus, Ohio and Miami as well, the statue found a taker in Puerto Rico.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2003 awarded Tsereteli Russian citizenship “for special services to the Russian Federation.”
In 2010, Luzhkov was dismissed as Moscow mayor. The new city administration preferred Western architects to work on ambitious urban projects, and Tsereteli was shifted to the sidelines.
However, Tsereteli remained president of the Russian Academy of Arts and director of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, which he founded in 1999.
His legacy includes some 5,000 pieces in Russia, Georgia and several other countries.
FILE - Georgian and Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli speaks at the opening of a series of busts of Soviet leaders that he created in Moscow, Russia, on Sept. 22, 2017. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE - Georgian and Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli poses during the opening ceremony of the 41st Moscow International Film Festival in Moscow, Russia, on April 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)
