Nepal: Can Sherpas compete with North Face?

As Nepal celebrates the 60-year “Diamond Jubilee” of the first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 this week, Tashi Sherpa is celebrating an anniversary of his own.

Ten years ago, he was in the import-export business, when, as he was walking down the street in Manhattan, a magazine cover honoring Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Staring back at him from the cover was his uncle, Ang Gyalzen Sherpa, whom Tashi soon learned had been one of the porters on the historic expedition. Soon after,Sherpa Adventure Gear was born. 

“When I started this brand it was a tribute to all the unsung heroes of Everest, the ones who have sacrificed years and their lives making it easier for people to climb and supporting them,” Tashi said. “Essentially, we are the story.”

The word "Sherpa" has become synonymous with the word "guide" or "porter" on Mt. Everest, though it refers to an Indo-Tibetan ethnic group numbering around 150,000 in Nepal. 

More from GlobalPost: Mt. Everest: Sherpas getting a bad rap

Today, Sherpa Adventure Gear is Nepal's own answer to world famous mountaineering apparel brands like Patagonia and The North Face. And even in Kathmandu, the brand competes successfully against the Chinese knockoffs sold in the backpacker ghetto of Thamel – where a Gore-Tex shell with The North Face label costs less than a third of Tashi's made-in-Nepal originals.

“Made in Nepal – because we make 80 percent of our production in Nepal – has been one of our big assets,” said Tashi. “People love the fact that we make our stuff in Nepal. We're very original, we're very authentic.” 

That hasn't been easy. Getting materials to landlocked, mountainous Nepal is costly. With poor roads and chronic electricity shortages, the infrastructure is not geared for manufacturers. And to make the high-tech apparel favored by international trekkers and climbers, Tashi spent two years just training a team of cutters and stitchers.

“At the drop of a hat, I could easily move all my allocations to Vietnam, Bangladesh, China, but having done that, I wouldn't be true to what I'm trying to do,” Tashi said.

“We try to be profitable, so that we can be more useful to more and more people. At any given time, there's more than 1000 people who are depending on us to be successful.”

Accolades have steadily rolled in. This year, Outside Magazine featured SAG's Imja ultralight shell among the 10 best jackets featured in its 2013 Summer Buyer's Guide, while other SAG products like the company's hand-knit Rani hat and Sonam baselayer top have gotten the nod in the past, not only from Outside but also Backpacker, UK Climbing and the like.

That makes the flagship store in Kathmandu a kind of mecca for outdoor gear freaks, even though everything from sandals to headlamps is available for a fraction of the price in Thamel. The reason? From branding to product design, SAG's small-volume products look cooler than the mass-market stuff, and the Sherpa name makes the company's apparel double as a souvenir from the Himalayas.

“We've managed to cover a fair part of the globe... at the last count maybe about 19 or 20 countries,” said Tashi. “But our own retail outlet in Nepal has turned out to be a great move for us.”

“It's allowed us to have a lot more brand exposure with all of the tourists and the trekkers that come to Nepal. They come through our doors, they see the products that we make, they buy it, they wear it, they go back to their country. That's been a great blessing for us.”

It's also been a great blessing for a handful of elite Sherpa mountaineers, whom SAG sponsors as professional athletes. Apart from providing mountaineers like Lhakpa Rita Sherpa, the first Sherpa to climb the world's “Seven Summits” with SAG swag to wear and test, the brand recognizes them for the feats they accomplish, sometimes as a routine part of their jobs as high-altitude guides.

“We're not a piece of fleece, we're not a porter, and I say that in all humility, without a trace of anger, because I can't expect the whole world to know who my people are,” said Tashi.

“It behooves us to tell the world who we are. That's essentially what Sherpa Adventure Gear is about.”

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Wanted in China: blind date with a millionaire

HONG KONG — Want to marry a millionaire in China? You'd better be hot and know how to clean house.

At least that’s the message from a high profile mainland contest, and not everyone's happy about it.

Last week in Jinan, China, more than 1,300 women wearing exquisite make-up and elegant dresses were asked to iron, cook, and tie a necktie. The goal: to qualify for a competition that will match 50 women with 50 millionaires for a blind date this July.

The men’s identities are kept secret, but their net worth isn't. Organizers say they're worth an average of $25 million each.

In addition to being judged on their looks and cleaning ability, the women were asked to draw a picture for psychologists to evaluate. Organizers also interviewed their friends and colleagues to assess their associates and connections.

While the women spared no efforts to show that they would make perfect wives, the millionaires were not at the scene. Only when the field has been whittled down to 50 women will the millionaires show up for a final party.

News and photos of the event have triggered heated debate on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service. Although it wasn't the first time a pageant-style matchmaking gig created controversy, many micro-bloggers bitterly denounced the Jinan event as a sign of money worship, a serious social illness in China, they argued.

One Weibo user wrote: “Are we going backward to the feudal society where the emperor held mass-selection to choose his concubines? What a lamentable society, all about money, all after money, do the women still have their self-esteem?’’

Cheng Yongsheng, the CEO of the Chinese Entrepreneurs Club for Singles (CECS), which has organized the blind date for four times since May 2012, defended the event by saying that it serves a real need that rich people have.

“I had the idea of creating CECS in 2012 originally because one of my friends who is also a millionaire told me how he is frustrated about finding a wife. It struck me for the first time that even these seemingly omnipotent rich guys have their weaknesses and vulnerabilities just like normal people,” Cheng said.

Moreover, Cheng believes it is even harder for millionaires to find wives because they are not as resourceful and sociable as people assume. More importantly, they are so engaged with their work that they don’t have the time and energy to go on dates.

That’s where Cheng saw the market potential.

In recent years, China has grown obsessed with money and millionaires, thanks to the country’s economic boom and to the skyrocketing list of rich people. A 2010 study jointly conducted by Reuters and Ipsos revealed that 70 percent of Chinese agree that money is the best sign of personal success — a higher rate than in almost any other country.

As such events seem to show, love and marriage aren't immune to the influence of money.

However, criticism of that mindset is equally impassioned.

In 2010, a contestant on a TV matchmaking program attempted to show her determination to marry a rich man by saying she’d “rather cry in a BMW car than smile on a bike.” That remark immediately frayed public nerves, and ignited widespread condemnation of such millionaire-baiting contests that are gaining momentum in recent years.

Some argued that such matchmaking transforms women nothing more than men’s property.

Ma Guanghai, a sociology professor at Shangdong University agreed. “Although I don’t want to be judgmental on this matter, I felt it very improper in the light of gender equality. Women are inspected from every angle in the strictest way possible while the millionaires enjoy the prestigious right of choice just because they are rich, ” Ma said.

For 27-year-old Liu Ying, who participated a blind date selection this April in Chengdu, however, matters aren't so complicated. “I haven’t thought of money-worshiping stuff or anything related to gender discrimination. I came just because I want to find a husband as good as myself, whether it is in terms of education, background or salary. I just want find the right one who can match me. ”

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Senate reaches deal on student loan rates: reports

Senators have reached a bipartisan deal to restore lower student loan interest rates, according to several reports.

Sources told The Associated Press the breakthrough came Wednesday evening, one day after lawmakers met with President Barack Obama on the issue at the White House.

The deal would offer students lower interest rates through the 2015 academic year.

After that, rates could reach as high as 8.25 percent for undergraduate students, 9.5 percent for graduate students and 10.5 percent for parents under the agreement.

More from GlobalPost: Have student loans? What the rate hike means for you

“It would save students in 11 million families billions of dollars,” Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander told Politico of the deal. “We’d like to be able to do this together and we hope that we can come to a decision right away because families need to make their plans.”

A formal announcement was likely on Thursday, and possibly even a vote.

Interest rates on federal student loans doubled to 6.8 percent on July 1 following a stalemate, and the Senate has been unable to pass a bill to deal with the issue. 

Reports first surfaced last week that a deal was close, though those talks hit a snag when initial cost estimates came in too high.

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Ed StockerJuly 7, 2013 06:07 Argentina is all about the black market Benjamins

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Hop into one of this city’s yellow-and-black taxis and the world-weary individual behind the wheel will probably do one of two things to initiate conversation. The first: slag off leftist president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. The second: bemoan a lack of US dollars in the country.

Argentina is a nation obsessed with the greenback. Their talk about the Benjamins peaked in October 2011, when the government initiated a clampdown on people buying the currency.

Fast-forward to present day and it is now effectively impossible for locals to buy, except when vacationing overseas — and even then they have to jump through a series of hoops.

With the country locked out of international markets — and reliant on the central bank as a lender — the state is desperate to keep its limited amount of US currency in circulation to help service overseas debt and infrastructure investment.

In May, the country even launched an ambitious tax amnesty project to try and get savers to exchange undeclared dollars for investment bonds in construction and energy. The bonds went on sale at the beginning of this month, with the amnesty due to last until the end of September.

Argentineans’ dollar love affair heated up in the 1990s, during the one-for-one exchange rate initiated by then-President Carlos Menem. The middle classes flocked to Miami, buying up the latest niceties to furnish their apartments. As the economy crashed, the dollar became the de rigueur saving currency — often stored under beds or in safety deposit boxes, away from the unreliable banks — when faced with an inflationary peso.

“Argentina has seen a significant amount of money leaving the system over the last five years, some $80 billion,” says Gabriela Nudel, head economist at Fundacion Capital, a financial consulting firm in Buenos Aires, referring to the dollar savings Argentineans tend to keep out of the banks.

“This made the government decide to tackle the issue in a questionable manner — by closing off the ability for the money to leave the system. This, of course, has created a parallel, or informal, market.”

Today an unofficial inflation rate of 25 percent and fears of another economic crash make Argentineans very uneasy. Even though they cannot buy legally, those with the ability to save — the middle class and above — are prepared to pay poor black market rates to have their precious dollars.

More from GlobalPost: Argentina tries to ditch the dollar

The flipside is that for foreigners entering the country with a strong currency, the informal market is hugely advantageous for buying local pesos.

Take Bautista, 36, a Chilean resident of Buenos Aires. He’s on his way to a “cueva,” or cave, what Argentineans call the illicit money changing offices that thrive throughout the capital. Like most people interviewed, he doesn’t want to give his last name.

“The truth is, I get a bit scared going to cuevas,” he explains, “because I know they’re not particularly safe places. At any moment the police could come and arrest both sellers and the buyers. It’s about going there to change my Chilean-bought dollars, having a quick conversation with the seller and leaving as quickly as possible.”

The whole exchange feels like something out of a movie.

He enters a French-style tower block in the downtown area, not far from Florida subway stop. At the desk, he has to give a password — a name —along with an office number. Stage one cleared and he’s pointed toward a wrought iron elevator and up several floors to an office.

The seller waits in the corridor to usher him into his tiny room. On the wall hangs a lone picture — a bucolic scene of horses in a field. At the far end of the room, a glass-fronted counter with a privacy partition. One side is for changing dollars to pesos; the other side completes the circle. Here there is no room for discussion: the seller presents Bautista with his “dolar blue” — or black market — rate, which he accepts. The money is counted and the customer leaves.

More from GlobalPost: Peru's king of counterfeit currency

As Bautista says, there are risks. In November last year, an American was shot, not fatally, as he arrived at a cueva, caught in the crossfire during a robbery.

The activity is illegal and unregulated: a currency exchange law from 1995 dictates fines or a prison sentence of between one and four years for the guilty financial institution. But in practice, authorities seem to turn a blind eye.

“It’s funny walking along nearby Florida street,” Bautista says. “It’s always full of people, many of them tourists. There are so many arbolitos [street hawks selling dollars] shouting ‘change’ and quoting the illegal rate. It seems as much a part of daily life there as touts selling tango show tickets.”

In May, the black market dollar rate reached double the official — a little over 10 pesos to the dollar as opposed just over 5 at the legal rate — meaning a foreigner with dollars could change money illegally at double the rate they’d get if taking money out of a cash machine with a foreign card.

For Bautista, despite the risks, he says that life becomes far more affordable with the black market rates.

Supporters of the government argue that Argentineans should stop nurturing the black market and have faith in their local currency. Saving in dollars is a concern of the elite, they say, while the poor have to worry about simply surviving on their peso salaries.

But for 31-year-old software consultant Ernesto, the dollar bind isn’t so much about saving as his ability to work efficiently. He has a roster of overseas clients and so charges in dollars — but when it comes to changing back into pesos for his bank account, he’s forced to do so at the official rate.

“The dollar situation makes software services companies [like mine] less competitive against our competitors in say Uruguay or Chile,” he says. “The dollar exchange rate remains at the same level, frozen by restrictions imposed by the government.

“But the price of everything here in Argentina continues to go up at 25 percent a year due to inflation. This means that you have to charge more and more dollars every time you send a proposal to a client abroad.”

From business moguls to bedroom hoarders — and despite the considerable restrictions — Argentina’s dalliance with the dollar is far from over.

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Brazil uprising: carnival's over, everyone

SAO PAULO, Brazil — When millions of Brazilians took to the streets last month in nationwide protest against everything from corruption to overpriced bus fares to a despised political class, the demonstrators chanted, “The giant has awoken.”

The reference came from a TV commercial for Johnnie Walker whisky that showed a stone giant arise from its slumber in Rio de Janeiro. That seemed appropriate given that the demonstrations were the biggest popular protests here in more than 20 years.

There was a feeling that citizens in the world’s fifth most populous nation had been taken advantage of for too long and that they were finally rising up and saying, “Enough is enough.”

A month on from that sudden outpouring of anger and the situation has calmed. Unlike in theMiddle East or North Africa, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets for months on end, or even in neighboring Argentina, where protesters shut down cities on an almost daily basis, Brazil’s anger was short-lived.

As he waited in vain for more people to turn up for an anti-corruption march last week, protester Paulo Resende fumed at the inertia of his countrymen and women.

“The giant has gone back to sleep,” he said.

There are many reasons the anger has died down.

Politically, the response was swift and befitting of a president who spent three years in jail for opposing the military dictatorship in the 1960s. Within hours of the biggest protests kicking off President Dilma Rousseff told Brazilians she was “proud” of their actions and that she understood “that people want more.” She then unveiled a package of measures designed to address some of the most widely held grievances.

Rousseff vowed to devote more money to health, education and public transport and try to negotiate a political reform bill with Congress that would make the country’s notoriously unreliable politicians more accountable.

In the days and weeks after, other leading figures also responded. Mayors and governors in dozens of big cities and states, including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, scrapped the proposed fare increases and announced they would freeze highway tolls, review or cancel existing transportation contracts and even sell their private helicopters to cut back on costs.

Congress, too, sparked into action, meeting into the wee hours to pass bills they had previously rejected or ignored, sometimes for years.

That rapid response is one reason the anger has cooled. Although the approval ratings of almost all the country’s top politicians plummeted — Rousseff’s decline was the swiftest for a sitting president in more than 20 years — Brazilians could see their government had heard their appeals and was taking action.

“The president listened to the voice of the streets and she called on people to get behind her and the pact she proposed,” said Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo. “She showed that she can lead. Life for Brazilians hasn’t changed. The economy is still doing well, unemployment is still at a historic low. When this period is over then people will once again see this government as positively as it did before.”

But activists say they are disappointed that the anger built up over decades dissipated so quickly.

Some said that Brazilians are just not used to demonstrating collectively. Others believe the end of the Confederations Cup soccer tournament robbed protesters of the international backdrop and attention. The fact that so many of the most recent protests ended in violence — either by rioters or by heavy-handed police — undoubtedly scared off many people.

And there is also a feeling that many of the demonstrators took to the streets not just to protest, but also to have fun. The marches were a political version of carnival, evenings spent meeting friends, painting faces and writing snappy placards that culminated with singing, dancing and drinking.

“It was just a big party for a lot of people,” Resende said. “It was the excitement of the moment. But at the end of the day, people have other priorities.”

The protests have not stopped entirely, but the ones that do take place are much smaller and more focused. At the start, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of the two biggest cities Sao Paulo and Rio and tens of thousands more in smaller towns and cities.

Now, a few thousand people gather at most, and their gripes focus on local or niche issues.

“The fact that bus fares were reduced is one of the reasons the momentum has died,” said Jairo Nicolau, a political scientist in Rio who watched and participated in the biggest demonstrations. “That was a unifying theme. But now there is a tiredness and you can’t get lots of people on the streets for generic issues, you need something for everyone to rally around.”

Some unions and groups have called for a national strike on Thursday, but Nicolau believes the era of the nationwide unrest is over and said they will be remembered in history books as “the June protests.”

But other analysts say that could depend on whether authorities make good on their promises and whether people see — or at least feel — a change.

Next year is an election year and the World Cup will be held in Brazil just three months before October’s presidential ballot.

What happens between now and then will determine the national mood. The giant might have gone back to sleep. But only time will tell if he is to be roused once again.

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Wire your Brain to Pick up a New Language Today

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In El Salvador, feared gangsters take up baking and chicken farming

ILOPANGO, El Salvador — Amid the musty smell of chicken droppings, Jose Vladimir describes his life as a gang member: hunger, beatings, friends murdered, a neighbor blown up by a grenade.

Now each afternoon, the 26-year-old feeds and cares for some 700 chickens on a small patch of forest in Ilopango, just east of this Central American country’s capital of San Salvador.

In several days, he and fellow members of the Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) — one of the largest and fiercest street gangs in the hemisphere — would slaughter their first chickens.

“The time that we execute them will be the most difficult,” Jose Vladimir said. “From when they were little chicks I’ve cared for them.”

Nearby, rival Barrio 18 gang members wear aprons and smash bread dough with their fists at a small house converted into a bakery.

The bakery and the farm were set up by Ilopango’s local government for young men who, though they may retain their gang affiliations and menacing head-to-toe tattoos for life, seek to leave behind a brutal past.

The tangled neighborhoods of Ilopango, and those of many other Salvadoran townships, have long been home to bloody turf wars between the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs.

Searching for a solution, successive Salvadoran governments launched iron-fist crackdowns that experts say caused prison populations to explode and gang members to become more hardened and violent.

More from GlobalPost: Interview with a gangster who's skeptical of the Salvadoran gang truce

In 2010, after gangs killed 17 people in attacks on buses — including one set aflame with passengers still inside — El Salvador’s President Mauricio Funes introduced a law that criminalized gang membership. The murder rate soared, with 4,308 people killed in 2011, the deadliest year since this country’s civil war.

The tide of violence began to ebb in March 2012 after the gangs announced a cease-fire, brokered by a team made up of a Catholic bishop and a former guerrilla fighter turned human rights activist.

El Salvador’s government at first denied involvement, but later acknowledged it had allowed several key gang leaders to be transferred to lower security prisons as part of the deal.

The truce has slashed El Salvador’s murder rate — previously second only to Honduras’s with about 14 killings a day — by more than half. Hoping to emulate its neighbor’s success, Honduras announced its own gang truce in May.

Early this year, IIopango was named El Salvador’s first peace zone, an area where local gang branches, known as cliques, pledged to cut down on violence and extortion.

MS-13 and Barrio 18 members painted over walls they’d tagged up. And with money from the town and the mayor’s encouragement, they built the bakery and the chicken farm to provide alternative employment.

The moves are evidence of the town’s commitment to upholding the nationwide truce, which has held for some 16 months. The gang truce is credited with saving some 2,000 lives across El Salvador — rare hope in a region wracked with gang killings. But with national elections looming early next year, it is showing signs of fraying: a fresh wave of violence killed 103 people in a single week this month.

More from GlobalPost: How Mexico got so fat

The conservative opposition, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), has run television ads accusing the governing left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) of making pacts with criminals, raising tensions all around. And experts say the recent spike in murders may be the gangs’ way of signaling that they still have control and power, regardless which party wins.

The Salvadoran gangs, also known as “maras,” have their roots in southern California but spread here after mass deportations by the United States in the late 1990s.

They found it easy to recruit teenagers from poor families displaced during El Salvador’s civil war. In this country of 6.1 million people, the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs swelled to about 60,000 members.

The same two gangs have taken hold in neighboring Guatemala and Honduras, which now suffer among the world’s highest homicide rates.

Before the truce, gang cliques openly battled for territory in Ilopango. In 2011, there were 110 murders there. Last year, there were 61. This past June, Ilopango recorded no murders at all.

Despite the notable drop in murders, many residents remain skeptical of the truce. The maras are still dealing drugs, locals say, and extorting bus drivers and businesses.

“The truce continues to be weak, fragile, and at any moment we could return to the past,” said Carlos Rivas, a pastor at a 20,000-member evangelical church here.

Ilopango Mayor Salvador Ruano was in no mood to celebrate his town’s peacemaking achievements at a recent news conference he called. Instead, he slammed his fists against the podium and fumed against President Funes, a former TV reporter, for failing to support them.

The Funes government has promised $72 million to El Salvador’s peace zones, of which there are now 16. But Ruano, of the opposition ARENA party, maintains that Ilopango has not received a cent.

“It is too bad that the president and his security minister have not appreciated what we are doing,” Ruano complained. “But we are going to keep moving.”

The town is straining to find ways to occupy its reformed gangsters.

Marvin Gonzales, a spokesman for MS-13 in Ilopango and head of the chicken farm, said he’d like to see the farm become a collective that offered schooling and other types of work. He acknowledged, though, that possibility seemed remote.

“This chicken farm can’t support everyone,” Gonzales said. “There are between 700 and 800 [MS-13 members] in all of Ilopango.” The farm employs 24.

Just a few minutes’ drive away from the farm, a group of Barrio 18 gang members, led by Jose Angel, 29, run their bakery out of a small house with walls painted blue.

“Look around, there are no guns here, no drugs,” said Jose Angel, who was wearing a polo shirt embroidered with the town’s crest. “No matter what political party comes, we are going to continue here.”

One recent afternoon, about 50 trays of “pan frances,” golden breakfast rolls, cooled on a wooden rack.

Wearing a threadbare white apron, 21-year-old Alex looked more like a California teenager, his hair spiked in a faux mohawk and a stud in his lip, than a hardened gang member. He had no visible tattoos.

But Alex, who asked that his last name not be used, said he had already seen three friends killed. Just before the bakery opened, one was shot in the head for having crossed an invisible gang boundary while selling avocados.

“I’m always going to feel anger” toward the MS-13, he said, feeding dough into a mechanical press. “Especially for what they have done to friends.”

Asked whether he would consider becoming a baker, Alex, who left high school in the ninth grade, turned the idea over in his mind.

“Maybe, if I learned to make other types of breads,” he said. “If I don’t study again, this could work for me. I just want to be like any other person, to just be someone.”

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A look at the world's most notorious art vandalism

There's art, and then there's the art of controversy. 

Green paint was found splashed all over the statue of the 16th US president and the surrounding marble floors of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC Friday morning. Although the damage is not reported to have been permanent, the act of vandalism has nonetheless drawn condemnation from the National Park Service, with a spokewoman calling the attack “heartbreaking.”

The nation’s capital is no stranger to the wrath of vandals, although their acts are relatively rare. The Vietnam Memorial and the city's statue of Christopher Columbus were both targets during the past few decades.  

Yet this phenomenon is hardly unique to the United States. GlobalPost takes a look at some high-profile cases of public defacement around the world — some of them sanctioned as public political expressions:

1. The Pieta, Michelangelo

Laslo Toth, a Hungarian man who was later sent to a mental hospital, attacked the marble statue 'The Pieta,' by Michelangelo, in Vatican City with a hammer in 1972.

2. Night Watch, Rembrandt

The painting withstood a knife attack in 1911 and was cut again in 1975, sustaining a final stroke of misfortune when German Hans-Joachim Bohlmann, said to be mentally unstable, threw acid on the canvas in 1990. 

3. Saddam Hussein Statue

A giant bronze statue of toppled Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's al-Fardous (paradise) square was pulled down in 2003, later replaced with the "Statue of Hope." Twenty days after US troops invaded Iraq, Marines pulled the statue down on live television.

4. Virgin and Child, da Vinci

"The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne," by Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci, has had a good life in Paris's Louvre Museum. But a sketch of the final painting, called the Leonardo Cartoon, was blasted by a shotgun in 1987 at the National Gallery in London. Luckily, protective glass defended against the bulk of the damage.

5. Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989, removing a political barrier between East and West Germany. What remains is mostly covered by street art or has been taken for exhibition.

6. The Little Mermaid

Copenhagen's world famous tourist attraction, The Little Mermaid, was varnished with red paint by vandals in May 2007. The statue has also been decapitated twice: first in 1964, when the head was stolen and a new one recast, and again in 1998.

7. Bridge at Argenteuil, Monet

This painting by the French impressionist Claude Monet was "severely damaged" by inebriated young vandals who broke into the Musee d'Orsay in Paris one night in 2007. The teenagers were said to have punched the canvas, causing a large tear.

7. Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), Elias Garcia Martinez

Who could forget this last piece on the list. After a well-meaning elderly woman from a small Spanish town botched her retouching project of the 100-year-old painting, the infamous restoration flop has since taken on a life of its own.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/culture-lifestyle/130726/the-worlds-most-notorious-art-vandalism

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