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US Returns Billionaire’s Plundered Artifacts to Jordan

Jordanian royal desert forces stand guard in front of Al Khazneh, Arabic for the Treasury, the most dramatic of many facades carved into the mountains, in the ancient city of Petra, Jordan. March 24, 2015 (photo credit: AP/Raad Adayleh)
Jordanian royal desert forces stand guard in front of Al Khazneh, Arabic for the Treasury, the most dramatic of many facades carved into the mountains, in the ancient city of Petra, Jordan. March 24, 2015 (photo credit: AP/Raad Adayleh)
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US Returns Billionaire’s Plundered Artifacts to Jordan

Jordanian royal desert forces stand guard in front of Al Khazneh, Arabic for the Treasury, the most dramatic of many facades carved into the mountains, in the ancient city of Petra, Jordan. March 24, 2015 (photo credit: AP/Raad Adayleh)
Jordanian royal desert forces stand guard in front of Al Khazneh, Arabic for the Treasury, the most dramatic of many facades carved into the mountains, in the ancient city of Petra, Jordan. March 24, 2015 (photo credit: AP/Raad Adayleh)

American authorities have returned nine looted artifacts to Jordan that were seized from a US billionaire collector as part of a landmark deal announced in December.

The artifacts were among 180 items seized by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as part of an agreement with collector Michael Steinhardt to surrender trafficked artifacts and avoid prosecution. The deal capped a four-year investigation into Steinhardt’s possession of looted antiquities.

The Jordanian Antiquities Ministry and the US Embassy in Jordan held a ceremony in Jordan’s capital, Amman, on Tuesday showcasing the objects that were “illegally smuggled from Jordan and obtained by an antiquities collector in the United States,” the embassy said in a statement.

“This is a testament to the United States’ commitment to help protect Jordan’s cultural heritage. With today’s repatriation of Jordanian antiquities, we are keeping this promise,” Ambassador Henry T. Wooster said, The Associated Press reported.

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Octopus Riding a Shark Caught on Camera

Researchers with the University of Auckland captured the rare sighting in the Hauraki Gulf near Kawau Island in New Zealand. (Credit: University of Auckland)
Researchers with the University of Auckland captured the rare sighting in the Hauraki Gulf near Kawau Island in New Zealand. (Credit: University of Auckland)
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Octopus Riding a Shark Caught on Camera

Researchers with the University of Auckland captured the rare sighting in the Hauraki Gulf near Kawau Island in New Zealand. (Credit: University of Auckland)
Researchers with the University of Auckland captured the rare sighting in the Hauraki Gulf near Kawau Island in New Zealand. (Credit: University of Auckland)

A rare sighting, captured on video off the coast of New Zealand and shared by scientists affiliated with the University of Auckland, shows a Maori octopus riding on top of a mako shark, Fox News reported.

The university said the December 2023 encounter "was one of the strangest things University of Auckland marine scientists had ever seen. It was a mysterious sight indeed... octopus are mostly on the seabed while short-fin mako sharks don’t [favor] the deep."

The university researchers had been looking for shark feeding frenzies in the Hauraki Gulf near Kawau Island when a mako shark with an "orange patch" on its head was discovered, the report said.

The researchers launched a drone and put a GoPro camera in the water and "saw something unforgettable: an octopus perched atop the shark’s head, clinging on with its tentacles," University of Auckland Professor Rochelle Constantine wrote in a piece for the university last week.

Constantine added that the researchers moved on after 10 minutes, so they weren’t sure what happened to the "sharktopus" next, but the "octopus may have been in for quite the experience, since the world’s fastest shark species can reach [30 mph]."