A Claude Monet painting out of the public eye for decades sold Tuesday for just over $27 million, leading the bidding at an auction of art from the estates of heiress Huguette Clark, businessman Edgar Bronfman and other major collectors.

"Water Lilies," Monet's 1907 rendition of his beloved garden in Giverny, France, went to an undisclosed Asian buyer in the season-opening auction of impressionist and modern art at Christie's. The painting, part of Clark's collection since 1930, has not been publicly exhibited since 1926.

The Vatican on Tuesday said it had shown its mettle in the battle against child sex abuse by priests, telling a U.N. hearing that it was determined to stamp out the scourge.

"Any serious look at the reality around the world on what the Holy See and the local Churches are doing shows clearly and without ambiguity that certainly there is no climate of impunity," the Holy See's U.N. envoy Monsignor Silvano Tomasi said.

A Chinese shaman resplendent in a dark suit and green cloth hat thumbed yellowing pages said to predict the future -- but mass migration to cities means the prospects for his own profession look bleak. 

"To see a spirit, you have to practice the ancient rituals," said Zhao Fucheng, 74, who claims he communicates with the spirit world from his wooden hut in southwestern Guangxi province. 

Auction house Christie's on Tuesday denied reports that it was negotiating with Iran to hold sales in the Islamic republic.

Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted Culture Minister Ali Janati as saying negotiations with Christie's were under way to organize auctions at Iran's Gulf resort Kish Island.

Florence's museums authority on Tuesday played down the risk of Michelangelo's 500-year-old David statue falling down because of fractures in its ankles.

"Even if there is an earthquake of 5.0 or 5.5 on the Richter scale, Florence will stay in one piece. And David would be the last to fall," Marco Ferri, a spokesman for the authority, told Agence France Presse.

Sotheby's agreed Monday to appoint hedge fund activist Dan Loeb and two allies to its board, averting a shareholder vote over the direction of the prestigious fine art auctioneer.

A day before a contentious Loeb-pushed vote could have upended company management, Sotheby's bowed to pressure and agreed to appoint Loeb along with restructuring expert Harry Wilson and Olivier Reza, a renowned jeweler and former banker, to the board.

"The Snow Queen" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Michael Cunningham

Like the Disney megahit "Frozen," Michael Cunningham's new novel is loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Snow Queen."

Mexican actress Kate del Castillo is taking a star turn off-Broadway with a Spanish-language version of the "Vagina Monologues" in the same Westside Theater where Eve Ensler's work was presented in 1999.

Other Spanish-language works have been presented on the circuit, but the show opening Tuesday will be the first to play a full, if short New York season off-Broadway.

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday upheld the right to pray at government meetings, in a divided decision which said the practice did not violate religious freedoms.

Voting along ideological lines, the court's five conservative justices said that "the nation's history and tradition have shown that prayer in this limited context could coexist with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom."

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed new legislation introducing harsh punishments for the justification or denial of Nazi war crimes.

The legislation makes it a criminal offence to deny facts established by the Nuremberg trials regarding the crimes of the Axis powers and to disseminate "false information about Soviet actions" during World War II.