The shooting in Paktika province was the latest in a string of so-called "insider attacks" in which Afghan forces open fire on their own comrades or international troops. The incidents threaten to shake the confidence and trust of the two sides as the 2014 withdrawal of most of the international forces approaches.

An argument between the Afghan soldier and his trainers appeared to have led to Saturday's shooting on an Afghan National Army base in Paktika's Kher Qot district, according to a statement from the provincial governor's office. The international military coalition in Afghanistan said two American service members and one U.S. civilian died. It had initially identified them as three U.S. military personnel.

The angry Afghan soldier opened fire during the argument, killing the three foreign trainers and wounding three others, according to the governor's statement. The foreigners returned fire and killed the Afghan soldier, who had no known connection to the insurgency.

A second Afghan man was arrested after the shooting, and an investigation has been launched, the coalition said later Saturday.

So far this year, there have been five insider attacks on foreign forces, with a total of eight troops and one U.S. contractor killed. However, the number of such attacks has eased after soaring last year in 2012, there were at least 29 insider attacks, killing 62 international troops.

Afghan security forces also are targets of such attacks. Last month, two recently rehired Afghan police opened fire on their commander at a checkpoint in a remote district in the country's south, killing him and six of his men.

The Taliban insurgents claim most of the insider attacks, saying they have infiltrated Afghan security forces or persuaded soldiers and police to join their side. However, the international coalition has said many of them are sparked by personal disputes.

In the western province of Farah, meanwhile, an Italian soldier was killed and three others wounded in a grenade attack on their armored vehicle in western Afghanistan.

The Italian Defense Ministry said the attack in Farah province came as the Italian soldiers were returning to their base from training Afghan security forces.

The Italian convoy of three armored vehicle apparently had been slowed by traffic near an intersection when an attacker ran up and threw an explosive device into the lead vehicle, the ministry said. It added that the three wounded soldiers' injuries were not life-threatening.

The Taliban quickly took responsibility for the attack, with spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claiming that the attacker was an 11-year-old boy.

But Farah province provincial government spokesman Abdul Rahman Zhawandai says an adult man was seen throwing a grenade, then escaping by blending into the crowd at a nearby vegetable market.

Saturday's deaths brought to 15 the number of international troops killed in Afghanistan this month. On Thursday, seven Georgian soldiers died in a truck bombing at their base in the south.

Taliban insurgents have launched intense attacks across the country as Afghan forces take over most security responsibility ahead of most foreign troops' withdrawal next year, more than a decade after the American-led invasion to oust the Taliban regime for sheltering al-Qaida's leadership after the Islamic extremist group launched the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.

Countries in the NATO alliance met in Brussels this week to lay out a new plan for shifting into a training and assistance role, but they did not agree on how many noncombat troops it will maintain in Afghanistan after 2014.

There are now about 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan, including 66,000 from the United States. Most of the pullout is set for this winter.

The remaining smaller force is expected to be mostly American advisers. However, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Saturday during a surprise visit to Kabul that the German government is thinking about leaving behind 600-800 troops after 2014.

"The departure of our troops from Afghanistan will happen as planned but at the same time we will not forget about Afghanistan in the years after 2014," Westerwelle said, adding, "We will engage with them in a different way."

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Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed to this report

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)

Brent is charged in the fatal car crash Dec. 8 that killed Jerry Brown, a Cowboys practice squad player, college teammate and friend. Police have accused Brent of driving with a blood-alcohol content more than twice the legal limit.

As a condition of his $100,000 bond, Brent is required to wear an alcohol ankle monitor and appear for regular meetings with a county officer. Witnesses at Friday's hearing said he had repeatedly missed required times for his ankle monitor to download information, as well as two appointments with the officer.

Judge Robert Burns ordered a second form of monitoring to take breath samples, and for Brent to provide a urine sample. Burns said he would not increase Brent's bond amount.

Prosecutors had filed a motion Thursday asking for his bond to be revoked.

Brent's ankle monitor was set off for alcohol four times in February and March, but both sides agreed Friday that those instances were most likely caused by the presence of alcohol in the air or near Brent not drinking. His attorneys said they didn't know how the alcohol positives occurred, but suggested in court that they could have been triggered by things as benign as mouthwash or hand sanitizer.

Brent sat silently throughout the nearly hour-long hearing, though at times he tapped one of his attorneys, George Milner, on the shoulder and whispered in his ear. He did not testify and declined to answer questions outside court.

Heath Harris, the Dallas County first assistant district attorney, said authorities wanted to be certain that Brent wasn't drinking or doing anything to violate his probation.

"Even though ... we can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was drinking, we can't prove that he was not drinking," Harris said. "That's the biggest problem."

Milner accused prosecutors of making a show of otherwise ordinary issues, many of which are from earlier this year, due to Brent's notoriety as a Dallas Cowboys player. His career is on hold pending the outcome of this case.

"I think we've unequivocally established the fact that the district attorney's office is treating Mr. Brent differently because of the helmet that he wears," Milner told reporters outside court. "There's no disputing that now. Everybody down here knew it. Now it's out in un-contradicted, sworn testimony."

Harris denied the charge.

"This guy is a repeat alcohol offender that killed someone in our county," he said. "We take offense to that."

A crash report released by suburban Dallas police says Brent was driving the night of the crash with a suspended driver's license from Illinois, where he pleaded guilty three years ago to a misdemeanor driving under the influence charge. Brent and Brown both played college football at the University of Illinois.

Brent faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of intoxicated manslaughter, though he could also get probation.

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Follow Nomaan Merchant on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/nomaanmerchant

Everyone loved the revenue agents when they put away Al Capone, the Chicago underworld's master of brutality and bribes, in a coup so spectacular it scared other gangsters straight.

In the year after, federal coffers swelled as delinquent taxpayers stepped forward to make good on their debts. Criminals came out of the woodwork to pay taxes on their ill-gotten gains. Authorities in what was then the Intelligence Unit of the Bureau of Internal Revenue nailed the slippery Public Enemy No. 1 when no one else could, scooped up New York City racketeers by the dozen and stood tall in the popular imagination as incorruptible, fearless stewards of the treasury and the law.

Fine, but that was the 1930s. What have they done for us lately?

Or to us?

The essential mission hasn't changed. The IRS still collects the money that goes back out to build roads, help look after people in their old age, fight menaces from Nazism to terrorism, and operate the vast levers of government. It still locks up a few thousand delinquents a year, among them drug kingpins who wouldn't be caught any other way.

But no one loves the IRS anymore, not for ages. It's our culture's king-sized pain that makes you do hard math, issues nonsensical directions, takes your money and gives it to politicians to waste even as they borrow unspeakable sums from China to waste even more.

On top of that overdrawn caricature, the agency now is saddled with its episode of tea party tumult, exposing IRS behavior that is memorably bumbling at best and criminal at worst.

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"Taxes grow without rain." Proverb.

More than 97,000 people work for the IRS, more than double the workforce of that other deeply inquisitive and all-seeing institution, Google.

That includes 13,000 revenue agents and more than 1,500 lawyers, about as many attorneys as practice statewide in North Dakota. It's bigger than some Cabinet departments Transportation for one. Employment has dropped by about 10,000 since 2010.

The perception of the "taxman" probably should give way to tax woman because more than six in 10 employees are female, a substantially higher share than in both the civil service and U.S. labor force at large.

The IRS is something of a hybrid in its relationship with political masters, not the "independent agency" claimed by President Barack Obama when he dissociated himself from its discriminatory audits of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status during the 2012 campaign.

It is partially independent, which is not at all like being a bit pregnant. On one hand, the president and his people at the White House are barred by law from pressing the IRS to start or stop a tax audit. This is to prevent the president from putting the heat on a political foe or going easy on a political friend, both tactics of the past.

The commissioner serves five-year terms, ensuring that leadership is out of synch with four-year election cycles. The commissioner and chief lawyer are the only political appointees and must be confirmed by the Senate.

But the commissioner reports to the treasury secretary through the department's deputy and can be fired at will by the president, which is not the case in more hands-off federal bodies. Indeed, the acting chief, Steven Miller, was ousted within days of the report coming to light showing the misbegotten actions of lower level employees; he was one of three senior officials to be sidelined in the continuing investigation.

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"This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher." Nobel Prize physicist Albert Einstein on preparing his taxes.

The income tax was unloved from its inception.

Pushing for it in 1861 to help pay for the Civil War, Rep. Thaddeus Stevens declared, "It is unpleasant to send the tax gatherer to the door of the farmers, the mechanics, and the capitalists ... but these things must come or this government must soon be buried in its grave."

President Abraham Lincoln signed into law a 3 percent tax on income over $800, a sum few people made. A progressive income tax followed a year later in a law establishing an enforcement arm, the office of commissioner of internal revenue in the Treasury Department. The wealthiest Americans paid 5 percent.

Before the end of the 1800s, the income tax was repealed, revived and struck down as unconstitutional, only to return in 1913 with the enactment of a constitutional amendment.

The tax form of 100 years ago three pages long, with another page of instructions loosely resembles the short form of today, except for its provisions for deducting uninsured shipwrecks and its guidance to a still-agricultural nation about claiming income from the wool and hides of slaughtered animals.

The basic tax rate was 1 percent on personal income over $3,000, and there was a 6 percent surtax on astronomical incomes over $500,000.

Rates would not remain so benign for long. In 1918, the top rate soared to 77 percent to help pay for World War I. During World War II, compliance leaped forward when Congress introduced payroll withholding and quarterly tax payments.

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"If you drive a car, I'll tax the street. If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat. If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat. If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet." The Beatles, "Taxman."

Back to biblical times, revenue collection was often contracted out to independent "tax farmers" so as to insulate authorities from the howls of an aggrieved population, Atlanta accountant Jay Starkman says in his history of taxes, "The Sex of a Hippopotamus," so named because it's about as hard to divine whether a hippo is male or female as it is to comprehend the tax code.

A certain distance remains. No president visited the IRS headquarters until John Kennedy did so in 1961, embracing the tax collector as the underpinning of a nation locked in Cold War competition, a space race and monumental obligations at home and abroad. "We are strongly behind you," Kennedy told the agency. "We expect the best from you."

It was a historic, morale-building visit to the put-upon agency but JFK's record with the IRS is not entirely noble. Although the bureau was reorganized in the 1950s to replace patronage appointments with career professionals (and to rename it the Internal Revenue Service), Kennedy's administration used it to try to cower critics on the right.

Later, President Richard Nixon's IRS manipulations against those on his "enemies list" rose to the level of an impeachable offense in the eyes of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In the 1990s, the IRS went through another overhaul, this time to introduce more accountability, more recourse for the taxpayer and a customer-service ethic.

"Some people believe that the IRS slogan is, 'We're not happy until you're not happy,'" Starkman writes in his book. Yet it's probably more responsive to the consumer than the annoying help lines for digital gadgets. "Although IRS is the largest paper-shuffling organization in the world," he says, "when I call, I still get a live American person fairly quickly."

To IRS haters, the overhaul was not much more than public relations gloss, lipstick on a fanged pig.

But it made some changes that are consequential to this day. Among them, it established the Office of the Inspector General for Tax Administration, a more autonomous organization than existed before to scrutinize the behavior of the tax collectors.

That's the outfit that investigated and exposed the audits slanted against conservatives in the 2012 campaign. It's why the IRS is in such a pickle now.

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Associated Press researcher Monika Mathur contributed to this report.

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Online:

The IRS and Al Capone: http://tinyurl.com/k39dhr7

Middle Class Falls, Wall Street Rises ... and Washington Dithers

"Bull Run Gets Solid Footing" read the headline. "Home Prices Power Optimism" "Country in a Buying Mood"

Unless you're among the wealthiest Americans, chances are this week's headlines don't square with your reality. Wall Street is faring far better than Main Street, where the middle class is losing ground and hope.

Despite signs of a durable economic recovery, a recent Allstate/National Journalshows that middle-class Americans fear they're falling behind. Of all Americans, 59 percent say they're concerned about slipping out of their economic class in the next few years.

Meanwhile, Washington dithers.

The GOP-controlled House is fixated on President Obama rather than the economy, with one-third of the chamber's committees investigating White House controversies. The president's economic agenda is designed to ease the middle-class squeeze, but he has failed to translate a populist reelection campaign message into legislative success.

Obama said Friday that the recovery can't be measured in stock prices alone, "it's about how much progress ordinary families are making. Are we creating ladders of economic opportunity for everybody who works hard?"

The answer is no.

Ron Fournierrfournier@nationaljournal.com

RUBIO TO ADDRESS HOUSE CONSERVATIVES ON IMMIGRATION REFORM. House conservatives will host several influential Republican senators next Wednesday for a closed-door policy summit that will feature voices on both sides of the immigration debate, National Journal'sTim Alberta reports. As House negotiators work to finalize an agreement on comprehensive immigration-reform legislation, the Republican Study Committee has invited a handful of Republican senators, representing a range of views on the immigration debate, to Wednesday's meeting in the Capitol. As of Friday, three had confirmed their attendance: Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Mike Lee of Utah.

MEDICARE TRUST FUND TO RUN OUT IN 2026, SOCIAL SECURITY IN 2033. Medicare and Social Security trustees announced in an annual report released today that the Medicare trust fund will not run out until 2026, two years later than previously projected, while the projected date for Social Security remains the same, in 2033. The revision in the Medicare estimate owes to the slower rate of increase in health care expenditures. The exhaustion of the funds' reserves would spur reductions in benefits for Medicare and Social Security beneficiaries.

BACHMANN CHALLENGER DROPS 2014 BID FOLLOWING RETIREMENT ANNOUNCEMENT. Businessman Jim Graves, the Democrat who challenged Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., in 2012, told supporters in an e-mail that he will drop his campaign for the seat, Roll Call reports. "A year ago, we set out on a mission: To restore civility, functionality and honesty to Washington by removing Michele Bachmann from office," he wrote. "After struggling with this decision agonizing over it with my friends, supporters and family, I've decided to suspend my campaign indefinitely."

HOLDER MEETS WITH NEWS ORGANIZATIONS, CONSIDERS CHANGES TO LEAK PROBES. Attorney General Eric Holder has begun consideration of changes to the Justice Department's policy on leak investigations, The New York Times reports. Holder began meeting Thursday with representatives of various news organizations; several organizations declined to participate due to the off-the-record nature of the conversations. One of the changes under consideration involves requiring a high-level review of potential subpoenas for journalists' e-mail correspondence; the current policy requires such a review only for subpoenas of telephone records.

DEM SENATOR BLASTS OBAMA IN FIRST CAMPAIGN AD. For a sign of the challenges Southern Democrats will face on the ballot next year, look no further than Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, who went up with his first campaign ad today. The spot blasts President Obama for his gun-control legislation and takes aim at New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been airing ads in the state criticizing Pryor for his vote against the Toomey-Manchin bill, National Journal's Josh Kraushaar reports.

FBI HAS PERSON OF INTEREST IN LATEST RICIN MAILINGS. The FBI has identified a person of interest in the mailing of ricin-laced letters to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a threatening letter to President Obama that may contain ricin, CBS News reports. According to sources, the letter to Bloomberg read: "You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional, God-given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die. What's in this letter is nothing compared to what I've got planned for you."

THREE NAVY FOOTBALL PLAYERS UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR RAPE. A spokesperson for the U.S. Naval Academy confirmed that three members of the school's football team are under investigation for the alleged rape of a female midshipman, Military.com reports. "Naval Academy leadership is monitoring the progress of this investigation and evaluating the appropriate options for adjudication," said Cmdr. John Schofield. Officials did not name the players, nor did they indicate when the investigation was expected to conclude. President Obama delivered the commencement address at the Naval Academy on May 24, urging the midshipmen to stem the tide of sexual assaults in the military.

REID: SENATE TO VOTE ON STUDENT-LOAN RATES NEXT WEEK. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced in a statement today that the Senate will vote next week to maintain low student-loan interest rates and dismissed a House plan as untenable. "The House Republican proposal is a non-starter in the Senate because it would leave middle-class families with the uncertainty of seeing their rates fluctuate wildly year to year, potentially having to pay thousands more from one year to the next," Reid said.

IS OBAMA OK WITH THE STATUS QUO? Perhaps the most notable thing about President Obama's reported choice of Jason Furman to be chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers is what it doesn't portend: change. The widely respected Furman, currently deputy director of the National Economic Council under Gene Sperling, is less known as an academic economist than as a policy wonk closely identified with many of Obama's policies from the first term, National Journal's Michael Hirsh writes.

"Having lost the election, I don't look at myself as the person best equipped to prescribe where the party should go, going forward." Mitt Romney, on giving the GOP advice ()

BUSH ON A BIKE: TALKING VETERANS, IMMIGRATION, POWER, AND FAME.Huffington Post reporter Jon Ward details his time with former President George W. Bush during the third annual Warrior 100K, which he has hosted since leaving the White House. Bush has largely withdrawn from public life, with Ward noting that "there's a frustration at the Bush Institute" because he isn't speaking out on issues more. Still, he's focused on making sure veterans are getting acclimated, with Ward writing that "an undercurrent flowing through remarks ... during the three days was a concern that returning veterans not be turned into charity cases." Bush also weighs in on immigration-reform efforts, Marco Rubio, his views on the impact of power and fame, and reaching "Ultra Zen."

WHITE HOUSE RECORDS SEEM TO CONTRADICT CLAIM ON IRS CHIEF'S VISITS. A review ofreleased by the White House indicates that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman may have visited the White House fewer times between 2009 and 2012 than claimed by a widely circulated piece in the conservative Daily Caller, The Atlantic reports. Records indicate that Shulman was "cleared to attend" 157 meetings -- including 40 with the director of the Office of Health Reform and 80 biweekly health reform deputies meetings -- but time-of-arrival information exists for just 11 of those.

The online blueprints for a fully functional 3D-printed gun have disappeared faster than a speeding bullet.

On Wednesday, the State Department ordered the company that posted the schematics, Defense Distributed, to remove them from the web. (Watch a Defense Distributed video explaining the gun above.) According to the State Department, publicly posting the instructions may have violated the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which governs the "transfer of, and access to" certain weapons and their technical details. By posting the files to the web where anyone in the world could download them, the company may have inadvertently violated those export restrictions.

"Please note that disclosing (including oral or visual disclosure) or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether in the United States or abroad, is considered an export," the State Department  in a letter.

However, the State Department did not say that the instructions must remain offline for good. Rather, the department asked that Defense Distributed file the necessary paperwork for the government to determine if the blueprints are, in fact, a violation of ITAR. In the meantime, State wrote, the company "should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled."

That letter came just two days after Defense Distributed, through its open-source printing project DEFCAD, posted the instructions for its "Liberator" handgun to the Internet. In just three days, the instructions had already been downloaded more than 

Here's how it works, :

Fifteen of the gun's 16 pieces are constructed on the $8,000 Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer, Forbes said. The final piece is a common nail, used as a firing pin, that can be found in a hardware store. []

And indeed, by Thursday evening, the webpage to download the instructions had been updated with the : "This file has been removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information."

Still, the federal order does not mean all copies of the blueprints have been be wiped from the web. The instructions have been posted to the file-sharing sites Pirate Bay and Mega, among others, meaning they're still available for download.

Wilson, who claims to have been inspired by anarchist writings, himself made that point in an , saying he thought he would ultimately be free from the government's oversight.

"I still think we win in the end," he said. "Because the files are all over the Internet, the Pirate Bay has it to think this can be stopped in any meaningful way is to misunderstand what the future of distributive technologies is about."

Lawmakers at the state and federal level have already moved to ban printable firearms.

In California, Democratic state Senator Leland Yee said in athat he would soon introduce a bill to ban weapons that "are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check." At the federal level, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have likewise called for legislation to ban such firearms.

"A terrorist, someone who's mentally ill, a spousal abuser, a felon can essentially open a gun factory in their garage," Schumer

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- West Virginia's governor and attorney general are joining two other states that are seeking to challenge federal environmental rules on greenhouse gas emissions.

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced Friday the state has filed a friend of the court brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a challenge to Environmental Protection Agency rules. The rules would allow the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources.

West Virginia, Kansas and Montana want the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify that the EPA has misinterpreted the Clean Air Act and has overstepped its regulatory authority.

Burning coal and other fossil fuels releases large amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for climate change.In February, an EPA report said power plants remain the largest stationary source of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trigger global warming.

Morrisey said EPA rules on greenhouse gas emissions "are another example of the federal agency overstepping its role to the detriment of West Virginians."

Tomblin said he also wrote to President Barack Obama last month urging him to direct the EPA to halt its "anti-coal" policies.

"The EPA's proposed limits on greenhouse gas emissions threaten the livelihood of our coal miners to the point of killing jobs and crippling our state and national economies, while also weakening our country's efforts toward energy independence," Tomblin said.

The book, which once belonged to the critic and author Malcolm Cowley, will go under the hammer along with a group of Fitzgerald's letters and an unpublished poem in the June 11 books and manuscript sale in New York.

"The book is now almost universally recognized as standing among the great achievements of 20th-century American literature with the tragic story of Jay Gatsby, and more broadly, the American dream, resonating with readers for generations," Sotheby's said in a statement announcing the sale.

Fitzgerald wrote the Jazz Age drama while living in France. Although it was popular when it was published in 1925, it wasn't until Fitzgerald's death in 1940 that it was hailed as the great American novel.

News of the sale comes just weeks after the opening of director Baz Luhrmann's film "The Great Gatsby," starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the hero of the tragic love story.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Wuerffel and the Gators bounced back from that record-breaking 62-24 smackdown to take the title the next season.

The former quarterbacks will cross paths again in December, when they are inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

Wuerffel and Frazier, along with Heisman Trophy winner Ron Dayne, highlighted the latest Hall of Fame class of 12 players and two coaches announced by the National Football Foundation on Tuesday.

The rest of the players to be inducted in Manhattan are: Miami Heisman winner Vinny Testaverde, whose selection was announced Monday; Ted Brown of North Carolina State; Tedy Bruschi of Arizona; Jerry Gray of Texas; Steve Meilinger of Kentucky; Orlando Pace of Ohio State; Rod Shoate of Oklahoma; Percy Snow of Michigan State; and Don Trull of Baylor.

The new Hall of Fame coaches are Wayne Hardin, who led Navy and Temple, and Bill McCartney of Colorado.

Florida and Nebraska fans have been eagerly awaiting the inductions of their beloved All-Americans for years.

Wuerffel won the Heisman in 1996, when he led the Gators to the national championship, throwing for 3,625 yards and 39 touchdowns in coach Steve Spurrier's Fun-n-Gun offense.

"I'm thankful for what college football has meant in my life ... and how it allowed me to help other people," said Wuerffel, who appeared at a news conference with Bruschi at the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in Times Square.

Wuerffel finished his college career as one of the most prolific passers in major college football history with 10,875 yards and 114 touchdown passes.

After a short NFL career, he retired to dedicate himself to ministry work in New Orleans, where he played from 1997-99 with the Saints.

In 2011, Wuerffel was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder Guillain-Barre syndrome, which causes paralysis and problems with the nervous system but is treatable.

Wuerffel said he is just about all the way back to his old self, but endured a difficult year and a half with little energy or strength.

"You're trying to live a normal life with 20 percent of your energy, 40 percent of your energy," he said.

Frazier, from Bradenton, Fla., was a four-year starter at Nebraska, running coach Tom Osborne's option attack.

"He was an outstanding leader and catalyst and made everyone around him better," Osborne said in a statement. "Tommie managed the game very well, and was a natural option quarterback. He had a good sense of timing, when to pitch, when not to pitch. He had excellent balance, good speed and was very strong.

"Tommie was better prepared to start as a freshman than any quarterback we had. That's not easy to do, but he was unusually mature and competitive."

Frazier was the centerpiece of Nebraska's last great dynasty. The Huskers were 33-3 in games he started and won back-to-back national titles in 1994 and '95.

"I think it's been a longer time coming than most of us would have thought," said former teammate Aaron Graham, a center on those great Nebraska teams. "The guy was the best college football player of our era and certainly deserving of one of the highest honors you can achieve as a college football player."

Frazier's famous tackling-breaking 75-yard touchdown run put an exclamation point on Nebraska's 62-24 victory over Wuerffel and Florida in that '96 Fiesta Bowl.

"I've seen that run a lot of times," Wuerffel said.

That loss helped propel the Gators into next season, Wuerffel said.

"I think most people would say the 1995 team was more talented," he said. "I think (the loss to Nebraska) helped that team mature."

Frazier finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1995 as a senior and finished his career with 5,476 total yards of offense and 79 total touchdowns.

"You never play the game and think you are going to be in the Hall of Fame one day," Frazier said in a statement released by Nebraska. "You just go out and try to be the best you can and whatever happens, happens. I was fortunate good things happened."

Dayne is the NCAA's career rushing leader with 6,397 yards rushing, though his bowl game yards would boost his career total past 7,000 yards if he hadn't played when the NCAA did not count them in regular season stats. The burly tailback won the Heisman for the Badgers in 1999.

"In my opinion, Ron was simply the most dominant running back that ever played college football," said Dayne's former coach and current Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez in a statement.

Bruschi had 52 sacks as part of Arizona's Desert Swarm defenses during the mid-1990s.

"I don't know who came up with that nickname, but thank you," Bruschi said.

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AP Sports Writer Eric Olson in Omaha, Neb., contributed to this report.

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Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Neuropsychologists should consider studying "Fast & Furious 6" (and its equally thrilling predecessor, "Fast Five") for its unique ability to completely bypass the brain's logic center and go right to pushing our pleasure buttons over and over again.

Countless action directors aspire to the big, dumb fun that these last few franchise entries have provided, but whereas most of them only get "dumb" and maybe "big" right, director Justin Lin and his crew deliver fun, fun, fun. (And nobody takes anybody's T-Bird away.)

"Furious 6" (as the film is called in the opening credits) opens with criminal and street racer Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), his girlfriend Elena (Elsa Pataky), Dom's sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and Mia's husband (and Dom's former nemesis turned best bro) Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) living the good life in the Canary Islands, enjoying the spoils of the big Brazilian bank job from "Fast Five" and avoiding extradition.

Thankfully, their bliss comes to an end when federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) shows up with an offer that Dom and Brian can't refuse; Hobbs needs their help in taking down international no-goodnik Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), and the fact that one of Shaw's henchmen appears to be Dom's girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) - thought to have been killed two movies ago in "Fast & Furious" - compels the hot-rodders out of retirement to rescue her.

Nabbing Shaw means putting the band back together, so Tej (Ludacris), Han (Sung Kang), Gisele (Gal Gadot) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) are all called in from their respective exiles to pitch in. Shaw has his own Benetton-ad-ready group of multi-ethnic henchmen, while Hobbs has his own backup, the hard-kicking Riley (Gina Carano of "Haywire").

There's a lot of running around regarding the McGuffin device that Shaw wants to steal so he can do very bad things, but that's not what "Fast & Furious 6" is really about; it's really about driving really fast through Picadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square and zipping along Spanish expressways while being shot at by a tank. And Lin and his team do an extraordinary job of staging the ever-escalating action sequences, up to a jaw-on-the-floor finale involving various four-wheel vehicles in and around a cargo plane that's trying to take off.

Not that all of the film's thrills are tied in to combustible engines. Getting to see Carano and Rodriguez (two of the screen's reigning bad-asses of any gender) go mano-a-mano twice counts as some kind of action movie landmark, and we also get Joe Taslim of the exhilarating "The Raid: Redemption" using his not-inconsiderable martial arts skills as one of Shaw's men. (The non-action casting is fairly creative as well, with Thure Lindhart, an Independent Spirit Award nominee for last year's powerful "Keep the Lights On," popping up in a supporting role.)

When the craziness slows down and people actually talk, the theme of family is constantly underlined, to the extent that my seatmate suggested a drinking game for every time the word "family" is mentioned. Nonetheless, while Diesel and Walker have a fairly limited skill set as actors, they are put to good use here, and six movies in, they've definitely established themselves and their co-stars as a cohesive unit.

The crazy gender politics of the "Fast and Furious" movies remain on display, and not just through the macho posturing and the bikini-clad car models writhing in slow motion. Every joke, insult or threat in the movie seems to revolve around the feminization if not outright emasculation of men. It's the sort of overcompensating we've come to expect from a series that critic Jennifer Smith once called "tender and homoerotic" and that spawned the "SNL" parody "The Fast and the Bi-Curious."

"Fast & Furious 6" serves up a big plate of entertainment. Its makers never pretend it's a steak, but they're happy to offer up a big fat juicy hamburger with extra cheese.