A painting hidden since the 1980s faces $3 million auction

A painting removed from a New York City closet in 2026 is expected to sell for more than $3 million at an auction taking place this week. The piece had been stashed away since the 1980s before it was dug out of the storage space earlier this year.

The discovery follows a week of varied global news that touched on technology, politics, and conflict. In the technology sector, reports of an affair between an AI billionaire and a suspected Chinese spy created chaos in Silicon Valley. Separately, a Microsoft outage disrupted the workdays of millions of employees. By Friday, a ground stop for air travel across the United States led many people to feel that something unusual was happening.

In the Middle East, Israeli forces killed a top Hamas commander during an airstrike on southern Gaza. In Europe, NATO announced it is scaling back high-level meetings. The alliance will not hold a leaders’ summit in Albania next year as originally planned. Southeast Asian leaders opened their annual summit in Manila, the Philippine capital, for three days of talks.

In North America, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins spoke about the meaning of being the first Democrat elected governor in Alaska in nearly 30 years. In South America, millions of Argentines gathered to see Pope Leo XIV. Many said the words that moved them most often belonged to his predecessor, Francis, who was also their compatriot.

In Africa, the Ebola outbreak remains out of control six months after it was announced. Health officials have recorded more than 11,000 cases, with nearly half proving fatal. Meanwhile, the region’s transition to electric vehicles is following a different route than wealthier markets, with motorcycles and three-wheelers emerging as practical alternatives to passenger cars. In college football, Kentucky and LSU played their way out of the College Football Playoff with consecutive losses.