The great cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris has been called "the noblest architectural conception of man." Its construction was begun in 1163 by Maurice de Sully (c.1110-1196), the Bishop of Paris, and completed 87 years later in 1250.

The small island in the River Seine has been a sacred site for millennia. It was a sacred grove for the Celts who held their most holy rituals there, then for the Romans who built a Temple of Jupiter. Upon the ruins of this temple, Childebert (496-558), son of Clovis who founded the French Merovingian dynasty, built a basilica to St. Etienne in 528. Since that time, the site has been sacred to Christians.

Elena Chudinova thinks it won’t be for very much longer. One of Russia’s most popular writers, her latest novel, The Mosque of Notre Dame de Paris is currently a runaway best seller in Russia. So current that it has not yet been translated into English. Let’s hope it soon will be.

Fifty-one years after her death, Marilyn Monroe still remains the most iconic movie star of all time. 

Last Sunday (6/09), the London Daily Mail ran a story with the headline, "I Listened to Marilyn Die."   The daughter of a famous Hollywood private detective, Fred Otash (1922-1992), recently found eleven boxes of her father's files and notes in a storage unit.  The files reveal that Otash had been hired by Howard Hughes to bug the home of Marilyn Monroe.

Otash's notes say that on August 5, 1962, she had a violent argument with Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford (Bobby's brother-in-law), yelling that she had been "passed around like a piece of meat" by the Kennedy brothers (Bobby, Teddy, and JFK).  The notes continued:

"She was really screaming and they were trying to quiet her down. She's in the bedroom and Bobby gets the pillow and he muffles her on the bed to keep the neighbors from hearing. She finally quieted down and then he was looking to get out of there."

That is followed by the note:  "I listened to Marilyn Monroe die."

The tape has never been found.  Marilyn Monroe died on August 5, 1962.  Otash never talked or wrote anything published about this.  His private notes seem to confirm what many have suspected over the years:  That Bobby Kennedy killed Marilyn Monroe.

In addition to Lafif Lakhdar in Tunis (see Sheikhs of Death ), there are folks in Denmark who also refuse to be intimidated by Moslem fanatics. The Copenhagen newspaper Jyllands-Posten, for example, which recently ran a story about a Danish author writing a book about Mohammed.

In response to the author’s complaint in the story that nobody dared to illustrate the book – for fear of angering Moslems as it’s supposedly sacrilegious to depict their prophet – 12 illustrators sent in cartoons which the newspaper promptly published.

BlackRock, the world's biggest investor, has warned that central banks are poised to tighten monetary policy in the Anglo-Saxon countries and China, advising clients to be ready to pull out of global stock markets at any sign of serious trouble.

"2014 is the year to squeeze more juice out of risk assets. But investors should be ready to discard the fruit when it starts running dry," says Ewen Cameron Watt, chief strategist for the BlackRock Investment Institute.

The group says in its 2014 Investment Outlook that investors have "jumped on the momentum train, effectively betting yesterday's strategy will win again tomorrow," but vanishing liquidity could leave them trapped if the mood changes. "Beware of traffic jams: easy to get into, hard to get out of," it says.

BlackRock, which manages funds worth $4.1 trillion, says the global system is still in the doldrums and far from achieving sustainable recovery.  There are real warning signs for Oabama's economy.