A section of topadsFeed.py

topadsFeed_fragment.py

def removeNonASCII(file):
	""" remove non-ASCII chars from file, after making a bakup first
	"""
	fileBak = "%s.bak" % (file)
	err = os.system("cp -p %s %s" % (file, fileBak))
	if err:
		return
	fout = open(fileBak, 'w')
	for line in fileinput.input(file):
		fout.write(re.sub(r'[\x80-\xff]', '', line))
	fout.close()

Seems like since you're setting a value to err on Line 5, then if err on Line 6 always evaluates to True and thus always exits on the return ...