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• Gu's case may have riveted the international community, but it is barely causing a ripple among ordinary Chinese, underscoring how far removed such high-stakes political maneuvering is from their lives.  The lack of awareness points in part to the government's relative success with censorship and limiting media exposure of the case, which has embarrassed the Communist Party ahead of its carefully managed once-a-decade reshuffle of power later this year. Bo was a contender for a top job until his downfall earlier this year.
• "I rarely pay attention to such news because politics has very little to do with my own life," said Gong Genwu, a 23-year-old computer software salesman who was strolling back to work after lunch outside a shopping mall across from the Hefei Intermediate People's Court.
• Gong said this was the first time he had heard about the trial and even Gu's name. Pressed for an opinion on the scandal as a whole, he added: "What can I say? If a murder really was committed by someone close to a high official, this shows that they are on a different level than ordinary people. Perhaps some of them lack morals."
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• LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The word "prolific" gets tossed around a lot, but it couldn't be more appropriate in discussing the work of the late, great Marvin Hamlisch. This is especially true in considering his many contributions to film over the past five-plus decades.
• Yes, he's been duly decorated in other artistic realms -- the longtime Broadway favorite "A Chorus Line," which eventually ended up on the big screen, earned him a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 -- but he also crafted some of the best-loved and most enduring songs and scores in movie history.
• Hamlisch died Monday after a brief illness, his family said. The former child prodigy, who was accepted to Juilliard School of Music at age 7, was 68.
• Regardless of the genre or year, Hamlisch's music had a unifying factor -- something intangible, an old-fashioned sense of showmanship, a feeling of substance and a respect for craft. He tapped into our emotions in a way that felt intimate and personal, yet he expressed yearnings that are universally relatable,
• One great example of this is "The Way We Were," a soaring, unabashedly sentimental, achingly melancholy ballad from the 1973 Sydney Pollack romantic drama

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