Good Reads: On World AIDS Day, global relief funding stalls

The results from international public funding for AIDS treatment have been impressive, but the Global Fund has suspended new funding, and US papers give World AIDS Day a pass.?

It was 30 years ago this month that Britain first diagnosed its first HIV patient, the British paper The Telegraph writes, and 30 years ago this year that an American medical journal published the first article about a strange disease that seemed to be targeting men in Los Angeles.

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Much progress has been made since world leaders decided to do something about AIDS, since public campaigns changed the public mindset about AIDS as a ?gay plague? and took it seriously as a shared health problem that needed to be solved, and quickly.

The breakthrough came from the very public health institutions, such as the British and American National Institutes of Health that are now facing heavy budget cuts. Later, it was state-funded initiatives like President George W. Bush?s President?s Emergency Program For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and philanthropic contributions from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation that helped make the nascent HIV treatments available and affordable to millions of people living in poorer countries. ?

The results have been impressive: a global drop of HIV infection rates, and a form of treatment that allows 33 million people to live normal lives with HIV. As a reporter based in South Africa, I met and wrote about young children who were given a second chance at life through drugs provided by PEPFAR. A good friend of mine, who was skeletal when he finally allowed himself to be taken to a doctor, had essentially given up on life when he was diagnosed with HIV. Today, after anti retro-viral treatments, he?s so healthy he has to watch his weight.

Yet at a time when many of the richer countries of Europe and the Americas are cutting back their budgets, AIDS experts say that positive momentum can be easily lost. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria ? the main coordinating body for funding AIDS treatments in 150 countries ?has this year suspended new funding to help poorer countries because of lack of donor funding. Many of those poorer countries ? especially in Africa, where the greatest numbers of HIV patients lives ? had just begun to reduce their HIV infection rates through public awareness campaigns, and had hoped to increase the number of health-care workers and technicians.

So this year, on World AIDS Day, there is some food for thought: What would the world have been like without a vigorous, bipartisan, publicly funded initiative to find a solution to the AIDS crisis? What will the world be like if such publicly funded programs are stopped?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/rP-STivMyRc/Good-Reads-On-World-AIDS-Day-global-relief-funding-stalls

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Jackson doctor gets 4-year sentence, judge's ire (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? It was clear that Michael Jackson's doctor was going to get the maximum four-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter before the judge even finished speaking.

In a nearly half-hour tongue lashing, Dr. Conrad Murray was denounced as a greedy, remorseless physician who committed a "horrific violation of trust" and killed the King of Pop during an experiment.

"Dr. Murray created a set of circumstances and became involved in a cycle of horrible medicine," Judge Michael Pastor said in a stern voice.

Pastor said Murray sold out his profession for a promised fee of $150,000 a month when he agreed to give Jackson a powerful anesthetic every night as an unorthodox cure for insomnia.

Murray will likely serve less than two years in county jail, not state prison, because of California's overcrowded prisons and jails. Sheriff's officials said he will be housed in a one-man cell and be kept away from other inmates.

The tall, imposing Murray, who has been in jail for three weeks, was allowed to change into street clothes ? a charcoal gray suit and white shirt ? for court. But he wore prison-issue white socks and soft slippers.

Jackson's family said in a statement read in court that they were not seeking revenge but a stiff sentence for Murray that would serve as a warning to opportunistic doctors. Afterward, they said they were pleased with the judge's sentence.

"We're going to be a family. We're going to move forward. We're going to tour, play the music and miss him," brother Jermaine Jackson said.

After sentencing, Murray mouthed the words "I love you" to his mother and girlfriend in the courtroom. Murray's mother, Milta Rush, sat alone on a bench in the courthouse hallway.

"My son is not what they charged him to be," she said quietly. "He was a gentle child from the time he was small."

Of her son's future, she said, "God is in charge."

Murray, 58, was convicted after a six-week trial that presented the most detailed account yet of Jackson's final hours, a story of the performer's anguish over being unable to sleep.

Pastor was relentless in his bashing of Murray, saying the physician lied repeatedly and abandoned Jackson when he was at his most vulnerable ? under the anesthesia that Murray administered in an unorthodox effort to induce sleep.

"It should be made very clear that experimental medicine is not going to be tolerated, and Mr. Jackson was an experiment," he said.

Propofol is supposed to be used in hospital settings and has never been approved for sleep treatments, yet Murray acknowledged giving it to Jackson then leaving the room on the day the singer died.

As for defense arguments that Jackson tempted his own fate when he demanded propofol, Pastor said, "Dr. Murray could have walked away and said no as countless others did. But Dr. Murray was intrigued with the prospect of this money-for-medicine madness."

Pastor said Murray was motivated by a desire for "money, fame and prestige" and cared more about himself than Jackson.

The doctor was deeply in debt when he agreed to serve as Jackson's personal physician for $150,000 a month during his comeback tour. The singer, however, died before Murray received any money.

"There are those who feel Dr. Murray is a saint and those who feel he is the devil," Pastor said. "He is neither. He is a human being who caused the death of another human being."

Defense attorney Ed Chernoff implored Pastor to look at Murray's life and give him credit for a career of good works. "I do wonder whether the court considers the book of a man's life, not just one chapter," Chernoff said.

The judge responded: "I accept Mr. Chernoff's invitation to read the whole book of Dr. Murray's life. But I also read the book of Michael Jackson's life, including the sad final chapter of Dr. Murray's treatment of Michael Jackson."

Chernoff suggested that Murray is being punished enough by the stigma of having caused Jackson's death. "Whether Dr. Murray is a barista or a greeter at Walmart, he is still the man that killed Michael Jackson," he said.

A probation report released after sentencing said Murray was listed as suicidal and mentally disturbed in jail records before his sentencing. However, Murray's spokesman Mark Fierro said a defense attorney visited the cardiologist in jail last week and found him upbeat.

The judge said one of the most disturbing aspects of Murray's case was a slurred recording of Jackson recovered from the doctor's cellphone. His speech was barely intelligible and Murray would say later Jackson was under the influence of propofol.

Pastor suggested Murray might have been planning to use it to blackmail Jackson if there was a falling out between them. "That tape recording was Dr. Murray's insurance policy," Pastor said.

Defense attorneys never explained in court why he recorded Jackson six weeks before his death. In the recording, Jackson talked about the importance of making his shows on the comeback tour "phenomenal."

Jackson's death in June 2009 stunned the world, as did the ensuing investigation that led to Murray being charged in February 2010.

Murray declined to testify during his trial but did participate in a documentary in which he said he didn't consider himself guilty of any crime and blamed Jackson for entrapping him into administering the propofol doses.

"Yikes," the judge said. "Talk about blaming the victim!"

Murray's attorneys presented 34 letters from relatives, friends and former patients to win a lighter sentence. They described Murray's compassion as a doctor, including accepting lower payments from his mostly poor patients.

In their sentencing memorandum, prosecutors cited Murray's statements to advocate for the maximum term. They also want him to pay restitution to the singer's three children ? Prince, Paris and Blanket.

The exact amount Murray has to pay will be determined at a hearing in January.

In the meantime, sheriff's officials said Murray will serve a little less than two years behind bars. A recent change in California law requires Murray to serve his sentence in county jail rather than state prison.

District Attorney Steve Cooley said he was considering asking Pastor to modify the sentence to classify the crime as a serious felony warranting incarceration in state prison.

"This is going to be a real test of our criminal justice system to see if it's meaningful at all," Cooley said.

___

AP Entertainment Writer Anthony McCartney contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/music/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111130/ap_en_mu/us_michael_jackson_doctor

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Judge blocks Citigroup-SEC settlement (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? A federal judge angrily threw out Citigroup Inc's proposed $285 million settlement over the sale of toxic mortgage debt, excoriating the top U.S. market regulator over how it reaches corporate fraud settlements.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said that in agreeing to the settlement, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission appeared uninterested in actually learning what Citigroup did wrong. He also said the regulator erred by asking him to ignore the interests of the public.

"An application of judicial power that does not rest on facts is worse than mindless, it is inherently dangerous," Rakoff wrote in an opinion dated Monday.

"In any case like this that touches on the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives, there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth," he added.

Rakoff called the settlement "neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest," and said it was hard to tell whether by settling the SEC was getting more than "a quick headline." He set a trial date of July 16, 2012.

Monday's decision throws into question the SEC's policies toward settlements with publicly traded companies, at a time when the regulator is trying to burnish its reputation for tough enforcement amid skeptics in Congress and elsewhere.

Many SEC cases against Wall Street banks and investment firms are settled out of court, without any admission or denial of wrongdoing. The absence of agreed-upon facts can make it harder for shareholders, bondholders and others to bring their own civil lawsuits against those same defendants.

THORN

Both the SEC and Citigroup on Monday maintained that the settlement was reasonable.

Robert Khuzami, the SEC director of enforcement, said the $285 million sum "reasonably reflects the scope of relief that would be obtained after a successful trial," but without the "risks, delay and resources" required.

He also said Rakoff ignored "decades of established practice throughout federal agencies and decisions of the federal courts."

Citigroup spokeswoman Danielle Romero-Apsilos called the settlement "a fair and reasonable resolution to the SEC's allegation of negligence." She said if a trial occurred, the bank would present "substantial factual and legal defenses."

The SEC and Citigroup did not in their statements address whether they might be able to reach a revised settlement that could win court approval.

In its complaint, the SEC accused Citigroup of selling a $1 billion mortgage-linked collateralized debt obligation, Class V Funding III, in 2007 as the housing market was beginning to collapse, and then betting against the transaction.

The SEC said the CDO caused more than $700 million of investor losses. One Citigroup employee, director Brian Stoker, was charged by the SEC, and is contesting those charges.

Rakoff has been a thorn in the side of the SEC. In 2009 he rejected its initial proposed settlement with Bank of America Corp over its takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co.

Bradley Bondi, a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and former counsel to two SEC commissioners, said the decision will hamper the regulator's ability to settle cases in the Manhattan court.

"But the judge's decision to probe the settlement to ensure it is in the best interest of shareholders - and requiring the SEC to show the facts in support ... are in the best interests of process," Bondi said in an email.

'POCKET CHANGE'

Rakoff called the Citigroup accord too lenient, and noted that the bank was charged only with negligence. Private investors cannot bring securities claims based on negligence.

"If the allegations of the complaint are true, this is a very good deal for Citigroup; and, even if they are untrue, it is a mild and modest cost of doing business," the judge wrote.

The settlement would have required the third-largest U.S. bank to give up $160 million of alleged ill-gotten profit, plus $30 million of interest.

It also would have imposed a $95 million fine for the alleged negligence, less than one-fifth what Goldman Sachs Group Inc paid last year in a $550 million SEC settlement over a different CDO.

Rakoff called the $95 million fine "pocket change" for Citigroup and said investors were being "short-changed."

Khuzami said the regulator will review the ruling and "take those steps that best serve the interests of investors."

In striking down the SEC's $33 million settlement with Bank of America over Merrill, Rakoff said it unfairly punished shareholders. He later approved a $150 million accord.

Citigroup shares closed 6 percent higher at $25.05 on Monday. Stocks rose broadly on optimism that leaders in Europe might take steps to address the region's debt crisis.

The case is SEC v Citigroup Global Markets Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-07387.

(Editing by Matthew Lewis, Gerald E. McCormick and John Wallace)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111128/bs_nm/us_citigroup_sec

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Smoke Bellew by Jack London

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'Itsy Bitsy' bikini songwriter Lee Pockriss dies

Paul Vance remembers calling his friend and fellow songwriter Lee Pockriss more than 50 years ago to share the lyrics of a song he had just written: "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini."

"Lee, I said, I have an idea," Vance recalled Friday. "He went crazy. By the time he got to my office he had 90 percent of the tune written."

The song, recorded by 16-year-old teen idol Brian Hyland, surged to No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1960 and has been a pop culture staple ever since.

Pockriss, who wrote other hit songs for a youthful post-World War II generation, died this week after a long illness. He was 87.

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His wife, Sonja Pockriss, confirmed his death on Friday. She said he died at home Tuesday.

"Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" ? about a shy young woman in a skimpy bathing suit ? has been used in such movies as "Sister Act 2" and "Revenge of the Nerds II."

Pockriss, who also worked in musical theater, co-wrote several songs with Vance, including "Catch a Falling Star" in 1957.

Vance, 82, said Pockriss did an excellent job on their collaborations.

"He was a very talented composer, a great composer, the opposite of me," he told The Associated Press on Friday. "He knew music inside out. I don't know one note of music."

Vance was erroneously reported as dead five years ago because of the death of Florida man who had falsely claimed to have written "Itsy Bitsy" under the name Paul Vance.

Vance said Pockriss also worked in musical theater and wrote the music for the 1963 Broadway show "Tovarich," for which Vivien Leigh won the Tony Award for best actress in a musical.

Pockriss was born in New York in 1924, his wife said. He served as a cryptographer, writing in code to guide Army Air Force planes over the Pacific during World War II. He studied musicology at New York University.

Sonja Pockriss said her husband was versatile, broadening his formal education in music with an ability to improvise. That talent was in demand for live TV in the 1950s and '60s and helped him land work on top programs starring Jack Paar, Milton Berle and Martha Raye.

"He ran from one studio to another," his wife said.

Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45358868/ns/today-entertainment/

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TheDaleJackson: RT @4gop: .@TheDaleJackson Mad. County GOP Men's Club Straw Poll - 19 Nov - 207 votes total. Gingrich 94, Cain 28, Romney 24, Paul 24, P ...

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Authorities foil NY protest bid to shut Wall Street (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? New York police prevented protesters from shutting down Wall Street on Thursday, arresting at least 177 people in repeated clashes with an Occupy Wall Street rally that grew to several thousand strong.

Occupy Wall Street protesters took to the streets in rainy New York and elsewhere in the United States for a day of action seen as a test of the momentum of the two-month-old grassroots movement against economic inequality.

Demonstrators targeted bridges they considered in disrepair in cities such as Miami, Detroit and Boston to highlight what they said was the need for government spending on infrastructure projects to create jobs.

In the biggest New York protest since a police raid broke up the protesters' encampment in a park near Wall Street on Tuesday, organizers and city officials had expected tens of thousands to turn out.

A crowd that disappointed organizers throughout the day grew to several thousand after the standard workday ended and labor union activists joined a march across the Brooklyn Bridge, where last month more than 700 people were arrested during a similar march.

"If you look at the crowds today, they are getting larger and more diverse. It's wonderful when you see the unions get involved. It truly shows this movement represents people from all different walks of life," said Terri Nilliasca, 38, a United Auto Workers member from New York.

Many protesters complained of police brutality, pointing to one media image of man whose face was bloodied during his arrest and another of a woman who was dragged across the sidewalk by an officer.

Police reported seven officers were injured, including one whose hand was cut by a flying piece of glass and five who were hit in the face by a liquid believed to be vinegar.

Police barricaded the narrow streets around Wall Street, home to the New York Stock Exchange, and used batons to push protesters onto the sidewalk as they marched through the area to try and prevent financial workers getting to their desks.

Workers were allowed past barricades with identification and the New York Stock Exchange opened on time and operated normally.

Protesters banged drums and yelled "We are the 99 percent" -- referring to their contention that the U.S. political system benefits only the richest 1 percent.

At the Union Square subway stop, one of the busiest in the city, protesters tried to crowd the entrance but police repeatedly moved them against the walls to make way for subway riders.

"The mayor wanted to shut us down at Zuccotti Park, but try shutting this down," said Travis McConnell, 27, of Brooklyn. "They can't. This movement is now worldwide and the more politicians and police try to stop us, the stronger we become."

PROTESTS ACROSS U.S.

In St. Louis, more than 1,000 protesters marched through downtown in support of the Occupy St. Louis movement which was evicted last week from its campsite near the Gateway Arch. The Thursday march was by far the largest since Occupy St. Louis began in support of the New York demonstrators.

In Los Angeles, hundreds of anti-Wall Street demonstrators blocked a downtown street, snarling traffic on surrounding freeways, before police moved in and arrested 23 people.

The Los Angeles protest took place near demonstrators' encampment on the City Hall lawn, and a handful of people in grinning Guy Fawkes masks -- a style hallmark of the Occupy movement -- joined the march.

"I think we're all saying the same thing, but in a million different ways," said Good Jobs LA organizer Sandra Gonzalez, 42, in explaining the relationship between her group, which organized the march, and the nationwide Occupy protests.

At least 300 people gathered at Chicago's Thompson Center, giving speeches in English and Spanish. The protest was focused on jobs with signs reading "We need jobs, not cuts" and "Jobs, schools, equality: end the wars."

The Washington gathering was smaller than hoped for by organizers. One protester in McPherson Square said he expected about 1,000 people while perhaps 200 showed and many left within the hour.

In Dallas more than a dozen people were arrested when police shut down their six-week-old camp near City Hall.

Before dawn on Thursday, police cleared away a protest camp from a plaza at the University of California, Berkeley, where 5,000 people had gathered on Tuesday night.

Protesters say they are upset that billions of dollars in bailouts given to banks during the recession allowed a return to huge profits while average Americans have had no relief from high unemployment and a struggling economy.

They also say the richest 1 percent of Americans do not pay their fair share of taxes. (Additional reporting by Sharon Reich in New York, Deborah Charles in Washington, Mary Wisniewski in Chicago, Bruce Nichols in Houston, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Laird Harrison in Oakland and Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; Writing by Michelle Nichols and Daniel Trotta; editing by Doina Chiacu and Cynthia Osterman)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111117/ts_nm/us_usa_protests_newyork

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Germans ask 'how' as neo-Nazi crimes unfold (AP)

BERLIN ? A 2000 firebomb targeting Russian Jewish immigrants at a Duesseldorf railway station. A 2004 nailbombing in a Cologne immigrant neighborhood. A 2008 fire in a Ludwigshafen apartment building that killed nine Turkish immigrants, including five children.

All unsolved crimes, and all now reopened as the possible work of a small band of neo-Nazis who allegedly killed and terrorized minorities for a decade, undetected by Germany's thousands of security authorities nationwide before they finally tripped up this month.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed a thorough investigation of the group's crimes, calling them "a disgrace, shameful for Germany."

Yet many questions remain. Key among them is whether the group is responsible for deadly hate crimes beyond the 10 deaths for which they are blamed, and whether there are other members or sympathizers still at large. More broadly, the nation is asking how such a group could have been allowed to carry out these crimes undetected for so long.

The case has provoked widespread criticism that in an effort to focus on leftist and Islamic terrorism, authorities have been blind to the threat of the right.

"If this had happened in Turkey, if eight or nine Germans had been killed with the same weapon and if the murderers were not found, all European nations would be up in arms, they would declare Turkey to be a barbarian country not fit to live in," Elif Kubasik, whose husband Mehmet was killed in April 2006 in a slaying linked to the group, told Turkey's Sabah daily.

Other families of the nine known minority victims have come forward with tales of how police suspected organized crime, drugs or interethnic rivalries ? anything but far-right violence. Aside from one Greek, all of these victims were of Turkish origin, and the group took responsibility for their deaths in a homemade video. The group is also believed have carried out the 2007 shooting death of a German police officer.

Authorities are now scrambling to determine whether the group was linked to other violent crimes targeting immigrants.

In the amateur DVD, the group also appeared to take credit for a 2004 bombing in the Muelheim district of Cologne, home to many Turks, in which 22 people were injured. The interior minister at the time, Otto Schily, said that attack was likely the work of "not terrorists but the criminal underworld."

Investigators are also taking a new look at a July 27, 2000, explosion at a rail station in Duesseldorf that injured 10 recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union, six of them Jewish. They have also reopened the investigation of a blaze in 2008 in the southern city of Ludwigshafen, in which five children and four adults ? all ethnic Turks ? died.

"We have a growing scandal," Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Friday. "Thirty-two state police and domestic security offices have not been able to stop a series of far-right extremist murders."

Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger and Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich held a crisis meeting Friday with representatives of the law enforcement agencies to try to figure out what went wrong, and where.

Although the emphasis is on solving the crimes, they also discussed the possible restructuring of Germany's complex web of police and security agencies ? a decentralized system set up in a post-World War II attempt to avoid the repeat of the Nazis' absolute consolidation of power.

"Federal prosecutors have to focus on the crime and its perpetrators," Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said Thursday. "Politicians have to answer the question of whether the security structures in Germany can work effectively and efficiently and what changes might be needed."

The story began to unfold on Nov. 4 with a brazen daylight bank heist in the central city of Eisenach, when two masked men wearing hooded sweat shirts reportedly made off with euro70,000 ($94,360) and police tracked them to a parked mobile home.

As authorities closed in, the mobile home caught fire. After dousing the flames, they found the bodies of two men inside ? Uwe Boehnhardt, 34, and Uwe Mundlos, 38 ? both had been shot in the upper body in an apparent suicide committed before setting the vehicle ablaze.

Several hours later, another fire broke out in an apartment 180 kilometers (110 miles) to the east in Zwickau. The two blazes seemed unrelated, until a pair of pistols were found that linked the two and blew the entire case up, leading authorities to tie the group to the killings of the nine minority victims and the policewoman.

The policewoman's service weapon was among the charred ruins inside the mobile home. At the burned-out apartment, police found a Czech-made 7.65mm Ceska pistol, known by authorities to be the weapon used in the slaying of the minority victims.

Copies of a self-made propaganda DVD also found among the wreckage tipped police off to the group's name, the Nationalist Socialist Underground ? a clear reference to the full name of the Nazis ? the "National Socialist" party ? and their extreme nationalist hatred. The video features pictures of the victims from the Ceska-linked killings, and included a cartoon image of the Pink Panther standing next to a sign proclaiming "Germany Tour: 9 Turks shot." The minority victims were all small businessmen, shot at close range in execution-style killings between 2000 and 2006.

Days after the two fires, 36-year-old Beate Zschaepe turned herself in to police. She has since been charged with membership in a terrorist organization for allegedly co-founding the group with Boehnhardt and Mundlos and for starting the fire in an attempt to destroy evidence.

Though the same pistol was used in all of the killings of the minorities, police could find no other leads and they remained unresolved for years.

Mehmet Kubasik was shot in the head at his greengrocer's shop in the western city of Dortmund in April 2006. Authorities now believe he was the group's eighth victim.

Yet German authorities refused to believe that the crime could have been attributed by neo-Nazis, Kubasik's widow told the Sabah daily in her native Turkey, where she was spending the religious Eid holiday last week.

"Because it could not associate itself with racism, the German government looked the other way for years. They inspected even the dust on the curtains in my home, they even suspected me, but they never considered racism," Kubasik said.

Such actions are emerging as what one expert has said was a clear tendency among authorities to trivialize the threat of right wing extremists over the last 20 years.

"The danger was not taken seriously by many of the top politicians who carry the responsibility in this country, and partially denied," said Hajo Funke, a professor at Berlin's Freie University who is among Germany's leading experts on the far-right scene.

Federal prosecutors took over the investigation on Nov. 11 under German anti-terrorism laws, looking at the group as a domestic terrorist organization.

In addition to Zschaepe, who so far has refused to make any statement to police, authorities have also arrested a man identified only as 37-year-old Holger G., and charged him with supporting a terror organization.

So far, neither has been charged with murder.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111119/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_far_right

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Open Road picks up U.S. rights to "Outrun" (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Open Road Films has pick up domestic rights to "Outrun," the company announced on Friday.

Dax Shepard, best known for NBC's "Parenthood," wrote, directs and stars in the film.

The action comedy co-stars Kristen Bell, Bradley Cooper, Tom Arnold, Beau Bridges, Kristin Chenoweth, David Koechner, Michael Rosenbaum, Joy Bryant and Ryan Hansen. David Palmer co-directed with Shepard.

"Outrun" centers on a former getaway driver who busts out of the Witness Protection Program to drive his girlfriend (Bell) to Los Angeles so she can land her dream job. Their road trip hits a snag when they are chased by the feds (Arnold) and a gang of criminals, led by Cooper.

Outrun was produced by Andrew Panay with Nate Tuck, Kim Waltrip and Jim Casey. Exclusive Media Group acquired the international rights.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111118/film_nm/us_outrun

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