German police announced Monday that they are on the lookout for thieves who stole an entire vineyard of grapes last week. 
 
 According to the police report, “The unknown offenders … used a professional harvesting machine over the entire surface” to collect the grapes on Wednesday afternoon. They had taken 3,527 pounds used to make Riesling wine valued at around $9,200, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported. 
 
 Thomas Lohnes/Getty 
 
 Authorities in the vineyard-rich Rhineland-Palatinate region in western Germany are asking the public for help in catching those responsible for the crime, which reportedly took place right next to the parking lot of a major supermarket. 
 
 Grape theft has occurred in Germany before, and cases are almost never solved. Following the theft of 350 kilograms of grapes, enough to make 350 bottles of wine in 2016, police told Die Welt that “no one is surprised when a harvester drives through the vineyards in the fall.” People are usually unaware that a crime is being committed and vineyard owners don’t check on the fruit daily, meaning that police cannot always determine when the theft occurred. 
 
 Authorities in another European country, however, have found a way to catch those responsible for stealing grapes. “Horses are the best way of getting around places where you can’t go by car,” Nicolas Krust, a member of the “green brigade” in the Haut-Rhin region of eastern France said, according to Agence France-Presse. 
 
 Krust is one of 16 officers on horseback that patrol the region, looking for people who litter, ticket illegally parked cars and watch for potential grape thieves. Locals believe that crime has fallen because of the unit. 
 
 “For several years we haven’t had many problems with theft which is linked to the presence of the green brigade,” Roland Martin, the mayor of Wuenheim, said 
 
 In the United States, two-and-a-half tons of grapes were reportedly stolen overnight in a Virginia vineyard last month, leaving the owner of Firefly Hill Vineyards with a loss of $50,000. 
 
 “I can handle losing a crop to Mother Nature, but to come in and take my crop in the middle of the night and steal what we’ve worked for eight months, that’s disheartening,” David Dunkenberger said, according to The Washington Post. 
 
 “You work your whole year for the harvest day and we were about to have that. We were almost there, and somebody stole it,” he said, mentioning that he has no idea who could have committed the crime or what they were planning to use the grapes for. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Image copyright Renate007/Wikimedia Commons Image caption Deidesheim lies at the heart of Riesling country 
 
 Police in southern Germany are looking for thieves who stole an entire vineyard of grapes from under their noses. 
 
 The criminals made off with the field full of grapes by "running a professional harvesting machine over the entire vineyard", the police said, according to the local Rheinpfalz newspaper. 
 
 Most galling of all for the police is the fact that the vineyard does not lie on some remote hillside, but is to be found right next to the car park of a major supermarket on the outskirts of the village of Deidesheim. 
 
 The resourceful thieves struck at some point between teatime last Wednesday and sunset the following day, netting 1,600 kg (3,527 lb) of the white grapes used to make Riesling wine. The haul is estimated to be worth 8,000 euros (£7,110; $9,272). 
 
 Image copyright Kallistratos/Wikimedia Commons Image caption The local Goat Auction is the occasion for a wine festival 
 
 The police are keen for any information on the theft, as it is not the first in their part of Rhineland-Palatinate Region. Last year alone 600-800 kg of grapes were stolen in the surrounding Bad Duerkheim district. 
 
 Rhineland-Palatinate is home to six of Germany's 13 wine-producing regions, and is famous for Riesling and sparkling wine. Its 13,000 vineyards account for 90% of Germany's wine exports. 
 
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 Local vintners have long suspected that rival wine-growers may be responsible. They note how the thieves unerringly select the choicest grapes, steal them just as they ripen, and have access to specialised harvesting equipment. 
 
 "The motive is jealousy," Stephan Altmann told Die Welt newspaper when his Winning Vineyard was plundered two years ago. A local policeman added that harvesting machines heading into fields at dusk are a common sight in the area, and so not necessarily bound to arouse suspicion. 
 
 The Deisdesheim winemakers could take the advice of their neighbours in France's Soultz-Haut-Rhin district, where local farmers swear that grape theft has been cut drastically by environmental officers on horseback patrol, France 3 TV reports. 
 
 Image copyright France 3 TV Image caption France says horse patrols deter grape thieves 
 
 Reporting by Martin Morgan 
 
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– Brazen thieves have swept into southern Germany and stolen 3,527 pounds of grapes—leaving an entire vineyard stripped bare, Newsweek reports. A police report issued Monday says the perpetrators used a professional harvesting machine to gather up $9,200 of grapes used to make Riesling wine. Amazingly, the vineyard in Rhineland-Palatinate sits beside a supermarket parking lot, but authorities say no one raised an eyebrow. "No one is surprised when a harvester drives through the vineyards in the fall," says a police source. It's nothing new, either: Between 1,300 and 1,700 pounds of grapes were stolen in the surrounding Bad Duerkheim district last year, per the BBC, and a Virginia vineyard allegedly had two and a half tons of grapes worth $50,000 stolen last fall. "I can handle losing a crop to Mother Nature, but to come in and take my crop in the middle of the night and steal what we’ve worked for eight months, that's disheartening," the vineyard owner tells the Washington Post. In Germany, vintners have blamed vineyard thefts on rivals: "The motive is jealousy," vineyard owner Stephan Altmann told Die Welt two years ago.