George Zimmerman's defense team formally requested Monday that the Florida judge assigned to their client's case be removed after she revealed her husband works with a CNN legal analyst.

Mark O'Mara's office filed paperwork Monday asking that Seminole Circuit Judge Jessica Recksiedler not preside over second-degree murder proceedings involving Zimmerman, according to Seminole County Court spokeswoman Michelle Kennedy.

The motion to "disqualify" the trial judge "will be ruled on in the appropriate manner," Kennedy said Monday.

Zimmerman, a 28-year-old neighborhood-watch volunteer, fatally shot teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, a killing he has said was in self-defense. Since then, the case has stirred civil rights activists nationwide and drawn intense publicity.

Recksiedler is assigned to the Zimmerman case. But on Friday, she said she would entertain motions to disqualify her from the trial after discovering that her husband works with Mark NeJame, an attorney whom Zimmerman approached about representing him and has since widely commented on the case in the media. NeJame also is a CNN contributor who has been asked to provide analysis on this case.

Chongqing, China - The British businessman whose murder has sparked political upheaval in China was poisoned after he threatened to expose a plan by a Chinese leader's wife to move money abroad, two sources with knowledge of the police investigation said.

It was the first time a specific motive has been revealed for Neil Heywood's murder last November, a death which ended Chinese leader Bo Xilai's hopes of emerging as a top central leader and threw off balance the Communist Party's looming leadership succession.

Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, asked Heywood late last year to move a large sum of money abroad, and she became outraged when he demanded a larger cut of the money than she had expected due to the size of the transaction, the sources said.

She accused him of being greedy and hatched a plan to kill him after he said he could expose her dealings, one of the sources said, summarizing the police case. Both sources have spoken to investigators in Chongqing, the southwestern Chinese city where Heywood was killed and where Bo had cast himself as a crime-fighting Communist Party leader.

Gu is in police custody on suspicion of committing or arranging Heywood's murder, though no details of the motive or the crime itself have been publicly released, other than a general comment from Chinese state media that he was killed after a financial dispute.

The sources have close ties to Chinese police and said they were given details of the investigation.

They said Heywood - formerly a close friend of Gu and who had been helping her with her overseas financial dealings - was killed after he threatened to expose what she was doing.

"Heywood told her that if she thought he was being too greedy, then he didn't need to become involved and wouldn't take a penny of the money, but he also said he could also expose it," the first source said.

About 1,600 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails will go on an open-ended hunger strike on April 17 to protest imprisonment without charge and solitary confinement exercised by the Tel Aviv regime.

Issa Qaraqi, the Palestinian Authority minister for prisoner affairs, said on Saturday the detainees also demand Israel allow families to visit them.

"The situation inside Israeli prisons has become very dangerous and serious," Qaraqi said.

April 17 marks the Palestinian Prisoners Day.

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of the Spanish capital of Madrid to protest the government's planned spending cuts in the health and education sectors.

The protesters carried banners with anti-government slogans and chanted, "Mariano, Mariano you won't make it to the summer," referring to the country's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Norwegian, who says he killed 77 people in self-defence, is 'emotional' as film he made to justify one-man war is played


In an average year, 30 murders are committed in Norway. In three hours one afternoon in July last year, Anders Behring Breivik more than doubled that figure. Yet when he appeared at the first day of his trial on Monday, the 33-year-old insisted he was not guilty of acts of terrorism resulting in the deaths of 77 people.

"I acknowledge the acts," Breivik told Oslo central court when asked to enter a plea. "But I do not plead guilty and I claim that I was doing it in self defence."

His lawyer had already warned that this would be how Breivik would justify planting an enormous bomb outside the government quarters in Oslo, killing eight people, before heading to the island of Utøya to gun down 69 more attending a summer camp of the ruling Labour party.

Earlier, he announced that he did not recognise the Norwegian court - because, he said, it receives its mandate "from political parties who support multiculturalism".

Breivik was defiant as he arrived in court, giving a closed-fist salute before shaking hands with prosecutors and court officials and then declaring himself a "writer" when asked for his occupation.

Madison, Wisconsin - A video captured a woman shaking and sobbing uncontrollably while being frisked by a Transportation Security Administration agent.

Political blogger Jim Hoft - who runs the Gateway Pundit website - captured the incident at a Madison, Wis., airport Sunday.

"This morning at a Midwest airport I witnessed this poor woman suffering through this horrible sexual violation," Hoft said on his Gateway Pundit website.

A documentary about Vittorio Arrigoni, the Italian peace activist whose passion for helping the Palestinian people, lead to his death.

He moved to Gaza in 2008 to work for the International Solidarity Movement. He was kidnapped and killed by a Salafi group in April 2011.

US, Texas - A baggage handler has been charged with theft by a public servant after he stole tablet computers from the luggage he was tasked with checking for security threats.

Clayton Keith Dovel, 36, of Bedford, Texas, was busted in February after he was found to have eight iPads believed to have been stolen from passengers.

Police said Dovel worked in a 'resolution room' at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, where checked bags are examined before they're placed on a flight.

He was suspended from his position as a TSA agent.

Borna Mojra, one of the iPad theft victims, said the crime is a breach of the public trust.

He told KXAS: 'If they're the guys who are protecting us and they're not, who am I going to trust next?'

What started out as a situation in poor isolated areas of the country left to their own devices has taken root and spread, across Appalachia and beyond.

Editor's Note: We're proud to announce that we've teamed with Salon to pursue the most important under-covered stories in the country. This story is the first product of our Salon-Alternet Investigative Fund.

KERMIT, W.Va. - It takes less than a minute to drive past Kermit, five to tour the place entirely. An old coal mining town with barely 300 residents and one blinking light between the train tracks, Kermit has no supermarket, no clothing store, no main drag. Main Street is really a side street with rows of cottages, its biggest building, the Kermit community center, empty and boarded.

Yet in this tiny town, the Kermit Sav-Rite Pharmacy used to be as busy as a New York deli. Six employees worked the counter, lines at the drive-through window snaked around the square cinder-block building, and the parking lot was full day and night.

Five soldiers confined to quarters over claims of inappropriate conduct as 11 secret service members are put on leave

The US secret service says it has put 11 agents on leave while it investigates alleged misconduct before a summit attended by Barack Obama in Colombia, as it emerged that five soldiers are also facing investigation.

The secret service apologised for the distraction the incident had caused at the summit in Cartagena, where Barack Obama is meeting leaders of more than 30 countries.