XML : Links not working after being rendered from xml and jquery

I have a basic news ticker that loads on index.html It pulls div information from xml file and auto changes the data on ticker screen. It pauses on hover and has forward and back buttons

Everything works great if the feed is just plain text, I however cannot seem to get the ticker to accept a link that is clickable. The clickable link should change background and open up a popup window with further information this works with a manual link on the page

I am able to get the link to show either by cdata on the xml file or working the "a href" into the jquery that adds the xml data to the page with appropriate div's

if i manually add the div with the link to the html page, the link works fine

after the js code the following is added to the html :

  <div class="newsTicker active"><a href="#" id="open">Latest News updates/ticker 1</a></div>  <div class="newsTicker">Latest News updates/ticker 2</div>  <div class="newsTicker">Latest News updates/ticker 3</div>  <div class="newsTicker">Latest News updates/ticker 4</div>    

when I inspecte the page the information is being entered into the page correctly yet the link does not work can someone please help!!

main ticker found here---> http://jsfiddle.net/17h0wa28/5/

xml page is very basic so that non technical people can update it on the fly if needed.

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>  <NEWSFEED>      <STATUS>          <UPDATE><![CDATA[<a href="#" id="open">Latest News updates/ticker 1</a>]]></UPDATE>      </STATUS>      <STATUS>          <UPDATE>Latest News updates/ticker 2</UPDATE>      </STATUS>      <STATUS>          <UPDATE>Latest News updates/ticker 3</UPDATE>      </STATUS>      <STATUS>          <UPDATE>Latest News updates/ticker 4</UPDATE>      </STATUS>  </NEWSFEED>