Eddy Merckx, 74, the most successful man in the history of competitive cycling, is in intensive care after falling off his bike during a ride with friends in Belgium

The most successful cyclist in history, Eddy Merckx, is in intensive care after falling during a bike ride with friends.

The 74-year-old was admitted to Dendermonde hospital in Belgium on Sunday.

He suffered head injuries and remains in intensive care.

The most successful cyclist in history, Eddy Merckx, is in intensive care after a bike fall

 Merckx has a history of history of heart problems, and had a pacemaker installed in 2013, prompting doctors to be more cautious.

Further tests are set to take place on Monday. 

The Belgian won an unparalleled 11 Grand Tours in his career, including five Tours of France, five of Italy and one in Spain. 

The mystery of the missing Leonardo: where is Da Vinci’s $450m Jesus?

Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi"

 Will it or won’t it appear? This is the question being asked across the art world about the Salvator Mundi - the first Leonardo to be discovered for more than a century - as the Louvre prepares for its blockbuster da Vinci exhibition.

With just under two weeks to go before the show opens, there are now serious doubts as to whether the star of the exhibition will be included, as the Paris museum had hoped.

The world’s most expensive painting, a depiction of Jesus in Renaissance dress, which sold at auction in 2017 for $450m, would draw huge crowds. Described as a devotional counterpart to the Mona Lisa, Leonardo’s most famous work, it is said to have an “extraordinary, communicative presence”.

But the arts world is awash with rumours that its appearance looks unlikely. The Art Newspaper goes further and claims the painting will not feature. A spokeswoman for the Louvre told the Observer: “I confirm the Louvre has asked for the loan of the Salvator Mundi. We don’t have the answer yet and thus, don’t have any further comment.”

A no show would be the latest twist in the extraordinary saga of a painting that has attracted as much controversy, intrigue and division as it has critical acclaim. Questions over its authenticity have raged among art historians for more than a decade.

 Once attributed to the “school of Giovanni Boltraffio”, an early Renaissance painter who was a pupil of Leonardo, it was then upgraded to “a work by Boltraffio” when sold for £45 in 1958 at an auction in London.

A New York art historian and dealer, Robert B Simon, bought it from a New Orleans auction house for just $1,175 in 2005 and it was attributed to Leonardo in 2011.

“There are a host of reasons why I believe 100% in Leonardo’s authorship of the Salvator Mundi – most of all the inimitable style, unique iconography and phenomenal quality of the painting,” Simon told the Observer. “To these one could add the peculiarities of Leonardo’s technique, the relationship of the painting to autograph drawings, and the evidence of the work’s history. However, for me the most compelling reason to believe in the painting is neither scholarly nor scientific: it comes from its sense of profound spirituality that is conveyed from artist to viewer across 500 years.”

The American artist’s rare ‘blue’ oil on canvas was painted while Rothko was at the pinnacle of his career in 1957. The verdant hues of the artwork symbolizes the artist's experiential nature. He painted it just months before he began working on the famous Seagram Mural series. The artwork was sold at a Christie's auction.

 Today, though, some still question the attribution although not, according to Simon, the Louvre. “I know that the painting was requested for the Louvre exhibition – and as a work by Leonardo,” he said. “But obviously the decision about whether to loan it is the owner’s to make. And I have no knowledge of his decision.”

Indeed, who actually owns the painting is another source of contention. It was rumoured to be in the hands of the Abu Dhabi royal family. More recently there has been speculation that it is on the super-yacht of Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince who has been forced to deny his involvement in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The painting’s previous known owner was Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev who bought it on 3 May 2013 for $127.5m, following substantial restoration. Rybolovlev was later incensed to learn that his art adviser, a Swiss businessman, Yves Bouvier, had allegedly acquired the painting on 2 May 2013 from a consortium led by Simon in a private sale brokered by Sotheby’s. Court documents allege Bouvier paid Sotheby’s $83m before flipping the painting to Rybolovlev for a markup of more than 50%.

Rybolovlev alleges that Bouvier repeated the same trick with no fewer than 38 art masterworks he acquired, including paintings by Picasso, Gauguin, Klimt, Rothko and Modigliani. In a lawsuit launched against Sotheby’s for its part in what he alleges was “the largest art fraud in history”, Rybolovlev claims he was defrauded of more than $1bn.

Sotheby’s, which did not return requests for comment, contests the claims, as does Bouvier.

The extraordinary alacrity with which the painting’s value sky-rocketed, and the opaque circumstances surrounding its sale and ownership, have prompted calls for the art market to be more heavily regulated.

But Simon, who this week publishes a new book he has co-authored about the painting – Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi and the Collecting of Leonardo in the Stuart Courts – which examines evidence that its previous owners included English royalty, expressed scepticism.

“I don’t see how any art market regulation would have a bearing on the controversy surrounding the sale of the work. The sale of a valuable work of art like the Leonardo is governed by existing laws similar to and often the same as those that concern other valuable properties – whether art, gold, jewellery, land, a building, yacht, or an airplane.“

The Salvator Mundi was due to appear at the Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi last year. Then, as now, its no show invited speculation as to where it was really hanging. It could be that the most expensive painting in history – and arguably the most controversial – is not on display anywhere.

“I do not know where the painting is,” Simon said. “Although I had heard that some months ago it was being kept in a secure art storage facility in Switzerland.”

The Two Men Who Accidentally Brought Down the Berlin Wall

Berlin wall 

On Nov. 9, 1989, citizens of the German Democratic Republic were allowed to freely cross the border into the West, signaling the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a moment to celebrate freedom not seen since the wall went up in 1961.

It was also a moment that had been one giant mistake, effectively brought about by two men: an unprepared spokesman and a career soldier who’d had enough of his boss. 

The autumn of 1989 was a crisis point for the GDR. The USSR had begun to open itself up more to the West, and satellite states like Poland and Hungary were following suit. Under the leadership of General Secretary Erich Honecker, the GDR was maintaining an iron grip on its citizens. 

“We thought that the GDR would be the one Soviet satellite that would remain untouched because Honecker was the hard-man who just wouldn’t follow Gorbachev,” explains journalist Peter Millar, author of 1989: The Berlin Wall: My Part in its Downfall. 

But on Oct. 18, Honecker was forced to step down over the GDR’s 40th anniversary celebrations, which turned violent when police troops were sent in to quash peaceful protesters. Egon Krenz took over as head of state, and former journalist Günter Schabowski became the unofficial spokesperson for the Politburo. By Nov. 9, the government was two days into a three-day Central Committee meeting. 

As part of that meeting, the Politburo reviewed a new set of travel regulations for East Germans, drafted by four officers from the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry for State Security. The goal was to appear liberal on travel freedoms (in keeping with other Soviet satellite states), while still maintaining control over where GDR citizens went. The policy changes were discussed in the meeting in draft form at the end of the day, with a plan to announce on Nov. 10. 

For reasons that remain unclear, Günter Schabowski, then 60 years old, had missed most of the Central Committee meeting. He walked in shortly after 5 pm, one hour before a Western-style press conference. When Krenz handed him a draft of the resolution and an accompanying press release, Schabowski took it with him to the conference but didn’t look at it beforehand. As he would later explain to Deutsche Welle, “I can speak German and I can read a text out loud without mistakes.” 

This would have likely been fine if Schabowski had been speaking with members of the Soviet press. He was used to dictating the news to reporters after it had happened, controlling the message down to the last semicolon. Western press conferences were a whole new ball game, and near the end of the allotted hour, Italian journalist Riccardo Ehrman questioned Schabowski about travel legislation for East Germans. Schabowski delivered an um-laden three minutes of rambling, trailing off sentences.

And then he said it: “Therefore, we have decided today to enact legislation that will make it possible for every GDR citizen to emigrate through all GDR border crossings.” As the press shouted questions, Schabowski searched for the document that Krenz had handed him two hours earlier. When another reporter asked when the new legislation would take effect, Schabowski scanned the legislative draft. “As far as I know … Immediate effect!” 

Millar heard all of this while in his car, returning from an assignment in Rostock. He had suspected that the Central Committee meeting would lead to something, but “I had no idea quite what a significant thing it was.” Once the news broke, he “drove like hell” to get to the border crossing at Checkpoint Charlie. But it would still be a few hours before anything happened, as none of the checkpoints had been made aware of the changes in travel policy (planned or otherwise). 

At Berlin’s largest border crossing on Bornholmer Strasse, Lt.-Col. Harald Jäger was the senior officer on duty that night. At 46, Jäger had served his country for 28 years. He was almost halfway through a 24-hour shift when, shortly after 7 pm, a group of curious citizens had gathered at the checkpoint demanding to be let through. 

The crowds only grew as media reports began to circulate. Soon there were nearly 1,000 people at Bornholmer. Unsure of what to do, Jäger called his supervisor and was told to hold the line. As the crowds grew, Jäger called his supervisor back upward of 30 times. Finally, his supervisor called the Ministry for State Security and instructed Jäger to listen in. 

That’s when the border guard heard an exasperated minister wonder “whether Comrade Jäger was in a position to assess the situation properly.” For Jäger, after over a quarter of a century’s worth of unflinching service, this was his breaking point. He shouted into the phone, “If you don’t believe me, then just listen!” and held the phone to the open window. After hanging up, Jäger turned to his men: “Open the barrier!” 

The borders had been opened at Checkpoint Charlie by the time Millar arrived. He had known the checkpoint’s guard by sight, though he didn’t know their names. One recognized him, and warned the journalist that driving across the border was “going to be dreadful.” He gamely offered to watch his car while he walked across. 

Even amid all of the celebrations, however, the thousands of East Germans living it up in West Berlin that night didn’t think it would last. When Millar finally went home at 5 am, he thought, “I’m going to get some sleep, and by the time I wake up again, the border’s going to be closed.” 

But it wasn’t. Schabowski would soon find himself expelled from the party and later briefly imprisoned. Jäger, once the wall came down, was out of a job. Still, the cracks in the wall made by these two men proved to be beyond repair. 

Saturn's ice moon is spewing organic compounds that could precede life

This artist's rendering shows how thermal activity on Enceladus might be spewing dust into space that eventually falls into orbit around Saturn.

NASA's Cassini probe plunged into Saturn's atmosphere in Sept. 2017, but astronomers are still poring over the data it sent back to Earth before its demise. New research shows Cassini picked up "new kinds of organic compounds", the precursors to amino acids, when it passed through a plume of ice ejected by Saturn's moon Enceladus. The nitrogen- and oxygen-containing compounds are exciting because they suggest the subsurface ocean of the icy moon has, at the very least, the precursors for life to begin. 

The study, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on Oct. 2, details the hunt for these compounds with the Cassini spacecraft. 

The Cassini-Huygens mission, launched in 1997, spent approximately 13 years orbiting Saturn and studying the great ringed planet. It has provided Earthlings with some impeccable views of the planet and its moons -- and it has also provided a ton of new science to sift through. Discovering Enceladus spewed up icy particles and vapor into space, and that it has a global subsurface ocean, is a feather in Cassini's cap. 

The new discovery used data from Cassini's mass spectrometers, special instruments hooked up to the spacecraft which can separate out the atoms in a sample. By flying through Saturn's E ring, where some of the ejected ice from Enceladus ended up, the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) and Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA) could pick apart the mixture of molecules contained within. 

How did the organic compounds get in the ice plumes? Astronomers suspect that huge hydrothermal vents deep in Enceladus' ocean eject material from the moon's core. That mixes into the ocean water and eventually gets spewed out of these ice geysers into space. 

That means the compounds detected in the new research have their origins in Enceladus' big ocean. And, scientists think, if the hydrothermal vents on Enceladus work the same way as they do on Earth, then they could spur these compounds into becoming amino acids.

"If the conditions are right, these molecules coming from the deep ocean of Enceladus could be on the same reaction pathway as we see here on Earth," said Nozair Khawaja, a lead researcher on the project, in a press release. "We don't yet know if amino acids are needed for life beyond Earth, but finding the molecules that form amino acids is an important piece of the puzzle."

This isn't the first time organic compounds have been spotted on the ice moon. In June last year, using Cassini data, scientists from the Southwest Research Institute discovered some interesting chemistry happening in the icy moon's ocean. 

Scientists have been testing the waters of Enceladus for a number of years now, using the Cassini data to reveal more about the mysterious, frozen moon. Hopefully, we will one day get a chance to dive in. 

The haka: Why the New Zealand All Blacks perform the dance - and what the words mean

The haka, the fearsome dance performed by the New Zealand rugby All Blacks before every fixture, has become an iconic sight in world sport.

Here's what you need to know about the haka's origins, the meaning behind it and what the words attached to the dances performed by the All Blacks mean.

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What are the origins of the Haka?

Haka is the generic name given to all Maori dance and, rather than always being a war dance, it is traditionally a celebratory expression of vitality and identity.

According to Maori folklore, it was created by Tane-rore, the child of Sun God Tama-nui-to-ra and his wife, who is represented by the quivering hands that feature in the dance.

The war haka, or peruperu, was performed by Maori warriors before battle to intimidate enemies by demonstrating their fierceness and strength. However, today's performances are mostly without weapons, known as haka taparahi.

The haka is regularly used as a welcome greeting for distinguished guests to New Zealand 

The first Europeans to witness the dance in the 18th century were struck by its ferocity and passion, while Christian missionaries in the 19th century strove to eradicate it for conflicting with their beliefs, and replace Maori chants with hymns.

For many the dance is synonymous with New Zealand rugby, but it is also commonly performed at special social occasions and to welcome distinguished guests, such as on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's recent tour.

Haka performance clubs are common in schools in New Zealand, with the Te Matatini Maori performance arts festival hosting a competition every two years.

The most recognisable haka for rugby fans is Ka Mate, which was composed by a Maori chieftain in 1820.

Its association with rugby began with its performance by the "New Zealand Natives" in 1888, and it has gone on to underpin the All Blacks' unique identity in the sport.

The war haka was performed by Maori warriors to intimidate their opponents before battle (Getty Images)

Since August 2005, when it was debuted against South Africa, they have also often performed the new Kapa O Pango haka, written in tribute of the rugby giants.

Despite its global popularity, the haka's increasingly widespread performance has proved controversial, particularly with brands keen to capitalise on the All Blacks' commercial potential.

In 2011, the dance was often the basis for flash mobs promoting the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, prompting accusations of cultural appropriation from Maori leaders.

Peter Love, who runs an organisation protecting Maori reserves, said: "I'm concerned our Maori culture is being abused by the overuse and inappropriateness of the haka when it is performed outside special occasions.

"The haka in our culture is something which is regarded as special and should not be bastardised by sport."

What do the words of the haka mean?

Ka mate, Ka mate (the haka performed by the All Blacks from 1888 to 2006)

Ka Mate! Ka Mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!

Ka Mate! Ka Mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!

Tenei te tangata puhuru huru

Nana nei I tiki mai

Whakawhiti te ra

A upa … ne! ka upa …ne!

A upane kaupane whiti te ra!

Hi!

I die! I die! I live! I live!

I die! I die! I live! I live!

This is the hairy man

Who fetched the sun

And caused it to shine again

One upward step! Another upward step!

An upward step, another… the sun shines!

There are two versions of the haka performed by the All Blacks (Getty Images)

Kapa O Pango (the specially written haka performed by the All Blacks since 2006)

Taringa whakarongo!

Kia rite! Kia rite! Kia mau!

Hi!

Kia whakawhenua au i ahau!

Hi, aue! Hi!

Ko Aotearoa, e ngunguru nei!

Hi, au! Au! Aue, ha! Hi!

Ko kapa o pango, e ngunguru nei!

Hi, au! Au! Aue, ha! Hi!

I ahaha!

Ka tu te ihi-ihi

Ka tu te wanawana

Ki runga i te rangi, e tu iho nei, tu iho nei, hi!

Ponga ra!

Kapa o pango! Aue, hi!

Ponga ra!

Kapa o pango! Aue, hi!

Ha!

Let me go back to my first gasp of breath

Let my life force return to the earth

It is New Zealand that thunders now

And it is my time! 

It is my moment!

The passion ignites!

This defines us as the All Blacks

And it is my time! 

It is my moment! 

The anticipation explodes!

Feel the power

Our dominance rises

Our supremacy emerges

To be placed on high

Silver fern!

All Blacks!

Silver fern!

All Blacks!

aue hi! 

Ancient Reptilian 'Hand' Muscles Have Been Found in Human Embryos

Back when you were just a fingernail-sized blob in your mother's uterus, your tiny baby flippers had far more in common with the paws of ancient reptiles than you might be comfortable with.

Special immunostaining techniques carried out by scientists from Washington's Howard University and Sorbonne University in Paris have revealed new human atavisms – remnants of anatomy that evolution never completely ditched – which help to explain how our bodies evolved.

"It used to be that we had more understanding of the early development of fishes, frogs, chicken and mice than in our own species, but these new techniques allow us to see human development in much greater detail," says Howard University evolutionary biologist, Rui Diogo.

Limb muscles thought to have been abandoned by our mammalian ancestors 250 million years ago never completely went away. In most of us, the muscles dissolve long before we're born, but these 'reptilian' remnants can still be found in some adults.

In the new study, by scanning the tissues of more than a dozen embryos and young foetuses in high-res 3D over a number of weeks, the team found tiny muscles in the hands and feet of a 7-week-old that were no longer visible by week 13.

While it's not the first time researchers have looked closely at the coming-and-going of tissues in tiny humans, most research on limb muscles has focussed on earlier weeks, missing crucial changes.

As the researchers watched, around a third of the muscles in the embryo's hands and feet simply withered away over the days, or fused with their neighbours. 

Crucially, the fact some of them exist at all in our lifetime is a little surprising. Muscles called dorsometacarpales were thought to have been thrown out of the mammalian instruction manual back when evolution was still coming up with our prototypes around 250 million years ago.

The study's record of limb development also challenges the assumption that lower limbs are more or less copies of our upper limbs.

While in adults the two parts have similar-looking structures that make it seem like a cut-and-paste job, the order of development of key muscle groups suggests the limbs came to resemble each another's forms over time.

Evolution is a funny thing. While we often use language that imagines it has some grand plan, biology is more often than not a process of trial and error, where random changes modify structures to potentially suit new functions.

Evolutionary biologists have the task of teasing apart the process of this modification, often by looking for anatomical structures to compare between modern organisms.

Finding the faint traces of ancient muscles early in our development adds crucial details to the story of our evolution.

As Diogo explained to BBC's Michelle Roberts, the way organisms adapt isn't a simple process of throwing out an old plan in favour of a new one.

"Probably, we cannot just say in evolution, 'Look, I will delete from scratch, from day zero, the muscle going to digits two, three, four, five, and I will just keep the one going to the thumb'."

To add to the complexity, the researchers note adults with certain chromosomal disorders don't lose these muscles, either as a seemingly healthy variation or as a result of congenital malformation.

"This reinforces the idea that both muscle variations and pathologies can be related to delayed or arrested embryonic development, in this case perhaps a delay or decrease of muscle apoptosis, and helps to explain why these muscles are occasionally found in adult people," says Diogo.  

"It provides a fascinating, powerful example of evolution at play."

Applying similar staining and imaging technology to other stages in human development could yet reveal other structures long thought to have faded from our bodies.