Carrers Delmon

NEW ORLEANS – A perfect record would have been lagniappe, as they say in Louisiana — a little something extra.
The history-making achievement the Saints and their fans really covet is a first Super Bowl appearance, which is all that's left to accomplish now that Tony Romo and Dallas ended their December doldrums at New Orleans' expense.
Drew Brees and the Saints are marching toward an unbeaten season no more after their frenzied rally fell short in a 24-17 loss to the Cowboys on Saturday night.
"This is going to sting for a while but we've got to be able to put this behind us," Brees said, noting that the Saints remain in control to finish the No. 1 playoff seeding in the NFC. "It's all about the next game."
Romo threw for 312 yards, including a 49-yard touchdown to Miles Austin, and DeMarcus Ware punctuated his comeback from a neck injury with a game-sealing strip of Brees.
The loss by the Saints (13-1) left the Indianapolis Colts (14-0) as the NFL's only unbeaten team this season.
"We'll digest this," Saints coach Sean Payton said. "Nonetheless, it is what it is and we've got to get back to work next week. We have two important games in front of us and we'll take that approach."
The Saints' start had New Orleans hoping its team could go 19-0 and win the Super Bowl after so many years of losing and heartbreak. It was seen by some as a symbol of New Orleans' ability to come back better than before from the epic disaster that was Hurricane Katrina a little more than four years ago.
Brees had sensed all of that, and made no secret that he wanted the Saints to go for it.
"We feel like we deserved it and the whole city deserved it and we wanted to make it happen," Brees said. "That's probably the most disappointing thing about it."
Instead, the Cowboys (9-5) overcame failures of a more recent nature, ending a two-game skid and proving they were good enough to beat the top team in the NFC in front of a charged-up, hostile crowd. They came to New Orleans 3-8 in December games in their last three seasons under coach Wade Phillips, who was finding himself increasingly on the defensive about his club's ability to play well down the stretch.
Dallas dominated early, scoring on its first two possessions to take a 14-0 lead and went up 24-3 on Marion Barber's second short TD run of the game in the third quarter. Then the Cowboys held on despite Nick Folk's surprising missed 24-yard field goal shortly before the 2-minute warning.
"I said all along this team has a lot of heart, a lot of character and a lot of leaders," Phillips said. "I didn't think this team could get beat three times in a row."
The high-powered Saints nearly pulled off what would have been the latest of several improbable comebacks.
Mike Bell's 1-yard run made it 24-10 with 12:35 to go. Brees followed that by capping a seven-play, 70-yard drive with a 7-yard touchdown pass to Lance Moore with 8 minutes left, cutting New Orleans' deficit to 24-17.
That left it up to the Saints' defense to hold once more. Dallas faced a third-and-7 on its own 23 and the crowd was going so wild Romo had to call timeout a moment before the play clock expired.
The noise was still deafening when Romo returned to the line of scrimmage, but that didn't stop him from finding Austin on a short crossing route for a 32-yard gain.
"We did what we knew we had to do on that drive," Romo said. "We all know how good their offense is so we had to move the ball on them."

On the next play, Romo spun away from the rush and hit tight end John Phillips for a 23-yard gain to New Orleans' 22. From there, Dallas went conservative and set up what looked to be a game-sealing field goal from nearly the same distance as Shaun Suisham's miss two weeks ago, which allowed the Saints to come back and beat Washington in overtime.

When Folk's kick bounced off the upright, the crowd erupted, sensing the Saints were simply destined not to lose. And it looked that way after Brees converted a frantic fourth down on a pass over the middle to Marques Colston, who made a one-handed catch.

The Saints marched to midfield in the final minute, but the Cowboys held firm. Ware stripped Brees for the second time in the game and lineman Jay Ratliff recovered, silencing the packed Superdome while the Cowboys leapt in the air and embraced one another.

"That was a fun one," Romo said. "These are the ones you love to play."

Ware had to be taken to the hospital only a week earlier after what looked like a serious neck injury in Dallas' loss to San Diego. He didn't practice fully all week, but said he was feeling better and was cleared to play. He certainly looked rested and healed.

He sacked Brees twice, forcing fumbles that the Saints' lost both times. The first one set up a field goal that gave Dallas a 17-3 lead at halftime. Linebacker Anthony Spencer also had two sacks.

Very little went right for Brees, who was intercepted once, sacked four times and pressured all night. Even what looked like a certain 36-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter slipped through Devery Henderson's hands in the end zone. Brees was sacked by Spencer soon after and that drive ended with a punt.

NOTES: The Cowboys outgained the Saints, 439 yards to 336, holding the Saints 90 yards and nearly 19 points below their averages in those categories. The Saints, who came in converting nearly 48 percent of third downs this season, converted only one of seven. ... Miles caught seven passes for 139 yards, going over 1,000 yards for the first time in his four-year career. ... Reggie Bush pulled up lame in the second quarter, favoring his right leg, and did not return. The Saints did not provide an update on his condition.

A sales tax is a consumption tax charged at the point of purchase for certain goods and services. The tax is usually set as a percentage by the government charging the tax. There is usually a list of exemptions. The tax can be included in the price (tax-inclusive) or added at the point of sale (tax-exclusive).

In some countries, there are multiple levels of government which each impose a sales tax. For example, sales tax in Chicago (Cook County), IL is 10.25%--the highest in the nation--consisting of 6.25% state, 1.25% city, 1.75% county and 1% regional transportation authority. And in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the tax is 9%, consisting of 4% state and 5% local rate.1 In Tennessee the sales tax is 9.25%, due to the lack of a state income tax. However, there is no nationwide sales tax in the United States.

Sales Tax Consulting

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – It was the slap heard 'round the coalfields: Cordelia Ruth Tucker, wearing the fluorescent-striped shirt of a miner, strode past West Virginia state troopers and into a stream of marchers protesting mountaintop removal mining to deliver an audible smack.
The 54-year-old Rock Creek woman isn't talking as she awaits trial on a battery charge. Her neighbor, environmental activist Judy Bonds, says she was on the receiving end of the slap.
And Bonds — like many in a place where labor disputes have a violent history — fears more blows will follow as the fight escalates over mountaintop removal, the uniquely Appalachian form of strip mining that involves blowing tops off mountains and dumping the rubble in valleys.
For nearly a decade, environmentalists and the mining industry battled in courtrooms and the Capitol. Arrests were unheard of.
This year, as mountaintop removal has drawn more scrutiny from regulators, policy makers and the public, the activists' strategy changed.
There have been nearly 100 arrests in 20 protests, most involving trespassing. Led by a new group called Climate Ground Zero, the activists have chained themselves to giant dump trucks, scaled 80-foot trees to stop blasting and paddled into a 9 million-gallon sludge pond. They've blocked roads, hung banners and staged sit-ins.
Virginia-based Massey Energy claims a single 3 1/2-hour occupation at Progress Coal Co. in Twilight cost the company $300,000. Two environmentalists pleaded no contest to battery after that incident for trying to push past a miner and climb a 20-story, earth-moving crane.
Mountaintop removal foes say the industry and its allies are stoking fear and anger among miners and their friends by accusing environmentalists, Congress and the Obama administration of trying to kill coal through regulation and permitting.
Massey equates anti-coal with anti-American. Pittsburgh-based Consol Energy blames the planned layoffs of 482 miners on a lawsuit by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
Both sides are fighting for a way of life. The miners see the mountains as their livelihood. The environmentalists see them as divine and irreplaceable creations.
Since that slap in June, conflict has manifested itself mainly in harsh words and shows of force: Shout-downs by hundreds of miners at an Army Corps of Engineers hearing; a bare-bellied miner's profane, throat-slitting gesture at a picnic for environmentalists on Kayford Mountain; a curse-laden online tirade in which someone using the screen name "Superhippieslayer" warns, "Look out violence is coming your way. There is a group ready as we speak to eliminate the threat."
The bitter feelings bubble up in comments posted on YouTube video links to incidents like the June 23 protest march where Bonds was slapped. Hundreds of comments were posted after she spoke at a Dec. 7 rally in Charleston, many laced with profanities.
It's to the point where Bonds, a diminutive 57-year-old, has installed home-security cameras, carries a handgun and checks her car for dangling bomb wires.
"I feel a sense of dread," she said. "You're taking your life in your hands if they know who you are."
Lorelei Scarbro, an activist with Coal River Mountain Watch, said the industry provokes the miners as it demonizes the environmentalists.
"It's not the working man that's the problem here," Scarbro said. "It's the industry and the way they continue to use and exploit people on both sides of the issue, whether it's the working man trying to take care of his family or the environmentalist trying to take care of us all."
Environmentalists use words like "corrupt," "greedy" and "thugs" to describe the pro-coal establishment. Industry counters with words like "hippies," "extremists" and "terrorists."
The West Virginia Coal Association dismisses much of the inflammatory language as harmless rhetoric, to be expected when jobs are on the line.

"We absolutely don't condone people who use threats, intimidation and general thuggism," said senior vice president Chris Hamilton. However, "from our standpoint, it's more difficult to engage in constructive discussion with someone who has as their primary objective to shut the industry down."

Neither side is backing down.

"People are not going to just roll over and let their livelihood be regulated out of business," said Beckley coal truck supplier Carl Hubbard, who bemoaned "limp-wristed greeniacs" in a recent newspaper column. "God put that coal here for us to mine, in my view."

There have been pleas to tone things down.

In July, after the South Charleston Museum board of directors canceled the premiere of the film "Coal Country" over unspecified security concerns, the West Virginia Council of Churches begged both sides to respect the rights of lawful assembly and free speech.

Months later, executive director Dennis Sparks is still waiting: "There's not a day goes by that we don't lift it up in prayer."

Politicians and power brokers have generally responded by inciting or standing indifferent. Take state Senate Majority Leader Truman Chafin: "The Lord didn't create many things without a purpose. But mosquitoes and the EPA come close, I think."

U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd recently became an important exception, rebuking the industry.

"The most important factor in maintaining coal-related jobs is demand for coal," he said. "Scapegoating and stoking fear among workers over the permitting process is counterproductive."

Elsewhere, rhetoric might be dismissed as just that, but the coalfields have a bloody history.

In 1920, a shootout between unionizing miners and coal company security guards left 12 men dead on the streets of Matewan, W.Va. The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, an armed union uprising, eventually required the intervention of federal troops. During a union strike in the 1980s, car windows were smashed and shots were fired.

"But this is different," said William Kovarik, an associate professor at Radford University in Virginia who studies and teaches the history of environmental movements worldwide.

Now the conflict is between miners and people within their own communities.

"Union and nonunion workers are being told by management that their livelihoods are at great risk from out-of-state environmentalists," Kovarik said. "Management is going out of its way to equate them with terrorists, when in reality, they are their own neighbors, grandparents, retired coal miners and college students."

And dehumanizing your opponent, Kovarik said, can open the door to real violence.

Activist Chuck Nelson, a former underground miner from Glen Daniel, said the longer surface miners face uncertainty, the more the danger grows: The federal government must act soon, one way or the other.

And if the EPA comes down on the environmentalists' side?

"Well," Nelson said, "there's a possibility it might not be safe to live in the Coal River Valley."

MIAMI – Beginning driver Ashley Crawford grips the worn gray steering wheel and warily begins maneuvering the 1999 Ford Escort through a set of bright orange traffic cones outside Killian Senior High School.
She considers herself lucky: Because of budget cuts, many schools around the country are leaving driver's ed by the side of the road. They are cutting back on behind-the-wheel instruction or eliminating it altogether, leaving it to parents to either teach their teenagers themselves or send them to commercial driving schools.
"If my parents would have taught me, it would have been different," said Ashley, a 16-year-old sophomore. "When I drive, they try to tell me what to do, and I get nervous."
Some educators and others worry that such cutbacks could prove tragic.
"As soon as people start taking driver's education away from the kids, we're going to pay for it with lost lives, collisions, and ultimately that costs everybody," said John Bolen, past president of the Florida Professional Driving School Association.
Some worry also that many parents can't afford the $350 to $700 that private lessons can cost or don't have the skills to teach their kids themselves. Even for those who can do it, the combination of parents, teenagers and learning how to drive can be volatile.
In more than half the states, minors who want a license must take driver's education from a certified instructor, said Allen Robinson, CEO of the American Driver and Traffic Safety Education Association. However, that doesn't necessarily mean schools are required to offer a class. (Generally, after age 18, would-be drivers do not have to undergo any formal instruction.)
High schools started rolling back driver's ed after their effectiveness was called into question in the 1980s. The more recent cutbacks have been driven by school funding shortages, and the trend might be accelerating because of the downturn in the economy, said J. Peter Kissinger, president and CEO of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
Robinson said the nation's schools have all but eliminated driver's ed as an elective course offered during the school day.
Here in Miami-Dade County, the nation's fourth-largest school system got rid of driver's ed during the day at all but Killian and another school. Students can still enroll in a free after-school course at one of the district's adult education centers. But that is not an option for the many thousands of students who play sports or are involved in other extracurricular activities, or cannot get a ride.
About 10 high schools in Georgia eliminated or reduced driver's education this school year. A dozen more did the same in Kansas last year. In Volusia County, Fla., schools eliminated daytime driver's ed three years ago, replacing it with summer, after-school and Saturday classes. Enrollment plummeted two-thirds, saving about $400,000 a year.
"This is not because they don't believe in driver's ed," said Bob Dallas, director of the Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety. "They do, but they're facing the same financial pressure that everybody in government is facing."
In rural Pennsylvania, the Titusville district got rid of the behind-the-wheel portion of its program last spring, saving about $20,000. In Blountville, Tenn., the driver's education program was cut in half about five years ago because of budget woes. Administrators considered eliminating the $130,000-a-year program last spring, but did not.
"It could save lives. It's very simple," said Jack Barnes, director of schools in Sullivan County, Tenn. "We don't want any of our students injured or killed because of mistakes they made that possibly a program like this could help."
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens; in 2007, an average of 11 16- to 19-year-olds died every day. But Russ Rader, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said studies show there is no difference in crash risk between 16- and 17-year-olds who take driver's ed and those who don't.
"In some cases, driver's education has a negative effect because in some states you can get a license sooner if you take driver's ed," he said.
Private instructors aren't necessarily picking up all the students who can't take driver's ed at school.
Julio Torres, an instructor at the Easy Method Driving School in Miami, said he suspects the downturn in the economy is playing a role. He also said some parents simply prefer to teach their kids.

But Torres and others said parents, despite their best intentions, aren't always the best instructors. For one thing, they may pass their own bad driving habits on to their children.

Also, "the kids are at a stage where they're confrontational with their parents," said Brenda Bennett, owner of a driving school in Erie, Pa., that holds contracts to teach driver's ed through some area high schools. "Then you add driving with a parent and you have more confrontation. Whereas someone like myself, when we take kids out, there's no personality going there. It's just all business."

WASHINGTON -- One of the major themes of this complex and confused year has been the seeming transformation of not only the United States but the entire world from a print mindset to an Internet mindset. Newspapers fail, even as we desperately clasp them to our bosoms for one last farewell. The world of readers and intellects shakes.

The optimists and media millennialists among us want to believe that every change brings with it its concomitant blessing -- they see the deaths of so many newspapers and the birth of the blogger and the Internet news agencies as great steps forward toward "citizen journalism" and becoming "global netizens."

Take, for instance, the Chinese model. An emerging and blossoming China will, they think, inevitably be democratized by its young people's fascination with the Internet, and newly worldly young Chinese will thus demand political rights in a world transformed. At the same time, the still profoundly autocratic Chinese officialdom all too often underlines this idea with its hysterical concern -- children with "Internet addiction" are sent to boot camps where one 15-year-old was recently beaten to death and where the government once regularly administered electroshock treatment for such addictions.

Now, however, some of our best thinkers are challenging these ideas. Internationally known authority on the Internet and free expression Rebecca MacKinnon, after many years covering China and Japan for CNN, recently spoke on China at a meeting of the World Press Freedom Committee here. She calls her theme of Internet-enabled authoritarianism "cybertarianism" and speaks of "the future of freedom" in the Internet age.

She told the group: "China is among the most successful repressive regimes in the world. The Internet is not affecting China, but China is affecting the Internet." And she says in a new book on the subject that she is writing, "It's time to upgrade our understanding of the relationship between technology and political change." Indeed, it is.

When the Internet stumblingly entered our consciousnesses about 20 years ago -- and then stunned our world into new conceptions -- the predominant idea was that this would mean greater democratization across the board: from personal freedom, to institutional relaxation, to the democratization of whole nation-states.

But while it has provided the first, the greater cultural freedom for individuals to explore the world, it has had little effect on the last two, infinitely larger intentions. To the contrary, the Internet is busy fracturing the institutions and politics of the developed and developing worlds, making it harder to create unified policies and political groupings.

In an oppressed country at very pregnant moments of change, you can use the Internet to call unhappy netizens to demonstrate and even to die; but in more open countries, and even in some generally repressive countries like China, it is only newspapers which can, step by step, provide the background to the serious organizing of society.

Even worse, the Internet brings out the illusion -- delusion, if you will -- that by blogging and kvetching endlessly on the Net, we are seriously changing the world. As Congressman Barney Frank said, wisely: "When somebody tells me he read something on the Internet, it's the same as telling me, 'Somebody told me something.'"

In his prophetic 1985 book about the changes television was bringing, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," the late New York University professor Neil Postman argued we have been heading toward a media "that denied interconnectedness, proceeded without context, argued the irrelevance of history, explained nothing, and offered fascination in place of complexity and coherence." Now, with the looming, but unquantifiable power of the Internet, we have come even closer to amusing ourselves to death.

The political blogger is an individual, often a disillusioned and angry one, who goes on the Web to express his or her rage against society. Internet journalism companies like Politico.com tend to be serious journalistic undertakings, but almost none have the institutional bulk of the traditional newspaper, with its rigorous fact-checking, lawyers for the defense of journalists and unifying reach across society.

When you pick up a newspaper, you see a world stretched out in front of you; when you open a blog, you generally have an angry someone raging at you, without context.

If newspapers were to truly fail across our society -- and most probably this next year will be crucial -- we will have no guardians of the little truths that keep societies sane, we will have no daily history of where our society has been, where it is and where it is going, we will have no institutions to force our attention to the wide variety of issues facing us and not just the ones we would choose on the Net.

What a dangerous moment we face. Wouldn't it be ironic if democratic societies turn out to be more threatened by the Internet age than the repressive regimes that have so feared this transformation.

Within New York City, griot-like performances of poetry and music by artists such as The Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron and Jalal Mansur Nuriddin had a significant impact on the post-civil rights era culture of the 1960s and 1970s.

Dub music had become popular in Jamaica due to the influence of American sailors and Rhythm & Blues. Large sound systems were set up to accommodate poor Jamaicans who couldn't afford to buy records and dub developed at the sound systems. DJ Kool Herc was one of the most popular DJs in the early 70’s. Due to the fact that the New York audience did not particularly like dub or reggae, Herc quickly switched to using funk, soul and disco records. Because the percussive breaks were generally short, Herc and other DJs began extending them using an audio mixer and two records.

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LAGOS (AFP) –
About 61,000 barrels of crude of oil giant Anglo-Dutch Shell were spilled in Nigeria last year, mostly due to the activities of Niger Delta armed militants, company document said on Wednesday.

"In 2008, saboteurs spilled almost 48,000 barrels of oil in 140 incidents... About 40,000 barrels of this was the result of armed gangs blowing up pipelines with explosives in 10 separate incidents," it said.

Shell's Nigerian subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), said that the volume of spill became significantly greater because local communities frequently delayed the company's officials from stopping the leak and start the clean-up.

"According to our own estimations, 13,000 extra barrels of oil were spilled in 2008 as a result," it added.

Local communities in the oil-rich region have often accused foreign oil companies, especially Shell, of causing environmental pollution and degradation without paying adequate compensation.

Shell was in 1994 forced to stop operation in Ogoniland -- a major community in the region -- following a violent campaign against the company.

SPDC, the largest private-sector oil and gas company in Nigeria, has a network of more than 6,000 kilometres (3,750 miles) of flowlines and pipelines and 90 oilfield in volatile Niger Delta.

It also has 1,000 oil wells, 72 flowstations (pumping stations), 10 gas plants and two major oil export terminals -- in Bonny and Forcados.

There were almost 90 incidents of crude oil theft, locally known as bunkering, from SPDC facilities last year, during which incidents of "malicious damage" and pipeline theft increased by 48 percent, it also said.

Between 2006 and 2008, armed militants kidnapped 133 SPDC workers and contractors.

Five people working for SPDC joint venture were killed in assaults and kidnappings in the same period.

Shell ventures produced an average of more than 850,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day last year, about 39 percent of the country's total oil and gas production, the document said.

CHICAGO – Brook Lopez scored 25 points and Devin Harris hit to the go-ahead basket with 14.9 seconds left Tuesday night as the New Jersey Nets got their second win of the season and first on the road, beating the Chicago Bulls 103-101.
The Nets, who got off the worst start in NBA history at 0-18 before beating Charlotte and then losing to the Knicks, are now 2-19 — including 1-12 away from home.
Chris Douglas-Roberts added 20 points and Harris had 17 for New Jersey.
Derrick Rose scored 11 of his 27 points in the fourth quarter for Chicago, which lost for the eighth time in nine games. Luol Deng also had 27 for the Bulls.
Rose drove past Courtney Lee and banked in a high arching shot to give Chicago a 100-99 lead with 19.5 seconds remaining.
But Harris answered with a driving shot of his own with Rose guarding him, putting the Nets back up 101-100 with 14.9 seconds to go.
After a timeout, Chicago's John Salmons missed a jumper before Rafer Alston made two at the free throw line with 6.3 seconds remaining, giving New Jersey a 103-100 lead.
Rose was fouled with 2.1 seconds to go. He made the first and missed the second intentionally before Lopez grabbed the rebound — his 10th of the game — as the buzzer sounded.
Douglas-Roberts had three baskets as the Nets began the second half with a 10-0 run to pull out to a 64-54 lead, and they increased it to 12 on a basket by Lopez, who would later pick up his third and fourth fouls in the third quarter.
The Nets led 80-70 after three, and when the Bulls missed four straight free throws to start the final period, the boos began to pour down at the United Center.
Then the Bulls went on a 9-0 run.
Taj Gibson sank a jumper, Rose drove for a basket, Deng dunked and Salmons hit a 3-pointer from the corner to cut the lead to one.
Lopez picked up a loose ball to score for the Nets, but Deng hit another 3-pointer to tie the game at 82.
Rose finally put the Bulls ahead with a basket at 94-93 but Harris responded with a drive, and Douglas-Roberts sank a jumper for a three-point Nets' lead with 2:10 left.
NOTES: Entering the game, the Nets were averaging an NBA-low 87.6 points per game. The Bulls were two from the bottom at 90.4. ... Chicago rookie Gibson scored a career-high 20 on 8-of-12 shooting after he was replaced in the starting lineup by Brad Miller.

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More than 60 years after the end of World War II, an 89-year-old retired auto worker from Ohio went on trial in Germany on Monday in what many are calling the country's last Nazi war-crimes proceeding. That's not the only reason the world is watching the trial closely: John Demjanjuk is also No. 1 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted war criminals, accused of being an accessory to the deaths of at least 27,900 people. Then there's the added drama of his health - Demjanjuk's family insists he's too old and sick to stand trial, claiming he's suffering from a range of ailments. He was pushed into the courtroom in a wheelchair on Monday morning, his mouth slightly agape and apparently struggling for breath. During the afternoon hearing, he was brought in lying on a gurney. When he started writhing and complaining of pain, he was taken outside for an injection.
Prosecutors say that Demjanjuk, who was born in Ukraine and emigrated to the U.S. in 1952, worked as a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943 and that his job was to lead thousands of Jews to their deaths in the gas chambers. Demjanjuk fought for the Russians first, however. According to prosecutors, he was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1942 and then sent for training to become a Nazi guard at a special camp in eastern Poland called Trawniki, which was run by Adolf Hitler's Élite SS force. Crucial to the prosecution's case is an ID card from Trawniki purportedly showing that Demjanjuk was transferred from the SS training camp to Sobibor in March 1943. (See pictures of the rise of Adolf Hitler.)
The prosecutors' charge sheet carries a detailed description of Demjanjuk's alleged duties at Sobibor. "When the transport train carrying Jews arrived, the normal work was stopped and each member of the camp personnel became involved in the routine extermination process," the document reads. After the Jews were ordered out of the cars, they were told to leave their luggage on the ramps and take off their clothes, the charge sheet says. They were then allegedly led to the gas chambers under the pretext they were taking a shower. Holocaust experts have also linked the Sobibor guards to mass executions. "The guards were involved in the extermination process - the Nazis had few personnel in the death camps and the people who were there played an integral part in genocide," Dr. Edith Raim, a historian at Munich's Institute of Contemporary History, tells TIME.
More than 30 plaintiffs, including former Sobibor inmates and relatives of those killed, are attending the trial in Munich. Nineteen will give evidence in the case. But it's unlikely that anyone will be able to identify Demjanjuk after 66 years - one of the main obstacles that prosecutors face. There are no living witnesses who can tie him to specific killings, so prosecutors will have to rely on past statements from witnesses who are now deceased and written documents. If convicted, Demjanjuk faces up to 15 years in prison - the usual maximum sentence in Germany. (See pictures of the faces of D-Day.)
Survivor Thomas Blatt, whose brother and parents died at the camp, has traveled from his home in California to Germany to testify. But even he admits it will be difficult to convict Demjanjuk. "I can't remember the faces of my parents now," the 82-year-old says. "How could I remember him?" Blatt says the trial is important, nonetheless. "I don't care if he ends up in prison or not," he says. "The world needs to find out what happened at Sobibor."
Demjanjuk has a different take on the past. He portrays himself as a victim of the Nazis - a Red Army conscript who was captured by the Germans and then held as a prisoner of war in different camps. Demjanjuk has thus far remained silent about the charges leveled against him. "I expect he won't say anything during the whole trial," says his lawyer, GÜnther Maull. And, he adds, even if prosecutors can prove that Demjanjuk was at Sobibor, Maull maintains that he would have been there under duress. (Read "New Trial for Nazi War-Crimes Suspect?")
After gaining U.S. citizenship in 1958, Demjanjuk lived an unassuming life with his family in Cleveland, Ohio, working at a Ford car factory until evidence surfaced suggesting he had been an SS guard at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. The U.S. government revoked his citizenship and, in 1987, Demjanjuk went on trial in Israel, accused of being the notorious guard Ivan the Terrible. He was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. But in 1993, his conviction was overturned on appeal by the Israeli Supreme Court, which ruled that he wasn't the guard in question. Demjanjuk returned to the U.S., but German authorities soon requested his extradition. Demjanjuk's family argued he was too ill to travel, but they lost their legal battle and he was finally deported to Germany in May. (Read a 2-Min. Bio of Demjanjuk.)
Doctors who examined Demjanjuk testified on Monday that while he's frail, he's fit to stand trial and he's not suffering from dementia. The hearings will be limited to two 90-minute sessions each day so as not to tire him out. If his health deteriorates further, however, there's a chance the whole trial may grind to a standstill. As for the survivors and the relatives of those killed at Sobibor, they're just relieved the trial has started.
See a brief history of World War II movies.
View this article on Time.comRelated articles on Time.com:Demjanjuk on Trial: The Last Nazi War Crimes Defendant New Trial for Nazi War Crimes Suspect? 2-Min. Bio: Accused Nazi John Demjanjuk Former Nazi Hitman, 88, Finally Stands Trial

LONDON (AFP) –
Franco-American author Jonathan Littell has won the Bad Sex In Fiction Award for a book that had previously scooped France's top literary award.

"The Kindly Ones", a World War II saga originally published in French under the title "Les Bienveillantes", won the Prix Goncourt in 2006 but it was only translated into English this year.

Judges at the London-based Literary Review magazine awarded Littell the tongue-in-cheek award on Monday for prose describing sex as "a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg."

He emerged victorious from a field including literary heavyweights Philip Roth ("The Humbling"), Paul Theroux ("A Dead Hand") and rock star Nick Cave ("The Death of Bunny Munro").

Cave described nipples which were "the size and texture of liquorice Jelly Spogs" and at one point a character in the book pleads with her partner to "pray, pray at my portal."

In Roth's work, one character "appoints herself ringmaster and would not participate until summoned."

The Literary Review noted that both Littell and Roth incorporated mythology into their sex scenes -- the winner used images of "a Gorgon's head" and "a motionless Cyclops."

Judges conceded that his work was "in part a work of genius". Many authors have taken the Bad Sex prize in good humour and occasionally attend the ceremony to pick up the award themselves.

Littell's agent accepted his award on his behalf. The author himself has yet to comment.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Dan Boyle scored the go-ahead goal on a power play 6:15 into the second period, and Evgeni Nabokov made 28 saves to lead the San Jose Sharks to a 4-2 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday night.
Manny Malhotra scored on a breakaway with 2:35 left and Jamie McGinn made it 4-1 on a scramble in front 13 seconds later for San Jose. Frazer McLaren also scored his first NHL goal for the Sharks, who have won four of their last five games and lead the league with 40 points.
Kyle Wellwood scored two minutes in and set up Jannik Hansen's meaningless goal with 6.3 seconds left in the game, and Roberto Luongo made 26 saves as the Canucks, playing for a second straight night, lost for just the second time in six games.
Boyle gave the Sharks the lead on the second of three straight power plays to start a second period dominated by San Jose. Luongo stopped Joe Thornton's high shot from the left circle, but the rebound went right to Boyle on the other side and he snapped it in before the goalie could recover.
The assist extended Thornton's point streak to eight games, giving him three goals and 15 points in that stretch. San Jose outshot the Canucks 15-4 in the second period.
Nabokov was at his busiest in the third, stopping the first 12 shots, including a skate save on Ryan Kesler's redirection in front with 7:16 left, before Hansen redirected Wellwood's shot from the top of the crease.
Wellwood, whose only other goal this season was into an empty net two games ago, opened the scoring on a 2-on-1 with a low shot past Nabokov's blocker.
McLaren, a tough guy playing his 10th NHL game, tied it 10 minutes later, going to the net to redirect Joe Pavelski's pass out of the corner past Luongo. San Jose almost took after Luongo gave the puck away behind his own net, but the first period ended just before Jed Ortmeyer tucked it into the vacated goal.
The Canucks went 4 for 5 on the power play against the Oilers the night before, moving up to second in the NHL. But they failed to register even a shot in four chances against San Jose's top-ranked penalty kill unit. The Sharks' third-ranked power play finished 1 for 5 against Vancouver s 22nd place penalty killing.
Already leading the NHL standings, the Sharks got captain Rob Blake back on defense after missing 11 games with an upper-body injury, and speedy third-year forward Devon Setoguchi returned after missing five with a leg injury.
NOTES: The Sharks sent rookies D Jason Demers, who had 13 points his first 27 NHL games, and C Benn Ferriero to Worcester of the AHL Saturday to make room for Blake and Setoguchi. San Jose was playing its league-high 18th road game of the season, but the Sharks play 21 of their next 28 games at home. Vancouver, which wrapped up a five-game homestand, starts a four-game, seven-day road trip in New Jersey on Tuesday. D Christian Ehrhoff played his first game against the Sharks since they traded him to Vancouver in September in late August, part of a salary dump that allowed San Jose to later acquire high-priced forward Dany Heatley in a trade with Ottawa.