fetching dependencies fails (3 problems)

I'm having 3 problems related to fetching dependencies:
i just tried to fetch a single dependency and ran into problems
1) maven 1.1 doesnt seem to pick up neither project.properties nor my build.properties in the directory i start maven (it picks up project.xml and maven.xml without a problem from there)
I needed that for setting the remote repository; could fix it by supplying a cli arg -Dmaven.repo.remote=http://www.jpox.org/downloads/maven/
Anyway its not supposed to be that way

2) the default repository seems to have a problem with rather fetching/using a xml (xhtml?) file than a checksum ~file (see snippet later on)

3) following 2), instead of the wanted jar jpox-1.2.0-beta-3.jar, i have now a apache xhtml file with that name in my local repository (attached it).
As thus, maven wont try to refetch the dependency until I delete that file. Maybe a short check, if the downloaded file is a non-corrupted jar would be
good for detecting problems early.

<snippet>
__ __

Trying to get missing dependencies (and updated snapshots) required by JPOX-Maven:

• Attempting to download jpox:jpox:1.2.0-beta-3:jar from http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/java-repository/maven/
  3K downloaded
  • • CHECKSUM FAILED - Checksum failed on download: local = '46304cf35acafaaf53e042c8704865d7'; remote = '<!DOCTYPE' - RETRYING
      </snippet>

i'm surprised that i couldnt find anybody else having this problem neither on the maillinglist nor the jira. anyway, i hope this contributes sth.
thanks for the good work,
axel