“MPs are ready to haul Amazon back to parliament to answer new questions about its tax status in Britain after a Guardian investigation … found Amazon pushing definitions close to breaking point; and tax authorities unable, or unwilling, to prevent the imposition of aggressive tax avoidance structures.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Cambodia Presses More US Museums To Return Antiquities
“Buoyed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s decision this month to return two stolen statues, Cambodia is asking other museums to examine any Khmer antiquities they acquired after 1970, when a 20-year period of civil war and genocide gave thieves free range to loot the country’s ancient temples.”
Unknown Dalí Watercolors Come To Light
“At a glance they seem like familiar 19th-century botanical lithographs, the type you see on endless hotel room walls. But look closer and the plum appears to be running away, the raspberries look embarrassed and the grapefruit … well, it’s enough to make the viewer blush.”
Kennedy Center Changes Selection Process For Honorees
“The Kennedy Center hopes to bring greater transparency to a selection process that has been largely opaque in past years. Last year, some national Hispanic advocacy groups criticized the Honors’ selection process after noting that only two of the 186 honorees since 1978 were Hispanic.”
Jacqueline Brooks, 82, Classical Stage Actress And Teacher
“[She] appeared in films and on television but … won her widest acclaim on the stage in New York and around the country, performing the work of Shakespeare, Molière, Pirandello, Edward Albee and other dramatists over a 60-year career.”
Fired Rochester Phil Music Director Takes Another Rochester Post
“Arild Remmereit has been named artistic director of the Rochester Chamber Orchestra for next season. The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra board, in a controversial move, fired Remmereit in January from his position as music director.”
Michigan School Declines To Ban Anne Frank’s Diary For Being ‘Pornographic’
Northville, Michigan’s “assistant superintendent for instructional services Robert Behnke wrote a letter to the community regarding the school’s decision, stating that the committee worried that removing the book would constitute as censorship.”
US E-Book Sales Nearly Doubled In 2012
“The total revenue generated by e-book sales in the U.S. in 2012 was $3.04 billion, a 44.2% increase over the year before. … And the increase in e-book sales did not take a bite out of print books – at least, not in the aggregate. Print sales were $12 billion in 2012; they were $12 billion in 2011, too.”
Does Britain Need Any More Theatres?
Will new playhouses create new activity and help regenerate their neighborhoods and towns? Will they just be yet more parties in the never-ending scramble for public and private funding? Lyn Gardner starts the discussion.
Interpol On The Lookout For Qaddafi Art Holdings
“The UK government has confirmed that art is likely to be among the items seized as part of a drive to recover billions of dollars worth of assets siphoned off by the Qaddafi family during four decades in power.” The late dictator’s son Saif al-Islam “was known to be a keen art collector and reportedly active on the Islamic art circuit.”