Five men have been arrested in Croatia for allegedly stealing €2m (£1.7m) worth of jewellery owned by a member of Qatar’s royal family from Venice’s Doge’s Palace in early January.

In a case that baffled police, the thieves managed to deactivate the alarm system, break into a reinforced case, seizing some earrings and a brooch before blending into the crowds during the final day of the four-month Treasures of the Mughals and the Maharajahs exhibition, which brought together a collection of five centuries of Indian craftmanship. Local police called on experts to help try to establish how they managed to pull off the heist in the Chamber of the Scrutinio, one of the rooms within the vast premises of the palace, which was once the residence of the former republic of Venice’s rulers and now attracts up to 4,000 visitors a day.

Four Croatians and one Serbian, aged between 43 and 60, were arrested in the Croatian capital, Zagreb. One of the suspects was said to be part of the Pink Panthers, an international network of jewel thieves. Investigators had been on the hunt for the same suspect following the robbery of €10m worth of jewels during an exhibition in Basel, Switzerland in 2011.(theguardian)…[+]

Michelle Obama says she felt “lost and alone” after suffering a miscarriage 20 years ago and underwent in vitro fertilization to conceive her two daughters. “I felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were, because we don’t talk about them,” the former first lady said in an interview broadcast on Friday on ABC’s Good Morning America breakfast show. She told the television station: “We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken.”

Obama, 54, said she and her husband Barack Obama had fertilization treatments to conceive daughters Sasha and Malia, now 17 and 20. “I realized that as I was 34 and 35, we had to do IVF,” she said in excerpts from an ABC special set to air on Sunday. “We had to do IVF.” The revelations come before Tuesday’s release of Obama’s memoir Becoming.

In the new book she criticises Donald Trump for “encouraging wingnuts and kooks” and she writes openly about everything from growing up in Chicago to confronting racism in public life and becoming the country’s first black first lady.(theguardian)…[+]

SHELDON and Lystra Jackson, the parents of sick baby Sheenece Jackson, are racing against time to shed over 100 pounds to save their only daughter. They have less than five months to do it.

Sheenece must have a liver transplant before she turns two next March, and with no other donor coming forward, doctors have told her parents, who share her O-positive blood type, they are compatible donors. The one obstacle is their weight. Lystra has already lost approximately 30 pounds through diet and exercise – but is appealing to anyone who can help them to shed the pounds faster to call her.

She needs to lose another 50 pounds before having tests to prove her compatibility with her 19-month-old daughter, who has been diagnosed with biliary atresia. This disease causes cirrhosis of the liver. In Sheenece’s short life she has already undergone two liv­er biop­sies, three blood transfusions and surgery to re­move her gall­blad­der. Every week she makes at least three vis­its to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, for different tests. Her eyes are yellow with jaundice, her skin itches and she is only a little heavier than the 12 pounds she weighed at birth. She also retains fluid, which accumulates in her abdomen, causing it to swell.(Trinidad Newsday)…[+]