Danny Puff

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) One of the country's poorest Native American tribes wants to buy a historically significant piece of land where 300 of their ancestors were killed, but tribal leaders say the nearly $4 million price tag for a property appraised at less than $7,000 is just too much.

James Czywczynski is trying to sell a 40-acre fraction of the Wounded Knee National Historic Landmark on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The land sits adjacent to a gravesite where about 150 of the 300 Lakota men, women and children killed by the 7th Cavalry in 1890 are buried.

Czywczynski, whose family has owned the property since 1968, recently gave the tribe an ultimatum: purchase the land for $3.9 million or he will open up bidding to non-Native Americans. He said he has been trying to sell the land to the tribe for years.

The ultimatum comes right before the tribe is poised to receive about $20 million from the Cobell lawsuit a $3.4 billion settlement stemming from a class-action lawsuit filed over American Indian land royalties mismanaged by the government for more than a century.

"I think it's ridiculous that he's putting a price on it like that," said Kevin Yellow Bird Steele, a tribal council representative from the Wounded Knee district, who thinks Czywczynski is putting pressure on the tribe because of the impending money. "We need to come down to earth and be realistic. We're not rich. We're not a rich tribe."

Czywczynski insists the site's historical significance adds value.

Along with its proximity to the burial grounds, the land includes the site of a former trading post burned down during the 1973 Wounded Knee uprising, in which hundreds of American Indian Movement protesters occupied the town built at the site of the 1890 massacre. The 71-day standoff that left two tribal members dead and a federal agent seriously wounded is credited with raising awareness about Native American struggles and giving rise to a wider protest movement that lasted the rest of the decade.

Czywczynski, who also is trying to sell another 40-acre piece of nearby land to the tribe for $1 million, also noted a coalition of Sioux tribes raised $9 million in December to buy land about 100 miles away in the Black Hills although the Oglala Sioux Tribe did not contribute to that effort.

"I'm getting older now and my family and myself want to dispose of this property," said Czywczynski, 75, who now lives in Rapid City. "We just want to see it in the hands of the Indian people rather than put it on the open market to the public."

Craig Dillon, a tribal council member on the Land Committee, said he would like to see the tribe buy the land at Wounded Knee because then they could build a museum commemorating the massacre with artifacts, food vendors and a place for local artists to sell their art to visitors.

"But with the price the way it is, I don't think the tribe could ever buy it," Dillon said.

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From the very beginning, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has kept a sense of humor about his now infamous reach-and-sip moment during the official Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address.

Now, he's cashing in on it.

In exchange for a $25 donation to Rubio's political action committee, the Reclaim America PAC will send you an official "Marco Rubio water bottle."

"Send the liberal detractors a message that not only does Marco Rubio inspire you he hydrates you too," the page reads.

www.reclaimamericapac.com

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AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Lyndon B. Johnson was so smitten when he met Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor in 1934 that he took her on a first date the very next day -- and asked for her hand in marriage.

Taylor adored her suitor but was worried about rushing into marriage, according to dozens of love letters between the two set to be released for the first time by the LBJ Presidential Library on Thursday, Valentine's Day.

In the pages of about 90 letters that the newly renovated library plans to post on its website, Johnson seems lonely and impatient, persistently urging Taylor to make up her mind. She says she wants to wait until they know each other better, though she also writes that she is afraid of losing him.

"All I can say, in absolute honesty, is -- I love you, I don't know how everlastingly I love you, -- so I can't answer you yet," Taylor wrote him shortly after they met that September.

Johnson, then 26 and working in Washington, D.C., as a secretary to Congressman Richard Kleberg, met Taylor, 21, through a friend while visiting Texas and asked her for a date the next morning. They had breakfast at the Driskill Hotel in Austin and spent the day sightseeing. That same day, he popped the question, asking her to become his wife.

After he returned to Washington, they spent two and a half months exchanging a flurry of letters and phone calls before going to San Antonio on November 17 to, as she later put it, "commit matrimony."

In the letters, Johnson implores her to write to him frequently.

"Give me lots of letters next week," he wrote to her. "I'm going to need them. Mix some I love you' in the lines and not between them."

Johnson's letters begin "My dear" or "Dear Bird." She addresses him as "My Dearest Lyndon" and signs "Devotedly, Bird." They sent each other photos. He sent her books.

"I wish you were here this minute because I feel silly and gay and I want to ruffle up your hair and kiss you and say silly things!" wrote Taylor, who had recently graduated from the University of Texas and was living with her father in Karnack, in East Texas.

A few of the letters had been released before, but this is the first time that all of the letters are being made public.

People probably won't be shocked to see a sweet side of Lady Bird Johnson, but reading tender sentiments from her husband, the hard-charging politician, is a different matter, said granddaughter Catherine Robb.

Johnson, who served in the U.S. House and Senate and as vice president, ascended to the presidency in 1963 as the nation grieved over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Johnson closed out his administration in 1969 under the cloud of Vietnam. He died in 1973.

He was known for giving the "Johnson Treatment" -- he'd lean in close, push people's buttons and get under their skin.

"I don't think people think of him as being terribly vulnerable," Robb, an Austin lawyer, told Reuters. In the letters, "you see a much more personal side of him, much more unguarded."

For example, he writes to his future wife that he carries a little orange comb in his billfold.

"It is the only thing I have from my little girl at Karnack and when I get lonesome and blue or happy and ambitious I always get pleasure when I look at the little comb and think just think," Johnson wrote.

Robb, who had weekly dinners with her grandmother for years before she died in 2007, recalled one meal at the Driskill Hotel - the site of her grandparents' first date.

"I asked her what she thought about this brash, impatient young man who proposed almost immediately and who she put off for a whopping two and a half months," Robb said. "She thought it was reasonable to wait an appropriate period of time, but she realized that she didn't want to be without him - he was something so special and this was an extraordinary adventure she was going to enjoy if she said yes."

Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson honeymooned in Mexico and were married for 39 years. They had two daughters, Luci Baines Johnson and Lynda Johnson Robb.

(Reporting by Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Prospects for a disabled farm animal born without the use of its hind legs are normally grim.

That is not the case for Chris P. Bacon, a month-old piglet from Florida whose videotaped struggle to learn how to use a tiny wheelchair have turned him an Internet sensation.

"He's cute. He grunts. And he's got a pretty cute little wheelchair," said veterinarian Len Lucero, trying to explain why his YouTube video of Chris's exploits have logged more than 474,000 views in two weeks.

After a client who could not care for Chris dropped him off at Lucero's veterinary hospital in Clermont, Florida, 30 miles west of Orlando, Lucero grabbed pieces from a child's set of K'nex construction toys to build a tiny wheelchair to mobilize the rear-end of the pink-and-white piglet.

The six-minute video shows Chris, then one pound and 10 days old, struggling with the contraption on Lucero's living room rug.

Chris walks on his front legs while lifting and holding the wheelchair off the ground. He grunts and roots around in the rug for food. He drinks lamb formula out of a baby bottle and wears a wet milk moustache.

Two other YouTube videos of Chris playing with a stuffed yellow duck and waking up in an incubator attracted another 160,000 views.

More than 14,000 people have clicked on "like" the "Chris P Bacon Pig on Wheels" Facebook page, and 1,000 people follow him on Twitter.

"You are the cutest piggy ever, you pink oinker!" wrote one of the thousands of fans.

Lucero said Chris was born on January 13 with the congenital defect.

His owner thought the only option was to have Chris put down, but Lucero realized Chris could live a full life with proper care. He offered to bring Chris to live on his own farm along with the family's goats, horses, dogs and cats.

"He was healthy and I was afraid he would have eventually met his maker," Lucero said.

Lucero said he does not know how big Chris might become, or anything about his parentage. Chris has outgrown his second wheelchair and will soon grow into his new, more permanent and rugged model.

Owning a celebrity pig that is set this week to make his national TV debut on a daytime talk show has changed his life, Lucero said.

"He just makes me happy," said Lucero, adding that he is getting "3 or 4 hours of sleep a night, if that, because I'm trying to keep up with all his media."

He has drawn up plans for "I Love Chris P. Bacon" T-shirts and possible advertisements on his YouTube videos.

Lucero said he does not expect to make much money off Chris' celebrity and that Chris' true value to him lies elsewhere.

"I want my piggy to be famous," Lucero said. "My goal is to put him out there because he makes people happy."

(Reporting by Barbara Liston; Editing by Kevin Gray and Toni Reinhold)

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc shares climbed more than 4 percent on Tuesday after an analyst note fueled optimism about the company's Kindle e-book business.

The e-book market is a lot bigger than previously thought, and owners of Kindle e-readers and tablets are reading more e-books, Morgan Stanley's Scott Devitt, a leading Internet and e-commerce analyst, told investors in the research note.

Devitt estimated worldwide e-book unit sales of 859 million in 2012, up considerably from a previous estimate of 567 million. With almost 45 percent of the e-book market, Amazon likely sold 383 million e-books last year, compared with an earlier estimate of 252 million, the analyst added.

Amazon's broader strategy is to sell mobile devices at or near cost and make money when consumers use the gadgets to buy digital content, including e-books, music, videos, apps and games.

Devitt said on Wednesday that the strategy may be working with e-books, one of Amazon's oldest digital categories.

"We initially assumed that early adopters of eReader devices would be avid readers and, therefore, the marginal buyer would read less," Devitt wrote.

However, data from a recent Amazon presentation show that consumers who bought a Kindle in 2011 read 4.6 times more e-books, on average, in the 12 months following their gadget purchase, compared with the 12 months before getting the device, the analyst noted.

Similar data from 2008 show consumers reading e-books 2.6 times as much after their Kindle device purchase, on average, according to Devitt.

The success of Amazon's Kindle business is important because it is more profitable than some of the company's other operations, Devitt said.

The Kindle business, which includes the gadgets and related digital content sales, generated about 11 percent of Amazon's sales last year and 34 percent of the company's consolidated segment operating income, or CSOI, Devitt estimated. The CSOI is a closely watched measure of Amazon's profitability.

"The Kindle franchise is a profit pool that subsidizes investments in other growth initiatives," Devitt wrote.

Amazon shares rose 4.1 percent to $269.30 in afternoon trading on Wednesday.

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; editing by Gunna Dickson)

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WASHINGTON (AP) Michelle Obama on Wednesday gushed over the Oscar-nominated film "Beasts of the Southern Wild," calling it one of the "most powerful and most important" movies in a long time in a ringing endorsement delivered less than two weeks before this month's Academy Awards ceremony.

The first lady commented during a Black History Month workshop at the White House for about 80 middle- and high-school students from the District of Columbia and New Orleans. The movie was set in Louisiana.

Students saw the film, then got to question director Benh Zeitlin and actors Dwight Henry and 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis. Wallis stars in the mythical tale of a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy struggling to survive in the southern Delta with her ailing father as a storm approaches. Her world consists of a tight-knit, shantytown community on the bayou with wild animals, both real and imagined.

The film won four Oscar nominations, including for best picture, best actress and directing.

Mrs. Obama said she saw the 93-minute film over the summer with a large group of friends and family who ranged in age from 3 to 73, and they were enthralled by it.

"It's rare these days to find a movie that can so completely and utterly captivate such a broad audience and that was one of the things that struck me about this movie," she said. "It managed to be beautiful, joyful and devastatingly honest."

The first lady said "Beasts" makes viewers "think deeply about the people we love in our lives who make us who we are" and shows the strength of communities and the power they give others to overcome obstacles.

"It also tells a compelling story of poverty and devastation but also of hope and love in the midst of some great challenges," she said.

Mrs. Obama also said it was "cool" that "there are so many important lessons to learn in that little 93 minutes."

"That a director and a set of writers and producers can say so much in just 93 minutes," the first lady told the students. "And it doesn't always happen in a movie, quite frankly, but this one did it, and that's why I love this movie so much and why our team wanted to bring it here to the White House and share it with all of you."

Mrs. Obama also used the film to inspire her young audience, noting that Wallis was just 5 years old when she auditioned for the part and Henry, who runs a bakery, had never acted a day in his life.

"You all have to really be focused on preparing yourselves for the challenges and the opportunities that will lie ahead for all of you. You've got to be prepared," she said, urging them to go to school, do their homework every day and follow her husband's example by reading everything they get their hands on.

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Beyonce is letting fans into her charmed life, introducing daughter Blue Ivy to the world and talking about motherhood, marriage and miscarriage in a new documentary.

The 31-year-old pop singer and her rapper husband, Jay-Z, 43, one of music's most influential couples, have been guarded about their private life.

But in "Life is But a Dream," airing on Saturday on cable channel HBO, Beyonce gives fans a glimpse of her working life and even a peek at baby Blue Ivy, who has been fiercely shielded from paparazzi since her birth in January 2012.

The "Crazy in Love" singer addresses the widely reported claim from 2011 that she was faking her pregnancy, calling it "the most ridiculous rumor I've ever heard of me."

"To think that I'd be that vain ... especially after losing a child. The pain and trauma from that just makes it mean so much more to get an opportunity to bring life into the world," she says in the documentary.

The Grammy-winning singer shows footage of a sonogram, her growing bump and grainy video of herself posing nude as she neared her due date.

The HBO film, which Beyonce co-directed, is part of a return to performing by the singer, who took a year off after her first child was born.

The arrival last year of Blue Ivy Carter gained worldwide media attention and prompted Beyonce to share more with her fans, launching a Tumblr page with snapshots that showed glimpses of her family life, including the baby.

Her miscarriage had been kept secret from the public until Jay-Z referred to it in his song "Glory," that he released following the birth of Blue Ivy.

In the documentary, Beyonce touched on the topic briefly, saying, "It was the saddest thing I've ever been through."

"My life is a journey. ... I had to go through my miscarriage, I believe I had to go through owning my company and managing myself ... ultimately your independence comes from knowing who you are and you being happy with yourself," she said.

"Life is But a Dream" serves as a coming-of-age for the star as she entered motherhood.

She gives audiences a peek into her four-year marriage to Jay-Z, showing footage of the couple singing Coldplay's "Yellow" to each other.

"This baby has made me love him more than I ever thought I could love another human being," she says.

The documentary shows Beyonce putting herself and her team through grueling choreography rehearsals in 2011 and planning every second of her performances at big awards shows that year.

Beyonce began her comeback with a controversial lip-synched performance of the national anthem at President Barack Obama's inauguration in January, followed by a live performance at the Super Bowl halftime show that wowed critics.

She has also announced a new album for this year. "The Mrs Carter Show World Tour" - Jay-Z's real name is Sean Carter - will kick off in April with more than 40 performances in Europe and North America.

"Life is But a Dream" airs on HBO on Saturday, the same day as Beyonce's interview with Oprah Winfrey on the OWN cable channel.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Doina Chiacu)

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TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, talk about their continued push for gun regulation in the upcoming issue of Vogue magazine.

The couple has formed a political action committee in hopes of preventing gun violence and changing laws to require compulsory background checks for gun buyers. The PAC will also work to limit the size of ammo magazines and to ban the sale of assault weapons to civilians.

Kelly said "now is the time" to do something in the wake of recent mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut.

Giffords and Kelly were interviewed at their Tucson home for the article, which appears in the March issue of Vogue that will be available on newsstands on Tuesday.

Giffords, 42, is shown lounging on a couch, dressed casually in a turtleneck sweater and holding hands with her husband.

Giffords was among 13 people wounded in a January 2011 shooting rampage as she met with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket. Six people were killed.

She resigned from Congress last year. Kelly, a former astronaut, has been by her side during her recovery.

They both attended Tuesday's State of the Union Address in which President Barack Obama called for stricter gun laws.

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Online:

http://www.vogue.com

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NEW YORK (AP) Alec Baldwin and his wife are expecting their first child together.

Publicist Matthew Hiltzik confirmed Tuesday that Hilaria Baldwin is due late this summer.

Alec Baldwin already is the father of a 17-year-old daughter, Ireland, from his previous marriage to actress Kim Basinger (BAY'-sing-ur). Hilaria Baldwin is a special correspondent for the TV show "Extra." The couple wed last June after a three-month engagement.

Alec Baldwin recently won a SAG Award for best actor in a TV series for the NBC comedy "30 Rock," which concluded its seven-year run two weeks ago.

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GAMMESFELD, Germany (Reuters) - Peter Breiter, 41, is an unusual banker. Not for him the big bonuses, complicated financial instruments and multi-million deals.

He is happy instead writing transaction slips out by hand for the 500 inhabitants of the tiny southern German village of Gammesfeld.

"Why would I use a cash machine?" said Friedrich Feldmann, a customer sitting in the bank's small waiting room on his once-weekly visit to withdraw cash. "They cost money anyway."

The Raiffeisen Gammesfeld eG cooperative bank in southern Germany is one of the country's 10 smallest banks by deposits and is the only one to be run by just one member of staff.

Small banks like this dominate the German banking landscape. Rooted in communities, they offer a limited range of accounts and loans to personal and local business customers.

While numbers have shrunk from around 7,000 in the 1970s to around 1,100 now, cooperative banks like Raiffeisen Gammesfeld provide competition for Germany's two largest banks - Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank.

A typical day's work for Breiter involves providing villagers with cash for their day-to-day needs and arranging small loans for local businesses. Not to mention cleaning the one-story building that houses the bank, which is 200 metres from his own front door.

Moving from a bigger bank, where it was all "sell, sell, sell", Gammesfeld-born Breiter says taking up this job in 2008 was the best decision he ever made.

The advertisement required someone to work by hand, without computers. The typewriter and the adding machine bear the signs of constant use, although Breiter, in his standard work outfit of jeans and jumper, does now have a computer.

"It's so much fun," Breiter, a keen mathematician, says as he deals with a steady stream of lunchtime customers. He knows his customers by name and regularly offers advice on jobs, relationship and money woes.

"People said I would get bored, but I'm not," he said.

Breiter doesn't even mind that he gets barely any holiday each year, saying he is happy to settle for weekends skiing in the mountains nearby. "My hobby is my job. What could be finer?"

The cooperatives' existence is entwined closely with that of the Mittelstand, Germany's medium-sized and often family-run firms responsible for much of its export success.

"The Mittelstand is the lifeblood of Germany, and these are often our customers," Steffen Steudel, a spokesman for the BVR cooperative banking group association told Reuters.

Mittelstand customers served by Gammesfeld include farmers, a maker of solar panels with around 100 employees, and a window firm, which supplied the windows for the bank.

CAN WE HAVE ONE TOO?

While many cooperative banks took a hit from the financial crisis, they fared better than some banks because they had mostly not tried to expand too quickly or take on too much risk-laden business.

The shock of seeing big banks go bust has also sparked renewed interest in the cooperatives, seen as steady and reliable, according to the BVR.

"Just as consumers want to know where their food is coming from, they also want to see what the bank is doing with their money," Steudel said.

Raiffeisen Gammesfeld restricts its business to traditional retail banking - no credit cards, shares, funds or even online banking. Annual profits are stable at around 40,000 euros and the biggest loan it ever agreed was for 650,000 euros.

Breiter said the financial crisis prompted interest in his bank from all over Germany: "One person rang up five times asking for a 4 million euro loan but I had to refuse because he wasn't from Gammesfeld!"

Breiter also says people have called to ask how they too can recreate Gammesfeld in their own village, although he says that the model is impossible to start from scratch today because of the sums of money that would be needed.

Breiter is also proud that Gammesfeld is there to serve the community and not just make profit. Each customer is offered the same interest rate, whether they earn 1,000 or 10,000 euros a month.

Inge Dill, whose son went to school with Breiter, says the bank offers the best interest rates around. "Why would I go anywhere else?"

The bank, however, almost did not make it this far.

Back in the 1980s, the bank's previous CEO, Fritz Vogt - whose grandfather founded the bank back in 1870 - had to go through the courts to ensure the bank kept its licence because it did not have a permanent second member of staff to act as a "second pair of eyes" to double-check transactions.

Even now, 82-year old Vogt, whose house backs onto the bank, still pops in each week to help out and cast an eye over the books.

Breiter says he too wants to stay working at the bank as long as possible. "Of course I have to be careful not to withdraw completely into my shell. There's a whole world outside Gammesfeld after all."

(Additional reporting by Lisi Niesner; Editing by Stephen Brown and Peter Graff)

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