Most dangerous occupations

As many as one-fifth of youths in the drug gangs of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are killed within two years, usually by police, a new study has indicated.

The report's authors followed 230 young people belonging to gangs in Rio de Janeiro's favelas, or shanty towns, for two years.

And quite aside from that, the work is hard:

Sixty percent of those questioned worked for more than 10 hours a day.

Half were on duty seven days a week and a majority had been involved in armed conflicts with rival gangs.

From the BBC.

Getty vs Italy, continued

The Getty continues to play the role of lightning rod in the ongoing crackdown on illegal antiquities:

Italy’s culture minister, Francesco Rutelli, said Thursday he was disappointed and surprised by the decision of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles to return only 26 of 52 ancient artifacts in its collection that Italy says were illegally excavated from its soil. However, he expressed hope that negotiations with the museum could resume and that the issue could be resolved.

Negotiations between the Getty and the Italian authorities have clearly been tough going from the outset. No other museum has had criminal charges filed against its curators; and though it may be that the Italians have been trying to make an example out of the Getty, there can be little doubt that it takes two to play this particular kind of hardball. As the NY Times noted earlier this week:

In an abrupt change of course, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles announced yesterday that it had broken off negotiations with the Italian government and made a “unilateral” decision to cede only some of the antiquities that Italy says were looted from its soil.

In a six-page letter to the Italian culture minister, Francesco Rutelli, the Getty’s director, Michael Brand, said the museum had decided to turn over 26 artifacts. Referring to other treasures sought by the Italians, he said that Italy had “no valid legal claim” to a prized bronze sculpture in the Getty’s collection, and that evidence regarding a limestone cult statue it wanted returned was “inconclusive.”

Who knows what is going on behind closed doors? All one can assume is that negotiations mustn't be going well for so much public airing of dissatisfaction. The Getty press release is here, while the NYT also notes:

Unlike deals to return disputed art that Italy negotiated this year with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the ceding of art by the Getty carries no guarantee of loans from Italy or other reciprocal benefits.

Peruvian tomb finds

Archaeologists said Tuesday they have unearthed 22 graves in northern Peru containing a trove of pre-Inca artifacts, including the first "tumi" ceremonial knives ever discovered by archaeologists rather than looted by thieves.

The find, which prominent archaeologist Walter Alva called "overwhelmingly important," means that scientists can study the tumi — Peru's national symbol — in its original setting to learn about the context in which it was used. . .

The tombs, more than 900 years old, were found next to a pyramid in the Pomac Forest Historical Sanctuary, 420 miles northwest of the capital, Lima. They are from the Sican culture, which flourished on Peru's northern desert coast from A.D. 750 to 1375.

The occupants "are clearly from the social elite and therefore some of them have gold objects, some of them have copper-gilded objects, but they are quite complex, well-endowed tombs," said Izumi Shimada . . . an anthropology professor at Southern Illinois University.

Full article here.

Gimme some (dino) skin

In the past, what we've learned about dinosaurs has been mostly based on bones. That might soon change with the recent discovery of an extremely well preserved, 67-million-year-old duckbilled dinosaur found with fossilized skin in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana, according to a North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences press release.

The near-complete remains may yield precious soft tissue, thanks to a technique that recovered structures resembling blood cells in a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton last year.

From Discovery News.

Marion True now charged in Greece as well

Trouble enough in Italy; now the Greeks are getting theirs in, too:

A Greek prosecutor on Tuesday charged a former curator of the American J. Paul Getty Museum with knowingly buying an ancient artifact which had been illegally dug up and smuggled out of Greece 13 years ago. . .

In the Greek investigation, police raided her Aegean island villa earlier this year and retrieved what authorities say are dozens of unregistered ancient objects.

From the lack of previous charges, however, these probably didn't add up to much -- though one wonders if the Greek police also seized personal records. The new charge, however, isn't so much against True personally, as against the Getty.

"True as well as two Greeks and two other foreigners have been charged with removing, accepting and distributing products resulting from criminal actions," a police source told Reuters.

"They are charged in connection with the golden wreath which was sold to a Getty representative in 1993 for $1.15 million."

The source said police believe an ancient Macedonian tomb was excavated some time between 1990-2 and it was then that the wreath was found and illegally removed.

From Reuters. More on the same story in the LA Times, including this:

The senior Greek official, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak about the case, said that in addition to True, the investigation recommended charges against [Christoph] Leon, the Basel dealer; L.J. Kovacevic, a Yugoslav national; and Georgios Tsatalis and Georgios Kagias, Greek citizens.

Greek police raided True's house on the Greek island of Paros last March and found several unregistered antiquities -- many of which were fragmentary and of little value. No charges have been filed in that case and the investigation continues.

Antiquities smuggling charges filed in Greece

Four members of a shipping family were charged yesterday in connection with a large collection of illegal antiquities that was found earlier this year at a villa on a tiny Aegean island. . .

The four suspects have been charged with illegally possessing, receiving and trading antiquities. Authorities said that 152 artifacts were found at the villa on Schinoussa and at the family’s Athenian home in Psychico, northern Athens. . .

Despina Papadimitriou is the sister of the late antiquities dealer Christos Michailidis, who died in 1999. Sources said the four suspects told authorities that they inherited the collection from the London-based dealer.

Michailidis worked with London-based dealer Robin Symes. The Papadimitriou family was involved in a two-year legal battle with Symes and eventually won the right to half the collection amassed by the two men.

However, sources said that witnesses told authorities that some of the antiquities arrived on the island six months before police raided the villa.

From Kathimerini.

Better late . . .

Germany's Culture Minister Bernd Neumann has invited leading museum representatives and legal experts to the Berlin Chancellery on Monday. A government spokesman said Neumann wanted to get an idea of the situation facing German museums for artwork unfairly bought or confiscated by the Nazis before and during World War Two.

Museum directors have said they are going into the meeting with no demands, but rather suggestions on the major problems at hand concerning restitution. A top item on their list is so-called "provenance" research, which traces the origins of a piece of art.

"We believe more funds need to be invested into this kind of research," said Mechtild Kronenberg, director of the German Museum Association -- a sentiment shared by the Jewish Claims Conference. It said that provenance research was a key factor to help come to terms with the consequences of the Nazi's art theft.

From Deutsche Welle. Interestingly, what has prompted this rather belated colloquium is the success of restitution claims, not all of which are as clear-cut as one might like:

Culture Minister Neumann issued his invitation for Monday following strong criticism of a recent restitution case in Berlin. The Berlin Senate returned the expressionist painting "Berlin Street Scene" by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner from 1913 to the granddaughter of Jewish art collector Alfred Hess. The work, in turn, was sold to cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder at an auction in New York last week for $38 million. . .

Although there was evidence that the painting was not a case of looted art, including written correspondence indicating it had been sold willingly, Berlin's Brücke museum had no official receipt for the work.