"The Sketchbook from Auschwitz"

Found hidden away in a bottle, the Auschwitz Memorial Museum has published sketches drawn by a prisoner at the Birkenau extermination camp. They provide a rare first-hand glimpse of life and death inside. The book is part of the museum’s plans to launch a catalogue of 6,000 artworks in its archives.

New Film Sheds Light on Plight of Gays, 'Honor Killing' in Turkey: VIDEO

In colloquial Turkish, the word zenne means male belly dancer. It is also the title of a new film that explores sexual identity while also highlighting a deadly case of homophobia in modern-day Turkey.

“The starting point was a dear friend of ours who was murdered in 2008 for being gay by his own father,” said Mehmet Binay, producer and co-director of “Zenne,” which opens in theaters across Turkey on Friday.

Binay was referring to the 2008 killing of Ahmet Yildiz, a 26-year old physics student who was gunned down in Istanbul.

Court records identify Yildiz’s father, Yahya, as the primary suspect in the killing. The father’s motive, according to a copy of the indictment, was that he “did not accept the victim to be in a gay relationship.”

Smear in Russia Backfires, and Online Tributes Roll In

Doctored photographs have a long history in Russia as political tools, but two or more parties can play the game in the Internet age.

Iran Rights Official Calls Homosexuality 'Disease'

from Radio Free Europe
The secretary-general of the Iranian High Council for Human Rights has been quoted as telling a visiting German lawmaker that homosexuality is a disease.

“The West says that the marriage of homosexuals should be allowed under the human rights charter, however, we think it is sexual immorality and a disease,” Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency quoted Mohammad Javad Larijani as saying, according to dpa.