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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jewish heirs of Holocaust victims and their representatives have filed two lawsuits in California staking their claims to Nazi-looted paintings that still hang on the walls of prominent museums in Los Angeles and Auschwitz. This pair of lawsuits are the first to be filed after the recent passage of laws by California and Congress, which strengthen U.S.-based claims to artwork that were forcibly taken from Jewish families during World War II. One lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and its board chair Daniel Gryczman against Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena for the return of “Adam and Eve.” These are two life-size oil-on-panel masterpieces created by Lucas Carnach the Elder in 1530. The other lawsuit was filed in federal court in Los Angeles the same day by the daughters of the late Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt, a Holocaust survivor and California-based animator who was held in Auschwitz. It demanded the return of watercolors of fellow prisoners that the artist was forced to paint for Josef Mengele, a Nazi physician who had earned the nickname the “Angel of Death.” Spokespersons for both museums say the museums legally hold titles to the works, and intend to continue displaying them to the public. The lawsuits don’t specify the monetary value of the paintings. The issue of Nazi-looted art is an emotional, legally and ethically charged topic that pits Jewish families that have suffered inter-generational trauma against museums that say they are trying to preserve a painful, yet important, chapter of history. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime orchestrated the largest art theft in world history, seizing over 600,000 works of art across Europe from Jewish families, collectors and museums. Decades later, many of these masterpieces reside in prominent museums around the world, making the push for their recovery more complex than a simple property dispute. Rabbi Noah Farkas is president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, the organization to which Marei von Saher, sole heir of Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, has signed over her rights. The paintings were seized from Goudstikker’s collection by Hermann Goring, Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command and changed a number of hands before being sold in the 1960s to the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, which was renamed Norton Simon Museum in honor of its benefactor. Farkas said the federation plans to use most of the net proceeds from the recovered art to provide much-needed help to the about 2,500 Holocaust survivors living in the Los Angeles area. “These are incredibly beautiful European masterpieces stolen from a Jewish family to enrich the Nazi party and fund the war and death machine against the people,” he said. “It’s our honor to take on this role on behalf of the community and use most of the proceeds to help these elderly survivors live out the last years of their lives in dignity, comfort and peace – something their family members were denied during the Holocaust.” Marei von Saher, in a statement, said she is grateful to the Jewish organization for taking up her family’s cause. “This effort represents a meaningful step toward justice for Holocaust survivors and victims of Nazi era atrocities,” she said. California Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel, D-Woodland Hills, wrote Assembly Bill 2867, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2024, which requires that the state law must apply in lawsuits brought by California residents or their heirs to recover art seized during the Holocaust or during other acts of persecution. Gabriel, who co-chairs the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, introduced the legislation in response to a federal court ruling, which allowed the state-owned Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid to keep a multimillion-dollar Camille Pissarro impressionist masterpiece. That painting had been taken by the Nazis from the Cassirer family in 1939. This case, which prompted this new law, is expected to be heard in federal court in California next month. Gabriel said it’s time for museums to “do some deep introspection on whether they want to be on the right side of history.” Norton Simon Museum released a statement pointing out that a federal court in 2018 unanimously determined that the museum had proper title to the Cranach paintings. In May 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to get involved in the case, leaving in place lower court rulings. They said the Cranach paintings, which originally belonged to the Stroganoff family, were put up for sale in 1931 by the Soviet Union in an illicit auction in Berlin where they were purchased by Goudstikker. After a complicated journey, the paintings were sold to the museum by a Stroganoff family descendant. The museum later restored and preserved the pieces. “For nearly 50 years, they have been on view at the Norton Simon Museum and will continue to be accessible to the public for years to come,” the statement said. Pawel Sawicki, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial, said the watercolors of Roma victims that Gottliebova Babbitt was forced to paint by Mengele to document his horrendous experiments and racial research, “must remain in the Memorial” to document the man’s crimes. He said these paintings must not be mischaracterized as “Nazi-looted art” because Gottliebova Babbitt painted them against her will as a prisoner and therefore didn’t have ownership of the watercolors. While he understands the family’s sentiments, Sawicki said the portraits of Roma and Sinti victims are among the few remaining documents of Mengele’s criminal experiments and should be treated as unique documents related to the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp. “While fully respecting the rights of people who created some of the documents here, we are of the opinion that any loss in the collections of the Memorial will constitute irreparable harm,” he said. “ … The loss of even the smallest part of the documentation is an irreparable loss and blemish on the memory of the victims of Auschwitz.” Joel Greenberg, founder of Art Ashes, a Philadelphia-area nonprofit that helps Jewish families track down and recover Nazi-looted art, said in addition to the California law, President Donald Trump signed into law and updated the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2025. This new law permanently eliminated the expiration date to allow Holocaust survivors and their heirs to indefinitely pursue the recovery of these works of art. Greenberg said the new federal law gave families the right to reclaim their art for up to six years from the time they find out in whose possession they are. “These new laws mean that technical defenses will no longer stick in court,” he said. “Every case will be heard on its merits.” He said the new legislation also ensures that these Jewish families have their day in court and a fair process to determine ownership of the stolen art. “It will make sure the stories of what happened to European Jewry is not lost and forgotten,” he said. “The art can still be returned to the rightful owner.” ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

MUNICH (AP) — Munich’s Oktoberfest kicked off Saturday with the city’s mayor tapping the first keg of beer and opening the 191st edition of the world’s largest folk festival. Mayor Dominik Krause put the first keg on tap with only two strokes and the traditional cry of “O’zapft is” — or “It’s been tapped.” Thousands of revelers — the women dressed in Bavarian dirndls, the men in lederhosen — stormed the beer tents on Munich’s Theresienwiese fairground in the morning to get a good spot on the benches. To the sounds of brass music and the taste of freshly tapped beer, they soon started singing, dancing and swaying. Besides beer, pretzels, pork roast and sausages were also sought-after delicacies. Over the course of 16 days, through Oct. 4, some 6 million visitors are expected at the Oktoberfest. The majority of them come from Munich and southern Germany. However, millions of guests also travel from other parts of Germany and from around the world. German authorities tightened security measures, after the festival last year had to close temporarily due to overcrowding. AI-powered cameras were installed for this year’s fest to detect large crowds early on, the German news agency dpa reported. A ban on knives and flying objects — especially drones — was also in effect. There are entry checks, large bags are prohibited — and smoking marijuana is not allowed. About 600 police officers are on duty around the festival in addition to Bavarian riot police, specialized pickpocket investigators, and international task forces from eight countries, dpa reported. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

NAGOYA, Japan (AP) — The opening ceremony of the Asian Games on Saturday marked the official start of the 16-day event — but in name only. Facing a packed schedule, competition in basketball started on Sept. 10 — more than a week ago. The semifinals in men’s basketball were on Friday, a day before the official opening. Soccer has been going on for almost as long. The Summer Olympics typically start a few days early, but this multi-sport event pushes the envelope. Welcome to the Asian Games, which feature at least 11,000 athletes. The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris had about 10,700. The last Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, in 2023 had roughly 12,000. Japanese organizers have yet to release an official athlete total from the 45 countries and regions contesting 43 sports. But it seems likely to reach the total in China of three years ago. Maybe more with a few new sports added. The games feature the old-standby Olympic disciplines like track and field, swimming and soccer. But there are some Asian specialties, too: kurash, kabaddi, and sepaktakraw to name three. Kurash is an ancient form of wrestling that originated in Uzbekistan. Kabaddi looks like a game of team tag with a physical edge. And sepaktakraw is a mix of volleyball and soccer. Games organizers have also added mixed martial arts, padel and teqball to the menu — with esports also on the schedule — hence the time crunch. Host Japan has the largest delegation with 933 athletes and China came with just over 800. China won 201 gold medals in the last games, followed by Japan (52) and South Korea (42). That pattern is expected to be repeated. Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako headed the list of dignitaries. The president of the Olympic Council of Asia, Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, elected earlier this year, was alongside. “Tonight the eyes of Asia, and much of the world, turn to Japan,” Sheikh Joaan said in his address, which was followed by the Emperor officially opening the games. The president of the International Olympic Committee, Kirsty Coventry, was also present. The theme of the opening ceremony was the “Harmonic Heart Beat,” and the stage on the infield at the Nagoya City Stadium was in the shape of a large heart. Afghanistan led off the traditional parade of athletes with Japan coming in last and, of course, receiving thunderous applause. The Asian Games have been dotted with controversies in the leadup to the opening ceremony. This also happens in the rush to get ready for most Olympics. First, there’s the issue of housing for athletes. Japanese organizers decided against building a dedicated athletes village. They opted instead to house an estimated 17,000 athletes and officials on a massive cruise ship, in hotels, and in wooden containers converted to lodging. Japan officially spent $13 billion on the Tokyo Olympics, delayed until 2021 by the pandemic. A government audit suggested the figure was likely twice that large. So lavish spending was out this time. Athletes have complained the beds and rooms are too small, some have reported the wooden huts have leaks, and logistics could be an issue with venues spread out around Nagoya. This is Japan’s third largest metropolitan area with a population of about 9.5 million and located about 200 miles (350 kilometers) south of Tokyo. Then the inevitable politics. On Friday, the day before the official opening, two incidents made headlines. Organizers played the North Korean national anthem at a field hockey game between South Korea and Bangladesh. South Korea players stood at attention, bewildered the North Korean anthem was playing. Many South Koreans are, in fact, unfamiliar with North Korea’s anthem and did not know what they were hearing. At about the same time, Taiwanese sports minister Lee Yang — a two-time Olympic gold medalist in badminton — was temporarily barred from a welcoming ceremony involving Taiwan, and other countries including North Korea, Palestine and India. The Olympic Council of Asia attributed it to a misunderstanding but did not entirely clarify. Yang was eventually allowed to participate. Taiwan competes in the Asian Games and the Olympics under the name of Chinese Taipei and without their flag due to China’s claim on the island off its east coast. ___ See full AP coverage of Asian sports here Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

Once a distant ambition for technology researchers, the prospect of artificial intelligence models teaching themselves autonomously to be more efficient and capable appears ever closer to reality. As the technology advances, developers say it is approaching “recursive self-improvement,” or RSI, in which AI models find ways to improve themselves and build their successor. It could bring the promise of advances in science and medicine, tech company executives say, but also risks. The uncertainty over where it all could lead is at the heart of growing fears about AI evading human control, and possible threats to humanity, which led several AI moguls to join last weekend in a call to slow down the technology’s pace of growth. Anthropic this week detailed how its model Claude is helping the company to develop the next, more intelligent version of itself. Claude is now leading 26% of Anthropic’s model research and development, which the company said means it can complete most of a given task “end-to-end from a high-level prompt” while still being under human supervision. The models are not working completely autonomously — at least not yet. Here are some key points about recursive self-improvement. Leading AI companies have different definitions for recursive self-improvement. Some define it as when there is any feedback from AI on model improvement, while others define it as AI working toward that goal fully autonomously. Autonomous recursive self-improvement essentially means AI that can improve itself designing the next version of the system, then the next version, and so on, said Anthony Aguirre, president and CEO of the nonprofit Future of Life Institute and a physics professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “The really important thing here is that as AI is doing more of it, it gets faster, because AI operates just much, much more quickly than the humans do,” he said. The fear around RSI is based largely on a runaway superintelligence emerging from that process, said John Thickstun, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University who studies methods that control the behavior of AI models. But he said a more grounded view suggests a kind of recursive self-improvement has been going on in AI development for a while now. “We have already, for years, been using these models in supportive roles for creating the next version of these models. So people use the past generation of models to write code for the AI systems that then create the next generation,” he said. For years, prominent AI researchers such as OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy have experimented with trying to get AI models to train and improve new AI systems. Those efforts have brought minor improvements, but not big creative leaps, Thickstun said. But AI companies today, Aguirre said, are much closer to pulling off those bigger leaps in improvement. “You can see in these plots from Anthropic over time, more and more of research is being done by the AI and it’s becoming closer and closer to fully autonomous,” he said. “And the result of that success, ultimately is something that is, I think, extremely scary. I think this is probably the worst idea in the history of humanity to do this. And yes, they’re doing it.” Anthropic’s recent announcement provided the public — and other labs — with some insight into RSI progress, and it encouraged its competitors to share similar metrics. Still, the company has not expressly said how close it is to achieving fully autonomous model improvement. ChatGPT maker OpenAI announced this month that it has developed an automated “research intern,” which it defines as a system that can carry out well-defined research tasks under human direction, including “tasks that would take a skilled researcher a few days.” The company has said it is moving forward with the goal of creating an automated AI “researcher” by March 2028. The company said in that announcement that while RSI can help align models’ actions with human values and intentions, that doesn’t mean “rapid RSI is necessarily an outcome we should pursue.” “Whether and how to proceed must depend on our ability to preserve human control and on informed democratic choices about the benefits and risks,” the company said in a blog post. Elon Musk seems more eager to forge ahead. He said in March that for xAI’s Grok models, “humans are gradually getting less and less in the loop” on model improvement and that “every successive model is built by the one before it,” but clarified that the process was not yet fully automated. That target might be reached by the end of this year, he added, “but not later” than 2027. Microsoft and some other leading AI companies seem to be taking a different approach. Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, has said the company is moving toward “humanist superintelligence,” or advanced AI capabilities that are in service of people and humanity at large. Suleyman said in a 2025 essay that this would not mean “an unbounded and unlimited entity with high degrees of autonomy,” but rather AI that is “carefully calibrated, contextualized, within limits.” A key challenge labs face — and have been facing essentially since the technology’s inception — is ensuring their safety measures advance alongside the models’ capabilities. Divisions have emerged in the tech industry over calls for a coordinated AI slowdown for safety, and not every major player in the AI space has specifically commented on their path forward with RSI. Anthropic, which has been a leading voice in the calls for pacing, has said it would slow or temporarily pause its development work — assuming its global competitors also did so, and in a “verifiable manner.” OpenAI explicitly said this month it does not yet know how to “safely get all the way to aligned, full RSI,” adding that the company “cannot assume that progress in alignment and safety will keep pace.” More capable systems can become harder to monitor, it continued, but pursuing RSI is still a goal it says it values because an “automated AI researcher can also be an automated safety or alignment researcher.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark’s government was cautiously optimistic on Saturday about Donald Trump’s announcement of a deal on Greenland to bolster U.S. military presence there but keep the island under Danish control, following months of threats by the U.S. president to seize the semiautonomous territory of a NATO ally. In Greenland, the Arctic island’s top leaders echoed that stance and said the deal had been long in coming. Trump said on Friday that the agreement would give the United States “permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many U.S. concerns.” Denmark and the U.S. already have a long-standing security agreement that has allowed the U.S. to deploy forces in Greenland, and it was not immediately clear how this deal was different from that. After Trump’s announcement Friday, the office of Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said the deal will be signed by all three governments next week during the United Nations General Assembly, but parliamentary action is still needed by the Danish and Greenland governments before it can be enforced. “Next week could be a good week … for Greenland, Denmark, and the United States alike,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen wrote on Instagram Saturday morning. “A period of uncertainty will hopefully be replaced by a binding agreement that strengthens security in the Arctic and the North Atlantic — and thus also our shared security within NATO and Europe — while respecting the Kingdom’s red lines,” he added. Greenland’s government leader Jens-Frederik Nielsen said he was happy about the deal, which he said “benefits not only our collective security, but also the continued development here in the country.” The foreign minister of Greenland, Múte B. Egede, said he was pleased that “we now have an agreement within reach.” “It has taken some time,” he told Denmark’s TV2 broadcaster. “I’m pleased that we finally have an end product within reach. And it’s about time.” Trump said that with the agreement, the U.S. would “immediately” begin the process of developing a larger military presence on the mineral-rich Danish territory. The U.S. had long held several bases and installations on the Arctic territory through the Cold War, before dialing back its presence. It still operates the remote Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, built after the U.S. and Denmark signed the Defense of Greenland Treaty in 1951. It supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO. A U.S. State Department official said the agreement bans any non-NATO base in Greenland, limits adversaries from being able to make investments in Greenland, and guarantees that China and Russia cannot have a base on the island. The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Denmark and Greenland did not explicitly confirm any of the specifics in Trump’s statements, nor did they provide details regarding the content of the agreement or the rights and obligations of the parties. U.S., Greenlandic and Danish officials had quietly negotiated for months behind the scenes, searching for solutions to address some of Trump’s security concerns about a territory of roughly 56,000 residents. With the announcement of the pact, Trump is able to tout a foreign policy achievement ahead of the midterm elections in the U.S. After his return to the White House, Trump had called on Denmark to sell the island to the U.S., while insisting Greenland is crucial for U.S. security. He pointedly wouldn’t rule out taking the island by military force, even though Denmark is a NATO ally of the U.S. Denmark and Greenland repeatedly said the island is not for sale and condemned reports of the U.S. gathering intelligence there. The U.S. push for Greenland was also fiercely opposed by Russia and much of Europe. Greenland grassroots pro-sovereignty activist Orla Joelsen wrote on X that “our fight against Trump’s ambition to take over Greenland has been won.” “The new agreement explicitly recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination,” the activist added. ___ Grieshaber reported from Berlin. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com