Briefly

UNITED STATES

Maryland selected for FBI headquarters

The administration of US President Joe Biden has chosen a location for a new FBI headquarters in Maryland, the General Services Administration confirmed Wednesday. The suburban Washington location was selected over nearby Virginia following a sharp competition between the two states. The site is planned for Greenbelt, about 20 kilometers northeast of Washington, The Associated Press reported. Consideration for a new headquarters has been going on for more than a decade, and in recent months the FBI has expressed concern over the site selection process. In July, the GSA announced changes in the criteria for choosing the new location.

Picasso's artwork fetches $139m

One of Pablo Picasso's masterpieces, Woman with a Watch, was sold at auction Wednesday night for $139.3 million by Sotheby's in New York, the second-highest price ever achieved for the artist. In a jampacked room at the venerable auction house, it only took a few minutes of telephone bidding for the 1932 painting depicting one of the Spanish artist's companions and muses, the French painter Marie-Therese Walter, to be sold. Femme a la montre had been valued at over $120 million before going on the block, according to Sotheby's. Julian Dawes, Sotheby's head of impressionist and modern art, called the Picasso canvas "a masterpiece by every measure".

SOUTH KOREA

Robot crushes worker to death

An industrial robot grabbed and crushed a worker to death at a vegetable packaging plant in South Korea, police said on Thursday, as they investigated whether the machine was defective or improperly designed. Police said early evidence suggests that human error was more likely to blame rather than problems with the machine itself. But the incident still triggered public concern about the safety of industrial robots and the false sense of security they may give to humans working nearby in a country that increasingly relies on such machines to automate its industries. South Korea has had several accidents involving industrial robots in recent years.

Agencies via Xinhua