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February 2012.
• Martin's supporters portrayed the shooting as racially motivated, while Zimmerman, who identifies himself as Hispanic, claimed self-defense. Charged with second-degree murder, Zimmerman is pleading not guilty at the trial unfolding in a Sanford courthouse.
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50 years on, Romania takes first steps toward punishing brutal Communist-era gulag guards
• BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) -- Guards slammed doors on prisoners' fingers, beat them on the soles of their feet and burned them with cigarettes. They served rotten meat and forced inmates to eat excrement as punishment. In extremes of heat and cold, they made their victims haul crushing loads until they collapsed.
• After decades of denial, chilling details are emerging about the torment guards inflicted upon political prisoners in Romanian communist-era gulags, as part of a first small step toward holding them to account. The names of 35 guards -- now in their 80s or 90s -- are to be handed to authorities starting next week for possible prosecution by a government institution tasked with investigating communist-era crimes, The Associated Press has learned.
• The perpetrators of communist-era crimes have long been shielded by Romania's establishment, whose ranks are filled with members of the former Securitate secret police. But the movement to expose Romanian gulag guards has a powerful champion in the Liberal Party, which is now part of the governing coalition. Members of the party were targeted by the Communists in their crackdown on all perceived dissent after it came to power in 1946.
• Of Romania's 617,000 political prisoners, 120,000 died in the gulags. The inmates included politicians, priests, peasants, writers, diplomats and children as young as 11. Most survivors died before seeing any chance of justice.
• Those still alive -- about 2,800 in all -- now see a glimmer of hope as the Institute for Investigating the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of the Romanian Exile begins probing allegations against the 35 guards on the list, as well as other communist-era crimes.
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Analysis shows shift in youth attitudes during Great Recession -- but will it last?
• CHICAGO (AP) -- Drew Miller clearly remembers the day his father was laid off.
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