Crusading environmentalist Pan Yue is tipped as a front-runner to be the new environment minister, a development that could restore some government credibility.

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The contemporary arena provided collectors with extraordinary choices, including a plethora of paintings by today's ''it'' artists, a cabal of young Chinese painters including Liu Ye, Yue Minjun and Chen Zhen.

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Among the highlights will be Wang Keping's 1979 wooden sculpture of a man being strangled, "Chain, " and Yue Minjun's "Liberty Leading the People, " his 1995 nod to Eugene Delacroix's revolutionary tableaux from 1830.

WSJ: Swiss Collector Gives $163 Million in Art to Hong Kong

The An Yue Jiang had attempted to make delivery to landlocked Zimbabwe, where violence continues in a dispute over election results, via South Africa but was blocked by a court ruling preventing transport of the arms across the country.

CNN: Mugabe trying to steal election, says U.S. official