Twenty years ago this week, one of the worst atrocities in Liberia's war a conflict that was marked by its sheer brutality and high civilian casualties occurred in Carter Camp when some 600 people were slaughtered on the night of June 5-6, 1993.

The neglect shown the victims mirrors the lack of action in bringing the perpetrators to justice. A United Nations-commissioned inquiry found the army of the late president Samuel Doe responsible, but other accounts have since challenged the report. No one was ever put on trial even though Liberia's post-conflict truth commission recommended prosecution for perpetrators of crimes in the war generally.

Nyenati Allison, who was then a reporter for The Associated Press, visited the area soon after the carnage and described a horrible scene: "Strewn through the camp were babies with crushed skulls, mothers hacked by machetes, elderly people butchered like livestock."

The victims were hastily buried. A profusion of bushes now renders the mass grave, dug between two aging trees on the outskirts of the old camp, all but inaccessible.

"The government needs to build a memorial here so that at least generations unborn will know what happened here," said Yelesah Mark, a 48-year-old survivor of that hellish night as he struggled to control his emotions.

Carter Camp existed originally as home for low-income rubber tappers of the Firestone tire company, situated 48 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Monrovia near the world's largest rubber plantation which began operations in 1926. When fighting between rival rebel forces and regional peacekeepers displaced locals, they sought refuge in Carter Camp, swelling its population to over 3,000. By the time of the massacre, those in the camp of mud huts were a combination of company employees and people displaced by fighting.

The camp was immediately abandoned after the massacre and visitors have to be told there once was a camp here. Grass has taken over everywhere. Apart from a Nigerian-originated church which operates here, the few visible living things are birds building nests in trees that once provided shades for camp residents.

Mark was among the displaced people who nearly lost their lives in the Carter Camp Massacre, one of the worst atrocities in Liberia's 14-year civil war that ended in 2003. When gunmen dressed in military uniform entered the sprawling camp, said Mark, "we saw two tactical jeeps in which they came taking positions at the two ends of the camp, but we did not know their intent at first."

The slaughter soon began, with the attackers using firearms and machetes. Over 200 of those who were butchered were children.

"My brother-in-law Bainda and my friend Sackie were among the batch of displaced people slaughtered behind a poultry house down there," he said. "The killings were all over the camp; as people cried for help, all you could hear were 'ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba'" Mark said, imitating the sound of automatic weapons fire.

"Whenever I ... tell the story to people, it brings back that sad memory; it looks like we are digging out old wounds," he said. "But again, the story has to be told."

Mark said those who drove into the camp and carried out the massacre were former soldiers belonging to the army loyal to Doe. The then president was killed in 1990, but the army he led continued to remain active, fighting other rival forces.

Flan J. Nowon was a relief worker supervising food distribution in Carter Camp 20 years ago. He and his team worked there hours before the massacre, handing out food to "desperate people." They decided to take a break and return to their homes outside the camp, planning to return and resume the food distribution the next morning.

"It was just about two hours later that we started hearing heavy gunfire in the camp," Nowon said, standing with AP reporters near the overgrown mass grave. "I believed for sure there was something terrible happening in the camp when I saw a woman who had been shot in the buttock coming out of the camp naked, bleeding and crying and carrying a child."

"I ran back inside and told my wife 'Carter Camp is on fire,'" Nowon recalled.

The lack of accountability for massacres such as this one has bred suspicion that persists two decades later that some of those who orchestrated the violence are in positions of power.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was a leader of a rebel group in 1993 and whose fighters many people like Nowon suspect had a hand in the attack, was found guilty in April 2012 in an international war crimes court in the Netherlands of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity and received a 50-year prison sentence.

But that was for aiding and abetting rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone, not for atrocities in his own country.

"Liberia became a place where killing was a way of life," said Nowon. "And those who killed people deliberately in Liberia have been left to roam the streets."

The visit came as authorities said a border guard was killed and two others were wounded in clashes along the Syrian frontier, the latest sign that the Syrian civil war risks spilling over into Iraq.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's visit to Irbil the first in the Kurdish regional capital since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein was to hold a Cabinet meeting as part of an initiative started last year to better understand provincial-level needs.

Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani leads the Kurds' largely autonomous and increasingly prosperous northern region, which has multiple government ministries, its own security forces and other trappings of an independent state. It remains part of Iraq, however, and relies heavily on a share of the federal budget controlled by Baghdad to meet its budget needs.

Arguments over dueling claims to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other disputed territories running along the Kurdish region's border with the rest of Iraq are one of the most serious threats to Iraq's stability.

Relations grew tenser in November, when an exchange of fire in one disputed city led both sides to send military reinforcements and heavy weapons into the contested area.

Sunday's meeting gave both leaders an opportunity to appear statesmanlike. Iraqi state TV showed Al-Maliki and government ministers arriving by military plane and being received on a red carpet by Barzani, who wore traditional Kurdish clothes.

The two leaders later hailed the meeting as an important step, but acknowledged that difficulties in repairing their relationship remain.

"The issue of reaching permanent solutions needs an atmosphere of understanding and mutual trust," al-Maliki said. "I can't tell you that brother Barzani or I have a magic wand, but with our joint desire and cooperation and through mutual trust we can go forward."

The Kurds have signed dozens of oil exploration deals with foreign energy companies over Baghdad's objections, including U.S. oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., and Total S.A. of France. The central government does not recognize the Kurdish agreements, which offer more generous terms than its own. It believes it should manage the country's oil policy and wants all exports to travel through state-run pipelines.

The Kurds are working on a pipeline to ship oil produced in their region into neighboring Turkey and earlier this year began trucking oil across their northern border, prompting charges of smuggling and threats of lawsuits from Baghdad.

The United Nations envoy, Martin Kobler, welcomed the Irbil meeting, as did the U.S. Embassy, which hailed it as a "sign that Iraqi leaders are committed to strengthening their state under the Iraqi Constitution and isolating the terrorists and criminal groups who seek to sow sectarian strife."

Al-Maliki also urged Iraqis to unite to face the unrest roiling the region.

Fears are growing that the ongoing fighting in neighboring Syria could further destabilize Shiite-led Iraq's already fragile security. Predominantly Sunni rebels in Syria, including the al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, are fighting to try to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. His Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam and is backed by Shiite powerhouse Iran.

"The region is going through a new strong storm, a sectarian storm, a storm of political challenges," al-Maliki said. "The most dangerous one is the comeback of the extremist organizations like al-Qaida and Jabhat al-Nusra and others who are backed by (hardline clerics') fatwas," he added.

Syria's unrest is increasingly worrying for Baghdad.

Iraq's Interior Ministry spokesman said the deadly frontier clash happened in the western al-Waleed region, which borders Syria, and involved what he believes are members of the Free Syrian Army rebel group. The spokesman, Saad Maan Ibrahim, said Iraqi forces are increasingly coming under attack by armed groups from the Syrian side of the border.

"We are determined and we have the capabilities to repel any attack on our border posts," he said.

The ministry said it foiled two other attempts by gunmen and smugglers to infiltrate Iraq's border with Syria, forcing them to retreat back across the border.

Sadoun al-Shaalan, a member in the provincial council of Sunni-dominated Anbar province, also said clashes along the border are increasingly common between Free Syrian Army fighters and Iraqi police guards.

He blamed the clashes on "the sectarian fighting and tension taking place in Syria and the belief by the Syria opposition that Baghdad is supporting the Assad regime in its struggle with the opposition."

Shortly before al-Maliki landed in Irbil, a car bomber rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into an Iraqi army checkpoint in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, killing five soldiers and two civilians, officials said. Eighteen were reported wounded.

The attack happened in the busy Kazimiyah neighborhood, which last week was the focus of an annual pilgrimage that brought hundreds of thousands of Shiite faithful to a golden-domed shrine where two revered Shiite saints are buried.

Authorities imposed strict security measures throughout the capital to protect pilgrims, and no major attacks occurred during the pilgrimage itself, which peaked midweek. It commemorates the death of one of the saints, Imam Moussa al-Kadhim.

A medical official in a nearby hospital confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

Shiites are one of the favorite targets for hardline Sunni insurgents who consider them infidels. Violence has spiked in Iraq in recent weeks, raising fears of a return to widespread sectarian bloodshed.

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Associated Press writers Adam Schreck and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad, and Mohammed Jambaz in Irbil contributed to this report.

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Follow Sinan Salaheddin on Twitter at twitter.com/sinansm

* Mercedes' run of four poles in a row ends

* Bottas third fastest for Williams (Updates with Raikkonen demoted to 10th, adds Massa quotes)

By Julian Linden

MONTREAL, June 8 (Reuters) - Sebastian Vettel snatched pole position at the Canadian Grand Prix for the third year in a row Saturday, pipping Lewis Hamilton in a frantic wet qualifying session to end Mercedes' run at the front of the grid.

The triple world champion kept his cool in the treacherous conditions to safely steer his Red Bull around the Montreal street circuit in a fastest time of one minute 25.425 seconds for his 39th career pole.

"It was very, very tricky because you never knew what the conditions were like," Vettel said.

"We're extremely happy with the result and looking forward to the race tomorrow. No matter what the conditions, I think we're in good shape."

In a repeat of last year's qualifying, the 25-year-old German was joined on the front row of the grid by Britain's 2008 world champion Hamilton, who was just 0.087 seconds behind.

Finnish rookie Valtteri Bottas was third for Williams, the highest grid placing of his short career and a major boost for a team suffering their worst start to a season with no points in six races so far.

Monaco winner Nico Rosberg, who had taken pole at each of the last three rounds of the championship, will line up fourth for Mercedes.

Red Bull's Australian Mark Webber and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso shared the third row while Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen, second in the championship standings behind Vettel, qualified ninth but was relegated to 10th after a pit-lane infringement.

Despite his run of poles in Canada, Vettel has yet to win a Formula One race in North America despite his domination elsewhere but gave himself another great opportunity.

"It was really tricky conditions and difficult to get the timing right but Sebastian did it just perfectly," Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said.

"Pole is the best place to be starting and having Mark in fifth is still a strong result on a track where you can overtake. The guys have done a great job today."

PUDDLES OF WATER

With light rain falling and puddles on parts of the track, none of the drivers were able to drive flat out, struggling just to stay on the slippery Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, one of the most demanding courses in Formula One because of its super-fast long straights and slow, tight corners.

Most drivers, including Vettel, ran off course at some point during the three-stage qualifying session, which was halted in the middle when Ferrari's Felipe Massa slammed sideways into a barrier.

The Brazilian, who also crashed heavily in Monaco practice and the race, qualified 16th.

"Physically, I'm fine, but within myself I'm very disappointed," Massa said. "Never before have I had three accidents in such close succession."

The day got off to an ominous start when the final practice session was reduced from 60 minutes to 30 after a car crashed into a fence during a support race, forcing maintenance staff to repair the barrer before the F1 cars could run.

Vettel had taken pole in the first two races this season, in Australia and Malaysia, but the Red Bulls had been unable to keep up with Mercedes in the four races since.

A three-time winner in Canada with his previous team McLaren, Hamilton had loomed as the man to beat for pole but the Englishman was unable to get enough heat in his tyres to generate the speed he needed.

"I was doing a pretty good final lap but I ran wide, so it was unfortunate but I'm still happy," said Hamilton.

McLaren failed to make the final phase of qualifying on Saturday with Jenson Button, a winner in Canada two years ago from last place after a re-start, qualifying 14th and missing the top-10 shootout.

"To be fair, I'm not too upset. It's pretty scary out there," he said. "I had my eyes closed for most of it. We struggled to get temperature into the tyres. It just didn't go our way."

While there was disappointment for McLaren and Ferrari, the struggling Williams team were in high spirits after Bottas weaved his way through the traffic to qualify third.

"This means a lot. It's way more up in the grid than we could have imagined," said the 23-year-old, who has been tipped as a future star and has retired double champion Mika Hakkinen as a mentor.

"The first six races have been so difficult, so this will be a nice boost for the team. We got everything just right today." (Reporting by Julian Linden; editing by Alan Baldwin)

Dr. Dean Brooks died May 30 at a retirement home in Salem at age 96, family members said. He had been in declining health for several weeks after a fall.

Brooks' daughter Dennie Brooks said Friday the film's producers were turned down by all the other mental hospitals they approached. But her father, who was the Salem hospital's superintendent, saw the value of the movie in starting a national discussion about mental health and the responsibility of institutions to do no harm.

She said Dean Brooks also thought being part of a movie would be fun for him and for patients. He ended up playing a small role in the film which was based on a 1962 Ken Kesey novel and starred Jack Nicholson and making sure patients were involved, too.

Allowing the movie inside the hospital was a big career risk, but Dean Brooks regularly took risks on behalf of the patients, going so far as to take them on mountain-climbing expeditions and teaching them to rappel down cliffs, said Greg Roberts, the Oregon State Hospital's current director.

At the urging of staff, he allowed patients to start wearing regular clothes rather than uniforms long before other state hospitals.

"He would wink at me and say he could do stuff then I could never get away with today," Roberts said. "In my opinion, Dean Brooks literally set the bar on how to be a great state hospital superintendent."

Kesey based the novel on his experiences working at a Veterans Administration hospital while a writing student at Stanford University. But the movie made the story forever part of the history of the Oregon State Hospital, which has since moved to another building.

In the film, the free-spirited Randall McMurphy fakes mental illness to get off a prison farm, only to be defeated by the overwhelming institutional power of the hospital and the domineering Nurse Ratched.

Dean Brooks played Dr. Spivey, a psychiatrist who initially acquiesces to Ratched's power but later is inspired by McMurphy to stand up for himself and the patients.

While the movie gave him a platform to speak out for patients, Brooks had a reputation as an innovator before the film was produced, his daughter said. She cited a patient outing he organized that included whitewater rafting and was featured in Life Magazine.

"He saw Ken Kesey's true message about our capacity and organization's capacity to do harm to one another," Dennie Brooks said. "If he hadn't known that, he would have gone right along with the administration at the time and said, 'No, we're not gonna do it (the film).'"

Before giving his approval for the movie, Dean Brooks went to every ward and discussed the idea with patients and staff.

"To make the deal, he insisted primarily that the patients be respected, and the patients actually be involved," said Charles Kifleyak, who made a documentary about the psychiatrist and the filming of "Cuckoo's Nest" called "Completely Cuckoo."

"He felt the film had to benefit the patients in some way, or he was not going to do it," Kifleyak said from Burbank, Calif.

Nearly 90 patients ultimately had parts in the movie, or jobs behind the scenes, said Dennie Brooks, who also worked on the film as a location coordinator.

Though Kesey was unhappy enough with the movie's portrayal of his book to sue its producers, owners and distributors, he "got" Dean Brooks and what he was doing at the hospital, Brooks' daughter said. Kesey eventually won an undisclosed settlement.

The writer visited the hospital while working on a screenplay, which was rejected, and he later penned a handwritten note to Brooks.

"What I thought was the greatest innovation was the eye-level way you deal with the men and women under your care, and the affection that created affection," Kesey wrote.

After the movie, Dean Brooks remained friends with Kesey. They did speaking engagements and visited Disneyworld together, even sharing a hotel room, she said. Dean Brooks also remained friends with actress Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratched.

Born July 22, 1916, in Colony, Kan., Dean Brooks put himself through medical school at the University of Kansas playing trombone in dance bands, his daughter said. There he met his wife, Ulista Jean Moser, a nursing student. She died in 2006 after 65 years of marriage.

Brooks went into the U.S. Navy in 1943 and served as a triage officer on ships taking part in the invasions of several islands in the South Pacific, including Iwo Jima, his daughter said.

After the war, while Dean Brooks served at a military hospital outside Medford, Ore., his commanding officer counseled him to become a psychiatrist.

Dean Brooks also worked at a Tacoma, Wash., VA hospital before joining the Oregon State Hospital staff in 1947 as a psychiatrist. He became superintendent in 1955.

After he retired in 1981, Dean Brooks moved to Everett, Wash., to be close to his grandchildren. He continued to advocate for the mentally ill, founding the Dorothea Dix Think Tank to decriminalize mental illness and find better ways of treating patients.

Besides Dennie Brooks, he is survived by two daughters, Ulista Jean Brooks and India Brooks Civey; a brother, Robert; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

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So, when-ish will the War on Terror end? It's going to be a while — maybe long after Obama has left office. "A Pentagon official suggested last week that the current conflict could continue for 10 to 20 years," the Times reports. Last year, facing the possibility that Obama could lose the 2012 election, the administration began working onfor the drone program. So while Obama is justifying the use of drone strikes at a time when they've come under , he might also be establishing new norms ahead of a possible President Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or whoever.

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Obviously Obama trusted his own administration to control the drone program without these rules. In his new book, , the Times's Mark Mazzetti reports that Obama's "kill list" was the product of an early effort to "an early attempt... to establish procedures for the conduct of a secret war that most believed would last years beyond" Obama's administration. But the rules weren't totally binding. Mazzetti writes that "as much assome officials tried to keep strict criteria about who could be added to the kill list, those criteria were sometimes eased." According to Mazzetti and Daniel Klaidman's book , when General James Cartwright asked Obama why the CIA was "building a second Air Force" with its drone fleet, Obama replied ""

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In his speech, Obama will also address what to do with some terrorist suspects caught overseas instead of killed by drones: the people in Guantanamo Bay. He'll pledge to renew efforts to close the detention facility, and appoint a State Department official to oversee shrinking the population there. Guantanamo — where 170 people are held without trial in perpetuity — is a relic of a previous administration that is disturbing on the grand civil liberties scale and at the tiny human scale. Just like drones. Obama is paying Bush's favor forward with a theoretical end to perpetual war without borders.

Cullen Finnerty, 30, a former Grand Valley State University quarterback, went missing Sunday while fishing near his family's cottage. His body was found in Webber Township about a mile from where he disappeared, but authorities said no foul play was suspected. An autopsy will be needed to determine how he died, they said.

Finnerty led Grand Valley State University to three Division II national titles and more than 50 wins during his four years as a starter in Allendale, Mich., last decade. His body was found about 8 p.m. in woods within a mile of where he disappeared, said Lake County Undersheriff Dennis Robinson.

Robinson said the body was not in the water and was found in a wooded area in near the family's cottage.

The search drew scores of police and volunteers, including staff and players from Grand Valley State.

Finnerty last spoke to a family member that night in a phone call in which he said "he was nervous about something," Sheriff Robert Hilts said earlier Tuesday. Based on that call, the family suspected "he might be having some kind of a mental episode that he was either afraid or something and ran off into the woods," Hilts said.

The sheriff said authorities had been tracking Finnerty's cellphone "until it went dead." The terrain made the search for the 6-foot-3, 230-pound ex-athlete difficult, Hilts said.

"This is the last river that I'd pick to fish," he said, citing logjams and dense brush. "And it's a very tough river to navigate."

Searchers from the sheriff's office, state police and area fire departments fanned out Tuesday across a square-mile area of Webber Township, which is about 65 miles north of Grand Rapids.

In addition, dozens of current and former Grand Valley State players, coaches and staff hopped on a bus and headed north to Lake County to lend a hand in the search effort.

Grand Valley coach Matt Mitchell, who was a defensive assistant when Finnerty led the Lakers to national titles in 2005 and 2006, as well as former Grand Valley coach and current Notre Dame offensive coordinator Chuck Martin were among those helping out.

Finnerty, who starred at Brighton High School, originally accepted an offer to play at the University of Toledo but transferred to Grand Valley after redshirting in 2001.

The dual-threat QB played for Grand Valley teams that won Division II titles in 2003, 2005 and 2006. He briefly was a member of the Baltimore Ravens and later the Denver Broncos.

Mitchell said Finnerty was "held in very high regard. He was the starting quarterback on national championship teams. But he's more than that: He's one of the most loyal teammates we've ever had."

Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly was Grand Valley's coach during the 2003 national championship season.

"It's very chilling," Kelly said Tuesday, before Finnerty's body was found. "He led me to a national championship as a true freshman. When I left, coach Martin took over and won two more national championships. My heart goes out to the family and to his beautiful wife."

___

AP reporter Tom Coyne in South Bend, Ind., contributed to this story.

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Mike Householder can be reached at mhouseholder(at)ap.org and http://twitter.com/mikehouseholder

That said, the film may have inadvertently spawned the most incredible 6 minutes and 22 seconds to hit the internet all year. While promoting the film on BBC One a few days ago, Will and Jaden Smith jumped into a surprise rendition of the Fresh Prince theme with DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Then, just before you think "This can't get any better," they bring out Alfonso Ribeiro, a.k.a. Mr. Carlton Banks himself. Watch it if you're into amazing things. (Via )

2. TV shows with different theme songsWhat would happen if you paired the cryptic Mad Men intro with the theme from The Office? Or Friends with the ominous battle hymn from Game of Thrones? Wonder no more. (Via )

3. Tumblr of the Week: New-old trend alert: Subjects crossing their arms whenever their mugs appear on the front page of local newspapers. Expect a New York Times trend piece about the phenomenon in a year or two.

4. Tumblr of the Week runner-up: The pixel density of that first hoagie is kind of "meh."

5. "Ice Fail" was cool — a well-designed article with stuff that moved around when you scrolled. Then the internet, doing what it does best, sought fit to ruin it with a bunch ofand . The backlash crystallized this week in the form of "," which its creators say is best viewed in "Netscape Navigator 3.0."

The lesson here is clear: Let us never Snow Fall anything again.

6. Woman wins a million dollars on Wheel of FortuneWheel of Fortune is usually 90 percent dumb luck, but 30-year-old Autumn Ernhard was able to solve this impossible final puzzle with only four consonants on the board. Try to guess it before she does. (Via )

7. A great bearBears are terrifying. These are big and strong animals with claws. They won't hesitate to eat you. But this one is awesome because it's somehow not devouring the human jumping over it. Also: He/she can hula hoop better than most people. (Via )

8. Dog of the WeekEverybody salute Brutus McCracker III, this week's winner. I wish I had a joke, but let's be real: This is just a great-looking dog. (Thanks, Jody!)

Do you have a cat, dog, or other cuddly animal you want to see featured? Send your best photo to Gayomali@TheWeek.com for a shot at fame.

View this article onGetIssues of The Week

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TORONTO (Reuters) - New apps are aiming to make traveling in a foreign country easier by putting translation tools in tourists' pockets, makers of the devices said on Monday.

A set of free apps for iOS devices from the language learning company Rosetta Stone give users short exercises so they can learn the basics of another language and commonly used phrases in French, Spanish, German and Italian.

The exercises in the Rosetta Stone Navigator apps use speech recognition to test whether the user is repeating a word correctly.

"It's about speaking - not just about reading and thinking through it," said Jonathan Mudd, senior director of global communications at Rosetta Stone, which is based in Virginia.

"When you get over that obstacle of hearing yourself say words in new languages, and messing them up, you will get comfortable a lot faster," he added.

Another free language app launched by Duolingo, for Android and iPhones, makes learning a new language into a game. Languages are broken down into different components, such as tenses and nouns, and when a user perfects a skill they can unlock new ones.

Other language apps, such as Google Translate and Vocre for iPhone and Android, use speech recognition technology paired with translation technology to translate speech. After speaking a phrase, the app converts it to one of dozens of other languages.

An app called VerbalizeIt, for iPhone and Android, takes a different approach. It connects translators around the globe with people struggling with a language.

Users choose the language they need to be translated and after touching a button on the app they are connected to a person on the other end of the phone. The app is free but the cost of the service ranges from $1 to $2 per minute.

"That call from the customer is routed through our virtual call center to the next available translator for that given language you need," said Ryan Frankel, chief executive officer of New York-based company VerbalizeIt.

The company said more than 8,500 translators, who have passed a language proficiency exam, work for it. It has also launched a platform for businesses to translate documents.

"We realized that when you build up this community of translators they're capable of doing so much more than phone translations," Frankel said.

He added that it may still be some time before apps can accurately translate speech from one language to another.

"I think the biggest hurdle - and this is the reason why you will always need humans - is that understanding local context, dialect, sarcasm and emotion is difficult. There's so much that a machine cannot pick up on that humans are capable of picking up on," Frankel said.

(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Mohammad Zargham)

Theis formerly known as the Bells and Whistles Stainless Steel Tea Kettle and is part of JCPenneys Michael Graves-designed kitchenware line.

CBS LA reports that the billboard has caught the attention of some Reddit users who say the curvature of the handle .

I stare at this from my office building every day and now I can tell my co-workers that Im not the only one who saw the Hitler in the bells and whistles sign! wrote user Tishacombs.

In fact, a number of comments are actually suggesting that the company intentionally made the teakettle resemble Hitler just to stir up attention. That, of course, makes very little sense. But it hasnt stopped people from speculating.

Well, look at us - we're all looking at and sharing a picture of an advertisement, . "If it was done on purpose to get people's attention, but keep the ability to deny doing it on purpose, it's brilliant.

Of course, most people arent taking the billboard too seriously. Americablog authorcharacter from South Park dressed as Hitler. Which, given Cartmans endless series of anti-Semitic commentary, might make more sense.

JCPenney has yet to comment on the advertisement. Perhaps it's letting the product speak for itself. After all, the teakettle is currently getting overwhelmingly positive reviews from customers on the JCPenney website.

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief grew out of an unlikely partnership between President George W. Bush and lawmakers led by the Congressional Black Caucus. It has come to represent what Washington can do when it puts politics aside and what America can do to make the world a better place.

President Barack Obama, speaking at the recent dedication of Bush's presidential library, praised the compassion Bush showed in "helping to save millions of lives and reminding people in some of the poorest corners of the globe that America cares."

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said of Bush in a statement that "while many events may distinguish his presidency, his devotion to combatting the scourge of HIV/AIDS will certainly define his legacy."

The AIDS program's future, however, is uncertain. Obama has upped the stakes, speaking in his State of the Union address this year of "realizing the promise of an AIDS-free generation." But funding for the relief plan's bilateral efforts has dipped in recent years and it's doubtful that Congress, in its current budget-cutting mood, will reverse that trend when the current five-year program expires later this year.

The AIDS program is also trying to find a balance between its goals of reaching more people with its prevention and treatment programs and turning over more responsibility to the host nations where it operates.

"This has been an incredible achievement," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., a senior Congressional Black Caucus member who played major roles both in passing the original 2003 act and its 2008 renewal that significantly increased funding for AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis treatment in Africa and other areas of the developing world. She spoke of the more than 5 million people now receiving life-saving antiretroviral treatment and 11 million pregnant women who received HIV testing and counseling last year. "But I'm worried that with any type of level-funding or cuts we'll go backward," she said.

The 2008 act more than tripled funding from the 2003 measure, approving $48 billion over five years for bilateral and global AIDS programs, malaria and tuberculosis. It also ended U.S. policy making it almost impossible for HIV-positive people to get visas to enter the country.

The AIDS program was the largest commitment ever by a nation to combat a single disease internationally. According to the U.N.'s UNAIDS and the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2011 the United States provided nearly 60 percent of all international AIDS assistance.

A decade ago, almost no one in sub-Saharan Africa was receiving antiretroviral treatment. By 2008, the AIDS program had boosted that number to 1.7 million. As of last year it was 5.1 million.

The State Department says the program last year also helped provide treatment to some 750,000 HIV-positive pregnant women, allowing about 230,000 infants to be born HIV-free, supported 2 million male circumcisions and directly supported HIV testing and counseling for 46.5 million.

"This is a remarkable story that the American people should know about," Kimberly Scott of the Institute of Medicine, which recently completed an evaluation of the AIDS program, said at a forum sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the CSIS Global Health Policy Center.

According to UNAIDS, the number of people living with HIV has leveled off, standing at about 34 million at the end of 2011. New infections that year reached 2.5 million, down 20 percent from 2001. AIDS-related deaths were 1.7 million, down from 2.3 million in 2005.

Jennifer Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at Kaiser, said most countries where the program operates have yet to reach the "tipping point," where new infections occurring in a year are less than the increase in people receiving treatment. Among the success stories were Ethiopia, where the 40,000 going on treatment in 2011 was almost four times the new infections. Still with a long way to go was Nigeria, which that year had 270,000 new HIV infections and a 57,000 increase in those getting treatment.

Chris Collins, director of public policy at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, also warned of potential repercussions as the AIDS program shifts from being an emergency response to the AIDS epidemic to a more supportive role for country-based health programs.

"The countries themselves largely are avoiding the important role that key populations play in epidemics," he said, referring to gay men, those injecting drugs and sex workers. These groups face discrimination and criminal charges in many cases, and 90 percent of the money to help them now comes from external sources.

Collins also spoke of the "huge mismatch" between the positive science and rhetoric on fighting AIDS and the money available. Since 2009 the funding for bilateral and global HIV and AIDS programs has largely stalled.

Kaiser's Kates said that while there's still bipartisan support for the AIDS program in Congress, "the big question is will the financing be there to reach the goals" of treating more people and advancing toward that AIDS-free generation. "The challenge right now is that the global economic climate is different, the U.S. climate is different, but the need is still great."