The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan was sued on Friday for the return of a Pablo Picasso masterpiece allegedly sold under duress in 1938 because of Nazi and Fascist persecution in Europe. A complaint was filed in Manhattan federal court by the great-grandniece of Paul Leffmann, a Jewish industrialist from Germany who once owned “The Actor,” a rare work from Picasso’s Rose Period in 1904 and 1905.
Anti-mafia police in Naples, Italy, have recovered two paintings by Vincent van Gogh that were stolen from a museum in Amsterdam more than a decade ago. The Van Gogh Museum announced Friday that a curator inspected the two works, at the request of Italian authorities, and "drew a firm conclusion: 'They are the real paintings!' " The two canvases, a seascape and a painting of a church, were stolen from the museum in 2002 in a widely publicized heist. They've been missing ever since.
Shimon Peres was a leading figure on Israel's political landscape for as long as the Jewish state itself has existed in modern times. He held almost every public office, including those of prime minister and president, although he never led a party to an election victory. Born Szymon Perski in Wiszniew, Poland (now Visnieva, Belarus), on 2 August 1923, Shimon Peres was the son of a lumber merchant. His parents were not Orthodox Jews but the young Shimon was taught the Talmud (compendium of Jewish law and commentaries) by his grandfather and became a strong adherent of the faith. In 1934 the family moved to the British Mandate of Palestine (Peres' father had emigrated two years earlier) and settled in Tel Aviv. Mr Peres died in a hospital near Tel Aviv early on Wednesday, with his family at his bedside.
A 10th of children have a "monkey-like" immune system that stops them developing AIDS, a study of Oxford University suggests. The study, in Science Translational Medicine, found the children's immune systems were "keeping calm", which prevented them being wiped out.An untreated HIV infection will kill 60% of children within two and a half years, but the equivalent infection in monkeys is not fatal. The findings could lead to new immune-based therapies for HIV infection. The virus eventually wipes out the immune system, leaving the body vulnerable to other infections, what is known as acquired human immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The researchers analysed the blood of 170 children from South Africa who had HIV, had never had antiretroviral therapy and yet had not developed AIDS.
