Mirren's award-winning performance as Queen Elizabeth II in "The Audience" will be beamed this week from London's Gielgud Theatre to hundreds of movie theatres around the world in a live broadcast.

It's the latest step in Mirren's glittering regal procession as the monarch. She won an Academy Award for playing Elizabeth in 2006 movie "The Queen," and gained an Olivier stage trophy in April for her reprise in box-office hit "The Audience."

But the actress, who has made a career of not being typecast, had to be persuaded to wear the crown a second time.

"I really didn't want to play the role again," Mirren said in an interview before another evening donning tiara and pearls. "I was very resistant."

Mirren was won over by the quality of the creative team, which includes director Stephen Daldry, award-winning stage designer Bob Crowley and playwright Peter Morgan, who wrote both "The Queen" and "The Audience."

"It was just an amazing team, and I thought, 'If you walk away from this, you're an idiot,'" Mirren said.

She also felt there was more to explore about the queen, an intensely private and uniquely public figure.

"She's at the same time completely known and completely unknowable," Mirren said. "So there's this extraordinary dichotomy of a very familiar person who is a complete mystery at the same time."

"The Audience" imagines the private weekly meetings between the monarch and Britain's prime ministers 12 in all over her six-decade reign. Mirren gives a delicately nuanced performance, both regal and vulnerable, in which the queen grows from a tentative 20-something to wise octogenarian while retaining a core of solitude.

Mirren is not a monarchist, but says she has come to sympathize with Elizabeth and the burden of her position.

"This is a woman who has lived with nonstop admiration and a lot of sycophancy, but at the same time is a very straightforward, pragmatic, down to earth person, I suspect.

"It's a life of incredible luxury in many ways, but I don't think luxury is her default mode. I don't think she likes luxury, actually. I think she'd be far happier on a tractor with muddy boots in the kitchen and lots of dogs running around."

"The Audience" will be broadcast to cinemas across Britain and around the world Thursday. Some movie theatres will show it live, while others will show it at different times throughout the summer.

Live theatre broadcasts have become a surprise hit since Britain's National Theatre launched its NT Live program four years ago with fittingly enough a production of Jean Racine's "Phedre" starring Mirren.

What began as an experiment inspired by the Metropolitan Opera's cinema broadcasts has quickly become a cultural fixture. From an initial 280 theatres, the broadcasts now go out to almost 700 venues in 25 countries.

Eight shows a year get the NT Live treatment. Most are National Theatre productions, but some, like "The Audience," come from other theatres. Next up is Kenneth Branagh's "Macbeth," to be broadcast from the Manchester International Festival on July 20.

"It's been way beyond our wildest dreams," said David Sabel, executive producer of NT Live. "When we launched it, it was very much an experiment. We were quietly confident, but there were a lot of questions about whether it would work.

"In the past when theatre has been filmed, they've put the cameras at the back or on the side so as not to disturb the audience," he said. "And that's why you end up with a product that looks like it wasn't meant to be filmed."

NT Live's approach was to treat the plays like live sports broadcasts, using multiple cameras, tracking shots, and close-ups to merge the immediacy of live theatre and the intimacy of film.

Mirren knows from experience the challenge of playing to a live audience while cameras, occupying some of the seats, film the action.

"It's very tricky, because there's such a world of difference between theatre acting and film acting, and this absolutely is right in the middle," Mirren said.

"It's not a process that you get to practice a lot, so it's a bit of a crapshoot. You're working in the dark really, and there's no chance of going back and going 'Oh God, can we do it again?' You just have to go for it, in the way that you do in the theatre."

"The Audience" ends its West End run on Saturday, but Mirren may not be finished with the queen yet. She says the play may transfer to Broadway "but not for a while."

At 67, Mirren is at the top of her game. In a 45-year career, she's gone from the Royal Shakespeare Company to screen notoriety in the racy "Caligula" to movie classics such as "Excalibur" and "The Long Good Friday." Millions know her as steely detective Jane Tennison in the long-running TV series "Prime Suspect," and she can currently be heard as the voice of a sinister creature in the animated movie "Monsters University."

Dame Helen Mirren she received the female equivalent of a knighthood in 2003 is as much a national treasure as the queen, though a considerably less buttoned-up one.

She has even been suggested as the next star of "Doctor Who," the beloved BBC sci-fi series about a space-hopping, time-travelling alien hero. Eleven actors have played the role since the show began in 1963, and a 12th is to be announced soon.

That has sparked intense speculation among the show's millions of fans, with some wondering whether the role might go to a woman for the first time. One bookmaker is offering 25-1 odds on it being Mirren.

"Oh, please I would put much longer odds on it than that," she scoffed.

"But I think it's absolutely time for a female Doctor Who. I'm so sick of that man with his girl sidekick. I could name at least 10 wonderful British actresses who would absolutely kill in that role."

___

Online:

The Audience: http://www.theaudienceplay.com/home/

NT Live: http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/

Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A misfired email from a U.S. Internal Revenue Service employee in Cincinnati in July 2010 alerted a broad group of Washington IRS officials to the heightened scrutiny being given conservative groups, according to an interview the IRS worker gave congressional investigators.

The interview transcripts, reviewed by Reuters on Thursday, provide new details about Washington IRS officials' awareness of the scrutiny given to groups seeking tax-exempt status using terms like "Tea Party" or "patriot" to flag applications.

A political furor over the practice has engulfed the tax agency for nearly a month since a senior IRS official publicly apologized for it at a Washington conference. Since then, President Barack Obama has fired the IRS chief, the FBI has mounted an investigation and Congress has held hearings.

The transcripts show that in July 2010, Elizabeth Hofacre, an IRS official in Cincinnati who was coordinating "emerging issues" for the agency's tax-exempt unit, was corresponding with Washington-based IRS tax attorney Carter Hull.

She was asked to summarize her findings in a spreadsheet and notify a small group of colleagues, including some staff in the Washington tax-exempt unit. She sent an email that month to a larger number of people in Washington by accident.

"Everybody in D.C. got it by mistake," Hofacre said in the transcripts. She later clarified that she did not mean all officials but those in the IRS Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements unit.

Hull could not be reached for comment.

Lois Lerner, the IRS official who set off the controversy, said she first learned of the "be on the lookout list" (BOLO) of partisan terms in June 2011, and ordered the criteria be removed immediately. The Treasury inspector general backed that up.

Washington IRS officials including Lerner, who was put on administrative leave in response to the fracas, have stressed the lack of Washington involvement in the scrutiny.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which studied the matter, has said no evidence exists that the list was created by high-level IRS officials, or political officials in the U.S. Treasury or the White House.

The inspector general's report last month said the Cincinnati office, where IRS reviews of applications for tax-exempt status are centralized, used the BOLO list that included the words "Tea Party" and "patriot" for flagging applications for extra review.

Neither Hofacre, nor a second IRS worker in Cincinnati, Gary Muthert, knew who asked for the partisan names to be added to the BOLO list in the first place, the transcripts showed.

Still, Muthert said that when his supervisor in Cincinnati initially asked him to look for "Tea Party" applications, "he told me Washington, D.C., wanted some cases," according to his interview with congressional investigators.

Hofacre, however, indicated that a Cincinnati official told her to use the criteria. That official "told me what I needed to put on this particular BOLO list," Hofacre said, referring to the list for Tea Party cases only.

Hofacre lashed out at Washington officials for putting the blame squarely on the staffers in Cincinnati. "It was a nuclear strike on us," she told congressional investigators.

MORE INTERVIEWS THIS WEEK

The interviews were among the first conducted by lawyers at the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives since the scandal broke on May 10. Two more interviews with other IRS employees were set for this week.

Darrell Issa, the panel's top Republican, said they confirmed his hunch that the scrutiny did not originate in Cincinnati. The top Democrat on the panel, Elijah Cummings, said Issa is cherry picking quotes to confirm his theory.

It was unclear from Hofacre how much authority Washington exerted over the applications.

She told congressional investigators the Tea Party cases were handled differently: IRS Washington attorney Hull wanted to see her response letters. In two cases, he handled the applications himself.

In one exchange, Hofacre said, "I had no autonomy," but in another instance she said, "they gave me leeway to work with them .... weren't involved in the actual reviewing."

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Howard Goller, Doina Chiacu)

Hesse state police spokesman Udo Buehler says since April criminals have successfully blown open 10 ticket machines by taping closed all holes, filling them with gas and igniting it. They then steal the money and blank train tickets.

But in six cases the attempts have failed, leaving the explosive gas inside, most recently Tuesday in a train station in the town of Karben, near Frankfurt.

Buehler warns the gas could potentially ignite when an unsuspecting customer uses the machine though so far it has not.

He says incidents have also been reported in neighboring states Thuringia and Lower Saxony.

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Eight-time world champion Floyd Mayweather refused to be drawn into a war of words at the final news conference for his WBC welterweight title clash with Robert Guerrero on Wednesday, despite being labeled a "woman beater" by his opponent's father.

The undefeated Mayweather (43-0, 26 KOs), who has said he has 30 months of boxing left before he brings the curtain down on his career, was a picture of calm as Ruben Guerrero screamed at him: "We are going to beat the woman beater".

Mayweather served two months of a 90-day sentence for domestic violence last year.

"I don't have to sit here and badmouth his father," shrugged Mayweather after the news conference. "Only God can judge me."

The fight in Las Vegas on Saturday will mark a turning point in Mayweather's often contentious relationship with his own father, Floyd Sr, who will be in his corner for the first time since a March 2000 win over Gregorio Vargas.

"My dad is sick, and if I never made a bond with my father and something harsh happened, it would hurt me," said Mayweather of his father, who has been suffering from sarcoidosis. Mending fences with his father, he adds, has yielded professional as well as personal benefits.

"There's certain things only my dad may see in training camp," he told reporters. "For this fight, I made sure I got more rest.

"My dad said, 'You need the rest. And when you've rested, you can come back and box in the gym and you're going to look a lot better.' And he was right. I feel like I'm in tip-top shape, tip-top condition. I'm ready to fight."

Guerrero, too, is ready to fight, and believes Mayweather has invited more stress on himself by starting the countdown clock on his career.

"They say the pressure is on me. The pressure is on him to stay undefeated, to keep his legacy going," Guerrero (31-1-1, 18 KOs) told reporters on Wednesday. "He has these 30 months left, and he's got a lot of stuff to fulfill, so I think the pressure is on him and not me."

Guerrero first called for a fight with Mayweather in 2011, even though at lightweight he was two weight divisions lower.

However, he made the step up to welterweight and scored two victories last year, including a thrilling brawl with former title holder Andre Berto in November, to earn the shot at Mayweather's title.

"Definitely, I absolutely believed I would get (the fight)," said Guerrero. "That's why I kept on it, and kept fighting the fights I needed to get myself in position to make it happen, and here it is."

Aerosmith, which started in Boston in 1970 and has maintained strong ties to the city, will be joined at TD Garden by James Taylor, the New Kids on the Block and the Dropkick Murphys in what is expected to be a raucous yet emotional tribute to the city.

Tickets priced between $35 and $285 sold out fast at the 17,500-seat venue, with net proceeds to be donated to The One Fund, a reserve established by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick that has so far received more than $31 million in donations to compensate victims of the April 15 bombing.

Three people were killed and 264 injured, many losing their legs, by homemade pressure-cooker bombs that exploded at the finish line of the world-renowned Boston Marathon.

"Live Nation and TD Garden have hosted thousands of concerts over the years, but none with such a sense of purpose," said Don Law, president of Live Nation New England which organized the Boston Strong concert.

The Boston Herald reported that Steven Tyler, Aerosmith's lead singer, said from a gig this week in Singapore that "it means everything to get back and play this show...we want to warm the cockles of peoples' hearts."

Concert organizers have declined to say yet how much money the concert will raise for The One Fund.

Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer who specializes in mediation, was tapped by Menino and Patrick to run the fund. Feinberg has warned victims to lower their expectations of how much money the fund would be able to pay individual beneficiaries.

Boston bomb suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen with roots in Russia's volatile northern Caucasus, was captured in a dramatic police manhunt days after the bombing. He was criminally charged and is being held in jail.

His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was also identified by the FBI as a suspect but he was killed in a gunfight with police. U.S. security officials have said they believe the brothers had Islamic militant sympathies.

(Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Standing conventional stock market wisdom on its head, investors may wish for weaker-than-expected U.S. employment numbers next Friday.

A strong jobs report could prompt an early end to the Federal Reserve's policy of pumping money into the banking system to rescue the economy and set off the stock market's long-awaited pullback.

The Fed's loose monetary policy since the end of 2008 has kept interest rates low and propelled stocks to record highs.

Last week, stocks fell and bond yields surged after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. central bank may decide to taper its stimulus programs in the next few policy meetings if data shows the economy is gaining traction.

Stocks posted their second straight week of losses on Friday, mostly on fears that the Fed would curb its bond-buying program sooner than most people expected.

"We're in a mindset where the market seems to be very fearful of the Fed beginning a tapering," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

"Those who are in the market based on easy money ... will probably exit" if the May jobs number exceeds expectations, she said.

The market has managed to climb this year without any substantial pullback. Concerns about the Fed's next move have increased speculation that a major bout of selling is ahead.

A stronger-than-expected jobs number "would continue to produce the concerns you've seen manifested in the market over the last couple of days," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia, which manages about $58 billion in assets.

Economists say job gains of at least 200,000 per month over several months are needed to significantly reduce high unemployment.

The Fed has said it will keep interest rates at historic lows until the U.S. unemployment rate drops to 6.5 percent.

Employers are expected to have added 168,000 jobs to their payrolls in May, according to economists polled by Reuters. That's slightly above April's count of 165,000 new positions.

The U.S. unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 7.5 percent in May.

To be sure, better-than-expected jobs data would be evidence of strength in the economy, a positive for the market in the long run, so any pullback could be short-lived, analysts said.

"If it's a short-term correction, I think that would have to be opportunistic, in the sense that investors should take advantage of moving any sideline money into the equity market," Luschini said.

Even with the recent losses - the Standard & Poor's 500 indexfell 1.1 percent this week - the index rose 14.34 percent for the first five months of 2013. That gain marked the S&P 500's best first five months of any year since 1997.

DITCHING DIVIDEND STOCKS

A rotation out of high-yielding dividend stocks has already begun because of the rise in U.S. Treasury bond yields.

Dividend stocks had been among the market's leaders for much of this year's rally as investors favored those shares over fixed-income securities in a low interest-rate environment.

"The first crack we've seen is, as bond yields have been going up, people are moving out of that area," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer of North Star Investment Management Corp., in Chicago.

"Managers are starting to look at things other than consumer staples with nice dividends and stable businesses. So within the stock market, you're seeing more volatility within sectors."

The S&P 500 gained 2.1 percent for the month of May, while the S&P utilities sector indexlost 9.6 percent and the S&P consumer staples indexdropped 2.4 percent.

The spread between the S&P 500 dividend yield and the 10-year U.S. Treasury note's yield this week hit its narrowest in about a year. The S&P 500 dividend yield was at 2.39 percent, while the 10-year note's yield hit 2.235 percent during the week.

By comparison, the dividend yield on the utilities sector stands at about 4 percent.

The move out of dividend-paying and other defensive shares should continue as the economy improves, Kuby said, though he pointed out that the market is still a "long way" from seeing high interest rates.

"The fact that rates are likely to creep up over time, that's a given. And it's not going to be sudden or dramatic. It's going to be more gradual."

IT'S RAINING NUMBERS

Next week will bring a snapshot of U.S. manufacturing activity from the Institute for Supply Management, which releases its May index on Monday. Economists polled by Reuters expect a reading of 50.5 for May, compared with 50.7 in April.

Monday's economic agenda also calls for April construction spending - forecast up 0.8 percent after a drop of 1.7 percent in March.

Domestic car and truck sales for May, also expected on Monday, are projected to have increased to 15.1 million units from April sales of about 14.9 million units, the Reuters Poll showed.

The U.S. international trade deficit, set for release on Tuesday, is forecast to have widened slightly to $41 billion in April from $38.8 billion in March.

A preview of the jobs picture will come on Wednesday with the release of a report from payrolls processor ADP. Economists polled by Reuters have forecast that the ADP data will show private-sector employers added 165,000 jobs in May, compared with 119,000 in April.

Wednesday's numbers to watch will include the ISM's release of its U.S. services-sector Purchasing Managers' Index for May. A reading of 53.4 is forecast for May, up from April's 53.1.

The Fed's Beige Book is expected on Wednesday afternoon. That report will give a look at the economy in 12 regional Federal Reserve bank districts.

On Thursday, initial claims for unemployment benefits will grab attention - on the day before the big payrolls report from the U.S. government. Initial jobless claims are projected to have slipped to 345,000 in the week ended June 1 from 354,000 in the previous week.

(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Questions or comments on this column can be emailed to: caroline.valetkevitch(at)thomsonreuters.com ) (Editing by Jan Paschal)

RELATED:

Bloomberg's Erik Matuszewski reports"best trick" competitions from any further iterations of the X-Games, its 18-year-old extreme sports challenge. Previously, riders on snowmobiles or specialized dirtbikes would throw themselves off a huge jump to attempt the gnarliest spin or flip moderation they possibly could. It often produced some of the Games'—and, of course, its biggest injuries, leading up this year's fatal one. 

RELATED:

An  that the decision to cut the events was not tied to Moore's death at all. "Moto X Best Trick and Snowmobile Best Trick were not dropped in response to what happened in Aspen," . "This decision was under consideration before Aspen, and, in fact, our review of Snowmobile Freestyle continues."

This is ESPN's official statement on their reasoning for eliminating the best trick events: 

"This change reflects our decision to focus on motor sports disciplines which feature athletes who also compete in multiple, world-class competitions [e.g., professional events and tours] reflecting the highest degree of athlete participation, competitive development and the global nature of our X Games franchise. Over the past 18 years we have made more than 60 changes to our competition lineups at X Games events to capture the evolution of the sport and these continue that growth."

When you wade through the P.R. jargon, this translates roughly to: We want to focus on competitions that aren't only featured at the X-Games. So, while there are other freestyle snowmobile competitions, there aren't very many "best trick" competitions. It just so happens that the decision came two months after an athlete died in a freestyle snowmobile competition attempting a variation of a trick — the backflip — that's very common in "best trick" competitions. Total coincidence, guys. Nothing to see here. 

So, while there was no prior indication that either "best trick" competition was up for elimination, this was : 

As a result of this accident we will conduct a thorough review of this discipline and adopt any appropriate changes to future X Games.

For 18 years we have worked closely on safety issues with athletes, course designers and other experts. Still, when the world's best compete at the highest level in any sport, risks remain. Caleb was a four-time X Games medalist attempting a move he has landed several times previously.

But the two decisions aren't related. Nope, not at all related. Millions would believe you, ESPN, but somehow we don't.

The dangers of X-Games events , culminating this winter. Moore attempted a backflip during the snowmobile "best trick" competition, but his machine under-rotated. The snowmobile's skis dug into the ground and slammed the machine down on top of a helpless Moore. He was able to walk away from the incident, but was later admitted to the hospital for a concussion and bleeding around his heart. Following complications after surgery, Mooresuffered in competition. 

ESPN is still deliberating whether or not to cut the snowmobile freestyle competition. But the decision to preemptively cut motocross "best trick" is interesting. It, too, has led to major injuries for some of the biggest X-Games stars, though nothing approaching the same level as snowmobiling. Notably, in 2011, Travis Pastrana — one of the most decorated athletes in X-Games history —  on the first day of a planned three-day blitz of events. The , as it was called, was ruined. And it turns out, Pastrana is pretty bummed with the decision to cut one of his favorite competition — arguably the one that brought him the most fame. "Best trick was my favorite event both as a competitor and a spectator," . "Usually these athletes were capable of landing their trick in a foam pit or on special set up but under pressure, they rarely did which added to the dangerousness of it. Either way I was a fan of this event and will be sad to see it go."

Whether this decision indicates freestyle motocross, one of the biggest draws at the Summer X-Games, is in danger of surviving with ESPN remains to be seen. But you can be it will be dangerous.

Still, the share price of the world's largest social network is at a six-month low, partly due to fears that young users were beginning to cool their activities on Facebook, in favor of newer services like Twitter and the increasingly popular photo messaging application, SnapChat.

In midday trading, shares were up at $24.63.

Jefferies & Co and BMO Capital upgraded the stock to buy and outperform, respectively. Their analysts argued that user growth may have leveled off as Facebook gained scale, but it remained the most popular social media service and upcoming products - such as higher-margin video ads - may accelerate revenue growth.

"While MAU's (monthly active users) have somewhat plateaued due to the law of large numbers, we think there is room for financial upside as we expect marketers will find Facebook's 1B+ users irresistible despite any incremental changes in teen usage habits," Jefferies analyst Brian Pitz wrote in a research note.

(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Seventh-seeded Detroit, who eliminated No. 2 seeds Anaheim in the first round, can seal the Western semi-final series with a win over the Blackhawks in Game Five on Saturday in Chicago.

After a scoreless first period, Detroit got on the board when Jakub Kindl scored on a power play midway through the second before Daniel Cleary sealed the win with an empty net goal in the final seconds.

Detroit goaltender Jimmy Howard made 28 saves for his second-career playoff shutout.

Chicago captain Jonathan Toews' struggles continued and he took three consecutive penalties in the second period. The Red Wings scored on the second of those power play opportunities.

Toews has not scored a goal in the playoffs this season.

Chicago, who won the President's Trophy for scoring the most points in the regular season, won the opening game against Detroit but have now lost three straight.

(Reporting by Ben Everill in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Rutherford)

BERLIN (Reuters) - A new novel about a neo-Nazi plot to assassinate Germany's first Jewish candidate for Chancellor has shed a timely light on the right-wing extremist violence that has plagued the country since 1990 and was swept under the carpet for years.

Political thriller "The Jewish Candidate" by British journalist David Crossland has been published just as Germany's September election campaign is heating up and at the start of a trial of a neo-Nazi cell blamed for a spate of racist murders that went undetected for more than a decade.

Built upon the intriguing notion of a Jewish politician named Rudolf Gutman running for Chancellor as the candidate for the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the fast-paced thriller is told through the eyes of a reporter for a fictional London newspaper who stumbles upon a neo-Nazi plot to kill Gutman.

Set in modern Germany, "The Jewish Candidate" focuses on the surge in far-right violence since reunification in 1990 and on the country's failure to contain it.

Some estimates say almost 200 people have been killed in acts of far-right violence since 1990 that have often been directed at dark-skinned foreigners. Those killings were often downplayed by authorities and German society as isolated acts of random violence mainly in formerly communist eastern Germany.

That complacency was shattered in late 2011 when police accidentally stumbled upon a neo-Nazi cell, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), whose members killed eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman execution-style between 2000-2007 and carried out two bombings in immigrant quarters in Cologne.

"I started writing it back in 2007 before anyone had heard about the NSU," said Crossland, a freelance writer and former Reuters correspondent.

"I was reporting about neo-Nazi violence and was surprised at how lightly the authorities and the general public were taking it despite warnings that parts of the east were 'no-go' areas for anyone who doesn't look German."

The trial of a surviving member of the NSU, Beate Zschaepe, began in Munich on May 6 after two men who founded the NSU in the late 1990s committed suicide following a botched bank robbery in November 2011.

Germans have been closely following the trial and parliament is conducting its own investigation into the failure of police and security services, who neglected the far-right threat and suspected other immigrants were responsible for the killings.

The parallels between the real-life NSU and the fictional neo-Nazi assassins in "The Jewish Candidate" are striking but coincidental. The novel, set in the run-up to an election, includes descriptions of clandestine torchlit neo-Nazi meetings and of their links with the security services.

The novel also raises the interesting question of whether Germany might one day have a Jewish chancellor. It had a Jewish population of 670,000 before the Nazi regime and Holocaust. There was a vestigial community of 29,000 in 1990. Germany prides itself on its growing Jewish population of over 200,000.

Crossland, 46, who has lived in Germany since 1992, said Germany may be ready to elect a Jewish leader.

"But it's an unlikely prospect for now due to a lack of Jewish politicians," he said. "It's clear, though, that neo-Nazis are better armed and better organised than the authorities believed until the NSU came to light."

(Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum, editing by Paul Casciato)