He's a tattooed guitar slinger who covers Motorhead and scored tour sponsorship from Jagermeister. Rick Monroe plays hard-core, raw, in-your-face ... country. ...more

March 13, 2009

Freedom was on the march downward in 2008, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union, a private democracy watchdog organization reports. ...more

January 12, 2009

Artist Tatyana Igumnova Hankinson, as someone who began life on the other side of the planet, has seen a bit of the world and it shows in her work. "I use different mediums and styles to reflect the different places I have traveled," says Hankinson. A resident of South Tampa since 2002, Hankinson is a native of the former Soviet Union. Hankinson will be featured in an exhibit titled "A Russian Artist's Journey's through a Vast Landscape" at the Pasco-Hernando Community College Art Gallery. ...more

November 8, 2008

Larik Cholak testified today in the trial of Alex Shevgert, who is accused of orchestrating attacks on his in-laws in New York and Sarasota because they stopped giving him money after they funded a series of failed businesses and bought him a house. ...more

November 6, 2008

SHINE A LIGHT *** This being 2008, the idea of a Rolling Stones concert film - even one directed by Martin Scorsese - doesn't sound quite as electrifying as it would have 20 or 30 or almost 40 years ago, when the Maysles brothers shot "Gimme Shelter" at Altamont. Still, Scorsese has assembled an impressive array of talent on both sides of the camera. ...more

July 31, 2008

Freedom declined in 2007 for a second consecutive year as 36 percent of the people in the world - about half of them in China - were not living in freedom, according to a survey by a private democracy watchdog organization. ...more

January 16, 2008

The United States might be reducing its nuclear stockpile, but experts say that nearly two decades after the Cold War, our firepower is still a case of overkill. ...more

January 13, 2008

An explosion almost certainly caused by a buildup of methane gas tore through a coal mine in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least 63 miners in what has become a deadly pattern in the mining industries of the former Soviet Union. ...more

November 19, 2007

Art Sicard of Port Richey says enough of war, which is horrible. ...more

November 7, 2007

SARASOTA - Not so many years ago, a visit to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art meant a day staring at a lot of arcane baroque paintings. ...more

October 7, 2007