Free Republic

On a shady cul-de-sac in the Riverdale Homes neighborhood, residents gathered Sunday in the street and talked quietly about the friends who weren't there. "We are all very close. And very torn up about this," said Angelia Brown, 45, referring to the shooting in a northwest Miami-Dade nail salon less than 48 hours earlier that left 10-year-old Aaron Vu dead and his father, Hai Nam Vu, in the hospital fighting for his life.

Former Velvet Underground members Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker and Doug Yule will make an extremely rare joint public appearance on December 8 at the New York Public Library. The three will discuss the Velvet Underground's music and legacy with rock journalist David Fricke as part of the "LIVE from the NYPL" series. The reunion of the legendary New York band comes on the heels of the publication of "The Velvet Underground: New York Art," a compendium of previously unseen photographs, poster and cover designs by Andy Warhol, Lou Reed's handwritten music and lyrics, underground press clippings and other reviews, flyers,...

Note: The following text is a quote: Four Members of Casino-Cheating Criminal Enterprise Sentenced for Targeting Casinos in the United States and Canada George Michael Lee, Duc Cong Nguyen, Hop Nguyen and Tien Duc Vu were sentenced today in San Diego for their roles in a scheme by the "Tran Organization" to cheat casinos across the United States and Canada. Duc Cong Nguyen and Vu admitted that they and their co-conspirators unlawfully obtained up to $2.5 million during card cheats. A three-count indictment was returned May 22, 2007, and unsealed in the Southern District of California on May 24, 2007,...

Forty years after it was made, The Velvet Underground's first recording has become a financial hit - in cyberspace. Bought for 75 cents four years ago at a Manhattan flea market, the rare recording of music that ended up on the influential New York band's first album, "The Velvet Underground & Nico," sold on eBay for a closing bid of $155,401. The buyer is a mystery, only identified by the eBay screen name: "mechadaddy." But a greater mystery endures: How did the 12-inch, acetate LP end up buried in a box of records at a flea market? Warren Hill, a...

Volunteers for déjà vu study wanted. Come again? By Paul Stokes (Filed: 02/02/2006) University researchers are conducting the world's first study into déjà vu - the feeling that something one is experiencing has happened before. They are seeking volunteers who are chronic sufferers of the condition, which takes its name from the French phrase for "already seen". Psychologists from Leeds University are being funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and will attempt to recreate déjà vu in laboratory conditions. The project coincides with "Groundhog Day" which was set as Feb 2 in the eponymous Hollywood film and is...

How an Original Velvet Underground Acetate Wound Up in Portland (And Could Be the Most Expensive Record in the World!) Yard sales are like junior high dances. You show up full of anticipation, bump into a lot of people, and then leave disappointed. But in both cases, an ineffable sense of possibility spawns return, over and over. Maybe this time I'll slow dance with Tiffany Pfeiffer. Maybe this time I'll find a first edition of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Maybe my life will change within the hour. And so earlier this year, with flickering expectation, Warren Hill...

<p>Anger that has been brewing for months over Vanderbilt University's deletion of the word ''Confederate'' from Confederate Memorial Hall has boiled over in recent weeks in the wake of a professor's comments about slavery and racism in the South.</p> <p>Outraged Southern heritage groups have launched Web sites, posted counter-opinions on the Internet, flooded their organizations' offices with more than 1,000 phone calls and e-mails and demanded that professor Jonathan Farley be fired in the weeks since Farley's essay appeared in The Tennessean.</p>