LOS ANGELES, Aug 14, 2007 (AFP) - The J. Paul Getty Trust, an international cultural institution, announced Tuesday it chose a German art historian to head its research library in Los Angeles, which boasts an 800,000 volume collection.

Thomas Gaehtgens, the 67-year-old director of the German Center for the History of Art in Paris, will take his post as director of the Getty Research Institute (GRI) on November 1, the trust said in a statement.

LOS ANGELES, Aug 14, 2007 (AFP) - The J. Paul Getty Trust, an international cultural institution, announced Tuesday it chose a German art historian to head its research library in Los Angeles, which boasts an 800,000 volume collection.

Thomas Gaehtgens, the 67-year-old director of the German Center for the History of Art in Paris, will take his post as director of the Getty Research Institute (GRI) on November 1, the trust said in a statement.

ROME, Aug 2, 2007 (AFP) - An accord under which Los Angeles' Getty museum will return 40 allegedly looted antiquities to Italy has helped 'tighten the noose' around traffickers, Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said Thursday.

Both the supply and the demand for such works -- at least from public institutions -- are shrinking, Rutelli told a news conference. 'Fifteen or 20 years ago a big museum could have works like this. Today they can't.'

But he warned that making trafficking more difficult 'makes looting more attractive' for those who succeed.

ROME, Aug 1, 2007 (AFP) - The Getty museum has agreed to return a prized statue, dubbed 'The Aphrodite,' to Italy following an acrimonious dispute over allegedly looted antiquities, the two sides announced Wednesday.

Under a bilateral agreement that resolves most aspects of the long-running dispute, the museum will 'transfer to Italy 40 objects, including the Aphrodite,' formally called the Cult Statue of a Goddess, in 2010, the Italian culture ministry said in a joint communique with the Los Angeles museum.