The heart-stopping moment when a man sticks a gun in the face of a politician on live TV — and the politician fights back

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A top Bulgarian politician had a brush with death on Saturday after a gunman pointed a pistol at his head as he delivered a televised speech. 


Ahmed Dogan escaped unscathed after falling to the ground as security tackled the gunman in front of stunned meeting hall of 3,000 people in the capital, Sofia. No shots were fired, but the Sofia Globe reports that sources say the gun might have jammed.

“Ahmed Dogan is in good health. Everything is under control," Ceyhan Ibryamov, a member of Dogan’s political party, said after the incident.

Dogan has led Bulgaria’s ethnic Turkish party for 25 years. He was in the middle of a speech to party members when a man in a black coat rushed the stage, holding a gun at arm’s length pointed directly in the face of the 58-year-old politician. Delegates and security jumped on the man, and television footage shows them beating, kicking and punching him.
Police arrested 25-year-old Oktai Enimehmedov, a Bulgarian man and ethnic Turk from the Black Sea town of Burgas. Enimehmedov was also carrying two knives, officials said.
It was unclear how he got past security and into the meeting hall. His motive was not known.
Bulgarian officials say Enimehmedov has a criminal record for drug possession, robberies and hooliganism.
Saturday's incident was the most serious attack on a  politician in post-communist Bulgaria since ex-prime Minister Andrei Lukanov was shot dead near his home in 1996.

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The great Freud rip-out rip-off: Gallery admits tearing pictures out of catalogue and selling them as original works of art

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A gallery has admitted ripping out pages from a Lucian Freud exhibition catalogue and selling them as original works of art on eBay.


The Rockingham Gallery, which boasts it has hundreds of authentic works by some of the world’s greatest artists, was last week selling ‘Amazing Lucian Freud Etchings’ for up to £150 each.
It was also offering what it describes as ‘original works by David Hockney, Henry Moore and Sir Peter Blake’.
But a Mail on Sunday investigation has established that the Freuds are actually pages from an exhibition catalogue printed in 1991.
Lawyers acting for the artist’s estate have now ordered the gallery to remove all of the images from both its eBay ‘shop’ and its own website.
The gallery, which is based in Market Harborough in Leicestershire, had been inviting customers to bid for what it called ‘Vintage Freud Etchings’, with asking prices of between £50 and £150.
The gallery described the ‘works’, which included Girl Sitting, Man  Posing, Naked Man On A Bed and  Ill In Paris, as ‘vintage etchings’  and ‘outstanding prints’ at ‘unbelievable prices’.
It assured customers they could be confident they were buying from a genuine gallery.
But experts last night said the descriptions were grossly misleading and insisted that a genuine etching  by Freud, whose sitters included the Queen and Kate Moss, would sell for between £10,000 and £145,000.
Frankie Rossi, director of Marlborough Fine Art, the country’s leading dealer in Freud etchings, said: ‘I think it’s outrageous what this gallery has done. I take exception to the description of the works as vintage etchings because they are neither vintage nor etchings.
All Lucian’s etchings, unlike these images, were numbered, signed and registered. If this gallery wants to sell pages from an exhibition catalogue, it should label them honestly.’
Art dealer Philip Mould, who co-presents BBC1’s Fake Or Fortune? with Fiona Bruce, said: ‘I think the gallery was clearly trying to pass the works off as original by implication. Unfortunately, this is becoming all too common because of the semi-anonymous nature of online sales. It is called trapping and people get very excited because they think they have found something special. It is like a virus sweeping through the art world.’
All of the Freud images were taken from the catalogue Lucian Freud: The Complete Etchings 1946-1991, which was produced for a retrospective of Freud’s work at the Thomas Gibson Fine Art gallery in London in 1991.  The catalogue, originally priced at £25, has high-quality embossed pages.
Simon Hall, owner of the Rockingham Gallery, last night said he had never set out to deceive anyone and insisted the description of the works as vintage etchings was a mistake.
He said: ‘This should not have happened and we should have described the images as “after an etching”.
‘The images are from the 1991  exhibition catalogue. We sell the actual page. I still think it’s fair to describe it as a print because a print is anything that is reproduced on paper.’ Mr Hall said the Freud works had been fairly priced and some sold for as little as 99p. He also insisted all the other works on the gallery’s home page and in the eBay shop had been properly labelled.
Hugh Gibson, a director of Thomas Gibson Fine Art, said: ‘When we produced this rather fancy catalogue in 1991, we could never have foreseen something like this.’
Deborah Rider, a senior solicitor with the law firm Goodman Derrick, which represents the Freud estate, confirmed the gallery had been asked to take down the images. She said: ‘Our client does take very seriously any activity which may be deemed to be a breach of copyright.’

Pak policy not dictated by US, says Indian FM

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There have been reports from Washington, which wants to see no distracting surprises ahead of the second-term swearing in of President Barack Obama and his new team, that the United States would hate to see trouble brewing between India and Pakistan.
“We are not influenced by anybody, including the US,” Mr Khurshid told a private news channel. “Neither does America pressurise us nor does it have any expectations that it can do so.”
It is true though that be they “America, Russia, China, Canada, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Malaysia, we speak to everybody,” Mr Khurshid said. He was asked whether India was influenced by America in matters concerning Pakistan.
Asked if there was a need to review the dialogue process between the two countries, he said reviews periodically happened as these were inbuilt in the dialogue process.
Mr Khurshid said the decision to send back Pakistani players who were visiting for the Indian Hockey League, saw the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party speaking in one voice.
“It is the society’s decision, and the government accepts the decision of society, because it is a democratic government,” he said.
The foreign minister said India would not relent on its demand for the handing over of 20 terrorists, he did not identify, who are believed to have sought shelter in Pakistan. “There is no way that we will let go of the pressure. In all our talks with them, we maintain these demands as a part of our strategy.”
Separately, Mr Khurshid participated in a debate on India’s foreign policy, which was tempered by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Intervening in the discourse on Pakistan in the wake of the flare-up on the
Line of Control, Congress scion Rahul Gandhi on Saturday made some plain speaking, saying taking tough steps and showing emotions were two different things.
Mr Gandhi, who spoke in the sub-group on ‘India and the World’ at the party’s brainstorming conclave in Jaipur, reportedly told the participants that while tough steps were taken in some situations, decisions cannot be guided by emotions, sources said.
“We should take tough steps but not be emotional in our response,” he said as the majority of participants sought unspecified tough action against Pakistan.
Mr Khurshid advocated “balance” in dealing with “such provocative” situations.
He pointed out that India conducted its diplomacy in such a way that it maintained friendly relationships with countries, which were sworn enemies between themselves.

New Jersey mom attacked with knife while shopping with her baby at Bed Bath and Beyond

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A New Jersey mother shopping with her baby at a Bed Bath and Beyond store was brutally attacked by a knife-wielding man with a history of violent behavior, police say.


Kerri Dalton, 29, had been upgraded Saturday from critical to good condition after being stabbed more than 20 times in the grisly, and apparently random, Thursday attack at a store in Middletown, N.J. Both Dalton’s lungs were punctured but her 5-month-old baby, who was in a baby carriage, was unharmed, authorities say.

Dalton was somehow able to phone 911 as she laid bloody on the ground, and police later arrested Tyrik Haynes, 19, in connection with the attack. He was charged with attempted murder and is being held on $1 million bail.

Haynes, of Middletown, N.J. was facing trial next month on charges of torching a cat to death. Authorities told the Asbury Park Press that Haynes adopted the cat online, then took it in its carrier into the woods near his home on Christmas Eve and set the helpless animal ablaze using a lighter and an aerosol can.
We found the cat a week and a half ago in the wooded area,” said Victor Amato of the Monmouth County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “It was dead from the burns.”

Authorities are still unclear why Dalton was targeted, but her family said the new mother was fighting through.

"She's holding up, she's strong, she's a fighter, she's my best friend," Dalton’s husband Roger told CBS New York on Friday. "I want to thank everyone for keeping us in their prayers."