Stolen art on show

In the world of crime, art theft is a boom industry with around £3 billion worth stolen across the globe every year.

In Britain alone there are some 50,000 works of art registered as stolen - and that number is rising.

Now the Metropolitan police is to use the internet to publicise many of the most intriguing and valuable missing works on its books - from the £50 million da Vinci stolen in an audacious raid, to a park bench with catwomen figurines swiped from Battersea Park.

Currently a limited number of items can be viewed on the Met's website but detectives at the specialist art and antiques unit - the only squad of its kind in the UK - hope to throw open the entire database to the public.

Among the more eye-catching items are the ancient jade ornaments stolen from the Victoria and Albert Museum last month and da Vinci's Madonna With The Yarnwinder, stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland last year.

However, not all of the pieces sought by the Met would find a home in a museum.

Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, head of the unit, said: "We have a lot of items on the database that would not usually be considered art - like toy cars and even an iron bridge taken from a man's home -