NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Octavia Spencer will star alongside Kevin Costner in "Black and White," IM Global announced on Tuesday.

IM Global has come aboard to sell the film to international buyers starting at the Cannes Film Festival next week. Cassian Elwes, an executive producer on the project, is handling domestic rights.

The film reunites Costner with "The Upside of Anger" director Mike Binder, who wrote and will directed "Black and White." It will begin shooting this summer in New Orleans.

Costner's Treehouse Productions and Binder's Sunlight Productions are co-producing the project, about widowed attorney Elliot Anderson (Costner) and his bi-racial granddaughter, Eloise. Eloise's mother, Eliot's daughter, died giving birth.

In the movie, Eloise's grandmother Rowena (Spencer) wants Eloise's father (and her son) to care for the child. Eliot and Rowena then spar over custody.

"We're delighted to come onboard such a powerful, compelling project with the Costner/Binder team that memorably brought us The Upside of Anger," Ford said in a statement. "Kevin's recent critical achievements as both an actor and producer with Hatfields & McCoys give the project added momentum and we're expecting a strong distributor response in Cannes."

Ford and IM Global president Jonathan Deckter made the deal with Elwes. Spencer can next be seen in Sundance favorite "Fruitvale," which the Weinstein Co. will release July 26. She is represented by WME.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis said on Wednesday that clergy who were "careerists" or "social climbers" were doing serious damage to the Catholic Church, his latest utterance aimed at instilling a sense of frugality and service in the Vatican and beyond.

Francis, 76, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, made the comments while addressing a gathering of superiors general of orders of nuns from around the world.

"Men and women of the Church who are careerists, social climbers, who use the people, the Church, brothers and sisters - those they should serve - as a springboard for their own ambitions and personal interests do great damage to the Church," he said.

"We learn poverty from the humble, the poor, the sick," he added, urging clergy to work with those on the margins of society and shun the "idols of materialism" that cloud the true meaning of life.

"We have no use for theoretical poverty," Francis said, departing from his prepared text.

Since his election on March 13, Francis has made it clear through his words and example that he wants clergy to live simpler lives, to serve the poor and shun temptations of power.

He has decided not to live in the spacious, luxurious papal apartments in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace used by his predecessors, opting instead for a small suite in a guest house, where he shares meals with other residents.

In his address, Francis appeared to be sending a message not only to priests, nuns and bishops around the world who serve the 1.2 billion-member Church, but also to bureaucrats in the Vatican itself.

Francis has inherited a Vatican rocked by a scandal in which documents leaked to the media spoke of alleged corruption in its administration and depicted prelates as fighting among themselves to advance their careers.

Last month he set up an advisory board of eight cardinals from around the world to help him reform the Vatican administration, known as the Curia.

They will help him put into place changes in an administration which has been held responsible for some of the mishaps and scandals that plagued the eight-year reign of Pope Benedict before he resigned in February.

Benedict left a secret report for Francis on the problems in the administration, which came to light when sensitive documents were stolen from the pope's desk and leaked by his butler in what became known as the "Vatileaks" scandal.

Before the conclave that elected Francis, cardinals called for changes to the Curia to make it a model of good governance, including introducing term limits on Vatican bureaucrats.

Anger at the mostly Italian prelates who run the Curia was one of the reasons that cardinals chose the first non-European pope for 1,300 years and quashed the chances of one of the front-runners, Milan Archbishop Angelo Scola.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; editing by Mike Collett-White)

DUBAI/NEW YORK (Reuters) - One of the credit card processing companies whose security was breached in a $45 million global cyber heist was India's ElectraCard Services, according to two people familiar with the situation.

ElectraCard Services processes prepaid travel cards for National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC (RAKBANK), one of two Middle Eastern banks named by U.S. prosecutors on Thursday as victims of the heist, the people said.

The prosecutors said an international criminal gang made two coordinated hits on cash machines around the world, withdrawing $5 million on December 21 last year and a further $40 million on February 19 this year.

The gang was able to make big withdrawals after hacking into an Indian and a U.S. credit card processing company to raise the balances and withdrawal limits on MasterCard prepaid debit cards, the prosecutors said. They did not name the processing companies.

A U.S. official and an employee of RAKBANK in Dubai both said the Indian card processor - used in the heist on December 21, 2012 - was ElectraCard Services, which is based in Pune, India. The two people spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ramesh Mengawade, the CEO of ElectraCard Services and its parent firm, Opus Software Solutions, could not be reached through his executive assistant or through e-mail on Saturday. Calls to the mobile phone of another company official were not answered.

An official at an external public relations firm that works with ElectraCard also said he had not been able to reach Mengawade on Saturday and did not have immediate comment.

RAKBANK has said two of its Prepaid MasterCard Cards have been launched with the support of ElectraCard.

MasterCard bought a 12.5 percent stake in ElectraCard in 2010, ElectraCard has said. MasterCard has said it had cooperated with law enforcement in the investigation and stressed that its systems were not involved or compromised in the attacks.

Cyber security experts said the global scope and speed of the $45 million bank theft was unprecedented. The global gang had operatives in 27 countries who could fan out to thousands of ATMs in a matter of hours, and withdraw money using fraudulent prepaid debit cards, according to U.S. prosecutors.

The U.S. Justice Department gave details of the heist on Thursday in an indictment against eight men accused of being the New York cell of the organization. The department said seven of the men have been arrested.

Dominican police on Friday confirmed that the eighth, Alberto Lajud-Pena, allegedly the leader of the New York cell, was shot dead in a robbery attempt in the Dominican Republic on April 27. Investigators found $100,000 in cash in the house where he was killed, as well as an M-16 assault rifle, two 9 mm pistols, a revolver, ammunition clips and a telescopic sight. It was not clear if the killing or the money were related to the cyber thefts.

Also on Friday, German prosecutors said they arrested two Dutch citizens, a man and a woman, on February 19, who were withdrawing cash at machines in Duesseldorf from accounts at Bank of Muscat of Oman, the other bank named by U.S. prosecutors.

The ringleaders of the global operation were believed to be outside the United States, but U.S. prosecutors have declined to give details, citing the continuing investigation. Germany is the only other country so far to announce arrests.

PREPAID CARDS

Experts in cyber security said the heists expose an Achilles heel in the global financial industry: prepaid debit cards.

Prepaid cards have fewer controls on them than on regular credit and debit cards issued by banks. Each prepaid card issued is like a blank slate: anonymous, new, and lacking any credit history or individual behavior pattern against which bankers and payment processors can measure activity to look for red flags.

A thief moving from ATM to ATM with a personal credit card would likely quickly raise alarms, because his or her behavior would look out of place compared to the credit card user's normal activity, experts said.

RAKBANK said the fraud against it took place at the end of last year and resulted in losses of around $4.7 million for the United Arab Emirates-based lender. The bank said the loss had been fully provided for before it closed its 2012 accounts.

RAKBANK Chief Executive Graham Honeybill said he believed the fraud went wider than lenders in the Gulf region. "We are given to understand that the overall fraud encompassed a number of banks not only in the Middle East but in the USA and other countries," Honeybill said in a statement.

"The bank can confirm that none of its customers suffered any financial loss as a result of this fraud," he added.

While full details of the latest heists were still unknown, cyber experts said such conspiracies typically come together in Internet forums, where hackers can exchange or sell information and recruit others. Gaining access to such private websites can take years of cultivating an online reputation for extraordinary trust or skill.

"It's sort of like Craigslist for cyber criminals," said Jason Weinstein, a lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson who previously supervised the Justice Department's computer crime unit.

In the early stages, one or more geeks install computer viruses inside networks, then spend days or weeks gathering detailed information about a bank's operations as they plan the job.

As they get ready to carry out the job, "carders" produce fake payment cards by coding the stolen account numbers onto magnetic strips. Those cards are distributed to large numbers of "cashers", who withdraw money from cash machines. "Mules" help move the booty across borders, sometimes in the form of luxury goods that they purchase with the cash.

The ringleaders, who rake in the biggest profits, typically are at the least risk of getting caught, while the carders, cashers and mules take on the highest risk of arrest.

In a similar heist in 2008, prosecutors say a group of men from Estonia, Russia and Moldova hacked into Royal Bank of Scotland's credit card processor. According to a federal indictment, they used casher crews to withdraw $9 million in more than 2,100 coordinated cash machine transactions worldwide over less than 12 hours.

Members of the organization often live in different countries and may never know the true identity of the other co-conspirators, aside from their online personae. In some cases, hackers don't learn the names of their partners until they appear on an indictment.

That is particularly true for low-level employees, like the cashers arrested in New York this week.

"Those low level guys very often don't have any idea who's pulling the strings on the overall conspiracy," said Michael DuBose, the head of cyber investigations for Kroll Advisory Solutions and the former chief of the Justice Department's computer crime section.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Ax in New York and Tony Munroe in Mumbai; Writing by Eddie Evans, editing by Tiffany Wu and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

VISTA, California (Reuters) - Heavy metal singer Tim Lambesis, the frontman for Christian rock band As I Lay Dying, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to a charge of soliciting the murder of his estranged wife.

North San Diego County Superior Court Judge Martin Staven set bail for Lambesis at $3 million. He ordered Lambesis to surrender his passport, stay away from his wife Meggan and their three children and remain in San Diego county except to meet with his attorney.

If convicted, Lambesis faces up to nine years in prison.

Lambesis, 32, was arrested at a bookstore in Oceanside, north of San Diego, on Tuesday after he tried to hire an undercover sheriff's deputy to kill Meggan Lambesis, according to Deputy District Attorney Claudia Grasso. Meggan Lambesis had filed for divorce in September after eight years of marriage, according to court records.

The singer gave the man he knew as 'Red' an envelope containing $1,000 in cash, photos of his wife, her address and codes to get through the security gates of her home, and a list of dates that would work well because he would have their three adopted children with him, Grasso said.

"The children would be his alibi," Grasso said at a news conference after the hearing, which was attended by more than 40 of Lambesis' friends, family and fans.

Lambesis' attorney, Anthony Salerno, said his client was set up. "If I had to hang a tag on it, I'd call it a scumbag snitch set-up," Salerno said. "Law enforcement was fed something by someone who effectively orchestrated the whole thing ... He did not intend to harm anybody."

Lambesis sent his wife an email in August while he was on tour, telling her he no longer loved her or believed in God, Grasso said. His wife also found he was having an affair and "there had been a string of other women," she said.

The prosecutor said Lambesis asked an acquaintance from his gym if he could find someone to kill his wife.

The gym friend arranged for him to meet with an undercover Sheriff's Department detective on Tuesday, to whom Lambesis gave the envelope of cash and information, Grasso said.

Salerno said he believed Lambesis did not want to harm his wife and had never done so in the past, noting the singer has no history of domestic violence or any arrests.

"Tim was mostly disappointed that it was going the way it was, he didn't feel it was good for his children," Salerno said. "The rest, I think will come out, that he was set up."

He also told the court that the restrictions on Lambesis to stay in San Diego County will affect the band's ability to tour and earn a living.

"The band has a tour scheduled," Salerno told the judge. "There's many people who depend on him. If he can't go that would be to the detriment of many, many people."

Lambesis is due to return to court for a preliminary hearing on July 10.

(Editing by Tim Gaynor and Mohammad Zargham)

By Patrick Johnston

KUALA LUMPUR, May 2 (Reuters) - The Asian Football Confederation elected Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa on to FIFA's executive committee at Thursday's vote in Malaysia.

The Bahraini secured 28 votes of the 46 available, beating Qatari Hassan Al Thawadi (18 votes) to secure a four-year term on the world governing body's powerful decision making table.

Sheikh Salman had narrowly failed to unseat then-AFC President Mohamed Bin Hammam from FIFA's ExCo in 2009; losing a vote of AFC members 23-21, with two votes deemed invalid because they were spoilt.

Earlier on Thursday, the AFC also chose Sheikh Salman to run Asian soccer for the next two years, handing him the AFC presidency after a three-way vote.

Sheikh Salman secured 33 votes of the 46 available from the AFC's member associations in Malaysia to beat Yousuf Al Serkal of the United Arab Emirates (six votes) and Thailand's Worawi Makudi (seven votes).

Outsider Hafez Al Medlej of Saudi Arabia unsurprisingly withdrew on the eve of the vote after failing to win full support of the West Asian region. (Editing by Peter Rutherford)

Many praised the government's efforts to rebuild Santiago and other cities but said much work remains to recover from the storm, which caused 11 deaths in Cuba before raging up the U.S. Atlantic Seaboard and killing 72.

"It was very hard-hit, but Santiago is once again blossoming," Aristides Zayas, a receptionist in Santiago said in a phone interview. "Of course the magnitude was such that not everything can get off the ground in six months. It will take time."

The half-year mark comes amid preparations for similar commemoration by states up and down the U.S. East Coast, where Sandy blew ashore in New Jersey on Oct. 29 as a monster storm that resulted in billions of dollars in damage.

Sandy had raked eastern Cuba four days earlier, causing major crop losses and damaging an estimated 130,000 to 200,000 homes. The government has not said how many of those have yet to be repaired or rebuilt.

Cuban scientists say Sandy's surge penetrated 50 yards (meters) inland and permanently altered much of the eastern coastline, washing away entire beaches and depositing sand elsewhere.

Shortly after the storm hit, Cuban President Raul Castro visited Santiago and said the city looked like it had been "bombed."

Cuba's highly organized civil defense brigades mobilized to get newly homeless people into shelters, distribute food and water and replant uprooted trees. Authorities also extended loans for rebuilding and knocked 50 percent off the price of home materials for storm victims.

Communist Party newspaper Granma said Thursday that for visitors today, "the first thing that catches one's attention and impresses ... is to find a clean and well-ordered city."

But residents said problems remain.

"From what I hear some things are still lacking," said Sister Mirtha, a Roman Catholic nun in the town of El Cobre, 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Santiago. "Some people have roofs, but others still do not. There are people who are getting rained on, and it's thanks to neighbors that they have somewhere to go."

She said some who live in informal housing situations have had difficulty getting their hands on building materials, because residents are required to show property titles to get the discounted items.

An international aid worker who has been closely involved in the relief effort said construction materials like bricks and corrugated iron rooftops are in short supply since local production is not meeting demand, and many items must be imported. Some families have moved back into damaged homes with just plastic sheets covering the roofs.

"They've done really well on re-establishing access to services like electricity and water, reopening roads, clearing out trees that have fallen down," the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to maintain the organization's relationship with island authorities. "All of that was quite quick given the scale of the impact."

"But at the individual level there's still a lot of work that needs to be done ... and my sense is that the government can't tend to every family's individual needs."

State-run news agency Prensa Latina reported this week that Santiago provincial authorities are prioritizing construction to make sure everyone displaced by Sandy has a safe place to live, a mission that takes on more urgency with the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season set to begin June 1.

There's also still plenty of work for international aid groups, which are continuing to distribute things like water tanks, purification tablets, mattresses, sheets, towels and other household goods.

"There's still a lot of families that are living in very precarious situations," the aid worker said. "Now that's a bit of a concern, because the rainy season's coming and you want to make sure that people have proper shelter."

___

Associated Press writer Andrea Rodriguez in Havana contributed to this report.

___

Follow Peter Orsi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

(Reuters) - A combination of five oral drugs being tested by AbbVie Inc cured at least 88 percent of new patients with hepatitis C after only eight weeks of treatment, without raising significant safety issues, researchers said on Tuesday.

The latest findings from an ongoing trial sponsored by AbbVie, called Aviator, also showed that 96 percent of patients taking the five medicines for 12 weeks eliminated the virus, as assessed by blood tests 24 weeks after they stopped treatment.

If the virus is undetectable 24 weeks after completing treatment, known as SVR 24, a patient is considered cured.

The latest results were deemed little different than the 99 percent sustained virologic response (SVR) rate reported in October, for patients evaluated 12 weeks after completing 12 weeks of the five-drug treatment regimen.

"We are pleased that the data remain consistent and robust," said Dr. Kris Kowdley, who is presenting the data this week at a meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) in Amsterdam.

"The data confirm that the 12-week treatment appears to be optimal, but certainly we are still very pleased with ... data for the eight-week treatment," Kowdley said in an interview.

AbbVie is deemed to be in a horse race with Gilead Sciences Inc to be first to market with an all-oral treatment for the serious liver disease, as companies work to eliminate difficult-to-tolerate intravenous interferon from the regimen, while raising cure rates and shortening treatment duration.

Current hepatitis C treatments take either 24 or 48 weeks.

Hepatitis C affects an estimated 170 million people worldwide, and if left untreated can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer or the need for a new liver.

Gilead has been given an edge by many analysts because its experimental regimen involves fewer drugs. But Abbvie said it is also testing regimens with fewer drugs and ones that do not include the older oral drug ribavirin, which can also be difficult for some patients to tolerate.

Any oral regimen to treat hepatitis C is expected to garner billions of dollars in annual sales.

Patients in the Aviator study had the most common, but hardest to treat, genotype 1 variation of the infectious virus. The AbbVie drugs were the protease inhibitor ABT-450, whose effect was boosted by a widely used antiviral called ritonavir; the polymerase inhibitor ABT-333 and ABT-267 from a class known as NS5A inhibitors. Those were given along with the generic antiviral medicine, ribavirin.

Kowdley, director of the Liver Center of Excellence at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, said the trial also showed impressive results among patients who had failed to benefit from earlier therapy.

The cure rate after 12 weeks of treatment was 93 percent for those patients, called null responders, assessed both 12 weeks and 24 weeks after completion of their drug regimens. That compared with a cure rate of 95 percent for patients treated for 24 weeks, and then assessed 24 weeks after treatment stopped.

AbbVie said the safety of the tested drugs was similar to that seen in results presented last year. Of the 247 patients evaluated, serious side effects were seen in four patients (1.6 percent), while seven patients had elevated levels of liver enzymes that can be considered a potential sign of toxicity.

Less serious side effects seen in more than 10 percent of patients included headache, fatigue, nausea, insomnia and diarrhea.

(Editing by Jan Paschal)

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press that the 11 captives were "being investigated," and denied reports that negotiations were underway for their release.

"They are healthy and in a safe place," Mujahid said. "A primary investigation has been started to find out who these people are."

The civilians have been tentatively identified as eight Turks, an Afghan translator and two pilots one from Russia and the other from Kyrgyzstan. They were captured by insurgents on Sunday after their civilian cargo helicopter had to land in a remote part of eastern Logar province because of bad weather.

Although the Turkish government has not said what the Turks were doing in Afghanistan, it's believed that they were working for a construction company.

Logar Deputy Police Chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai said local elders had started negotiations to see if the Taliban would release the men, but Mujahid said there were no talks.

"I am rejecting that. Before the end of the investigation there is no negotiation," Mujahid said.

The crisis began when the civilian transport aircraft was forced down in strong winds and heavy rain in the village of Dahra Mangal in the Azra district of Logar province, southeast of Kabul. The area is heavily influenced by insurgents.

The MI-8 helicopter went down in a ravine in the densely forested region, known for narrow gorges and rugged mountains, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Pakistan border.

Afghan police who tried to get to the scene were forced back by insurgent gunfire.

Afghan security forces believe the foreigners have been taken to neighboring Nangarhar province, which borders lawless tribal areas in Pakistan where insurgents have hideouts.

Although the capture or kidnapping of foreigners is not uncommon in Afghanistan, large-scale captures of foreigners are rare.

The last such instance was in July 2007, when the Taliban abducted 23 South Korean church volunteers as they traveled by bus along a dangerous road in southern Afghanistan. The militants killed two men soon after taking them and gradually released the remaining captives during the next month.

Also on Tuesday, NATO said two of its service members were killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. It provided no other details. Their deaths bring the total of foreign forces killed in April to eight; 34 have been killed since the start of the year.

April already has been the deadliest month this year for security forces and Afghan and foreign civilians as the U.S. and other countries prepare to end their combat mission by the end of next year. According to an Associated Press tally, about 238 people including civilians, foreign troops and Afghan security forces have been killed in violence around the nation this month.

Five people were killed on Tuesday in northern Faryab province, including a local prosecutor, his wife and three associates, provincial spokesman Jaweed Didar said. One of the gunmen also died in an exchange of gunfire, he added.

In southern Kandahar, nine civilian de-miners were captured by insurgents and negotiations were underway for their release, said provincial spokesman Javeed Faisal. The men were being driven back from a minefield on Sunday when they were captured, he said. Afghanistan has a legacy of land mines going back decades and remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

___

AP writers Mirwais Khan in Kandahar and Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.

The site brings together people looking to learn an instrument, sing, or read music with those who can teach those skill sets. Lessons are given either online or ‘on-tour’ and available sessions can be accessed via the site which is complete with teacher profiles, session scheduling, message support and an e-commerce store. BandHappy is one of the first online communities of its kind for aspiring, experienced and professional musicians. The Drupal CMS based site allowed r2i to deliver all the required back-end database functionality as well as a simple, user-friendly interface for site visitors.

R2i was selected as a finalist among 114 nominees and is in the company of other high profile Drupal Partners for final selection. R2i Chief Technology Officer, Chris Chodnicki, commented, “Acquia is an important partner for us and we are thrilled to have been recognized at this level for the BandHappy site.”

As an Acquia Partner,to help clients create, publish and manage dynamic digital content as well as leverage social interactions and monitor important customer metrics. In addition to BandHappy, r2i has designed, developed and deployed sites using Drupal for clients in industries such as education, technology, healthcare and consumer products which include Salsa Labs, Moodlerooms, Echo360, GetWellNetwork, Privia and Radcliffe Jewelers.

About R2integrated

R2integrated (“r2i”) is a high growth, next-generation digital/social marketing and technology firm specializing in creating meaningful customer engagement in the ever-changing world of peer-to-peer interactions. R2i provides advanced expertise in content and social media marketing and is able to bridge the gap between marketing disciplines and the advanced technologies required for 21st century execution. The company offers a comprehensive set of professional services and technology products including social/digital marketing strategy and programs, social/consumer data analysis technology, content strategy and content distribution technology, and reporting and analytics – all geared toward customer acquisition. R2i clients include Microsoft, Under Armour, Black and Decker, Time Warner Cable and Hershey’s.

Natalie StainesR2Integrated410-369-3689