SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - EBay Inc pulled a listing on Wednesday for a Nike Inc t-shirt displaying the phrase "Boston Massacre," citing the online marketplace's policy against "offensive materials."

The t-shirt was listed for sale earlier this week on eBay and received bids of more than $150,000, according to bid history on the company's website.

The t-shirt refers to the rivalry between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox baseball teams and has images of red blood spattered on the word Boston.

In the wake of the Boston Marathon attack, Nike pulled all the shirts from stores, but a used one turned up on eBay.

An eBay spokeswoman said the shirt was removed because it violated a company policy that bans listings of items that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance, or promote organizations with such views.

EBay will also remove listings that graphically portray graphic violence or victims of violence, unless they have substantial social, artistic, or political value, according to the policy.

A check on Wednesday afternoon by Reuters confirmed that the listing was taken down.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

that Castner was arrested on charges of welfare fraud as part of a Manatee County sheriff's office undercover sting entitled Operation Meal Ticket.

and have warrants out for dozens more in the undercover sting operation.

Castner isto undercover agents.

Manatee Sheriff Brad Steube said some of the people caught in the sting said they were using money from selling the cards to buy "rock cocaine, drugs and alcohol."

After he was booked, Castner was forced to ditch his ironic T-shirt for more traditional prison garb and a .

There is a feel-good angle to this story. WBTV reported that the sheriffs office used $9,000 in recovered food stamp money to buy baby formula for the Manatee County food bank.

* McNeil sits in third, one stroke back (Adds details, quotes)

May 4 (Reuters) - Phil Mickelson and Nick Watney survived some late-round misadventures to emerge from Saturday's third round tied for the lead in the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Mickelson topped the leaderboard for most of the day and Watney took his turn alone in first place during the final stretch before both players fell back with double-bogeys to head into Sunday's final round knotted at eight-under-par 208.

Watney shot a one-under 71 and Mickelson a 73.

Fellow-American George McNeil bogeyed the 18th to fall out of a three-way tie for the lead and was alone in third place on seven-under 209.

The stumbles by the leaders brought a slew of other contenders into the frame.

Two strokes off the pace at six-under-par 210 were Britons Lee Westwood (72) and David Lynn (71), Australian John Senden (67), Robert Karlsson of Sweden (69) and Americans Ryan Moore (68) and Derek Ernst (72).

Five players were another shot away, including world number two Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland, who struggled with his putter on the way to posting a one-over 73 for 211.

A gamble that backfired, a shanked tee shot and an approach that bounced off the head of a spectator highlighted a comedy of errors over the last holes.

Mickelson, the overnight leader by two strokes, led by one shot heading to the par-five 15th.

After a pulling a drive just outside the cart path and behind a tree on the right side of the fairway, the big left-hander decided to steer a metal-wood shot around the tree but it took off straight out of bounds.

"The second shot should not have been a problem," explained Mickelson after the double bogey. "If I had pulled (out) the driver like I did the second time, then it would have cut around, no problem.

"But I tried to do it with a three-wood and it shot straight and went out of bounds. I thought the driver might go in the bunker and I wanted to play it short."

A bogey at the par-four 16th cost Mickelson another stroke.

Mickelson was set up perfectly in the fairway but hit his second shot left of the green and off the head of a spectator down onto the 17th tee. He tried to run the ball through thick grass over a hill back to the green but got caught in the rough.

The bogey left him tied for the lead as Watney squandered his good fortune by shanking his tee shot at the par-three 17th on his way to a double-bogey five.

"I'm still in shock about 17. That's just a terrible feeling. I hope it doesn't happen again," a sheepish Watney said. "Ever.

"But the big picture, I'm tied for the lead."

Players will be grouped in threesomes and start earlier than usual on Sunday as forecasts call for possible heavy rains overnight that could last until Monday.

"It means we're gonna have to be even more patient," said Watney. "It's going to be a long day. But it will be fun. This is what you play for. We kind of let a lot of guys back in. It will be a shootout and I look forward to it."

(Reporting by Larry Fine in New York,; Editing by Gene Cherry)

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian stocks rose on Monday as investors gave the thumbs up to an upbeat U.S. labor force report that sent Wall Street to an all-time closing high last week, while the dollar held its ground against the yen.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japanclimbed 0.5 percent with Australia's main share indexmore than 1.0 percent higher. South Korean sharesadvanced 0.7 percent.

Japanese financial markets are shut on Monday for a public holiday and will reopen on Tuesday.

The gains came after data on Friday showed U.S. employment rose at a faster pace than expected in April and hiring was much stronger than previously thought in the prior two months, a relief to investors nervous about a U.S. slowdown.

But other U.S. data, including a survey of the vast services sectors, were less encouraging and led investors to suspect that the Federal Reserve will probably maintain its aggressive stimulus program.

"We take the April employment report, in conjunction with other data, as supportive of the Fed keeping its (debt) purchase program intact," analysts at Barclays Capital wrote in a note.

"Labor market and inflation trends are soft enough to reduce the likelihood of tapering, in our view, but steady enough to keep the Fed from increasing the pace of its purchases."

The data helped lift U.S. Treasury yields, which in turn gave the dollar a boost against the low-yielding yen. Having rallied more than 1 percent on Friday, the dollar last traded at 99.11 yen, up 0.1 percent on the day. It is within a hair's breadth of a 4-year peak near 100 scaled last month.

Other currencies outperformed the greenback with the Australian dollar back around $1.0300, well off last week's low near $1.0220.

The Aussie's immediate fortunes depend on local retail sales data due at 0130 GMT. Any disappointment could see the market firm up expectations for a cut in interest rates at the Reserve Bank of Australia's policy meeting on Tuesday.

A standout this morning was the Malaysian ringgit, which hit a 20-month high on the greenback after Sunday's election saw the governing coalition extend its half-century rule, albeit with its worst-ever performance.

Commodities also added to gains, having powered higher on Friday in the wake of the U.S. jobs report. U.S. crude rose more than one percent towards $97.00 a barrel, reaching fresh one-month highs.

Copper is in focus after it stole the limelight with a 6.5-percent rally to $7,270.00 on Friday.

However, to put its move in perspective, copper had fallen nearly 20 percent in the past three months partly on worries about a slowing global economy.

LeBron James had 30 points, eight rebounds and seven assists and visiting Miami pulled away in the fourth quarter to complete a four-game series sweep of Milwaukee.

Ray Allen scored 16 points off the bench and Udonis Haslem added 13 as the reigning NBA champions rolled into the Eastern Conference semi-finals despite playing without All Star guard Dwyane Wade, who sat out with an ailing knee.

The Heat will play either Chicago or Brooklyn in the next round.

Monta Ellis scored 21 points and Mike Dunleavy chipped in 17 for the eighth-seeded Bucks, who followed the script of the previous two games by staying close through three quarters before the top-seeded Heat turned on the jets.

Miami led by as many as 11 points in the second quarter but Ellis scored seven straight points as Milwaukee cut the deficit to 45-41 at the half. The Bucks were within five at the end of three quarters and trailed by two with 9 1/2 minutes to play when the Heat delivered the knockout blows.

Allen buried a pair of three-pointers and Mario Chalmers and Shane Battier each connected from long range before James capped a 19-5 burst with a conventional three-point play to extend the lead to 86-72 with 4:54 remaining.

- - - -

Celtics 97, Knicks 90 (overtime)

Reserve Jason Terry scored nine of his 18 points in the final 91 seconds of overtime as hosts Boston averted a four-game sweep despite blowing a 20-point second-half lead.

Paul Pierce scored 29 points and Jeff Green added 26 as the Celtics fought off a stirring comeback to force Game Five of the best-of-seven Eastern Conference series on Wednesday at New York's Madison Square Garden.

Kevin Garnett added 13 points and 17 rebounds for Boston.

Carmelo Anthony scored 36 points and Raymond Felton had 27 for the Knicks, who led only once - at 84-82 with 1:18 to play in regulation - and trailed 59-39 with 9:25 left in the third quarter.

Terry put the Celtics ahead to stay by burying a three-pointer with 1:31 left in the extra session. After Anthony sliced the deficit to one, Terry hit a short jumper and buried two foul shots for a 95-90 edge with 20.4 seconds left.

Pierce scored eight points in a 73-second span late in the second quarter to help send the Celtics into the break with a seemingly commanding 54-35 lead. A three-pointer by Green pushed it to 20 early in the third quarter before Felton scored 16 points in a 26-9 burst to pull New York within 68-65 entering the final 12 minutes.

The Knicks played without Sixth Man of the Year J.R. Smith, who was suspended one game by the NBA for elbowing Terry in the face in the fourth quarter of Game Three.

- - - -

Spurs 103, Lakers 82

Tony Parker scored 23 points and visiting San Antonio routed Los Angeles to complete a four-game sweep of the Western Conference playoff series.

Kawhi Leonard and DeJuan Blair scored 13 points apiece and Tim Duncan added 11 as the Spurs broke the game open early and sent the Lakers to their first opening-round postseason sweep since 1967.

Second-seeded San Antonio will face Denver or Golden State in the next round.

The injury-depleted Lakers, already missing their top four guards and starting forward Metta World Peace, went down meekly and saw center Dwight Howard ejected after picking up his second technical foul for arguing a non-call in the opening minutes of the third quarter.

Pau Gasol scored 16 points and Andrew Goudelock added 14 for Los Angeles.

The Spurs allowed the Lakers to hang around for the first quarter, leading by eight, but Gary Neal came off the bench and knocked down a pair of three-pointers in a personal 8-0 run to put San Antonio ahead by 14 en route to a 52-34 halftime edge.

The Spurs had only three turnovers in the first half compared to 16 for Los Angeles.

- - - -

Warriors 115, Nuggets 101

Stephen Curry took over in the third quarter and finished with 31 points and seven assists as host Golden State took a 3-1 lead over Denver in the best-of-seven series.

Curry hit six three-pointers and went 10-for-16 from the field for the Warriors, who will try to close out the series at Denver on Tuesday. Jarrett Jack added 21 points and nine assists and Carl Landry scored 17 off the bench.

Ty Lawson scored 26 points and Andre Iguodala had 19 for the Nuggets, who committed 23 turnovers leading to 33 points. Denver has allowed an average of 118.7 points in the last three games - all losses.

(Editing by John O'Brien)

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Bazlus Samad and Mahmudur Rahaman Tapash were charged with "death due to negligence." The case against them seems pretty strong, too: the top three stories of the eight-story building were added illegally (a ninth story was under construction at the time of the collapse), and survivors have said that though they were ordered by police to evacuate the building the night before the collapse after cracks appeared in the walls, their bossesto work. 

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Following a tremendous outcry and pressure to respond, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ordered the arrests of the owners of the factories housed within the building as well as the owner of the building itself, Mohammed Sohel Rana. Rana has yet to be found, and Bangladesh News 24 hoursthat "several people who identified themselves as Rana's staff were seen moving goods from the house."

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The night before the building collapse, Rana reportedly told workers that the building ".'" It didn't even last another 100 hours. 

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Here's how The Wall Street Journal :

On Friday, limbs of victims protruded from the fallen masonry and volunteers sprayed scented air freshener around the site to obscure the stench of decomposed flesh. 

Survivors are still being pulled out of the rubble -- two of them having given birth while they were trapped. The AFP report put the current death toll at 324. It's estimated the final count will be much higher; hundreds of people are still missing.

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Nomura Chief Financial Officer Shigesuke Kashiwagi told an earnings briefing that it had been informed of the order over Nomura Bank International's (NBI) assets in Italy on April 23, which it said comprised a small amount of cash and receivables.

Kashiwagi said Nomura believed the move was unwarranted given that NBI was not directly involved in the derivatives trades with Monte Dei Paschi.

Kashiwagi added that the action would have no impact on the settlement of the Japanese bank's trades across Europe.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The founder and managing director of Prim Capital Corporation has been charged with attempting to defraud the National Basketball Association players' union out of $3 million with a bogus contract, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said.

A complaint unsealed on Thursday charges Ohio-based Prim Capital founder Joseph Lombardo, 72, with attempted wire fraud, attempted mail fraud and obstruction of justice.

Carolyn Kaufman, 72, who served as president of Prim's advisory services component, was charged with obstructing justice.

From 2001 until 2013, Prim Capital served as the primary outside investment advisory firm handling the investments and finances for the New York-based National Basketball Players Association, the union representing NBA players.

Prim, described on its website as a boutique investment banking firm, managed up to $250 million of the NBPA's assets, reviewed individual players' investments and conducted financial seminars for players, federal prosecutors said.

Prim was asked to turn over copies of its agreements with the NBPA in 2012 as part of a probe by the U.S. Department of Labor into potential criminal activity at the union, according to the complaint.

In response it produced an agreement showing the firm's fees were $350,000 per year.

Several months later, the firm produced another contract listing the firm's annual fee at $602,000 for a five-year term, prosecutors said.

But an investigation showed that a signature from former NBPA general counsel, Gary Hall, on the contract had been forged months after his death, prosecutors said. Another signature on the contract was allegedly forged as well, according to the prosecutor's office.

Lombardo and Kaufman are charged with trying to thwart a grand jury investigation and giving false testimony.

"As alleged, Joseph Lombardo faked the signature of a dead man as part of manufacturing a multi-million dollar contract out of whole cloth that, had it been enforced, would have caused significant losses for basketball players who entrusted him with their savings," U.S. attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. "And together with his partner in crime, Carolyn Kaufman, he allegedly lied about it to a federal grand jury."

Lombardo and Kaufman were arrested at their residences in Ohio on Thursday, and will make their initial appearances in Manhattan federal court on May 2, according to the Manhattan prosecutor's office.

Lombardo faces up to 20 years on each fraud charge. He and Kaufman face up to 20 years on the obstruction of justice charge.

A lawyer who represented Lombardo and Kaufman during a court hearing in Ohio was not immediately available for comment Thursday evening. Prim Capital and the NBPA did not immediately return requests for comment.

(Reporting by Jessica Dye; editing by Xavier Briand)

Tamerlan Tsarnaev seemed more American than Chechen and "did not fit into the Muslim life" in Russia's Caucasus, Patimat Suleimanova told The Associated Press. She said when Tsarnaev arrived in January 2012, he wore a winter hat with a little pompom, something no local man would wear, and "we made him take it off."

Tsarnaev and his younger brother are accused of setting off the two bombs at the Boston Marathon on April 15 that killed three people and wounded more than 200. Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a gun battle with police. His 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was later captured alive, but badly wounded.

On Monday, two U.S. officials said preliminary evidence from an interrogation suggests the brothers were motivated by religion but were apparently not tied to any Islamic terrorist groups. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.

U.S. investigators are focusing on the six months Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent last year in two predominantly Muslim Russian provinces, Dagestan and Chechnya, to see if he was radicalized by the region's militants who have waged a low-level insurgency against Russian security forces for years.

After returning from Russia, Tsarnaev made his presence known at a Boston-area mosque, where his outbursts interrupted two sermons that encouraged Muslims to celebrate American institutions such as the July 4 Independence Day and figures like Martin Luther King Jr., according to the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center. During one incident congregants shouted at him, telling him to leave, the center said in a statement released Monday.

The Tsarnaev family moved to the United States a decade ago, but the suspects' parents are now in Russia. Their father said he hopes to go to the United States this week to seek "justice and the truth."

Suleimanova, who wore a pea-green headscarf, said her nephew prayed regularly and studied the Muslim holy book. "He needed this. This was a necessity for him," she said.

Every day, using Skype, he spoke to his American-born wife, who had recently converted to Islam, and at times she instructed him on how to observe religious practices correctly when he lapsed, Suleimanova said Sunday from her home in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. She said her nephew was considering bringing his wife to Dagestan.

His parents insist he spent much of his time visiting relatives in his mother's and father's extended families in Dagestan and Chechnya, but details of his whereabouts are vague and contradictory. His father says Tsarnaev stayed with him in Makhachkala, regularly sleeping late.

His aunt, however, said neither of Tsarnaev's parents was in Russia when he arrived. One reason his father came last year, Suleimanova said, was to make sure his elder son returned to the United States. It was not clear when his father or mother arrived. His mother was arrested in the U.S. in June on charges of shoplifting.

Tsarnaev's father explained his son's trip by saying he needed to get a new Russian passport. But an official with the federal migration service in Dagestan said Monday that Tsarnaev had applied for a new passport in July, but never picked it up, the Interfax news agency reported. Tsarnaev returned to the U.S. on July 17.

His mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told the AP that her son greatly enjoyed his time with her relatives, but never traveled to her native village in a mountainous region of Dagestan, which is a hotbed of an ultraconservative strain of Islam known as Wahabbism. Wahabbism was introduced to the Caucasus in the 1990s by preachers and teachers from Saudi Arabia.

The mother said her relatives now all live in Makhachkala and the town of Kaspiisk. She refused to say which mosque her son frequented, but Tsarnaev's parents and aunt firmly denied that he met with militants or fell under the sway of religious extremists.

"He used to say, 'I want to go somewhere in the mountains, to be all by myself, to escape from everyday life, to be alone,'" Suleimanova said.

The suspects' father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said he intends to travel to the U.S. "I want normal justice," he said. "I have many questions for the police. You know, I am a lawyer myself and I want to clear up many things. .... I want justice and the truth."

The family said he wants to bring Tsarnaev's body back to Russia.

___

Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Pete Yost in Washington contributed.

The Federal Joint Committee, or G-BA, said on Thursday it would review the cost-effectiveness of a range of drugs in different treatment areas.

The list includes Novo's diabetes drug Victoza, Bayer's blood-thinner Xarelto, Amgen's osteoporosis medicine Prolia, Johnson & Johnson's painkiller Nucynta and Roche's rheumatoid arthritis drug Actemra. Other drugs in the same therapeutic class will also be covered by the review.

The G-BA, which will look at the affected drugs one at a time over the coming months, picked these products because they are among the biggest-selling in Germany, based both on revenues and volume sales.

Germany introduced a new system in January 2011 under which newly launched drugs are only allowed free pricing for one year, after which prices are negotiated based on a cost-benefit analysis. The latest initiative by the G-BA extends this system to certain medicines already on the market.

Countries across Europe are taking a harder line in demanding that drugmakers show that the price of their products is commensurate with their clinical value. Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, has carried out such cost-effectiveness reviews for more than a decade.

(Reporting by Maria Sheahan; editing by Ben Hirschler)