TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Now it's time for the Pop Culture Lead. It may be hard to sympathize to the company that got away with charging $4.99 to rent VHS copies of "Jumping Jack Flashback" in the day and impose late fees that even loan sharks would find excessive. But this really is the end of an era. Blockbuster will close all of its remaining stores about 300 of them and shut down its DVD mailing service by early January. Back in 2004, Blockbuster had 9,000 locations, but then Netflix came along and blockbuster will live on as a streaming service. They are works of art that could be worth millions and yet some say little is being done to get these precious paintings into the hands of their rightful owners despite the evidence that they were stolen during World War II. The art work was discovered in an apartment in Munich, Germany during a police raid last year. The man who lives in the home is the son of a wartime art dealer. It's believed that his father got his hands on the paintings at the end of World War II when the Nazis had a habit of confiscating so- called "Degenerate Artwork." Jewish groups are furious that German officials won't release a full list of what they found. But a state prosecutor in Germany said officials never went public because it would have been, quote, counterproductive to the investigation. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @jaketapper and also @theleadcnn and check out our show page at cnn.com/thelead for video, blogs and extras. That's it for THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. I now turn you over to Wolf Blitzer. He's in "THE SITUATION ROOM" -- Wolf.
Blockbuster Closing All Remaining Stores; Battle Over Looted Paintings