Remembering NASCAR icon Tim Richmond

Many of today’s NASCAR fans barely recognize the name Tim Richmond. It’s not surprising: He won his last race in 1987 and died in 1989. He never won a Winston Cup Championship, although he did finish third in points in 1986.

Richmond’s career was cut short – way short – by AIDS in 1989, the result of a hard-living lifestyle that enabled him to stand out even among the good ol’ boys of stock car racing.

Beginning tonight, a one-hour documentary called “Tim Richmond: To the Limit,” which details Richmond’s flamboyant life and his death due to AIDS, begins airing on ESPN.

“Richmond was the sort of character that you can’t make up,” according to Scott Fowler of the Charlotte Observer. “He shook up stock car racing in the 1980s with Hollywood theatrics and driving talent you couldn’t teach.”

Pétain had key role in French anti-Semitism

Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said he’s discovered the original document that shows French military hero Marshal Philippe Pétain played a key role in the restrictions his country put on Jews during World War II.

‘The discovery of this plan is fundamental,” Klarsfeld told Agence France-Presse. “This document establishes Pétain’s decisive role in drawing up this position in the most aggressive way, revealing (Pétain’s) deep anti-Semitism.”

Pétain, a military hero in World War I, became head of the state based at Vichy in central France which collaborated with the German Nazi occupiers following the French defeat in June 1940.

The pencilled-in changes to the document, from October 1940, are a “profound alteration” of the document’s nature, Klarsfeld said.