Boston bomber makes Rolling Stone cover

Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will grace the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, a move that’s being described as glamourising terrorism. The music magazine said it chose Tsarnaev after contributing editor Janet Reitman spent two months interviewing dozens of people connected to him, including friends, teachers and police

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Album review: Bright Sunny South – Sam Amidon

BRIGHT SUNNY SOUTH Sam Amidon (Warner) The fourth album by the husband of Beth Orton and son of Peter and Mary Alice follows in the footsteps of his parents with Sam Amidon’s signing to iconic US label Nonesuch. The reference points go deeper on this sweetly stark collection of folk song interpretations, which Amidon says were part of the soundtrack of his youth with particular reference to the gorgeous style of shape-note singing found on Weeping Mary, a track which his parents recorded in 1979.

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Syria: Has the Regime Turned a Corner Against the Protests?

As bright spring days gradually turn hot and muggy, the consensus in Damascus is that the protest movement has been badly burnt. The activist Facebook group Syrian Revolution 2011 put out an order for a general strike across Syria on Wednesday calling for “mass protests” and the closure of all schools, universities, shops and restaurants, “not even taxis.” But there was no apparent strike on Wednesday morning in central Damascus.

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