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[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Members of the international community have reacted to the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran and the oppostion protests which have accompanied the result. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pictured at a rally held in Tehran Sunday to celebrate his re-election as Iranian president. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement Saturday: \"We are monitoring the situation as it unfolds in Iran but we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide. \"The United States has refrained from commenting on the election in Iran. We obviously hope that the outcome reflects the genuine will and desire of the Iranian people.\" White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Saturday the administration was \"impressed by the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians.\" U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, commenting on NBC's \"Meet the Press\" Sunday, said: \"I have doubts, but withhold comment.\" He added that the Iranian government had suppressed crowds and limited free speech, which raised questions. He also said that the strong showing by Ahmadinejad was \"unlikely,\" based on pre-election analysis. Gallery: Emotions run high after election » . Israel's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Liberman said in a statement that \"the problem which Iran poses for the international community is not personal in nature, but derives from its policy. \"In any case, in light of Tehran's ongoing policy, and even more so after Ahmadinejad's re-election, the international community must continue to act uncompromisingly to prevent the nuclearization of Iran, and to halt its activity in support of terror organizations and undermining stability in the Middle East. In a statement Saturday the EU Presidency said it was \"concerned about alleged irregularities during the election process and post-electional violence that broke out immediately after the release of the official election results on 13 June 2009. \"The Presidency hopes that outcome of the Presidential elections will bring the opportunity to resume the dialogue on nuclear issue and clear up Iranian position in this regard. The Presidency expects the new Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran will take its responsibility towards international community and respect its international obligations.\" UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Saturday that the UK government had \"followed carefully, and admired, the passion and debate during the Iranian election campaign. \"We have also heard the concerns about the counting of ballots expressed by two of the candidates. This is a matter for the Iranian authorities to address. We will continue to follow developments. Our priority is that Iran engages with the concerns of the world community, above all on the issue of nuclear proliferation.\" Fawzi Barhoum, spokesman for Hamas, the militant Palestinian movement backed by Iran, welcomed the results. He urged the world to respect Iranian democracy and accept the results of the elections. The office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement Sunday that he had congratulated Ahmadinejad on his victory. It added that Karzai believed \"relations between the two Muslim nations of Afghanistan and Iran expanded during Mr. Ahmadinejad's first term and hoped that these relations get stronger during his second term.\" German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told ARD Sunday that the Iranian ambassador in Berlin would be summoned to explain the treatment of protesters against the result. \"I have already prompted Iran, together with European colleagues today, to quickly shed light on what has happened there -- if one can take the announced election results there seriously or not,\" he added. Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have offered their congratulations to Ahmadinejad, the official Anatolian Agency reported Monday. It said that they \"called Ahmadinejad on the phone and congratulated him for his success in the election.\" Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told reporters in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, Saturday, that Canada was \"deeply concerned\" about allegations of voting irregularities. \"We're troubled by reports of intimidation of opposition candidates' offices by security forces. We've asked our embassy officials in Tehran to closely monitor the situation, and Canada is calling on Iranian authorities to conduct fair and transparent counting of all ballots.\" CNN's Shira Medding in Jerusalem and Greg Clary in Washington contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "U.S. Vice President Joe Biden: Questions need to be asked about vote .\nUK: We admire passion of the election, Iran needs to address fears about fairness .\nEU Presidency: Hopes outcome sees opportunity for dialogue on nuclear issue .\nTurkish media: President, prime minister have offered congratulations ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A drunk passenger who tried to set the curtains of a Boeing 767 on fire during a trans-Atlantic flight is in custody in Vienna, Austria, the Transportation Security Administration said Thursday. A drunk Delta passenger was placed in custody after he tried to light curtains on fire during a flight. There was no apparent connection to terrorism, officials said. Zoltan Lensky, 25, a Slovakian citizen, was on Delta Flight 40 from Atlanta, Georgia, to Vienna Wednesday night when flight attendants refused his request for more liquor. According to TSA spokesman Christopher White, Lensky slapped a flight attendant on the hand, moved forward in the cabin, pulled out a lighter and tried to ignite the curtains around the flight attendants' rest area. A federal air marshal on the flight arrested Lensky and put him in handcuffs, White said. Lensky was handed over to authorities in Vienna when the flight landed. It is policy for air marshals never to fly alone. According to White, the other air marshal, or marshals, on the Delta flight remained undercover in case Lensky was being used as a diversion. However, \"he was nothing but an intoxicated passenger,\" said White." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A drunk passenger tried to set the curtains of a Boeing 767 on fire .\nZoltan Lensky, 25, a Slovakian citizen, was on Delta flight from Atlanta to Vienna .\nHe slapped a flight attendant's hand when she refused to provide more booze .\nLensky was handed over to authorities in Vienna when the flight landed ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "NEW YORK (CNN) -- Paul McCartney has come to New York and he wants to shout it from the rooftops. Paul McCartney performs Wednesday on the roof above the marquee of New York's Ed Sullivan Theater. To promote his concert at Citi Field this Friday, the former Beatle performed Wednesday afternoon on the roof above the Ed Sullivan Theater marquee before his appearance on \"Late Night with David Letterman,\" which is taped in the theater. Wednesday's performance began at 5:30 p.m. ET and included a set of classics including \"Get Back,\" \"Band on the Run,\" \"Helter Skelter\" and \"Back in the USSR.\" Sporting a pink button-up shirt and suspenders, McCartney played to a huge crowd that blocked off traffic near the intersection of 53rd Street and Broadway. McCartney occasionally waved to occupants of nearby buildings as they gathered at their windows to listen to the concert. McCartney will be the first music act to play at Citi Field, and that concert will kick off his summer U.S. tour. The Ed Sullivan Theater, named for the late variety-show host, has special meaning for McCartney as it was the site of the Beatles' historic televised performance in 1964." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "McCartney performs songs before appearance on \"Late Night with David Letterman\"\nFormer Beatle promoting his Friday concert at New York's Citi Field .\nEd Sullivan Theater was site of Beatles' historic 1964 TV performance ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida (CNN) -- Just after midnight on July 16, 1969, Jack King kissed his wife goodbye at their Cocoa Beach, Florida home, jumped in his car, and drove to Dunkin' Donuts for a doughnut and a cup of coffee. Jack King became the voice of the Apollo 11 launch. \"It was quite a thrilling time,\" he says. It was the start of a big day: the launch of a Saturn V rocket, lifting man from the face of the Earth to the face of the moon. King, the chief of public information at Kennedy Space Center, would become known that day as the voice of Apollo 11. In the wee hours of the morning, he followed his launch-day routine. But as he headed across the causeway to the space center, King lost sight of the lagoon he normally passed -- the view obstructed by RVs and trailers that had secured their spots for a view of the moon launch. \"The town was very much alive; the vibrancy was entirely different. Three-quarters of a million people had come into the area to view the launch, so it was quite a thrilling time,\" says King, now 78. \"When I'd cross the bridge over the Banana River heading to the Space Center, I'd pull off onto the side of the road, get out of the car, and there was the Saturn V, bathed in the floodlights, just glowing.\" Hear the voice of King, watch as Apollo took off for moon » . \"It was a just a very impressive, majestic rocket.\" Launch manager Paul Donnelly recalls, \"We launched at 9:32 that morning.\" He reported for work the night before to oversee the hazardous and delicate operation of fueling the three-stage rocket. \"Everything on Apollo 11 went just beautiful, no real problems.\" He says he always told the astronauts, \"The launch crew wishes you good luck and Godspeed.\" As the hatch closed that day, he says he was thinking, \"Go! Go! Go! Let's do it.\" See the men who've walked the moon » . Forty years after America's launch of Apollo 11, the U.S. space program is at a different crossroads, challenged in recent years to return to the moon and to recapture the ambition that launched the space race in 1961. Back then, a dazzled nation heard the big dreams of a youthful Ivy League-educated, senator-turned president. \"I believe,\" President John F. Kennedy told Congress, \"that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.\" That was the same year Barack Obama was born. Forty-eight years later, Obama, a similarly youthful Ivy League-educated former senator, is now in charge, and the nation wonders what his vision is for the U.S. space program. Watch Buzz Aldrin: U.S. should go to Mars » . Donnelly, now 86, says he recalls the launch of Apollo 11 as if it were yesterday. He also says he believes President Obama could re-energize the space program. Donnelly believed the moon mission would ultimately come to pass, even after Kennedy had been assassinated. \"It didn't distract me or the people here,\" Donnelly said referring to the launch team. The pressure was on for the United States to get to that fateful launch day, especially given the intense competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. \"It was a missile race before it was a space race,\" said King, a former reporter for The Associated Press. By the time Alan Shepard became the first American in space in 1961, the Russians had already flown two cosmonauts. The Russians, backed by Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev, were also working with a much more powerful rocket. \"The challenges were tremendous. Khruschev appeared at the U.N., slammed his shoe and said -- 'We're going to bury you,' \" King recalls. \"Looking back it was a critical decade, the '60s.\" John Logsdon, who holds the Charles A. Lindbergh chair in aerospace history at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, says for the Kennedy administration, the moon mission was about more than the space race itself. It was also an exercise in soft power -- \"an attempt to show the world the technological strength of the United States in a very visible but peaceful way.\" In striking out for the moon, the United States started on fairly equal footing with the Soviets because at that time, neither had a rocket large enough for a moon mission. One advantage for the United States was the expertise of rocket scientist Werner Von Braun. In 1945, Von Braun and his team of engineers were brought from Nazi Germany, where during World War II they advanced the science of rocket propulsion for military applications. \"Von Braun and his rocket team had plans for space exploration for a long time, and they had designed increasingly larger rockets,\" Logsdon says. \"Their first thought was to build a really large rocket called 'Nova' that would be 50 percent bigger than the Saturn V that we used to go to the moon. It would have been a gigantic rocket.\" In the launch control center at what was then known as Cape Kennedy, on July 16, 1969, there were about 400 engineers and technicians who had worked together to this point, for years. \"We were close,\" says Donnelly. Were there nerves and emotions inside Mission Control? Donnelly says there was a sense of confidence, but beyond that, the team worked methodically through the hundreds of steps involved in the moon launch. Once the astronauts were in the space capsule and the hatch closed, Donnelly says, emotions picked up. Jack King recalls that day as \"one of the smoothest Saturn V countdowns that I ever went through. For most of the count, we were probably 10 or 15 minutes ahead.\" Then, with the launch seconds away, \"We'd go, 'Guidance is internal 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9; ignition sequence start, 6, 5,4,3, 2; all engines running, commit, liftoff.'\" King recalls looking over his shoulder and seeing the 365-foot rocket glowing in the morning sun. \"I see this magnificent thing is sitting in a bed of flames there on the launch pad,\" he says. Unlike the jackrabbit-launch of a space shuttle, King says the moon rocket lumbered away. \"The Saturn V took close to seven seconds just to clear the tower.\" Forty years later, \"the future is under review,\" says Logsdon. A blue-ribbon panel, led by former Lockheed Martin chief Norm Augustine, is taking stock of the nation's human space flight program, with a report to President Obama due by the end of this summer. \"There is a high degree of uncertainty right now,\" says Logsdon. Among the biggest questions: Will the United States return to the moon by 2020, as envisioned by former President George W. Bush, or will they lead a coalition of countries into space in the same way the international space station has operated? For Donnelly, it only makes sense for the United States to push on toward Mars. \"Oh yes,\" says Donnelly. \"Great things can happen.\" CNN's Louise Schiavone contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Apollo 11 took off for the moon 40 years ago today .\nJack King, voice of Mission Control, says, \"It was quite a thrilling time\"\n\"Everything on Apollo 11 went just beautiful,\" says launch manager Paul Donnelly .\nDonnelly says man should now head for Mars ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Editor's Note: This is the fourth in a five-part series exploring Judge Sonia Sotomayor's background and life with those who know her, revealing the experiences that might shape her views as a Supreme Court justice. Sonia Sotomayor is flanked by her supervisor, Warren Murray, and D.A. Robert Morgenthau, right, in 1983. NEW YORK (CNN) -- Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor graduated with honors from Ivy League schools. But she may have learned some of her most memorable lessons as a young prosecutor, following police into abandoned tenements and tracking down witnesses on the grimy streets of New York. Sotomayor joined the Manhattan District Attorney's office in 1979 during an epic crime wave. Muggings, burglaries and assaults were rampant; homicides topped 1,800 a year. She was recruited from Yale Law School by Robert M. Morgenthau, Manhattan's district attorney. She was 25, and her starting salary was $17,000. The cases in Trial Bureau 50 seasoned the idealistic young lawyer and honed her trial skills. She could shred a witness on cross-examination and move a jury to tears, former colleagues recalled. New York City was awash in heroin, street crime and gun violence. To prepare for trials, she followed police into tenement shooting galleries, scaled rickety staircases in dilapidated buildings and fought off the stench of squalor to talk to reluctant witnesses. Sotomayor's former colleagues and her legal foes describe her as intense, driven and politically astute. As a prosecutor, she had a commanding presence and put in long hours, chugging several cans a day of the diet soft drink Tab and chain-smoking cigarettes. (She no longer smokes.) Watch how she made an impression on fellow prosecutors » . Trial Bureau 50, with its crowded cubicles and walls painted the color of putty, has sent many lawyers onto distinguished careers in public service, including the late Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and John Kennedy Jr. Sotomayor's five years there, say Manhattan prosecutors past and present, make her uniquely qualified for the nation's highest court. If confirmed, she would be the only justice who prosecuted criminal cases, presided over them and handled criminal appeals. See what would set Sotomayor apart on the court » . \"If you can handle a felony case load in New York County, you can run a small country,\" said Warren Murray, who ran the bureau when Sotomayor worked there, and still does. \"I think Sonia's most interesting days were in the district attorney's office,\" said Hugh H. Mo, a former homicide prosecutor who supervised Sotomayor and tried cases with her. \"You can grow up in the projects and still be very sheltered. She got her education on the streets of Harlem.\" Like most rookies, Sotomayor started with misdemeanors, juggling 60 to 80 cases at a time, working 12-hour days in the 1930s-era building on the tip of Manhattan, and pulling an occasional shift in night court. \"Some of the judges liked to use the new assistants to clear their calendars,\" Morgenthau recalled. \"She quickly established herself as somebody the judges couldn't push around.\" On her second trial, Sotomayor met Dawn Cardi, a rookie Legal Aid lawyer who was trying her first case. They became best friends. \"We were both baby attorneys,\" Cardi said. \"She's really, really smart and very well-prepared. She was an excellent trial attorney. She had a talent for it.\" Another defense attorney, Gerald Lefcourt, recalled Sotomayor as \"a very zealous prosecutor,\" adding, \"She didn't see gray. She only saw black and white.\" Sotomayor moved up quickly in the D.A.'s office. It wasn't long before she was prosecuting murder cases. To prepare for trials, she hit the streets, working junkies and street characters for information and comforting grieving families. The work was sometimes unnerving, but it could also provide an adrenalin rush. \"You could feel the violence. It was palpable,\" said Mo, who with Sotomayor accompanied detectives of Harlem's 28th precinct into top-floor apartments in six-story tenements to prepare for what became known as the \"Tarzan Burglar\" case. \"Normal people do not walk into these buildings,\" he recalled. \"They were hangouts for drug addicts.\" Robert M. Morgenthau remembers Sotomayor for her role in both the Tarzan Burglar case and in winning the office's first conviction under a rewritten child pornography law. Sotomayor mentioned the lessons of the Tarzan case during her confirmation hearings. She said the case taught her \"the tragic consequences of needless deaths.\" A family was destroyed after one of the siblings was killed by a bullet in the head, she said. \"They scattered to the four winds, and only one brother remained in New York who could testify,\" she said Tuesday. The Tarzan case was Sotomayor's rite of passage as a prosecutor. She sat second chair, meaning she assisted Mo, the lead prosecutor, at the murder trial of Richard Maddicks. Read the complaint (pdf) Maddicks earned his nickname by swinging from building to building with rope and cables, Mo said. Along his route, he burglarized top-floor apartments, robbed residents and shot people who got in his way. Sotomayor convinced Maddicks' girlfriend, Mabel Ivey, to testify, pointing out that she could shave years off her sentence in another case if she cooperated. They linked the murder weapon to Maddicks through a neighbor who sold liquor after-hours through a hole cut in the door of his basement apartment. Sotomayor questioned the man, Charles \"Wirdell\" Brown, in court, Mo recalled. It was a high point in the colorful trial. She had the jury in tears as she questioned the girlfriend of a man fatally shot by the Tarzan Burglar. Sotomayor impressed Mo with her organizational skills and ability to boil a complicated case into the essential elements that resonate with jurors. She helped write his opening statement for the five-week trial and -- long before computers and PowerPoint -- crafted People's Exhibit One, a large poster-board chart illustrating the pattern linking the Tarzan Burglar to his crimes. The chart somehow survived nearly three decades in Mo's basement laundry room. During the trial, Sotomayor handled the questioning of half the 40 witnesses. Maddicks was convicted of murder, robbery and related crimes and sentenced to 62½ years to life in prison. He's still serving time \"upstate,\" as Manhattan's prosecutors say. Even 30 years ago, it was obvious Sotomayor was going places. See her life story told in pictures » . \"Did anybody think she was going to the Supreme Court? Of course not,\" said Cardi. \"But when you look back, you see she always stood out. She was always really a cut above.\" \"She was very focused, very ambitious, very competent, very hardworking,\" Mo recalled. What struck him most, he said, was her confidence. \"She wanted to reach the highest pinnacle of the profession and didn't think that was far-fetched. You could see it. She wanted to make history,\" Mo said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor began her legal career as a prosecutor .\nShe worked in the Manhattan DA's office from 1979 to 1984 .\nHer former colleagues remember Sotomayor as driven and focused .\nManhattan DA Robert M. Morgenthau on Thursday's Senate witness schedule ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will decide this week whether to allow gays and lesbians who are not celibate to serve as clergy members and lay leaders, a spokesman said Tuesday. Current Evangelical Lutheran Church policy allows gay and lesbian clergy, lay people to serve only if celibate. Spokesman John Brooks said the church's 1,045 voting members, who are at a weeklong Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis, Minnesota, will vote Friday on whether to change its policy regarding gay clergy members. The policy allows gays and lesbians to serve as clergy members and lay leaders if they are celibate, Brooks said. Heterosexual clergy are allowed to have sex within marriage. The new policy would allow gays and lesbians in \"publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships,\" to serve as clergy and lay leaders, according to the proposal. Lay leaders are people other than clergy members who are on the professional rosters of the church. A simple majority will decide the vote, Brooks said. He said there is a \"wide range of opinions\" on changing the policy. The body is also scheduled to vote Wednesday on a social statement on sexuality that has been eight years in the making, he said. \"It's important for us because it informs the basis for policy,\" he said. According to its Web site, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has 4.6 million members. The church is not the only denomination that has dealt with the issue of gay clergy. Last month, the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops voted by a wide margin to allow gays and lesbians to become bishops, Episcopal Life reported. In April, the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted against allowing openly gay pastors to serve, according to the Presbyterian News Service." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Evangelical Lutheran Church in America meeting in Minneapolis this week .\nPolicy allows gays, lesbians to serve as clergy, lay leaders if they are celibate .\nIf approved, new policy would allow them to serve if in monogamous relationships .\nSpokesman says simply majority vote of 1,045 members to decide issue ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Undercover officers rescued a baby gorilla from suspected animal traffickers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a national park in the country announced Tuesday. This baby gorilla was rescued from a suspected trafficker in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The gorilla, thought to be about two years old, was hidden at the bottom of a bag and covered with clothes when Congolese Wildlife Authority officers arrested the suspected trafficker on Sunday, Virunga National Park said. The gorilla, a female, was overheated and dehydrated after six hours in transit. She also had a puncture wound on her right leg, among other injuries, and is malnourished, but is responding to treatment, the park said in a statement. It is not clear if the young gorilla's mother is alive or dead, park spokeswoman Samantha Newport said. \"You can assume that a gorilla family was attacked in order for the traffickers to obtain a baby -- but it is impossible to know if a whole family was wiped out, just a few individuals, or none at all,\" she said. \"In most cases gorillas have to die to get a baby -- but we cannot know specifically for this case.\" The animal is now being looked after by specially trained carers, Newport said. \"This is of course not an ideal replacement for a mother -- but the best option we have,\" she told CNN via e-mail. Carers often have some veterinary training, but are not fully fledged vets, she added. But gorillas do not do well in situations like this, she warned. \"Gorillas, it is worth noting, are notoriously difficult to keep alive,\" she said. \"Chimps are fighters, as are bonobos. But gorillas -- when the going gets tough -- tend to just shut down. So it really is a critical time right now to ensure she gets the veterinary attention and human warmth that she needs to get through this.\" The suspect was getting off a plane from the interior of the country, near the gorillas' habitat, the park said. One person has been charged under the country's law forbidding the destruction of flora and fauna, Newport told CNN. The park did not name the suspect. Gorillas can fetch up to $20,000 on the black market, the head of Virunga National Park said. \"Investigations have yet to reveal where these animals are being sent and who is buying them, but on the ground sources tell us that a baby gorilla can fetch up to $20,000,\" said Emmanuel de Merode, the director. \"We must remember that for each trafficked baby gorilla, several gorillas have probably been killed in the wild.\" He led the three-month undercover operation that netted the suspect and the gorilla, the park said. The gorilla is a lowland eastern gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri), also known as the Grauer's Gorilla, a subspecies of Eastern Gorilla only found in the forests of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the park. Virunga National Park calls itself the oldest national park in Africa, established in 1925. It lies in a region that has been badly affected by the long-running war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The gorilla section is in a strategically important area near the borders of Rwanda and Uganda. A ranger was killed earlier this year, and rangers lost control of a large part of the park to rebels for over a year. But a census earlier this year suggests mountain gorillas are surviving despite poaching and war. Officials have long said that the 250-square kilometer gorilla reserve in the southern part of Virunga National Park is where around 200 of the world's 700 mountain gorillas live." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Undercover officers rescue a baby gorilla from suspected animal traffickers .\nCongolese Wildlife Authority officers find gorilla hidden in bag .\nFemale gorilla was overheated and dehydrated after six hours in transit ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- A Disney stunt performer died Monday night after suffering an injury during a rehearsal, company and local officials said. A performer was injured during rehearsal for the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular at Hollywood Studios. Walt Disney World spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez said the performer was injured while performing a tumbling roll for the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular at Disney's Hollywood Studios, part of the Orlando, Florida, theme park. It was the third fatal incident at the park in less than two months. Earlier this month, a performer was injured in a pirate show and later died. In July, two monorail trains collided, killing a driver. \"'We feel a sense of loss for these valued cast members,\" Suarez said. She said a review would be conducted on each incident. Performers receive extensive training, she said. The Orange County Sheriff's Department identified the performer in the latest incident as Anislav Varbanov, 30, and said he had been pronounced dead at a hospital. Watch a report on the incident » . Security personnel at Hollywood Studios called 911 Monday evening to say a cast member had suffered a head injury during the rehearsal, the sheriff's department said. No other details were given. The sheriff's department said the incident is under investigation. CNN's Carolina Sanchez contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Man hurt while rehearsing for Indiana Jones stunt show at Hollywood Studios .\nTwo people died after incidents at Orlando, Florida, theme park this summer .\nSheriff's department is investigating death of Anislav Varbanov ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Dr. Conrad Murray, the physician under investigation in the death of singer Michael Jackson, said in a video posted online Tuesday that he has \"faith the truth will prevail.\" In Dr. Conrad Murray's video, posted on YouTube, he tells supporters he has been receiving their messages. Murray, who was with Jackson when he died, recorded the one-minute video in Houston, Texas, on Wednesday and it posted on YouTube Tuesday, the spokeswoman for his lawyer said. \"I have done all I could do,\" Murray said. \"I told the truth, and I have faith the truth will prevail.\" The video is the first public comment by Murray since Jackson's June 25 death. \"I want to thank all of my patients and friends who have sent such kind e-mails, letters and messages to let me know of your support and prayers for me and my family,\" Murray said. Watch the statement from Jackson's doctor » . \"Because of all that is going on, I am afraid to return phone calls or use my e-mail. Therefore, I recorded this video to let all of you know that I have been receiving your messages,\" he said. Murray, a cardiologist, owned and operated two medical clinics -- in Las Vegas, Nevada, and in Houston -- but he took a full-time job as Jackson's personal doctor in May as the pop singer prepared for his comeback concerts scheduled to start in July. He was at Jackson's Los Angeles home when the entertainer was found unconscious and rushed to a hospital. Investigators have searched Murray's home and clinics for evidence related to the anesthetic propofol, according to documents filed in court. A source close to the investigation told CNN that Murray is believed to have administered the drug -- also known by the brand name Diprivan -- to Jackson within 24 hours of his death. Murray has been \"under siege\" by the media and targeted by death threats in recent weeks, according to the spokeswoman. \"I have not been able to thank you personally, which, as you know, is not normal for me,\" Murray said in the video. \"Your messages give me strength and courage and keep me going. They mean the world to me. Please, don't worry. As long as I keep God in my heart and you in my life, I will be fine.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Dr. Conrad Murray was Michael Jackson's doctor; he's under investigation .\nMurray made video, posted to YouTube, in which he thanks supporters .\nSpokesperson: Murray has been \"under siege\" in recent weeks ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Ancient man may have started global warming through massive deforestation and burning that could have permanently altered the Earth's climate, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Primitive slash-and-burn agriculture permanently changed Earth's climate, according to a new study. The study, published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews and reported on the University of Virginia's Web site, says over thousands of years, farmers burned down so many forests on such a large scale that huge amounts of carbon dioxide were pumped into the atmosphere. That possibly caused the Earth to warm up and forever changed the climate. Lead study author William Ruddiman is a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a climate scientist. \"It seems like a common-sense idea that there weren't enough people around 5, 6, 7,000 years ago to have any significant impact on climate. But if you allow for the fact that those people, person by person, had something like 10 times as much of an effect or cleared 10 times as much land as people do today on average, that bumps up the effect of those earlier farmers considerably, and it does make them a factor in contributing to the rise of greenhouse gasses,\" Ruddiman said. Ruddiman said that starting thousands of years ago, people would burn down a forest, poke a hole in the soil between the stumps, drop seeds in the holes and grow a crop on that land until the nutrients were tapped out of the soil. Then they would move on. \"And they'd burn down another patch of forest and another and another. They might do that five times in a 20-year period,\" he said. That slashing and burning on such a large scale spewed enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and warmed the planet, the study says. Ruddiman has studied and researched the idea of ancient man contributing to climate change for years now. And he's endured plenty of criticism over his theories. Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, California, is among those who disagree with Ruddiman. He said Ruddiman is \"exaggerating the importance of early man.\" Caldeira told CNN that while ancient farmers may have played a tiny role in climate change, \"it just wasn't a significant factor.\" He added, \"There are actually studies showing if you cut down forests for farmland, you actually cool the planet, because of the glare from the cleared land.\" Ruddiman and study co-author Erle Ellis, an ecologist with UMBC, acknowledge that some models of past land use show it's only been in the past 150 years -- with a huge population explosion, the onset of the Industrial Age and the rise of fossil-fuel burning -- that global warming has accelerated. But Ruddiman said, \"My argument is that even at the beginning, they just used much more land per person, so even though there weren't that many people, they used enough to start to push these greenhouse gas concentrations up.\" Ruddiman's research also argues that the Earth was on its way to another ice age 10,000 years ago and that ice sheets were already forming in northern latitudes when ancient man started his slashing and burning method of farming." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Study: Ancient people were fewer in number, but burned 10 times as much land .\nWilliam Ruddiman: People would slash, burn \"five times in a 20 year period\"\nKen Caldeira, a climate scientist, says study exaggerating impact of early man ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "NEW YORK (CNN) -- The largest mass transit project in the country got under way Monday with the help of federal stimulus dollars, as public officials broke ground on a second passenger rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River. Work on the country's largest mass transit project began Monday. The new tunnel will link New Jersey with New York and eventually will double capacity on the nation's busiest rail corridor, running from Washington to Boston, Massachusetts, officials said. Officials participated in the groundbreaking for the $8.7 billion project as commuter trains passed behind them in North Bergen, New Jersey, before entering the existing train tunnel, which went into operation in 1908. \"As we start digging this tunnel, I think that what really it means, we are digging our way out of an economic crisis,\" said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey. \"As we're getting under way, we're seeing the dividends of the Recovery Act being paid right now.\" The Department of Transportation announced Monday that it will commit $3 billion to the project over its lifespan. Of that, $130 million is coming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the department said.. It is the largest commitment to any transportation project anywhere in the United States in the history of the Department of Transportation, according to administrator Peter Rogoff of the Federal Transportation Administration. \"This is what President Obama means by recovery. It means putting people back to work now to improve the lives of so many others for years to come,\" Rogoff said. The project -- known as ARC, for Access to the Region's Core -- is expected to create 6,000 design and construction jobs. \"This is going to promote mobility, reduce commuter congestion, staunch carbon emissions, enhance regional competitiveness and lay a foundation for an extraordinary expansion of mass transit in the most densely populate state in the nation, New Jersey,\" New Jersey Gov. John Corzine said. New Jersey Transit says 170,000 passengers now travel through the existing train tunnel beneath the Hudson River to New York each day. When completed, the second tunnel will enable that figure to increase to 255,000 passenger trips. The additional passengers will disembark at a new concourse to be built at Penn Station in New York, 150 feet below street level." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tunnel will link New Jersey with New York, doubles commuter rail capacity .\nPart of project financed by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act .\nARC, Access to the Region's Core, expected to create 6,000 jobs ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Samina Rajput speaks in hushed tones about her husband, Asif, who was killed alongside former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in the December 27 attack that convulsed the nation. Suicide bombings have killed 400 people and wounded nearly 1,000 others in the last three months. \"He always used to say ... 'I am ready to sacrifice my life for the party and my country,'\" Rajput says. She clings to a weathered book with newspaper clippings of her husband, a 28-year-old Bhutto supporter who had great political ambitions. He wanted a brighter and freer Pakistan, Rajput says, as she turns the delicate pages of the scrapbook. The clippings on the faded pages offer little comfort. But a picture of their wedding day less than two years ago, buried among the pages, makes her face light up somewhat. \"As the widow of a martyr, one has to keep dignity, and I will do this up to my last breath,\" Rajput says, clasping her hands and rubbing them together. Suicide bombings like the attack that killed Bhutto and more than 20 of her supporters, including Asif, have intensified in recent months in Pakistan. Watch the devastating effects of bombings » . On Thursday, a suicide bomber killed at least 23 people and injured more than 58 others outside a court in Lahore, police said. The attack brought to 20 the number of suicide attacks in Pakistan in the last three months, including a failed attack on Bhutto's life in October. The bombings have killed close to 400 people and wounded nearly 1,000 others in the last three months, according to government officials. Pro-Taliban militants with ties to al Qaeda are carrying out the attacks, according to analysts and government officials. CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen says the number of suicide bombings in Pakistan has \"reached unprecedented levels in the past year.\" Previously, Bergen says, such attacks were rare. \"The reason for this rise is because al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban have morphed together ideologically and tactically, and both see themselves at war with the Pakistani state,\" Bergen says. \"Many of the suicide attacks have been aimed at Pakistani politicians, officials and soldiers.\" Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has vowed to fight militancy and religious extremism, going after Taliban and al Qaeda within the country. Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, recently told CNN that the Pakistani military is \"totally focused on destroying al Qaeda and the Taliban network and not just one person.\" Still, the suicide bombers are succeeding, targeting political parties, rallies, military installations and anyone seen as a threat. Meanwhile, civilians are caught in the crossfire. \"They would like to destabilize our country,\" Azhar Hamdani, who survived a July attack, says of suicide bombers. Clutching a walker, Hamdani recalls the blast that changed his life. On July 17, 2007, a suicide bomber targeted a rally for Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who was stripped of power by Musharraf. The explosion killed at least 12 people and wounded 35 others in the capital, Islamabad. Hamdani remembers a strong blast throwing him several yards. When he regained consciousness, he was missing his left eye and his right leg was severely injured. \"My leg was totally damaged,\" he says. \"My one left eye was damaged and I have several other injuries on my body.\" But at the time of the blast, Hamdani was not focused on his own pain, he says, because he was surrounded by the bodies of his dead friends lying in pools of blood. The bombings, he says, must be stopped. \"I hope that we will succeed and, God willing, we will try to stop these bloody cowards,\" he says. \"I don't think they are Muslim.\" \"Innocent people are suffering.\" E-mail to a friend . CNN's Wayne Drash contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "19 suicide bombings have rocked Pakistan over the last three months .\nTerror analyst: Number of attacks \"unprecedented\" as Taliban, al Qaeda join forces .\nMan wounded in attack says \"bloody cowards\" must be stopped ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- A Texas agency is installing videocameras and hiring security officers at a state school for mentally handicapped adults after allegations emerged that workers there staged \"fight club\" battles among residents. Admissions to the Corpus Christi State School in Corpus Christi, Texas have been suspended. The Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services also announced Tuesday that it is suspending admissions to the Corpus Christi State School in Corpus Christi. A cell phone containing videos of the alleged abuse at the school was turned over to police last week, and authorities are expecting to file arrest warrants this week, Corpus Christi Police Capt. Tim Wilson said Tuesday. The incidents are believed to have taken place in a school dormitory, Wilson said, adding, \"this has been going on for some time.\" Watch how the 'fight club' scandal unfolded » . The school's workers \"are charged with the care and custody of these clients, and they are exploiting [them],\" he said. In addition to the videocameras, the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services said it is increasing supervision of night shifts at the school. It also said state school representatives would be making random, unannounced inspections during evening and overnight shifts. Seven school employees have been placed on paid leave by the agency, according to department spokeswoman Cecilia Fedorov. Those employees are barred from coming onto the campus but must sign in at the gate every day they are on leave, she said. State officials are awaiting the outcome of the investigation to determine whether they should take further action, she said. Some former workers also will be interviewed, authorities said. Fedorov said the Department of Aging and Disability Services was told Friday by the state Department of Family and Protective Services that it was opening an investigation into possible abuse or neglect after being alerted to the situation by police. Wilson said those involved are likely to face charges of injury of a disabled person, which can range up to a third-class felony, depending on the extent of a person's involvement. The actual charges, however, will be left up to the Nueces County district attorney, who is participating in the investigation along with the Texas Inspector General's Office, he said. Corpus Christi police received the cell phone a week ago, Wilson said, after someone found it and gave it to an officer working security at a hospital. The officer looked at several of the videos and then gave the phone to the police's forensic unit for analysis. More videos were found in the phone's memory. \"It appears it was some sort of a fight club,\" Wilson said. Twenty videos were found on the phone, with dates going back about a year. All the videos featured the school's \"clients,\" who are severely mentally handicapped, he said. On the videos, the clients \"are not upset like they are being forced,\" Wilson said. \"They are being more goaded into it. There's a lot of voices on there from workers ... saying, 'Look at that, ha ha' ... laughing, stuff like that.\" No clients are seen crying, upset or injured on the videos, he said, but none of the workers is seen stopping the fighting. \"The fighting entails pushing, wrestling and some shoving,\" Wilson said. The Department of Aging and Disability Services said Tuesday that the residents in the images had been assessed and were found to be free of injuries. They are receiving additional counseling, the agency said. Wilson said that four or five clients had been identified, as well as at least five workers, possibly as many as 10. The clients are all adult males, ranging in age from their late teens into their 30s, he said, and as part of the investigation, the inspector general's office has interviewed some of them. Police believe, based on the videos, that the \"fight club\" was confined to one dormitory, Wilson said. CNN's Tracy Sabo and John Murgatroyd contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Texas authorities install cameras in school for mentally disabled .\nAdmissions also suspended in wake of \"fight club\" scandal .\nSeven school employees placed on leave; arrest warrants are pending ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- A collision involving two big-rigs and a car Wednesday caused an explosion that sent flames and clouds of smoke billowing and collapsed a highway overpass just north of Detroit, Michigan. Fire rages at the site of a tanker crash and overpass collapse on I-75 north of Detroit, Michigan, Wednesday. One of the tankers was traveling on the Interstate 75 about 8:30 p.m. in Hazel Park, near the Nine-Mile overpass, when the collision caused an explosion, said Lt. Shannon Simms of the Michigan State Police. It was headed northbound, said Bill Shreck of the Department of Transportation. Hazel Park is about 10 miles north of downtown Detroit. The explosion erupted upward, causing the overpass, carrying two lanes in each direction, to collapse, Simms said. Watch footage of fire » . Firefighters put out the blaze late Wednesday and were able to locate all three drivers of the vehicles involved in the crash. The three suffered minor injuries. One of the tankers was filled with thousands of gallons of fuel, Simms said. \"I just saw a huge ball of flame go up when I was at the red light, just went up in flame,\" said witness Mary Greib. \"I took off running.\" Said another witness, who did not want to be identified: \"We had a woman in a light-colored, midsized vehicle of some sort that was hesitant to pass the tanker. A number of vehicles were attempting to go around her in different directions.\" He said he was one of them, and passed her on the right, after which the explosion occurred. \"We are not sure what happened,\" he said. Vince Brennan said he was on the eighth floor of a nearby building when he heard the explosion coming from where \"a vicious curve\" exists on the highway. \"I heard a whole bunch of boom, boom, boom,\" he said. He ran to the window and looked down on a McDonald's restaurant. \"You couldn't even see it, it was so black with smoke,\" he said. \"The flames had to be 30, 40 feet in the air.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Collision involving two big-rigs and a car erupts in a fiery explosion .\nForce of explosion causes overpass to collapse onto I-75, police say .\nThree drivers involved in crash escape with minor injuries .\nWitness who saw huge ball of flame \"took off running\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LOCKERBIE, Scotland (CNN) -- Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi's fate hangs in the balance. The Libyan man convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie bombings has terminal prostate cancer and, according to his lawyers, just weeks to live. Mourners at the 20th anniversary memorial service for the victims of the Lockerbie bombing. Scotland's Justice Minister Frank MacAskill is weighing up whether to release him on compassionate grounds so he can die at home; to transfer him to a Libyan jail under a prisoner transfer agreement drawn up between Libya and the UK; or whether to keep him in a Scottish jail for the rest of his days. That is certainly the preferred option of the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who last week wrote to Mr MacAskill urging him not to send Al Megrahi home. In Lockerbie itself, matters of politics seem far removed. George Stobbs was one of the first policemen on the scene when the Boeing 747 crashed into Sherwood Crescent. \"I've never talked about the politics of the thing because I had no interest,\" he says. \"People here aren't interested in the politics, they just want to carry on with their lives.\" Stobbs has vivid memories of the night of December 21, 1988 -- the \"shortest and darkest night of the year,\" he says. \"The houses were just slowly burning and more houses were catching fire. The windows were popping, the gutters were burning, everything was burning. It was like hell. I remember seeing a wrought iron gate in the distance and I remember it was dripping like molten butter, drip drip dripping away.\" At first Stobbs thought it was a military aircraft which had crashed into the town. Then he heard that the nose cone of a 747 had landed in a field three miles from Lockerbie and he knew that he was dealing with far greater numbers of dead. \"We were told about the 747,\" he says, \"and we realized we weren't looking for twenty people but for 300. But where were they?\" There is a small memorial room beside the little church of Tundergarth, across the road from where the nose cone landed. Inside are inscriptions from visitors commemorating the huge loss of life and photographs of each of the 270 people who died in the Lockerbie bombing. \"Gentle Lockerbie\" reads one of the inscriptions from a family member who lost a loved one. \"Some say the land there is now tainted, I say it is blessed.\" In the field itself there are no marks to suggest where the nose cone landed. The local farmer points to the horizon across the rolling Scottish hills. \"Between here and the top of the hill, here on my father's farm, we found 120 bodies,\" he says. The force of the explosion and the wind that night blew bits of the plane, personal possessions and body parts across a vast area. Stobbs, and hundreds of policemen and other volunteers combed 845 square meters of land looking for clues as to what brought the plane down. Documents from the plane were even discovered in the North Sea, 60 miles away. The crucial piece of evidence that implicated Al Megrahi was a scrap of clothing wrapped around a part of the device used to detonate the suitcase bomb. It was traced back to a Maltese boutique whose shop-owner recognized Al Megrahi. Lockerbie local John Gair said he was never entirely convinced of Al Megrahi's guilt. \"I did feel that some of the evidence was circumstantial,\" he says. \"I think partly out of compassion and partly out of a possible element of doubt, he should be allowed out.\" As he looks down Sherwood Crescent at the neat rows of houses, not yet twenty years old, he says: \"Life goes on and once a tragedy like this is over people pick up the threads of their lives. And they don't forget but they don't dwell on it. Because there's no earthly point in dwelling on any of this.\" 270 people from 21 nations lost their lives in the beautiful hills around Lockerbie. Some of them had been so badly incinerated no trace of them was ever found, just their personal belongings and the Pan Am passenger list which proved they'd been on board. Twenty years later in the town of Lockerbie, the streets have been rebuilt, the past buried, but not forgotten." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "CNN's Diana Magnay travels to Lockerbie, Scotland 20 years on from the air tragedy .\nRetired police inspector George Stobbs recalls the scene of devastation .\nHundreds of policemen and other volunteers combed 845 square meters of land .\nLockerbie local John Gair said he was never entirely convinced of Al Megrahi's guilt ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LEXINGTON, Georgia (CNN) -- A pack of dogs brought down and killed an animal-loving couple last weekend in rural northeastern Georgia, and a similar tragedy could occur anywhere dogs roam freely, authorities say. Two dogs from the pack that killed two people await euthanasia Tuesday at a shelter in northeast Georgia. Sheriff's deputies, code enforcement officers and other officials spent most of Monday and Tuesday rounding up 11 adult dogs and five puppies, Oglethorpe County Sheriff's Capt. Shalon Huff said. One more was trapped Wednesday morning, leaving one still to be captured, she said. \"We're just lucky this hasn't happened before,\" said Susan Fornash, director of the Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter in Danielsville, where the captured dogs were held before being euthanized Tuesday under orders from a local judge. \"We've had people bring in a dog because it killed a goat or chased their horses or something like that. And to me, that was just the forerunner of something like this.\" Investigators say they believe that University of Georgia librarian Sherry Schweder, 65, went for her usual morning walk Saturday down Howard Thaxton Road, the narrow dirt lane that runs alongside the couple's property. The dogs were familiar in the area, investigators say, having been left behind when the person who had been caring for some of them moved out of a home at the end of the lane. Authorities theorize that halfway down the lane, about a quarter-mile from her home, Sherry Schweder was confronted by the dogs, which knocked her down and killed her. Her husband, retired UGA language professor Lothar Schweder, became concerned when she didn't return and went out in their Honda CRX to look for her. When he found her lying in the lane and got out to shoo away the dogs, they attacked and killed him too, investigators believe. Although no blood was seen on the dogs, other evidence and autopsy results convince authorities that the pack killed the Schweders, said Jim Fullington, special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's office in nearby Athens. Watch what investigators learned » . Black bears occasionally pass through the area, but none have been reported recently, said Sgt. Doyte Chaffin, a wildlife officer with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Investigators found no prints other than those of dogs and humans, Fullington added. Humans can appear threatening to dogs that run in packs, said Bonnie Beaver, a professor in the department of small animal clinical sciences at Texas A&M University and an expert in pack behavior. \"From their perspective, a person is an alien, if you will,\" Beaver said. \"It would be the same as we would relate to a grizzly bear.\" Dogs kill an average of 10 to 20 people each year in the United States, Beaver said. The vast majority of those cases involve a single dog attacking a small child, she said. As few as two or three dogs, whether urban, suburban or rural, can behave like a pack, Beaver said. And when pack mentality takes over, \"they do insane things that they would not do\" under normal circumstances, she said. \"My bet is there was one ringleader who kind of started it\" in the Georgia case, Beaver said. Something as simple as making eye contact may have made one dog in the group feel threatened, and its body language put the other dogs on edge, triggering an \"escalation,\" she said. Even though none of the dogs weighed more than about 40 pounds, their numbers would have overwhelmed the victims. Screaming, flailing or trying to run would only make things worse, Beaver said. \"To be slight people, as I'm told they both were, and the ages that they were, I don't know what they could have done. I don't know what I would do,\" Fornash said. Jehovah's Witnesses walking up the lane to visit the lone house found the Schweders' mutilated bodies lying next to the car and called 911, Fullington said. He added that a sheriff's deputy had to fire a shot in the air to scare the dogs away. The house the evangelists had intended to visit was unoccupied, but it was home to at least some of the dogs, Fullington said. The owner, Howard Thaxton, had moved out some months earlier because of health and financial problems but had someone drive him every other day to leave food for the dogs, said GBI Special Agent Christopher Bish. Several empty 40-pound bags of Ol' Roy dog food were strewn about the property Tuesday. Thaxton, an amputee who Bish said was recently released from a hospital, has been cooperating with authorities. Thaxton doesn't believe that those animals were capable of killing people, law enforcement officials said. He has not been charged. \"We are still in discussions with the district attorney about culpability and what have you, but no decisions have been reached yet,\" Bish said. Bish said it took 14 visits to Thaxton's house to make initial contact with him. CNN's efforts to find Thaxton for comment were unsuccessful. Stopping the dogs from reproducing might have prevented the tragedy, Fornash said. Just a few dogs can multiply rapidly into a menace, she added. Watch how dog bites might be prevented » . \"In the blink of an eye, we have a pack of 50 dogs because people don't spay and neuter,\" she said. It took about 90 minutes to euthanize all 16 dogs, several of which were maggot-infested, Fornash said. No one asked that they be checked for rabies, and the sheriff directed that the carcasses be cremated immediately, she said. \"I'm heartbroken for the family,\" Fornash said. \"I can't even imagine how they must feel. And I'm also very sad for those animals, because if they had been cared for the way they should have been, this wouldn't have happened. It's not their fault.\" The Schweders' seven dogs and four of their cats were to be brought to the shelter Wednesday and eventually adopted out, she said. Thaxton's wood frame house that served as the dogs' home sits at the edge of a forest dotted with hunting campers and abandoned 1950s vehicles. Empty 5-gallon water bottles fill a ravine behind the house, and a derelict 1980s Chevy Caprice crouches next to a rusting John Deere tractor under a shade tree. After all the sheriff's deputies and trappers had left Tuesday afternoon, a scruffy red dog appeared, ears up, next to the tractor. The animal, alone, scampered off into the woods." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Dogs attacked woman, husband who tried to help her, Georgia authorities say .\nSixteen animals euthanized; couple's pets to be adopted at same shelter .\nPack instincts make untamed dogs dangerous, expert says .\nSpaying and neutering of pets might have prevented tragedy, shelter director says ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- The newly named lawyer for Michael Jackson's children makes her first court appearance Monday as a judge decides if he'll approve a contract between Jackson's estate and concert promoter AEG Live. Michael Jackson's estate will be the subject of a court hearing today. Jackson's mother, Katherine Jackson, who has custody of the three children, objected to provisions of the deal that would give AEG Live a share of rights to video of her son's final rehearsals. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff appointed estate law expert Margaret Lodise last week to represent the children after he decided their interests might sometimes conflict with their grandmother's. Despite warnings by estate lawyers that a delay could cost millions of dollars, Beckloff delayed his decision on the AEG Live contract one week to give the children's new lawyer time to weigh in on the deal. The contract would provide for an exhibition of Jackson memorabilia that would travel to at least three cities, according to Kathy Jorrie, a lawyer for concert promoter AEG Live. \"The longer we wait, the more time passes, frankly, the less interest there will be on the part of the public to come see it,\" Jorrie said. The judge has already approved a contract to allow Columbia Pictures to use video that AEG Live shot of Jackson's last rehearsals for a documentary due out this fall. Columbia is a division of Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures said it would deliver the movie -- \"This Is It\" -- to theaters starting October 30 \"with the full support of the estate of Michael Jackson.\" Court papers filed last week revealed that Columbia Pictures would pay a minimum of $60 million for the rights to make the Jackson movie. Katherine Jackson's lawyers, while endorsing the movie deal, have objected to terms given to AEG, saying they are too generous to the company. Jackson's lawyers objected to the estate's agreement to let AEG recover all its expenses from that money, then take 10 percent of the remainder. It also gives the company a perpetual share of the profits from the video rights. AEG Live's lawyer said the company had made many concessions to the estate and could not make more. The judge previously has said he might approve the contracts even over Katherine Jackson's objection. Jermaine Jackson, Michael Jackson's older brother, told CNN's Larry King recently that he likes the deals, which he said could bring in nearly $100 million into the estate. Katherine Jackson and Michael Jackson's three children are the main beneficiaries of the estate, which is controlled by Jackson's former lawyer, John Branca, and longtime Jackson friend and music executive John McClain. Branca and McClain were named in Jackson's will as executors. Katherine Jackson is considering a challenge of their control of the estate." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Judge appointed attorney for interests of Michael Jackson's children .\nDiscussion between estate, AEG Live is ongoing .\nExecutors have deal in mind, Katherine Jackson has expressed objections ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- The gunman who opened fire at Washington's U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum this week is no better than a suicide bomber, a survivor of the Holocaust said. Sel Hubert, seen here with his wife, says education is the best weapon against bigotry. Sel Hubert, 83, of Rye Brook, New York, said he also fears that through the shooter's \"ultimate act of Holocaust denial,\" he has invigorated others who embrace hate and who might wish to exact violence against others. \"By doing this, he gives worldwide notoriety to himself and his ideals of hatred,\" said Hubert, who at 13 escaped Germany on a transport to England just weeks before World War II erupted. \"He chooses martyrdom to glorify his hatred similar to a suicide bomber.\" Authorities have charged James von Brunn with murdering Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, a security officer who opened a museum door Wednesday for the 88-year-old reputed white supremacist. Watch more on who von Brunn is » . Authorities say von Brunn acted alone, but Hubert says he represents all those who share his views. \"This empowers these people to think that this is how you get to be famous, gain notoriety, and they hope other people will mimic him -- and that's scary,\" he said. Eva Rich Blumberg, 85, of Rockville, Maryland, also worries that the shooting may have emboldened others to attack Jews and symbols of Jewish culture, she said. Blumberg, whose father was killed by Nazis and who spent about a year at Majdanek concentration camp in Poland in 1942, was scheduled to speak Sunday at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, but is now having second thoughts. Watch author discuss importance of combating Holocaust denial » . \"I lost everyone in the Holocaust. This incident just shook me up so that I don't know what to say,\" she said. Anytime a group asks Blumberg to speak about the Holocaust, she obliges, she said, out of a sense of duty to educate people so that the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany are never repeated. However, she said Thursday, the shooting at the museum leaves her wrestling with the decision on whether to deliver her speech this weekend. \"I'm frightened. I don't know what to do,\" she said. \"I couldn't sleep all night because things keep coming back.\" Regina Spiegel, 83, also of Rockville, believes education is one of the best weapons against bigotry. She volunteers at the museum on Wednesdays and was there when von Brunn allegedly opened fire with a .22-caliber rifle. See photos from the museum » . Fortunately, Spiegel was downstairs and didn't hear the shots, but that did not dampen her anger and disgust over the incident. Spiegel, who met her husband of more than 60 years, Samuel, at a slave labor camp in Auschwitz, teaches children to shun hate in hopes they will blossom into productive adults unfettered by ignorance and prejudices -- \"just the opposite of what he is,\" she said, referring to the museum shooter. \"We don't teach hate,\" she said firmly. \"This guy, every time I think about it, it makes me sick that there are such people around.\" Hubert, who is a board member of the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, said the Holocaust museum stands as an important educational tool, particularly to young Americans, for providing lessons on the follies of hatred and genocide. Map of museum » . \"It's an ultimate act of Holocaust denial and I and all Jews -- especially survivors -- feel violated all over again,\" he said. \"To attack that symbol is striking at the very heart of what the museum is trying to do, what America stands for -- the fight against bigotry and hatred.\" The Southern Poverty Law Center has described von Brunn as a \"hardcore neo-Nazi\" and Internet postings attributed to von Brunn allege that the Holocaust and Christianity are hoaxes. The postings further state that President Obama is a tool of \"Jew owners\" and that Adolf Hitler's worst mistake was \"he didn't gas the Jews.\" Watch debate on free speech, hate crimes » . Hubert and Blumberg both expressed concern that von Brunn was able to express his hateful views on Jews and minorities via the Internet. Neither is impressed with the freedom-of-speech defense. \"Hitler's Germany, they had freedom of speech and look what happened,\" Blumberg said. \"Freedom of speech has to be controlled.\" Added Hubert, \"It's the uncontrolled Internet which provides the tools and means for this scourge to spread, and it's a very dangerous thing that's happening.\" While Hubert believes the United States should strengthen its laws to prevent these types of incidents from occurring again, he also concurs with Blumberg and Spiegel that the best way to counter bigotry is \"by placing greater emphasis on prejudice and hatred for next generation,\" he said. \"The lesson is we need to be vigilant and proactive in combating hatred,\" Hubert said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Holocaust survivors fear museum shooting emboldens others who embrace hatred .\nShooting leaves Eva Rich Blumberg pondering whether to deliver speech Sunday .\nBlumberg: \"I couldn't sleep all night because things keep coming back\"\nShooting highlights importance of \"placing greater emphasis on prejudice, hatred\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Welcome to democracy, Afghan-style. An Afghan woman in a burqa veil holds up a photograph of President Hamid Karzai. An incumbent president and 38 challengers, including two women, are vying for the votes of 17 million registered Afghans against a backdrop of war, graft, poverty and illiteracy. More than 3,000 donkeys, 3,000 cars and three helicopters will traverse harsh terrain to carry voting materials to remote polling stations. And 30 observer groups, domestic and international, will be on hand to help guard against fraud. This Thursday, Afghanistan holds its second-ever popular election, the results of which will put into office a new president and 420 provincial council winners. Preliminary results are scheduled September 3, with final results expected two weeks later. At the heart of every vote will be the two biggest impediments to progress for one of the poorest nations in the world: stifling corruption and an increasingly bloody Taliban resurgence. The number of Afghan civilians killed increased 24 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the United Nations. NATO and U.S. forces have suffered record losses this summer, with 75 troops killed in the month of July alone. Amid the violence, the candidates continued their last-minute campaigning, with the hope that the elections can showcase Afghanistan's fledgling democracy. \"We hope that this election will go ahead in accordance with the constitution of this country and the rightful freedoms of our people, in the best manner possible, so that the Afghan nation can determine its future,\" said historian Omar Khan Massoudi, director of the National Museum in Kabul. Watch young Afghans talk about their hopes » . International donors are helping pay for the $223 million undertaking, and hundreds of U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers have moved into southern Afghanistan to protect voters against possible Taliban attacks. The top U.S. envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, expressed optimism that Thursday's vote would be Afghanistan's moment to shine. It's tough to organize elections during a war, he said, but the reality is that violence during elections is common place in many parts of the world. \"Afghanistan has never had a contested election,\" Holbrooke said. \"So this is a remarkable experiment in democracy and something that Afghanistan needs to give legitimacy to the new government.\" That legitimacy has become a key issue in the campaign. Frontrunner President Hamid Karzai's chief challengers -- former finance minister Ashraf Ghani and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah -- have both lashed out at the incumbent for failing to rein in corruption. In its annual global corruption perception index in 2008, Transparency International ranked Afghanistan 176 out of 180 countries and said graft was \"a major factor impeding the country's stability and future growth.\" Ghani told CNN the most significant challenge Afghanistan's next president faces is earning back the trust of the people. \"This government has lost it,\" he said in a recent interview. \"There is no sense of trust, not only in the current leadership, but in the political class as such. And in the capacity of the state or the international community to improve the lot of our people.\" Ghani characterized Karzai as a \"very poor manager\" who failed to deal with pressing issues and create any sense of momentum for the nation moving forward. As a guest on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS earlier this month, Ghani said Afghanistan's corruption had become a cancer that was \"eating through the society.\" Babrak Babarkhale, a former journalist and Mujahadeen fighter in the war to end Soviet occupation in the 1980s, said he planned to vote for Abdullah because he was fed up with corruption. \"We want to support Dr. Abdullah Abdullah to be our future president, to take all Afghans out of this corruption, away from this weak government,\" he said. Abdullah argued that people's dissatisfaction with the Karzai government has helped strengthen the insurgency. \"There is no doubt there is a hardcore element in it,\" he told CNN. \"But there are thousands of people under the same brand, Taliban, [who] have joined the insurgency because of other reasons.\" The insurgents are filling a vacuum left by Afghanistan's Western-backed government, which foreign diplomats and military commanders concede now suffers from nepotism, corruption and predatory practices. During a political debate Sunday, Karzai admitted that corruption was a problem but offered no specific cures. He also has been blamed for what has become the bloodiest summer since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Abdullah said last week that Karzai's government had failed to capitalize on the opportunities presented by international aid and troops. The government, Abdullah said, had failed to \"stabilize Afghanistan to the extent that eight years down the road, we would have been able to say less troops rather than more.\" Most polls, however, show Karzai with a commanding lead. Latifa, a Kabul housewife, said she was pleased with Karzai's stewardship and would vote for him. \"Like raising a child for seven years, in seven years he has helped our Kabul, our Afghanistan, stand on its own two feet,\" she said. \"We didn't know an election before, we hadn't seen a parliament.\" But can a nation as troubled as Afghanistan carry out fair and free elections? Some observers of Afghanistan and human rights activists have voiced their doubts. Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, said Thursday's election will be the most difficult he has encountered in his life. Besides the violence and corruption, weak infrastructure and a high illiteracy rate will add to election woes, he said. A new Gallup Poll found that fewer than one in four voting-age Afghans are confident the election will be fair and transparent. Voting in Afghanistan, Eide said, is not yet the kind of democratic expression understood in the West. \"If you look at the well-established democracies in the West, for instance, that's not possible under these circumstances,\" he said. \"But ... my objective is that we have credible, inclusive elections where the result will be accepted by the people. That is our level of ambition, and I think we will achieve that.\" Eide said a significant number of polling stations in strife-torn Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni and Wardak provinces will not be able to open due to security reasons. He said ballots ought to be counted at the polling center itself instead of transporting them elsewhere and increasing the possibility of fraud, encountered in the last election in 2004. Eide said 3,000 donkeys were \"mobilized\" to carry ballots to remote mountainous regions. Of the 4.6 million new registered voters, 39 percent are women. So thousands of women had to be employed to search burqa-clad female voters. Human Rights Watch, however, said Tuesday that the recruitment drive for women began too late, and as a result, not enough women will be available for security checks. \"Women voters have been badly let down by their government and its international backers,\" said Brad Adams, the organization's Asia director. Women's votes are key in Afghanistan, where the Taliban stripped women of equal rights and education. Human Rights Watch also said Tuesday that election-related violence was a serious impediment. Between April 25 and August 1, the rights group documented at least 13 political killings and at least 10 abductions of electoral commission officials, candidates and campaign workers. It said provincial council candidates had withdrawn after receiving death threats. The overall security situation is \"considerably worse than during the last elections,\" Human Rights Watch concluded. But despite the violence, despite the threats from the Taliban to disrupt the voting, enthusiasm filled the air Monday as the presidential candidates wrapped up their campaigns. A campaign rally resembled more a rock concert than a political event in Afghanistan, as Kabul stadium transformed into a sea of blue, Abdullah's campaign color. Supporters hoisted banners and sported T-shirts emblazoned with Abdullah's face. \"I believe there is a dire need for a change of course in Afghanistan, irrespective of who becomes the president,\" said Rauf Roashan of the Institute for Afghan Studies, a scholarly center founded by Afghans living abroad. Not yet old enough to vote, Ferishta, 15, a beauty school student, echoed Roashan's sentiments. If she could, she'd cast a ballot for Ghani. \"We want a president who is peaceful and caring,\" she said. \"We don't want any more bombs. In these bombs, so many Afghans have died, one person's son, one person's child.\" No one can say with any certainty whether abounding energy will translate into high turnout. Not in a war-ravaged nation. As though to serve reminder of the high stakes, Kabul came under attack again on Tuesday -- just two days before the polls open. CNN's Ivan Watson, Kevin Flower and Moni Basu contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "More than 17 million Afghans are registered to vote .\nElections are scheduled amid increasing violence .\nA key issue for voters is government corruption .\nSome observers concerned elections will be neither fair nor free ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- From Yellowstone National Park to the Everglades, America's 391 national parks are in need of repair -- and thanks to the economic stimulus signed into law, help is now underway. President Obama and his family visit the Grand Canyon in Arizona, a national park. President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus plan passed in February and designated $750 million dollars to the national parks. But not all of the stimulus money is being used -- and the parks are facing a $9 billion backlog in maintenance projects. So far, nearly 10 percent is in the pipeline. \"We are picking away at it as much as we can and we've been fortunate to have the recovery act money,\" said Jeffrey Olson of the National Park Service. Olson said half of the $9 billion is slated to go for road repairs. \"Half of that [$9 billion] is roads and about $2 billion of that are the most pressing needs -- those we get some help from the stimulus. The president's budget proposal is calling for more maintenance and construction money,\" Olsen said. Dan Wenk, the acting director of the National Park Service says most of those pressing needs include, \"camp grounds, camp sites, it's amphitheaters for evening programs. It's the bathrooms. It's literally everything we have to make our visits enjoyable.\" And those needs, Ranger Rocky Schroeder hopes, will be fulfilled soon. Watch more on the national parks facelift » . Schroeder patrols Prince William Park, about 35 miles outside the nation's capital. It has more than a dozen historic cabins slated for repair and is just one of the 250 national parks getting a face lift because of the stimulus package. \"The stimulus will help keep our visitors here, keep them happy and keep them coming back,\" Schroeder added. And the numbers are good for national parks. As of the end of July, attendance at the parks is up roughly 3 percent from the same time last year, according to the parks service. In 2008, nearly 275 million people visited the national parks compared to 272 million in 2006. At Prince William Forest park, officials are hoping to start putting the money to use next month -- and said they've had overwhelming interest. For these stimulus projects, they need to hire six additional people. So far, they've received nearly 200 applications. The Interior Department estimates the stimulus allocation will create around 8,000 jobs over two years -- though many will be temporary. \"It's stimulus because we are putting people to work ... but it's also stimulus because we're creating a better place ... increasing the visitor experience,\" Wenk said. Some Republicans, however, are skeptical. \"Clearly we need to improve our national parks ... but nobody should confuse that with economic stimulus. I mean frankly that's just false advertising,\" Rep. Jeb Hensarlin, R-Texas, says. For Ron Tipton of the National Parks Conservation Association, the funding is vital. \"We must ensure our national parks are well funded to address the parks' crumbling historic buildings and trails, enhance the Park Service's ability to protect wildlife, and provide needed public education and services,\" he said on the association's Web site. Olson believes that when economic times are tough -- especially during the current recession -- parks are an economically friendly alternative to more expensive getaways. \"We rise above other things like theme parks,\" he says. \"When times are tough economically, people turn inward and ask some really basic questions and there is nothing like being in a national park to ask those questions.\" Olson adds that 147 parks in the United States and in the nation's territories have an entry fee, which ranges from $5 to $25; 244 do not have an entry fee. But when it comes to this money, the key question being asked: How is the stimulus money being used? Nearly $56 million is for Washington landmarks, which some say are in dire need of repair. More than $14.5 million is going to Mesa Verde National Park and nearly $11 million has been allocated for the Grand Canyon. Schroeder said he is confident the infusion of stimulus dollars is a worthwhile investment. \"The national parks are our past, our history.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Obama plan designated $750M stimulus dollars to the national parks .\nThere are 391 national parks across the country and in U.S. territories .\nPark Service is dealing with a $9 billion backlog of maintenance needs .\nAn official says the popularity of parks is high because of hard economic times ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- For many graduate students seeking an advanced education degree, obstacles abound. Issues of finance, time management and family logistics often get in the way of students furthering their education and their dreams. Palestinian Sawsan Salameh is attending an Israeli university after years of negotiations and court proceedings. For Sawsan Salameh, the obstacles also involved politics. Several years ago, Salameh, a 31-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank village of Anata, was granted a scholarship to study at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although her town is only a few miles from the university, access to the school was out of reach because of an Israeli military ban that limited Palestinian students' access to Israeli universities, on security grounds. But she was far from giving up on her goal of pursuing her education. \"When I was in high school, it was a dream that I should finish my Ph.D.,\" Salameh said. After obtaining a master's degree at Al Quds University, a Palestinian school in the West Bank, Salameh was granted full scholarships at several international schools, including Hebrew University. With the military ban in place, Salameh considered studying at a university abroad. \"I started to think I should get up and take this offer to leave, but it's not easy to go abroad, and the only chance is for me to study in Israel, because it's important for me to stay close to my family,\" Salameh said. Salameh sought the support of the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, which submitted a petition to Israel's Supreme Court on her behalf in 2006. The Supreme Court responded by asking the military to lift the ban and allow Salameh to study at Hebrew University, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in pharmacology. \"We argued Sawsan's case for 2½ years, and at the end of the day, the military agreed to let Sawsan study,\" said Sari Bashi, director of Gisha. \"It was impossible to deny her incredible talents and the example she set for women and girls throughout the West Bank,\" Bashi says. The Israeli military agreed to review all future requests for Palestinians in the West Bank wishing to pursue a degree at an Israeli university on a case-by-case basis, based on specific criteria. The criteria include that the potential student clear all necessary internal security checks, that the student pursue a degree in a discipline that would encourage regional cooperation and develop area coexistence, and that the area of study not have the potential to cause damage to Israel, says Maj. Guy Inbar, spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. The area of study must be supported by an international organization (such as the U.N. or the Red Cross) and approved by the Ministry of Education and must also be a degree unique to an Israeli university (not offered at a Palestinian university). The request must come with a recommendation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to Inbar. After Salameh's victory, Gisha, with the support of a number of Israeli academics, further appealed to the court to push the military to ease these limitations. The Israeli military's heightened security concerns reflect heightened tensions in the region due to the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In July 2002, a bomb exploded in the student cafeteria of Hebrew University, killing seven people. The Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas claimed responsibility for the explosion, according to Palestinian sources. Still, some academics at Hebrew University believe qualified students like Salameh pose no security risk, and their acceptance to Israeli universities could even foster better relations in the region. Professor Alon Harel, a law professor at Hebrew University, pushed for the appeal to lift the military's criteria on Palestinian students. He believes that the admission of Palestinian students from the West Bank would enrich the academic environment at the university, particularly in the study of law. \"It's particularly important for classes to be diverse, for people to have familiarity with Arabic studies and Islamic law,\" he said. Other academics agree that qualified students such as Salameh can only add to the diversity of the campus, where thousands of Israeli Arab students are enrolled. \"My personal feeling is that we should do everything we can to allow Palestinian students to study at Hebrew University,\" said Yaacov Schul, vice rector at Hebrew University. Salameh is a devout Muslim with a traditional background yet shirks pressure from family members to focus on marriage and motherhood. \"Everyday I have to hear something about [not being married] from relatives and aunts,\" she says. \"It's become [the] usual.\" Salameh, who also provides valuable resources for young women at a women's center she opened in her community, says she hopes her pursuit of higher education will open even more doors for young women also wishing to pursue a higher education and achieve their academic goals. \"I get lots of phone calls every day from girls in the West Bank who ask me how to apply to universities in Israel,\" Salameh said. \"Maybe they can become more than just a wife and mother and at least finish their first degree,\" she said. Salameh says she enjoys the collegial atmosphere at Hebrew University, where she studies among Israeli Arab, international and Israeli students. She is considering pursuing another degree after completing her Ph.D. in two years. \"I would like to help other people, and I hope the political situation will become better and things will become easier,\" she said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Palestinian Sawsan Salameh faced many obstacles before attending Israeli school .\nShe hopes she can open doors for other students to study where they want .\nShe also has become a role model for girls in the West Bank to pursue education ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Editor's note: Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor, was a political consultant for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992 and was counselor to Clinton in the White House. He was a co-host of \"Crossfire\" on CNN with Robert Novak from 2002 to 2005. Paul Begala says he admired Robert Novak for his skepticism about authority, work ethic and faith in his beliefs. (CNN) -- In our innumerable debates, I delighted in calling Bob Novak \"the finest mind of the 12th century.\" One time, though, he scowled and growled, \"I prefer the 15th century. Spanish Inquisition. Those were the days.\" Novak left this world on Tuesday, but he also left his mark. Needless to say I disagreed with Bob about virtually every political issue, and sometimes our on-air debates continued as profanity-laced shouting matches after the show ended. Despite our profound differences, though, we were friends. Here's why: . Bob was an iconoclast. He loved poking conventional wisdom in the eye. If all the media elite were perched on the same wire, Bob would land on the opposite wire and gleefully squawk at them. Bob was an ideologue more than a partisan. One of the many sources of tension between us was the fact that I am a partisan Democrat who believes that, from time to time, my personal ideological agenda must take a backseat to advancing a broader progressive agenda carried by my party. Not Bob. He was a conservative first, last and always, and when he felt the Republican Party had strayed from his hard-core anti-tax, anti-government ideology he would hammer the GOP with the same withering ridicule he usually dispensed to Democrats. Bob was deeply skeptical of authority. He was a lowly lieutenant in the United States Army, and he instinctively distrusted big shots -- a rarity in a town that is often dazzled by rank. For a guy who said he preferred business to government, he was not afraid to show his contempt for network executives with whom he disagreed. Bob had a remarkable work ethic. In the predawn hours after the 2004 presidential debate in Miami, Bob slipped in the shower, breaking his hip. The injury was terribly painful, and Bob was rushed to the hospital. Within 24 hours he was propped up in bed, working the phones and banging out a column on his laptop. Bob was an old-school reporter. Most pundits (your humble author included) devour the reporting of others and regurgitate our opinions. While strongly opinionated, Bob also reported. His sources, especially in the GOP, were wide and deep. When I was a White House official, one of my most dreaded responsibilities was dealing with Bob. He didn't support much of anything we were trying to do, but he never lied to me, never broke his word, and tried his hardest to get things right. Accuracy mattered enormously. Bob could be civil. This will astonish some, because Bob could also be rude. But he taught me at least one lesson in civility. On \"Crossfire,\" I carried a debate over into the commercial break. I badgered and hectored and attacked the guest who was on the right. I was angry and I let him have it. \"Wait just a #*& $@#^ minute,\" Bob screamed at me. \"You're out of line. You're being rude. Get off his back. He's come here on our show to make his case and you're abusing him. We call them 'guests' for a reason, Paul.\" He was right. Bob loved sports. One tiny island of common ground Bob and I could share was a love of sports. When James Carville and I joined \"Crossfire\" in 2002, CNN had a much-hyped debut planned for April 1. Bob didn't care. Maryland was playing for the NCAA basketball championship and he was going to be there. Producers pleaded, but Bob was unmoved. He did the show via satellite from Atlanta, Georgia, and when Coach Gary Williams cut down the net for the Terps, Bob was courtside. Bob became a Catholic. My brand of Catholicism and Bob's were as different as our brands of politics, but as a cradle Catholic I admire anyone who, at age 67, is still seeking the divine, still questioning, still open to a new faith. We spoke about faith often, and I'm sure his Catholic faith gave him great comfort as he battled the disease that claimed his life. Requiem in pace, friend. Or, as Bob might prefer: Goodnight, sweet Prince of Darkness. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul Begala." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Paul Begala: Bob Novak was a friend even though we differed on many issues .\nHe says Novak was true to his conservative beliefs even when GOP strayed .\nHe says Novak worked very hard at being a reporter as well as an advocate ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- A newspaper aligned with Iranian reformist Mehdi Karrubi, who recently made headlines for claims that post-election detainees in Iran were raped behind bars, was shut down for running \"unlawful\" material, state-run media reported Monday. Mehdi Karrubi says an \"impartial committee\" is needed to investigate alleged mistreatment of detainees. An investigating judge said the popular newspaper, Etemad-e Melli, was ordered closed for what has been described as \"publishing unlawful and criminal material,\" state-run Press TV reported. Protesters outside the newspaper offices clashed with police Monday, the network also reported. On Sunday Masih Alinejad, a reporter and columnist with the paper, told CNN that officers from Iran's judiciary confronted employees of Etemad-e Melli after hours as they were getting the Monday's edition to print. She and Karrubi's son, Hossein, said the newspaper had planned to run a firm response from Karrubi to his opponents, who have dismissed the allegations of detainee rapes. The officials told the employees that they \"were not allowed to come to the newspaper tomorrow,\" Alinejad, who is temporarily in the United States for a reporting assignment, told CNN. In a statement on Saham News, the official Web site of his father's party, Etemad-e Melli, or the National Trust party, Hossein Karrubi said that the paper was forced to temporarily shut down. He cited the pending publication of his father's response to \"the insults\" recently hurled at him for the shutdown. Early Monday, Etemad-e Melli's Web site was still up with a report about a ban on the newspaper. It was not printed, and its offices were closed, Alinejad said. Hardliners have criticized Karrubi for openly describing the mistreatment of detainees arrested in the aftermath of the Islamic republic's disputed June 12 election and calling for an investigation into prison conditions. Karrubi and fellow reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi ran against hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was declared the overwhelming winner and was recently sworn in for his second term. The treatment of detainees at Iran's prisons has increasingly become a high-profile issue, with human-rights groups accusing guards of conducting harsh interrogations, beatings, sleep deprivation, and threats of torture to coerce false confessions. In an August 8 posting on the Etemad-e Melli party's Web site, Karrubi said he had heard descriptions of torture and violence that made his \"body shake.\" \"Some of the former detainees have told of such brutal and violent, repeated rapes of the young women [in detention] that have caused irreparable damage to their reproductive systems,\" Karrubi said. \"Others have raped our detained young men with such brutality that they [the victims] have been afflicted by depression and are no longer speaking with anyone and refuse to leave the dark corners of their houses.\" He added that an investigation would \"teach a lesson to the thugs and criminals in the future and prevent the smearing of the reputation of the Islamic Republic.\" Iran's influential parliament speaker dismissed the allegations, calling them \"sheer lies,\" state-run media reported last week. Ali Larijani said a special panel of Iran's parliament, or Majlis, conducted a \"precise and comprehensive inquiry\" into the treatment at Tehran's Evin and Kahrizak prisons, and found \"no cases of rape or sexual abuse,\" Press TV reported. He challenged Karrubi to \"present evidence of such outrages\" for the Majlis to investigate, according to Press TV. Earlier Sunday, Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Karrubi had backed off the statements, quoting him as saying, \"I did not say that such things have certainly occurred, rather I said that there are rumors of such ugliness having taken place and I reiterated that God willing it is a lie and nothing but rumors.\" Alinejad questioned the legitimacy of the report, saying Karrubi's real response would have been in Monday's edition of Etemad-e Melli." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Karrubi was to run response to opponents in Monday edition, son and reporter say .\nProtesters outside newspaper offices clash with police, state-run Press TV reports .\nHardliners criticize Karrubi for openly describing mistreatment of detainees .\nHuman-rights groups accuse guards of conducting harsh interrogations ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Michael Jackson will be buried Saturday, August 29, on what would have been the singer's 51st birthday, according to a statement from publicist Ken Sunshine. Katherine Jackson has proposed she or one of her children be added as an executor to Michael's will. The private ceremony will take place at Holly Terrace in The Great Mausoleum at Glendale Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, and \"will be limited to family and close friends,\" the statement said. Jackson died June 25 of cardiac arrest. The famed entertainer was 50. Other Jackson plans have moved sluggishly. Monday, a judge delayed his approval of the exhibition agreement between concert promoter AEG Live and the Jackson estate until Friday, when he will hear testimony about why Michael Jackson's mother, Katherine Jackson, thinks it should be renegotiated. The three-city exhibition of Jackson memorabilia could be derailed, as relations between Jackson's mother, the men Jackson named as executors of his will and the promoter of his planned comeback concerts have been challenging. Questions surrounding Michael Jackson's death and AEG Live's role in his last days are an \"obvious source of tension\" as Katherine Jackson objects to the agreement, Jackson attorney Burt Levitch said. Michael Jackson's family has \"floated\" the possibility of filing a wrongful-death lawsuit against AEG Live because of its \"very, very active role in Michael's life during the last six months,\" Levitch said Monday. Levitch said AEG Live \"apparently paid for the services of Dr. Conrad Murray, who we're told is under criminal investigation in connection with the decedent's death.\" Warrants used to search Murray's home and clinics indicated police were investigating his role in Jackson's June 25 death. A source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN that Murray gave the anesthetic propofol to Jackson in the 24 hours before he died. \"There's an obvious link between AEG and concerns that we have about the decedent's demise,\" Levitch said. \"So, that's one obvious source of tension right now.\" Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff set a November trial date to hear Katherine Jackson's potential challenge of John Branca and John McClain, who were named as executors in Michael Jackson's 2002 will. Katherine Jackson has proposed that she or one of her children be added as an executor. \"We think it's important for the family to have a seat at the table,\" Levitch said. \"It's not just a matter of making a quick buck here.\" A Jackson family member would be in the best position to guide Michael Jackson's legacy, he said. Beckloff delayed a decision until Friday on Katherine Jackson's objection to the agreement made by Branca and McClain, who are serving for now as special administrators of the estate, to allow AEG Live to produce a Michael Jackson exhibition. Jackson lawyers argued in Monday's hearing that the 50-50 split of profits for the exhibition was too generous to AEG Live, but estate lawyers said they negotiated the best terms possible. AEG Live lawyer Kathy Jorrie said any further delay in approval would cause the company to abandon the deal and the company would not renegotiate. AEG Live would hold the exhibition just as a documentary about Jackson's last months hits theaters at the end of October. \"It's important to the world that we present them with the memorabilia at the time the movie is released,\" Jorrie said. The judge has approved a merchandising agreement and the movie deal, both of which were adjustments to the contract Jackson signed with AEG Live earlier this year for a string of 50 comeback concerts that were to start last month in London, England. Estate lawyer Howard Weitzman said canceling the exhibition deal could cost the Jackson estate $5 million." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "NEW: Michael Jackson to be buried Saturday, August 29 .\nJudge delays approval of agreement between AEG Live, Jackson estate until Friday .\nJackson family hints at possibility of filing wrongful-death lawsuit against AEG Live .\nAEG lawyer: Further delay in would cause company to abandon the deal ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- South African teenager Caster Semenya won the women's 800 meters gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, just hours after the sport's governing body asked for the 18-year-old's gender to be verified. Semenya celebrates her gold, which came just hours after the IAAF called for a gender test on the athlete. Semenya crushed her rivals by streaking away to secure victory in a time of one minute 55.45 seconds -- the best time in the world this year. Defending champion Janeth Jepkosgei of Kenya took the silver with Briton Jennifer Meadows claiming bronze. However, the race was run amid controversy following the announcement by the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF). Watch outrage over allegations » . \"The gender verification test is an extremely complex procedure,\" said IAAF spokesman Nick Davies -- who revealed the question of Semenya's gender was first raised after her astonishing African junior championship displays. \"In the case of this athlete, following her breakthrough in the African junior championships, the rumors, the gossip were starting to build-up,\" Davies added to reporters. There have been precedents in such cases, the most famous being that of Polish athletics great Stella Walsh, who won Olympic gold in the 100 yards at the 1932 Olympics and silver in the same event in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. However, after she was shot dead during an armed robbery in 1980, the subsequent autopsy revealed she possessed male genitalia, although she also had female characteristics as well. Meanwhile, Yusuf Saad Kamel secured Bahrain's first-ever medal with a superb late surge to claim gold in the men's 1,500 meters. Kamel, who until 2003 competed for Kenya as Gregory Konchellah and is the son of former two-time world 800m champion Billy, won in a time of three minutes 35.93 seconds. Ethiopia's world indoor champion Deresse Mekonnen claimed a surprise silver with defending champion Bernard Lagat, also Kenyan-born but now competing for the United States, in bronze. \"\"It's amazing to win a world title just like my father. The only thing left for me to do is to beat his times and win more medals and get to the front of my family,\" Kamel told reporters. Olympic silver medallist Asbel Kiprop of Kenya could only finish fourth after leaving himself too much to do down the home straight. Elsewhere, sprint king Usain Bolt produced an effortless run to coast into the men's 200m final and remain on course to claim a world sprint double to add to his Olympic sprint double from Beijing. The 22-year-old Jamaican, who set a new world record of 9.58 seconds in winning the 100m on Sunday eased home to win his semifinal in 20.08 seconds and only injury looks like depriving him of gold. \"I just try and get through and make it as easy as possible,\" Bolt told reporters. \"I've been training for this for a long time now. I know what I have to do.\" There was more sprint joy for Jamaica when Bolt's compatriot Brigitte Foster-Hylton ran a season's best time of 12.51 seconds to finally claim gold in the women's 100m hurdles. The 34-year-old, who won world bronze in Helsinki in 2005 and silver in Paris in 2003, secured her first global title by edging out Canada's Olympic bronze medallist Priscilla Lopes-Schliep. Another Jamaican, Delloreen Ennis-London, took the bronze medal. However, the biggest cheer of the night at an electric Olympic Stadium was reserved for Germany's Robert Harting, who dramatically won the men's discus gold with his sixth and final throw of 69.43 meters. Poland's long-time leader Piotr Malachowski won silver with a throw of 69.15m with defending world and Olympic champion Gerd Kanter of Estonia claiming the bronze with 66.88m. The victory was host nations Germany's second of the championships after Steffi Nerius claimed gold in the women's javelin on Tuesday." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Caster Semenya wins women's 800m gold at World Athletics Championships .\nSouth African secures victory after IAAF asked for gender test on the teenager .\nYusuf Saad Kamel claims Bahrain's first-ever medal with gold in men's 1,500m ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Travelers don't always have to fight the masses and schlep overseas to find exotic vacation thrills. Safari West near Sonoma, California, offers a taste of Africa in North America. If you know where to look, you can find destinations closer to home that offer relief from crowds and pricey travel arrangements. The right location can generate the makings of an African or European vacation -- without leaving North America. Along the same lines, wine-lovers yearning for a taste of the Napa Valley don't necessarily have to travel to California. Watch more about getaways with an exotic vibe » . Africa-like safari . If you've always wanted to take an African safari but don't have the time or money, Sarah Kantrowitz of Travel + Leisure recommends traveling to Sonoma, California, for a host of wild adventures. In the heart of wine country, Safari West offers a slice of Serengeti life with 400 acres of preserve. \"You'll be able to visit almost 500 animals including cheetahs, zebra and wildebeest,\" says Kantrowitz. Climb aboard their Classic Safari Truck tour to observe over 80 species of wild animals in a natural habitat. Safari West's director of communications Aphrodite Caserta calls the tour a \"don't miss experience.\" \"Simply,\" she says, \"it's a rare opportunity to experience an authentic African adventure without a passport and without the jet lag. And, without spending thousands of dollars.\" Safari West also offers private truck tours, educational animal presentations and overnight tent accommodations. They even offer many seasonal specials to make your stay more affordable. Check out http://www.safariwest.com/ for information on their Full Moon Madness package. You can save 50 percent off room rates on or around the full moon each month. Napa Valley-esque wine tastings . If it's wine you want, find an alternative to Napa Valley in Michigan's Leelanau and Old Mission peninsulas. Here you'll discover more than 850 acres of land and more than 20 wineries for your choosing. The area offers tastings and gourmet meals, and Kantrowitz says, \"The region is particularly known for its great pinot blancs.\" It also boasts plenty of opportunities for outdoor activities like scenic bike tours of the wine trails and camping on the lakeshore. Andrew MacFarlane, spokesperson for the Leelanau Peninsula Vintner's Association, considers Michigan wine country unique because the effects of the Great Lakes perfect the wine and the atmosphere. He says, \"It's blue skies, no humidity. It's an absolutely beautiful place to come in any season.\" Check out Leelanau's and Old Mission's Web sites for winery lists, wine trail maps, special events and more. Pseudo-European getaways . With the Euro still dominating the American dollar, try looking in your own backyard for European flair with a considerably smaller price tag. You can get a taste of France without breaking the bank in Quebec. Quebec City, the province's capital, offers an experience rich in cultural heritage. Settled about 400 years ago by French fur traders, the city hosts many examples of 18th and 19th century architecture and the distinction of being the only fortified city north of Mexico. \"Consider walking the streets and exploring the wonderful shops that sell wine, cheese and delicious baguettes,\" says Kantrowitz. Visit http://www.quebecregion.com/e/ for Quebec City's calendar of events and recommendations for dining, shopping and lodging in the area. Here you can also find information on different tours and package deals. If it's Spanish culture that interests you, look no further than St. Augustine, Florida. The nation's oldest city was founded more than 400 years ago, and its Colonial Spanish Quarter Museum gives visitors the opportunity to see what life was like in the city when it was still an outpost of the Spanish empire. Through the state's preservation effort, many of the colonial buildings in St. Augustine have been restored to their original appearance. Kantrowitz suggests taking a pedestrian route through the city. She says, \"Try a walking tour to see a lot of architecture that is very reminiscent of Spain itself.\" Head over to http://www.visitflorida.com/ for St. Augustine photos, up-to-date deals and user-generated activity suggestions." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "St. Augustine, Florida, offers Old World Spain without leaving North America .\n400-year-old Quebec City is the only fortified city north of Mexico .\nCalifornia has a slice of Africa's Serengeti: cheetahs, zebra and wildebeest .\nMichigan's Leelanau and Old Mission peninsulas offer excellent wine tourism ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Editor's note: Rep. Jared Polis, a Democrat, represents Colorado's 2nd Congressional District and is appearing in CNN.com's \"Freshman Year\" series along with Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah. Jared Polis says America's immigration system is broken and urgently needs reform. (CNN) -- Twelve-year-old Josh Garcia courageously took the stage. Fighting back tears, he told how he came home from school one day to find that his father had been taken into an immigration detention facility. His father, an entrepreneur who had created dozens of jobs, was \"exactly the kind of person we want in this country.\" And there wasn't a dry eye in the place as this young American boy told the audience how the next time he saw his father, he was traumatized to find him \"in a prison\" surrounded by men with guns. On June 13, I sponsored an immigration town hall in my home state of Colorado to discuss the harm our broken immigration system is causing American families and the urgent need for comprehensive immigration reform. More than 1,600 attendees, including representatives from Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim faiths, filled the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish Center in Northglenn and spilled outside onto the lawn in the hot June sun. Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput -- despite our many differences -- joined me onstage to urge people of faith to stand up for immigration reform. The audience listened with rapt attention as Josh and several other Americans directly impacted by our broken immigration laws recounted their haunting tales. Our current immigration system is broken and greatly in need of reform. In order to create real, long-lasting reform, we must create a pathway to legal status for the millions of undocumented immigrants who have made lives for themselves and their families in the United States. It is essential for our national security to know who resides within our borders. And this phenomenon is not unique to Colorado; throughout the country, Americans agree that it is time to reform our broken immigration system. According to a recent poll of 1,000 voters by the Benenson Strategy Group, more than eight in 10 Democratic, Republican and independent voters support Congress passing comprehensive reform, as do 86 percent of voters who are undecided on the 2010 congressional race. Only 14 percent oppose the reform. Americans agree that comprehensive immigration reform is fair to both taxpayers (81 percent agree) and illegal immigrants (79 percent agree), and 91 percent agree that the comprehensive proposal would help taxpayers by making illegal immigrants pay taxes. If we secure our borders and crack down on employers who illegally hire, and deport illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, nearly seven in 10 (68 percent) voters argue that the remaining 12 million illegal immigrants should be required to register, meet conditions and eventually be allowed to apply for citizenship. A whopping 62 percent of self-identified Republicans say they should be allowed to stay and apply for citizenship. Clearly, Americans agree that the economic and national security burdens placed on state and local governments -- not to mention the incredible hardships placed on immigrant families -- because of the failures of federal immigration policy are unfair and that we desperately need meaningful reform. It is rare to find this kind of across-the-board consensus, and it indicates that rather than demagoguery, the American people want action. Our town hall's other special guest, my colleague Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, formed the United Families movement. It works to bring diverse groups to the table from faith-based organizations, civil rights groups, unions and businesses to demand comprehensive immigration reform. Thanks to their leadership, progressives and conservatives in Colorado and across the country are working to urge President Obama and Congress to take it up this year. Amnesty alone is not the solution. We need real reform. We tried amnesty in the late 1980s, and because we never took serious steps at enforcement, we wound up in precisely the same predicament 20 years later. If all we do is pass amnesty, we will likely be having the same debate again a few years. Likewise, the \"enforcement-only\" policies of the past few years have failed and have resulted only in even more illegal immigration and the separation of American families. Trying to enforce our out-of-touch laws is as foolish and impossible as trying to enforce a law requiring that water flow uphill. The good news is that we can solve this issue. We can pass practical comprehensive immigration reform. Crafting a solution to this complex problem will require a debate, which should begin without delay. Citizens and elected leaders of this great nation must realize our common goal of putting an end to illegal immigration and demand immigration reform now. We are a nation of immigrants. Our diversity has always been our strength. We should be thankful that we have even have this problem to consider, thankful that America continues to be a beacon of hope and liberty, and thankful that the best and brightest from across the globe are fighting to start a better life in our country and take part in the American dream. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jared Polis." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jared Polis: America urgently needs to reform broken immigration system .\nHe says the public supports comprehensive immigration reform .\nAmerica's strength comes from being a nation of immigrants, Polis says ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- A United Nations court convicted a former governor of Rwanda to life in prison for his role in a 1994 genocide that left about 800,000 dead in the central African country. An estimated 800,000 people -- mainly Tutsis -- were killed in Rwanda in 1994. Tharcisse Renzaho was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The verdict, delivered Tuesday, is the third judgment on charges of genocide delivered this year by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The U.N. court is holding hearings in Arusha, Tanzania, where it is based. Renzaho was governor of the capital, Kigali, and a colonel in the Rwandan Armed Forces in 1994 during the country's genocide, when extremist militias made up of ethnic Hutus slaughtered ethnic Tutsis across Rwanda. It began in April of that year and within 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people were killed. The court found that Renzaho ordered soldiers, police and militias to set up roadblocks to identify Tutsi civilians to be executed. It found he ordered the distribution of weapons to people who then killed Tutsis. Renzaho also supervised a selection process at a refugee site where about 40 Tutsis were abducted and killed, the court found. Renzaho participated in an attack at the Sainte Famille church in which more than 100 Tutsis were killed. People across Rwanda sought refuge in churches all over the country as the genocide unfolded. He also made remarks encouraging the sexual abuse of women, according to the court, and was found criminally liable for the rapes that followed. The genocide ended when Tutsi-led militias backing Rwandan President Paul Kagame ousted the Hutu government supporting the massacre. Renzaho was arrested in September 2002 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His trial began in January 2007 and closed in September that year after hearing from 53 witnesses, including Renzaho. Throughout the trial, Renzaho maintained his innocence and said he had no association with the militia. Renzaho's lawyer blamed the case on political interference by the Rwandan government. Renzaho has the right to appeal the verdict. The decision is the third judgment on charges of genocide delivered this year by the tribunal. Emmanuel Rukundo, a former military chaplain, was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The court found Rukundo had a history of contempt for Tutsis and his fellow clergymen, and that he ordered the killings of Tutsi civilians. Callixte Kalimanzira was sentenced to 30 years in prison for genocide and incitement to commit genocide. The court found that Kalimanzira, a senior civil servant who at one point worked with the Interior Ministry, participated in various massacres of Tutsi civilians and actively encouraged other crimes against them. Prosecutors at his trial said he beat some Tutsis to death and called for the elimination of all Tutsis, including pregnant women and their babies." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tharcisse Renzaho guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes .\n3rd genocide judgment this year by International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda .\nRenzaho governor of Kigali in 1994 during the country's genocide .\nCourt: Renzaho ordered roadblocks to identify Tutsi civilians to be executed ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- A United Nations court convicted a former governor of Rwanda to life in prison for his role in a 1994 genocide that left about 800,000 dead in the central African country. An estimated 800,000 people -- mainly Tutsis -- were killed in Rwanda in 1994. Tharcisse Renzaho was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The verdict, delivered Tuesday, is the third judgment on charges of genocide delivered this year by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The U.N. court is holding hearings in Arusha, Tanzania, where it is based. Renzaho was governor of the capital, Kigali, and a colonel in the Rwandan Armed Forces in 1994 during the country's genocide, when extremist militias made up of ethnic Hutus slaughtered ethnic Tutsis across Rwanda. It began in April of that year and within 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people were killed. The court found that Renzaho ordered soldiers, police and militias to set up roadblocks to identify Tutsi civilians to be executed. It found he ordered the distribution of weapons to people who then killed Tutsis. Renzaho also supervised a selection process at a refugee site where about 40 Tutsis were abducted and killed, the court found. Renzaho participated in an attack at the Sainte Famille church in which more than 100 Tutsis were killed. People across Rwanda sought refuge in churches all over the country as the genocide unfolded. He also made remarks encouraging the sexual abuse of women, according to the court, and was found criminally liable for the rapes that followed. The genocide ended when Tutsi-led militias backing Rwandan President Paul Kagame ousted the Hutu government supporting the massacre. Renzaho was arrested in September 2002 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His trial began in January 2007 and closed in September that year after hearing from 53 witnesses, including Renzaho. Throughout the trial, Renzaho maintained his innocence and said he had no association with the militia. Renzaho's lawyer blamed the case on political interference by the Rwandan government. Renzaho has the right to appeal the verdict. The decision is the third judgment on charges of genocide delivered this year by the tribunal. Emmanuel Rukundo, a former military chaplain, was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The court found Rukundo had a history of contempt for Tutsis and his fellow clergymen, and that he ordered the killings of Tutsi civilians. Callixte Kalimanzira was sentenced to 30 years in prison for genocide and incitement to commit genocide. The court found that Kalimanzira, a senior civil servant who at one point worked with the Interior Ministry, participated in various massacres of Tutsi civilians and actively encouraged other crimes against them. Prosecutors at his trial said he beat some Tutsis to death and called for the elimination of all Tutsis, including pregnant women and their babies." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tharcisse Renzaho guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes .\n3rd genocide judgment this year by International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda .\nRenzaho governor of Kigali in 1994 during the country's genocide .\nCourt: Renzaho ordered roadblocks to identify Tutsi civilians to be executed ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "SOWETO, South Africa (CNN) -- It's late Sunday morning inside a cavernous Salvation Army Church in Soweto, South Africa. Services, complete with African and traditional music, have just finished and a catchy drum beat with a distinctly American hip-hop sound is coming from the stage. Laura DiFilippi, 12, gets ready to board the bus in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to go to the airport. The group of teenagers dancing around the drums is 8,000 miles and an 18-hour plane ride from their New York home. They are mostly from Bushwick, Brooklyn -- a community of about 109,000 people only five miles from Manhattan. For some of these kids, it's their first time away from home. Unfamiliar with Bushwick? It's mostly a working class neighborhood where families have often struggled. For years it was a community with a thriving drug trade, severely under-achieving schools, extreme poverty and a staggering rate of teenage pregnancy. It was ravaged by fires and looting during the summer of 1977 and hit hard by the crack epidemic in the 1980s. Bushwick is recovering now, but half of the children under age 18 still live below the poverty line. A quarter of the adults never make it past the ninth grade and more than half never graduate from high school. The children on this trip to South Africa are what educators and social workers call \"at-risk\" -- at risk of having babies as teenagers; at risk of never finishing high school or achieving their dreams; at risk of never knowing the world beyond their neighborhood. Thirty of these children, between the ages of 12 to 16, have been paired up with college-aged mentors and brought to South Africa by Malaak Compton-Rock, the wife of comedian Chris Rock. She brought them to volunteer -- to serve the impoverished and the AIDS orphans in this country with the highest HIV-infected population in the world. Watch the kids' video diaries from South Africa » . Compton-Rock has carved her own niche in espousing service -- giving back. She often quotes her mentor Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund: \"Service is the rent we pay for living.\" The South Africa trip is Compton-Rock's brainchild -- to broaden the horizons of young teens and give them perspective on their own lives. Watch: The kids witness devastating effect of AIDS in South Africa » . \"I believe by traveling you open up your life,\" Compton-Rock tells a crowd gathered for a press conference the morning after the group has arrived. \"You don't think locally, you start to think globally and internationally and I think it gives you a sense of confidence.\" She also wants the children to know, \"that in the United States of America, even in Bushwick, we have certain services that I want the children to understand that they need to take advantage of.\" Compton-Rock is talking about access to free public education, food, knowledge and social mobility -- elusive things for South Africa's impoverished and particularly so for 1.4 million AIDS orphans there. One of the mentors on this trip is 20-year-old Alicia Gerald. \"I know that in my own experience,\" Alicia says. \"Just having someone put their hand out and say 'I believe that you can be great,' has really helped me rise to those expectations.\" Photos: Meet some of the kids » . Alicia is from Bedford-Stuyvesant, a troubled community just blocks away from Bushwick. It's also where Compton-Rock's husband grew up. Compton-Rock has required all of the children selected for the trip to sign one-year contracts to become \"global ambassadors.\" As ambassadors they are required to tell their friends and neighbors about their experiences -- through writing, blogging, photographs and speeches. The idea, Compton-Rock explains, is that if a child is given a unique opportunity, she or he, is \"obligated to bore a hole and take someone through with you.\" Among the children on Compton-Rock's \"Journey for Change\" mission is Laura DiFilippi, a quiet girl who's overcome a lot of challenges in her 12 years. Constant moving and instability in her family life meant it was tough to find the documents needed for travel. For a while, it seemed as thought she wouldn't be able to get her U.S. passport. With the help of Compton-Rock's assistant, Cece Falls, Laura got the paperwork done and her passport was issued just 24 hours before the kids piled onto the bus for the airport. There is also 15-year-old Jeremy Baker, with a broad smile and slight frame. He is growing up in the projects with four siblings and hits the basketball courts every morning before breakfast during the summer. His dream? \"Senior year I'd get a scholarship to Connecticut, UConn, play there,\" says Jeremy. \"Then, like after my sophomore year in college, go to the NBA, get drafted by Detroit.\" It's a dream of many young black men, but a recent study suggests only .03 percent of the youngsters playing ball as seniors in high school actually make it to the NBA. Another young man, who makes magic with the drums and also smiles broadly, is 14-year-old Jonathan Severe. Compton-Rock snaps pictures while dancing to the beat and tapping on a nearby African drum. She is shaking her head in both joy and disbelief, clearly thrilled by what she sees. It's been less than 48 hours since the group has arrived; they haven't even begun their service yet, and already the young man is opening up in a way she had never expected. Jonathan said maybe six words during his interview for entry to the program, and despite Compton-Rock's best mothering skills he never lifted his eyes from the floor. His grandmother came with him to the interview and kicked his leg under the table to get him to speak. It didn't work. He barely spoke and when he did, you could hardly hear him. It wasn't easy for Compton-Rock to decide to take him to Africa. Her selection committee feared he didn't have the communication skills needed to be an ambassador. Two days into the trip and Jonathan is effusive. I literally have to cut him off in interviews to get a word in. To see that, so early on, has been one of the thrills of this trip for me. Two days in and I can already tell this experience will be life-changing for all of us. What will they learn and discover about themselves, and the world? I'll let them tell you. All the kids have been asked to blog about the joys and the challenges, the things they're learning and the disappointments. We're taking photos and documenting every step they take in South Africa. The Bushwick kids came to make a difference in the lives of these vulnerable kids in South Africa. It will be equally interesting to see how South Africa's children make a difference in the lives of these children from Bushwick." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Thirty kids from Bushwick, Brooklyn, took part in \"Journey for Change\"\nMalaak Compton-Rock spearheaded the mission to empower \"at-risk\" youth .\nKids, ages 12 to 15, volunteered to serve the impoverished, AIDS orphans .\nKids were required to sign one-year contracts to become \"global ambassadors\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LONDON, England (CNN) -- A Web designer in London was amazed to discover that Iranian election protesters are attacking the Iranian president's Web site using software he developed in his spare time, he told CNN Wednesday. Ryan Kelly: \"I suppose I am taking sides but I have no problems with it being used in this way.\" With anti-government activists in Iran sidestepping official attempts to silence them on the Internet by posting photos, videos and blogs on sites like Facebook and Twitter, others are using a site that automatically refreshes a Web page every few seconds, potentially overloading the host server. The page reboot software means that dissidents can \"attack\" sites with a barrage of hits -- known as a denial of service attack -- causing them to appear to users as \"unobtainable.\" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Web sites was one of those displaying this message on Monday, according to Britain's Channel 4 News, although on Tuesday it was loading correctly. The freely available page refresh site was partly developed by Ryan Kelly for use with sports results sites and eBay. He said he was unaware it was being used by Iranian protesters to stop the government from getting out its message until Tuesday when he received an email from an unknown source asking him to take the site down. \"Can you please shout (sic) down the website for few weeks. Currently they are using that website to attack other websites,\" stated the anonymous e-mail seen by CNN. Kelly, who works for contract publisher Wardour, then discovered that hits on his own site had risen from 700 on a normal day to 41,000 on Monday. \"I was shocked when I heard my site was being used in this way,\" the 25-year-old told CNN. \"This exemplifies the power of the Internet that something happening in London can affect events thousands of miles away in Tehran. It's great it's being used in this way.\" The heavy traffic forced Kelly to temporarily suspend his site, but only because it was exceeding the volume of traffic on his server. He said he later received dozens of e-mails requesting him to restore the site, and he did so. One message seen by CNN said: \"Please bring your site back up as fast as you can. We need your help in Iran against Ahmadinejad.\" Kelly said he supported the protesters in their battle to have the results of the disputed presidential election overturned. \"I suppose I am taking sides because I've put the site back up, but I have no problems with it being used in this way.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Iranian protesters use site that refreshes Web page to hack official sites .\nPage reboot software means dissidents can \"attack\" sites with barrage of hits .\nHeavy traffic forced Ryan Kelly to temporarily suspend it, but he later restored it ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(WIRED) -- The wind blowing through the streets of Manhattan couldn't power the city, but wind machines placed thousands of feet above the city theoretically could. A prototype of a high-altitude wind turbine made by Magenn Power. The first rigorous, worldwide study of high-altitude wind power estimates that there is enough wind energy at altitudes of about 1,600 to 40,000 feet to meet global electricity demand a hundred times over. The very best ground-based wind sites have a wind-power density of less than 1 kilowatt per square meter of area swept. Up near the jet stream above New York, the wind power density can reach 16 kilowatts per square meter. The air up there is a vast potential reservoir of energy, if its intermittency can be overcome. Even better, the best high-altitude wind-power resources match up with highly populated areas including North America's Eastern Seaboard and China's coastline. \"The resource is really, really phenomenal,\" said Christine Archer of Cal State University-Chico, who co-authored a paper on the work published in the open-access journal Energies.\"There is a lot of energy up there, but it's not as steady as we thought. It's not going to be the silver bullet that will solve all of our energy problems, but it will have a role.\" For centuries, we've been using high-density fossil fuels, but peaking oil supplies and climate concerns have given new life to green technologies. Unfortunately, renewable energy is generally diffuse, meaning you need to cover a lot of area to get the energy you want. So engineers look for renewable resources that are as dense as possible. On that score, high-altitude wind looks very promising. Wind's power -- energy which can be used to do work like spinning magnets to generate electricity -- varies with the cube of its speed. So, a small increase in wind speed can lead to a big increase in the amount of mechanical energy you can harvest. High-altitude wind blows fast, is spread nicely across the globe, and is easier to predict than terrestrial wind. These properties have led inventors and scientists to cast their hopes upward, where strong winds have long been known to blow, as Etzler's dreamy quote shows. During the energy shocks of the 1970s, when new energy ideas of all kinds were bursting forth, engineers and schemers patented several designs for harnessing wind thousands of feet in the air. The two main design frameworks they came up with are still with us today. The first is essentially a power plant in the sky, generating electricity aloft and sending it down to Earth via a conductive tether. The second is more like a kite, transmitting mechanical energy to the ground, where generators turn it into electricity. Theoretically, both approaches could work, but nothing approaching a rigorous evaluation of the technologies has been conducted. The Department of Energy had a very small high-altitude wind program, which produced some of the first good data about the qualities of the wind up there, but it got axed as energy prices dropped in the 1980s and Reagan-era DOE officials directed funds elsewhere. The program hasn't been restarted, despite growing attention to renewables, but that's not because it's considered a bad idea. Rather, it is seen as just a little too far out on the horizon. \"We're very much aimed these days at things that we can fairly quickly commercialize, like in the next 10 years or so,\" said National Renewable Energy Laboratory spokesperson George Douglas. Startups like KiteGen, Sky Windpower, Magenn, and Makani (Google's secretive fundee) have come into the space over the last several years, and they seem to be working on much shorter timelines. \"We are not that far from working prototypes,\" Archer said, though she noted that the companies are all incredibly secretive about the data from their testing. Magenn CFO Barry Monette said he expects \"first revenue\" next year when they sell \"two to four\" working prototypes of their blimpy machine, which will operate at much lower altitudes. \"We do think that we're going to be first [to market], unless something happens,\" Monette said. In the long term, trying to power entire cities with machines like this would be difficult, largely because even in the best locations, the wind will fail at least 5 percent of the time. \"This means that you either need backup power, massive amounts of energy storage, or a continental- or even global-scale electricity grid to assure power availability,\" said co-author Ken Caldeira, an ecologist at Stanford University. \"So, while high-altitude wind may ultimately prove to be a major energy source, it requires substantial infrastructure.\" Subscribe to WIRED magazine for less than $1 an issue and get a FREE GIFT! Click here! Copyright 2009 Wired.com." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Study: Wind machines placed thousands of feet above New York could power the city .\nEnough wind energy exists at high altitudes to meet global demand 100 times over .\nA kite-like device could transmit energy to generators that turn it into electricity .\nStartups are developing turbines, although they are still in the prototype stage ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LONDON, England (CNN) -- A former motor-racing engineer has unveiled a prototype of a new hydrogen-powered city car which claims to emit less than one third of the carbon emissions produced by its nearest rival. The Riversimple Urban Car has been nine years in the making and needs further funding for city trials. The creators of the 'Urban Car,' UK-based company Riversimple, say the vehicle emits less than 30 grams per kilometer of carbon dioxide, less than one third of the carbon produced by the Polo Bluemotion. Riversimple founder Hugo Spowers has spent nine years researching and developing the prototype car. \"I think that the auto industry is focusing a lot of money on research and development at a basic science level on hydrogen storage and fuel cell technology. We don't think it's necessary to do that,\" Spowers told CNN. \"We can use existing technology and integrate it into a whole system design approach -- that is where the breakthrough has come.\" Spowers is searching for extra funding to put the 'Urban Car' on the streets, but he says at this stage they won't be for sale. Riversimple plans to lease the car to customers for a monthly fee of £200 ($330). Hydrogen fuel for the cars will cost just 15 pence (25 cents) per mile. It's a long way from the fuel-guzzling world Spowers used to inhabit as a designer and developer of high-powered racing cars. It was the industry's appalling environmental record that encouraged him to leave to try to find a way to make driving greener. \"Certainly the first five or six years were hard work because I did have an awful lot of people telling me I was mad,\" Spowers told CNN, at the launch of the Riversimple Urban Car in London. \"Gradually it all sort of gathered steam,\" he said, adding \"I'm absolutely convinced that we're offering a better solution for a segment of the transport problem and we'd be crazy not to pursue it.\" The Urban Car's power comes from hydrogen fuel cells which are linked to four electric motors situated over each of the car's wheels. Almost all of the braking is done by the electric motors, which then capture the energy of the car in motion and store it in a bank of ultracapacitors. In conventional cars, the energy generated through braking is lost as heat. The energy stored in the Urban Car's electric motors is enough to power 80 percent of the car's acceleration. That reduces the energy demands on the hydrogen fuel cell, meaning it can be one fifth of the size of one used in a normal car. The lighter fuel cell also makes it more energy efficient. A large part of the funding for the car's development came from the family of Ernst Piëch, the eldest grandson of Ferdinand Porsche who founded the motor company of the same name in 1931. Ferdinand Porsche's great-grandson Sebastien Piëch is a partner in Riversimple. He says the company's nimble size has given it an advantage over larger car manufacturers whose future he says concerns him. \"It concerns me massively, because I don't see that the model they have now is very relevant to where consumers are going. Consumers are looking for a different solution. I'm not sure if what they're producing is working,\" he said. Riversimple plans to share the designs for its car through open-source licence agreements, a system more commonly used in the software industry. Designers and manufacturers will be invited to make improvements so the car evolves into the most efficient vehicle it can be. \"We don't believe that making money on IP (intellectual property) is really what's actually happening even now. We believe that service and providing the solution for customers will be where we make money,\" Piëch told CNN. The next step now is to find further financing, another £20 million ($33 million), to build and test ten cars. Fifty prototypes will then be built for a pilot project in a small city. The location is still to be confirmed, but Riversimple has narrowed down its options to small towns in the United Kingdom, perhaps Oxford or Peterborough. \"I'm very confident we'll get it to market,\" Spowers said. \"I couldn't say hand on heart that I'm confident that we'll achieve what I think technically can be done. That's a bit in the lap of the gods and it's all to do with people, politics and business -- all a bit more unpredictable.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Riversimple launches car prototype with lowest level of carbon emissions .\nCar is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell and four electric motors over the wheels .\nCompany's looking for $33 million dollars to build ten cars for trials .\nDesigner Spowers used expertise he gained in motor racing to build prototype ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Marching in dramatic silence, many with tape over their mouths, hundreds of thousands of Iranians kept alive public support for opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi Wednesday even as the government stepped up efforts to thwart daily protests calling for a new presidential election. Supporters of defeated reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi line the streets of Tehran Wednesday. Large crowds gathered in Haft-e-Tir Square in central Tehran Wednesday evening for a fifth day of protests, according to witnesses. The demonstrators are demanding that officials throw out the results of the balloting Friday that kept hardline incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power. More protests are expected Thursday after Moussavi, in a message on his Web site, called for an afternoon \"ceremony of mourning,\" which he planned to attend. Referring to those who have died or been wounded \"as a result of illegal and violent clashes\" with his opponents, Moussavi urged people to gather in mosques and holy sites and wear \"mourning symbols\" in a show of sympathy and support for the families. The protests have claimed at least eight lives, according to Iran's government-funded Press TV. The eighth death was included in a report the Intelligence Ministry provided to parliament Wednesday, the network said. View a map of major rallies in Tehran » . The National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian Majlis briefed lawmakers \"about the current situation in the country,\" Press TV reported. No details of the report have been made public. Iran is also investigating reports of violence at a Tehran University dormitory in the wake of rallies sparked by last week's disputed election. Moussavi and former President Mohammad Khatami sent a joint letter asking Iran's courts to quell post-election violence and release protesters who have been arrested. The letter, posted on Moussavi's Web site, said, \"the use of violence against ordinary people, raiding people's residences just because they chant the sacred phrase of Allh-o-akbar (Allah is great), beating up women and men, destroying buildings\" is not in line with the standards of the Islamic Republic. For a second day Wednesday, pro-Moussavi marchers urged their peers to march silently -- perhaps as a way of keeping a low profile in the face of riot police, witnesses told CNN. Protesters held placards and posters reading, \"Where is my vote?\" and \"Freedom,\" the witnesses said. Some held signs that said \"Silence\" and put their finger to their lips. Several business owners reported that they closed up shop early so their employees could attend Wednesday's rally. The government cracked down by banning international media from covering the protests and blocking access to Web sites. Watch Christiane Amanpour on media restrictions » . A CNN iReporter who is not being identified said Wednesday's rally ended without incident. \"The people of Iran are finally fed up with the lies, the temperament, the foolish actions of Ahmadinejad,\" a 20-year-old Iranian man told CNN. Authorities in Tehran transported dozens of protesters to jail Tuesday and blocked access to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The government accused international reporters of being the \"mouthpiece\" of \"hooligans\" who have created unrest, and said it could not guarantee the safety of those reporters. (Full story) \"I do believe them because the militia, they don't care who you are. If they see a camera, you will be a target,\" said a CNN producer who is not being identified for his safety. He was referring to the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary force that takes its orders from the Revolutionary Guard and is suspected of being behind most of the violent acts. Citizens were barred from using typical means of getting Iran's stories to the outside world, but amateur videos and photos blossomed on sites such as YouTube and CNN's iReport. The content was impossible to verify in most cases, and much of it was posted anonymously or through third parties, some with little information. iReport.com: On the ground in Iran . Iran's Revolutionary Guard corps said it will pursue legal action against Web sites that it said were inciting people to riot. The Guard, a military unit that enforces the government's Islamic codes and morality, blamed U.S., British and Canadian companies, including American intelligence agencies, for financially and technically supporting the Web sites. Despite the Guard's threats, defiant Moussavi backers stood firm. \"We are fighting with our lives and the world is just watching,\" said Ali, a Tehran University student who requested his last name not be used. \"They see how the government is trying to silence us, how they are beating us -- but they don't come to our help. It's OK. We will succeed, even if we have to fight alone.\" Though the focus of demonstrations has been in Tehran, reports of protests and violence sprouted in all corners of Iran. Human rights group Amnesty International, which is monitoring the situation through media reports and a network of local correspondents, said people had protested in Tabriz and Bobol in the north, Shiraz in the south and Mashad and Zahedan in the east. It reported several deaths in Oroumiye and Shiraz as well as beatings by police, use of tear gas and the detention of hundreds of protesters. A video on CNN's iReport site by a third party showed several people who apparently had been shot, purportedly in the city of Esfahan, about 200 miles south of Tehran, and others attempting to treat them without medical supplies. In Shiraz, 28-year-old Najmeh said she has taken to the streets every day since Saturday -- much to the chagrin of her worried parents. But Wednesday, the hospital nurse said no more. \"The police are everywhere you look,\" she said. \"They hurt and arrested so many people last night that no one wants to go out.\" Thousands of miles away, members of Iran's national soccer team sported green arm and wrist bands Wednesday during their World Cup qualifying match against South Korea. The team does not normally wear bands of green, the venerated color of Islam that has been adopted by Moussavi supporters, and many Iranians viewed the gesture as a sign of support, although that has not been confirmed. (Full story) Meanwhile, the Swiss ambassador to Iran -- the protecting power of the U.S. in Iran -- was called into the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday to hear Iranian complaints regarding U.S. interference in Iran's election process, P.J. Crowley, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, told reporters in Washington. U.S. President Barack Obama has voiced \"deep concerns\" about the elections, as has the European Union. But neither has dismissed the election results outright. Counter-demonstrations by Ahmadinejad backers have also drawn thousands, reflecting a deep fissure in the country. Iran's all-powerful leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appealed to the citizenry to stand behind the Islamic republic. He is to deliver a sermon Friday that will be closely watched for a sign of how the government plans to resolve the stalemate. On Tuesday, Khamenei -- who has given his blessing to the election results -- asked the country's election authority, the Guardian Council, to recount some of the votes. But Moussavi is asking for fresh elections. CNN's Samson Desta and Reza Sayah in Tehran, and Mitra Mobasherat and Saeed Ahmed in Atlanta, contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Thousands protest in Tehran in support of opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi .\nIranian elite military warns of legal action against social networking Web sites .\nSupreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei urges Iranians to stand behind republic ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) -- A federal grand jury has indicted two Minnesota men in connection with the recruitment of Somali immigrants to fight with Islamic insurgents in their home country. Jamal Bana is one of several missing Somali-Americans believed to have fought with an Islamist insurgency. Salah Osman Ahmed and Abdifatah Yusuf Isse are charged with one count each of providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure people overseas, the indictment states. The recruiting effort took place between September 2007 and December 2008, according to the charges. Ahmed also is charged with two counts of making false statements to investigators. According to the indictment, he told FBI agents that he had traveled alone on a flight to Somalia when, in fact, he and another person were going together \"so that they could fight jihad in Somalia.\" Ahmed was arrested Saturday, FBI Special Agent E.K. Wilson told CNN. Isse had been in custody for some time, said Omar Jamal, the head of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis. Both were from Minnesota and in their 20s, Jamal said. Jamal said Ahmed and Isse were \"foot soldiers\" carrying out the work of others, and that he expected more indictments \"in a week or two.\" The FBI has been investigating what appears to be a massive recruiting effort by the al Qaeda-linked Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab in immigrant communities in the United States. More than a dozen young men of Somali descent have disappeared from the Minneapolis area in recent months, and at least three have been killed in Somalia, community leaders have said. The latest, Jamal Bana, was confirmed dead over the weekend, his family said Sunday. The same day, Somalia's president -- a former member of the Islamist movement himself -- issued a plea to Somali-Americans not to join the fight in his country. \"I am saying to those young men from abroad: 'Your families fled your home to America because of insecurity. You should not return here to foment violence against your people,' \" President Sheik Sharif Ahmed said. Al-Shabaab has ties to al Qaeda and has recruited foreign fighters to join its battle to overthrow the Somali government, U.S. officials said. It remains entrenched in the northeast and in sections south of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, after fighting that has uprooted more than 200,000 people since early May, according to the United Nations. Wilson said the number of missing men believed to be in Somalia is \"in the 10s,\" but their recruitment is \"a significant concern and one that we're giving our highest priority.\" In October, Shirwa Ahmed, 27, a Somali-American believed to have been radicalized by al-Shabaab, traveled from Minneapolis to Somalia and blew up himself and 29 others. It was the first suicide bombing by a naturalized U.S. citizen, and it raised red flags throughout the U.S. intelligence community and sparked an investigation by the FBI. Burhan Hassan, a 17-year-old Somali-American high school student in Minneapolis, went missing eight months ago, around the same time as Bana. Last month, his family learned that he was killed in Somalia. Neither family has any idea why the young males left the United States, where they came as young boys, and Bana's family believes he was being held against his will, said Omar Jamal, head of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis. \"Only one time he placed a phone call [in mid-November], he didn't say much,\" Jamal said. \"He spoke as if he was being held hostage. He couldn't be speak freely. They asked him to cut the conversation short.\" Hassan's uncle, Abdirizak Bihi, said a fourth man -- 30-year-old Zakariya Maruf -- was killed Friday, but Jamal said Maruf may only be injured. Maruf was the first of the missing Somalis to head overseas, said Bihi, who has become a spokesman for the families of the missing men. Bihi called him a \"leader\" whom the others consulted on travel plans. Many of the missing Somali-Americans are believed to have left for Somalia when Ethiopian forces were still on the ground. Ethiopia invaded Somalia to push the Islamists out of Mogadishu in December 2006, but their presence in the country was an outrage to most Somalis and became a rallying cry for al-Shabaab. Ethiopian troops left Somalia this year, leaving Ahmed's weak transitional government to battle the insurgents. CNN's David McKenzie and Tricia Escobedo contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Two defendants were mere \"foot soldiers,\" their legal advocate says .\nTwo charged with conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists .\nFBI investigating Somali militants' recruiting effort in immigrant communities in U.S.\nThe militant group in Africa has ties to al Qaeda ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Pet owners know that their furry friends can add a little something extra to the spring cleaning chores. CNN spoke with \"the Queen of Clean,\" Linda Cobb, a New York Times best-selling author and television personality. Cobb, who owns three cats, knows a thing or two about getting the best of pet messes. CNN: What can pet owners do about pet hair? Cobb: You can use what's called a soot and dirt removal sponge. You simply run it over a lampshade [or the] upholstery on your furniture, and it actually pulls the hair right off. You can also use a damp sponge. Another good thing to use is rubber gloves. Dip them into water -- keep a bucket of water near you -- shake off the excess water and rub that over the upholstery, and the hair will collect on the rubber gloves. It does a great, great job. The other thing you need is a really good vacuum cleaner. I have found that I prefer one that has a bag in it. I use an Oreck XL. If you're using a canister vacuum, you have to take it out and then shake it into the trash, which puts all of that dust and that dander and that cat hair and everything else back up into the air. Another good vacuum that is newer to the market is the Halo [UXV Ultraviolet Vacuum Cleaner]. That's the one with the ultraviolet light that kills germs and bacteria as you vacuum. Now, you have to vacuum correctly and go back over the area of the carpet enough times, but that's a very good vacuum too. If you have someone in the house that is sensitive to cats, has an allergy from them or something like that, there is a product called Allerpet that you can actually just spray on to your pet, and it neutralizes the enzymes in the saliva, which is what people are usually allergic to. This is something that even if the cat licks itself, it won't hurt it. CNN: What about pet accidents? Cobb: If you've got a hairball, or spaghetti didn't agree with the dog, accident on the carpet, the first thing you do is scream and run to get the paper towels and start trying to pick it up, which drives it down into the carpet fibers. Instead, reach for your baking soda. Sprinkle on a really heavy coat, and I mean heavy, so that it's completely covering it totally. Walk away. The baking soda will pull the liquid, the bile, the acids from the accident up into it away from the carpet. Once it's dry, you take the suction hose from your vacuum and simply vacuum that up, and many times you can't even tell there was an accident there. For pet urine, the first thing you want to do is put a very heavy, heavy pile of paper towels on it, stand on it, draw all the urine you can away from the carpet. Then pour on club soda and do the same thing. Then you can go in to neutralize it with about a half a cup of water quarter cup of white vinegar. [Then] blot that dry. If you have any odor, you want to use an odor eliminator to remove that. Now, that's not a spray that smells like lavender or oranges or flowers. An odor eliminator has no odor. A really, really fine one is Odorzout. It's all-natural, so it can't hurt the pet. The man who invented it powdered his grandson's little butt with it when he changed his diaper, that's how natural it is. If there's a larger accident and you have a bowel movement on the floor, as long as it's not diarrhea-like, you can pick that up with a paper towel. I recommend that you immediately treat that with Odorzout, because if your pets can smell what they've done, they'll go back to that area because they think it's OK. CNN: What about the litter box? Cobb: Cats like to be very, very clean, so to avoid having accidents in other areas because their litter's dirty, you want to clean every day. If you're using a regular litter box, there is a product called a Litter Locker; it's a little sanitary container for the [waste] removal. It's a fantastic product. I use it for my cats, and I just love it. Now, if you're using [an automatic cleaner], every few days, you need to make sure that the catch basin is cleaned out. If it overfills and the cat smells that, they don't want to go in, and then they're going to start using corners of your house. And you know what? That's not their fault. That's our fault if we don't keep their litter clean. CNN: How do you keep your pets safe when you're doing a big spring cleaning? Cobb: Well, you look for natural products. Don't use harsh chemicals; it's not necessary. Disinfectants have to stay wet on the surfaces for five to 10 minutes to work; then they have to be rinsed off. They're not safe for food surfaces. You know what that says? They're not safe for your pets to walk on, either. Read when you go to the grocery store. If there's a natural seal or if they have a green cross on it, they're a natural, safe, organic product. I recommend so highly the ACT Natural microfiber products from Sweden, the cloths and the mops. Because with nothing but water, they remove 99.9 percent of germs and bacteria and soiling from surfaces. You're not getting any residue on surfaces, and you're not spending any money on chemicals, and you're saving the environment and your health too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Use rubber gloves to attack pet hair on furniture .\nReach for the baking soda in case of wet pet messes .\nAllergic to cats? Spray the cat down with Allerpet .\nUse natural cleaning products to protect your pets ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Editor's note: Wendell Potter has served since May 2009 as senior fellow on health care at the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit organization that says it seeks to expose \"corporate spin and government propaganda.\" After a 20-year career as a corporate public relations executive, Potter left his job last year as head of communications for one of the nation's largest health insurers, CIGNA Corporation. Ex-insurance company spokesman Wendell Potter says the industry seeks to drive the health care debate. (CNN) -- Having grown up in one of the most conservative and Republican places in the country -- East Tennessee -- I understand why many of the people who are showing up at town hall meetings this month are reacting, sometimes violently, when members of Congress try to explain the need for an expanded government role in our health care system. I also have a lot of conservative friends, including one former co-worker who was laid off by CIGNA several years ago but who nonetheless worries about a \"government takeover\" of health care. The most vocal folks at the town hall meetings seem to share the same ideology as my kinfolks in East Tennessee and my former CIGNA buddy: the less government involvement in our lives, the better. That point couldn't have been made clearer than by the man standing in line to get free care at Remote Area Medical's recent health care \"expedition\" at the Wise County, Virginia, fairgrounds, who told a reporter he was dead set against President Obama's reform proposal. Even though he didn't have health insurance, and could see the desperation in the faces of thousands of others all around him who were in similar straits, he was more worried about the possibility of having to pay more taxes than he was eager to make sure he and his neighbors wouldn't have to wait in line to get care provided by volunteer doctors in animal stalls. Watch Potter interview with Sanjay Gupta » . Friday morning my former CIGNA buddy sent me an e-mail challenging something he said his wife heard me say in a radio report about my press conference in the Capitol on Wednesday with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-New York, chairwoman of the House Rules Committee. \"She heard you say that these protestors are funded by the insurance companies. Frankly, nothing would surprise me, but certainly not each and every person,\" he wrote. \"If there was a meeting near me, I certainly would tell my local representative how I feel about this entire subject (and it wouldn't be pretty), and I certainly am not funded by anyone. So I am ultimately wondering what proof there is that seemingly ordinary Americans are finally protesting what is going in Washington and there are all of these suggestions of a greater conspiracy.\" If the radio report had carried more of my remarks, he might have a better understanding of how the health insurance and its army of PR people are influencing his opinions and actions without his even knowing it. Until I quit my job last year, I was one of the leaders of that army. I had a very successful career and was my company's voice to the media and the public for several years. It was my job to \"promote and defend\" the company's reputation and to try to persuade reporters to write positive stories about the industry's ideas on reform. During the last couple of years of my career, however, I became increasingly worried that the high-deductible plans insurers were beginning to push Americans into would force more and more of us into bankruptcy. The higher I rose in the company, the more I learned about the tactics insurers use to dump policyholders when they get sick, in order to increase profits and to reward their Wall Street investors. I could not in good conscience continue serving as an industry mouthpiece. And I did not want to be part of yet another industry effort to kill meaningful reform. I explained during the press conference with Rep. Slaughter how the industry funnels millions of its policyholders' premiums to big public relations firms that provide talking points to conservative talk show hosts, business groups and politicians. I also described how the PR firms set up front groups, again using your premium dollars and mine, to scare people away from reform. What I'm trying to do as I write and speak out against the insurance industry I was a part of for nearly two decades is to inform Americans that when they hear isolated stories of long waiting times to see doctors in Canada and allegations that care in other systems is rationed by \"government bureaucrats,\" someone associated with the insurance industry wrote the original script. The industry has been engaging in these kinds of tactics for many years, going back to its successful behind-the-scenes campaign to kill the Clinton reform plan. A story in Friday's New York Times about the origin of the absurdly false rumor that President Obama's health care proposal would create government-sponsored \"death panels\" bears out what I have been saying. The story notes that the rumor emanated \"from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating Bill Clinton's health care proposal 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, the lieutenant governor of New York).\" The big PR firms that work for the industry have close connections with those media outlets and stars in the conservative movement. One of their PR firms, which created and staffed a front group in the late '90s to kill the proposed \"Patients' Bill of Rights,\" launched a PR and advertising campaign in conservative media outlets to drum up opposition to the bill. The message: President Clinton \"owed a debt to the liberal base of the Democrat Party and would try to pay back that debt by advancing the type of big government agenda on health care that he failed to get in 1994.\" The industry goes to great lengths to keep its involvement in these campaigns hidden from public view. I know from having served on numerous trade group committees and industry-funded front groups, however, that industry leaders are always full partners in developing strategies to derail any reform that might interfere with insurers' ability to increase profits. So the next time you hear someone warning against a \"government takeover\" of our health care system, or that the creation of a public health insurance option would send us down the \"slippery slope toward socialism,\" know that someone like I used to be wrote those terms, knowing it might turn many of the very people who would benefit most from meaningful reform into unwitting spokespeople for the industry. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Wendell Potter." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Wendell Potter: In my former job, I helped shape public opinion on health care .\nHe says insurance companies quietly seek to counter reform measures .\nPotter: Industry worked to kill the Clinton health reform plan .\nHe says he didn't want to be part of another effort to kill a health care plan ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Forecasters issued a tropical storm warning Thursday for the Atlantic island of Bermuda as Category 3 Hurricane Bill neared. Hurricane Bill's projected path shows it moving north toward New England and then Canada. The warning from the National Hurricane Center means tropical storm conditions, including winds of at least 39 mph (63 kph), are expected on the island within 24 hours. A hurricane watch was also in effect, meaning hurricane conditions, including winds of at least 74 mph (119 kph), are possible within 36 hours. As of 11 p.m. ET Thursday, Bill's center was about 510 miles (825 kilometers) south of Bermuda, and about 975 miles (1,570 kilometers) southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the hurricane center said. The storm was moving northwest at near 18 mph (30 kph), and is expected to continue that motion overnight, with a gradual turn to the north-northwest on Friday followed by a turn toward the north on Saturday. \"The core of the hurricane is expected to pass between Bermuda and the east coast of the United States on Saturday,\" forecasters said. See Bill's projected path » . However, Bill is considered a large hurricane, with hurricane-force winds extending out 115 miles (185 kilometers) from the center and tropical storm-force winds extending out 260 miles (418 kilometers), so Bermuda is likely to feel its effects as it brushes by. Bill's maximum sustained winds had increased slightly to 125 mph (205 kph), with higher gusts, the hurricane center said. It was downgraded to a Category 3 storm from Category 4 status early Thursday, after its top sustained winds slipped below 131 mph (211 kph). Fluctuations in intensity are likely over the next 12 to 24 hours, however, and Bill could regain Category 4 strength Friday, forecasters said. Large swells generated by Bill were affecting the northern Leeward Islands on Thursday, along with Puerto Rico and the island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The East Coast of the United States should start seeing large swells during the next few days, along with the Bahamas, Bermuda and the eastern coast of Canada, the hurricane center said. \"These swells will cause extremely dangerous surf and life-threatening rip currents.\" Bill is forecast to diminish into a Category 1 hurricane by Sunday evening, when it could make landfall near Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, Canada." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Bermuda on alert as Hurricane Bill gets closer .\nHurricane Bill downgraded to Category 3 storm .\nU.S. East Coast expected to have large swells during the next few days .\nBill expected to make landfall near Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, Canada on Sunday ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghanistan officials said 26 people across the country were killed in election day violence, although they hailed Thursday's vote as a success. A woman dips her finger in ink to show she voted in Bamiyan, one of Afghanistan's more peaceful provinces. Nearly 95 percent of the more than 6,000 polling stations across Afghanistan opened on Thursday, according to government and electoral officials. Counting is under way but initial results are not expected for another 36 to 48 hours, while final results will not be certified until mid-September. Officials extended voting until everyone waiting in line had a chance to cast their ballots. \"At some [polling stations] there is a very large line,\" said Azizullah Ludin of Afghanistan's Independent Electoral Commission. \"We have to complete all these people that are coming here.\" It is the nation's second presidential election since the 2001 fall of the Taliban. Ludin said the decision to add more time to vote was because of a large turnout at some stations and technical issues that delayed voting for others. There were no official details on voter turnout and it has been difficult to get an accurate count of how many Afghans voted in defiance of threats of violence from the Taliban. CNN's Atia Abawi said election officials at one polling station in Kabul had already begun counting ballots after a low turnout when the order to extend voting reached them. Afghan voter turnout low as presidential election nears end » . When asked how many ballots had been counted, an election official said 1,000 -- which seemed high to the CNN crew that had been at the polling station all day. \"We were there all day and we did not see 1,000 people,\" CNN's Kevin Flower said. Election workers in central Bamiyan province immediately began reopening the polls after the order to extend voting. \"Election workers had put up security tape barriers and even tied down the flaps to their voting tents shortly after 4 p.m. local time,\" CNN's Ivan Watson reported from the province. \"The security tape has been removed and voters are straggling in again.\" Election observers from 30 groups -- both domestic and international -- said voting in Kabul province was fairly smooth, though a few reports surfaced of irregularities at various polling stations. Afghans were electing a president from 40 hopefuls and 420 members of the provincial council in what was seen in the international community as a high-stakes test for the fledgling South Asian democracy. The Taliban had vowed to disrupt the voting and the risk factor in some areas may have been too high for some Afghans to venture out to vote. Watch an election monitor in Kabul discuss what's being examined » . The government ordered a ban on media coverage of incidents of violence in an effort to \"ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people\" as 300,000 NATO and Afghan soldiers were out in force to safeguard voters. The independent Pajhwok Afghan News, which had announced it would not heed the media ban, posted online reports of deadly attacks across Afghanistan. CNN has not confirmed those incidents. Afghan security officials said voting day violence claimed the lives of 17 Afghan policemen and soldiers, and another nine civilians. An American service member was killed in a mortar strike in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said. It did not say where the attack took place. Major fighting continued for a second day in the city of Baghlan, north of Kabul, security sources said. Rockets were fired at the town throughout the day, a day after heavy fighting that claimed the life of the city's police chief, the sources said. Afghans in Baghlan are afraid to leave their homes to cast their ballots, Afghan security officials said. In the eastern city of Gardez, four rockets pounded the outskirts of the city, while a roadside bomb struck in another area, the local security chief said. There were no casualties from either incident. But other parts of Afghanistan have been largely spared the daily drumbeat of car bombs, assassinations and whizzing rockets. Enthusiasm filled the air as voters lined up to have their say. Pajhwok reported brisk turnout in western Herat province, which borders Iran. Khwaja Mahboob told Pajhwok that he voted for a woman for a provincial council seat because he believed women should have a stronger say in Afghanistan. Watch what ranks high among Afghan concerns » . In central Bamiyan province, where predominantly ethnic Hazaras suffered under Taliban rule, thousands of voters cast their ballots behind cardboard screens inside dust-caked tents. Police struggled to hold back and search the crowd and at one point, people pushed through, breaking off one of the gates to the polling center. After voting, one elderly man admitted he wasn't sure who he voted for. \"Whoever God wants will be king,\" he said. Many Afghans are illiterate and rely on symbols like light bulbs and books to identify their candidates on the ballot paper. Organizers from Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission said 11 polling centers in Daikundi province were closed because of security concerns. Some polling stations in eastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces did not open and others, including 100 in Ghor, opened without a security presence, according to Pajhwok. Afghanistan observers and experts said a high turnout would help marginalize the Taliban which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Incumbent President Hamid Karzai, dressed in his traditional purple and green striped robe, cast his vote shortly after the polls opened and had his finger stained with ink that is supposed to last for two weeks, a measure intended to thwart fraud by preventing people from voting multiple times. \"I'm sure this will be for peace, for progress and for the well-being of the Afghan people,\" Karzai said. But at some Kabul polling stations, the ink apparently was not potent enough, according to Damaso Magbual, an observer from the Asian Network for Free Elections. At another station, a boy who successfully voted with a fraudulent registration card, admitted to being only 13, Magbual said. Karzai's top rival was his former finance minister Abdullah Abdullah, who once served as a confidante of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the charismatic leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance killed by al Qaeda. Who are the candidates? How does the voting work? Read here » . The other candidate who gathered steam in the campaign was former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, a Western-educated man who served as a World Bank analyst. Karzai was named interim leader after the fall of the Taliban regime and won the 2004 election by a significant margin. His popularity, however, has waned in recent months as Afghanistan has been crippled by corruption and increasing bloodshed. Both Abdullah and Ghani hailed anti-corruption measures and government transparency as centerpieces of their campaign platforms. Women's votes were seen as crucial after an especially repressive period for women under the Taliban when they were stripped of rights. But in some polling stations Thursday, women voters were greatly outnumbered by men. What do Afghans want? See in photos here » . Habiba Surobi, the female governor of Bamiyan, said women who live in remote Afghan villages are still not aware of their rights. \"This is something to be concerned about,\" she said, adding that it was the responsibility of Afghanistan's women leaders to ensure better awareness and education. About 15 million of Afghanistan's 33 million people are registered to vote. Earlier, officials had estimated that number as 17 million. CNN's Atia Abawi and Ivan Watson contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "26 people killed in election day violence, Afghan officials say .\nVote hailed a success by officials as the count begins .\nThe Taliban had vowed to disrupt the voting .\nMore than 3,000 candidates vie for 420 provincial seats; 40 standing for president ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Ten climbers have died on two mountains in northern Japan, police said Friday. Hokkaido's mountains and scenery are a big drawcard for climbers and tourists. Eight of the climbers who died on Mount Tomuraushi were in a group organized by a tourist company, according to Yuji Kikuchi, a spokesman for Hokkaido police. A ninth man was climbing alone. One more climber died on Mount Biei, Kikuchi said. Another 10 people survived on both mountains in Hokkaido, according to Kikuchi. Except for a 32-year-old survivor, all the climbers were in their late 60s, the spokesman said. The cause of their deaths was not available. The area has experienced heavy rain and gusty winds in the past two weeks due to a persistent area of low pressure, CNN's meteorologist Jennifer Delgado said. The storm system has also brought flooding to North and South Korea, she added. CNN's Junko Ogura and Elizabeth Yuan contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "10 climbers have died on two mountains in northern Japan, police said Friday .\nEight climbers who died on Mount Tomuraushi were in tourist group .\nExcept for a 32-year-old survivor, all the climbers were in their late 60s ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Kids dig in the sand at the beach all the time, but the fun nearly turned fatal for an 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy this week. The 11-year-old was given CPR and revived before being taken to a local hospital. The boy was digging a tunnel with friends on a beach in Ocean City, Maryland, on Tuesday when part of it collapsed on top of him, authorities said. Lifeguards rushed to pull him out, but it first appeared that they were too late. The boy was not breathing, and he had no pulse, Beach Patrol Capt. Butch Arbin told CNN on Wednesday. But rescue crews revived the boy by performing CPR, said Arbin, who was at the scene. There was a lot of emotion on the beach when the boy's pulse came back, he said. \"He basically went from dead to life,\" Arbin said, adding that the boy's mother called the rescue a \"miracle.\" As he was being rolled into an ambulance on a stretcher, the boy -- perhaps not realizing the trauma he had just survived -- complained to his mother that he had sand in his eyes, Arbin said. The child, whose family did not want to be identified, was initially taken to Atlantic General Hospital and later flown to the A.I. DuPont Hospital for Children in Delaware, he said. He's recovering there and probably will be released later Wednesday, Arbin said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Boy, 11, was digging a tunnel with friends on a beach in Ocean City, Maryland .\nLifeguards rushed to help; boy had no pulse and wasn't breathing .\nBeach Patrol captain: \"He basically went from dead to life\"\nBoy recovering in hospital, expected to be released later Wednesday ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Eight-time gold medal winner at the Beijing Olympics and multiple world-record holder Michael Phelps warmed up for the Swimming World Championships in Rome by setting a new men's world record in the 100 meters butterfly. Michael Phelps attacks the pool in Indianapolis to set a new world mark in the 100m fly. The 24-year-old American shaved 18-hundredths of a second from the previous mark set by compatriot Ian Crocker in 2005, with a time of 50.22 on the third day of competition at the U.S. National Championships in the Indianapolis. \"I was pretty happy with my swim. I really wanted to break 50 seconds, but that is something to shoot for,\" Phelps told the event's official Web site. \"Ian Crocker texted me after prelims. He wished me all the luck. That really meant a lot to me as a competitor and as a friend,\" he added. The new time takes Phelps's personal tally of individual world records to five, to add to the three he can claim from relay events, and means he has qualified for three events at the upcoming World Championships in Rome thus far. Places were booked with wins in the 200m freestyle and 200m butterfly on Wednesday while a further slot could be confirmed via the 100m freestyle. Phelps, who was banned for three months when he was pictured smoking drugs at a party after returning from Beijing, has been eager to regain his Olympic form after his enforced exile from the pool. \"This is something that I really, really wanted to accomplish,\" Phelps told the LA Times. \"Crock and I had a lot of great history, a lot of great races with one another. I've wanted that record ever since he took it in '03 worlds. . . . After the race, you could tell I was pretty fired up and excited.\" Elsewhere, twelve-time Olympic medallist Dara Torres qualified for the World Championships team in the 50m freestyle. The American told the LA Times there was still work to do despite the result: \"My coach was telling me I probably lost four or five tenths [of a second] on the start,\" said Torres. \"The adrenaline kind of took over so I didn't really feel (my knee injury). It's a great feeling to be able to be out there and still race [at age 42], but that time won't medal at the world championships,\" Torres added. The men's 50m freestyle saw four Olympians battled for the gold, with Nathan Adrian beating his 2008 Olympic teammates Cullen Jones and Garrett Weber-Gale by 0.3 seconds." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Michael Phelps sets new men's 100m fly world record time of 50.22 .\nThe American has now qualified for three events at the World Championships .\nPhelps, 24, now holds five personal world records in the pool .\nNew time went better than the mark set by compatriot Ian Crocker in 2005 ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- The Tennessee man accused of selling the gun used to kill former NFL quarterback Steve McNair is in custody facing a federal charge of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, authorities said Friday. Police say Adrian Gilliam admitted he sold Sahel Kazemi the gun she used to kill NFL quarterback Steve McNair. \"This is another example of what can happen with a gun when a felon is selling it on the street with little to no interest other than just selling it for 100 bucks,\" said Nashville, Tennessee, Police Chief Ronal Serpas. Authorities said federal agents traced the gun used in the Fourth of July murder-suicide to Household Pawn in Nashville, which sold it in January 2002. \"Further investigation revealed the 9 mm pistol was later sold for approximately $100 to Adrian Gilliam approximately one to one and a half years ago,\" Nashville police said in a news release. Gilliam, 33, of LaVergne, Tennessee, told detectives that on July 2 he sold the gun for about the same price to Sahel Kazemi outside a shopping mall. Police said Kazemi, McNair's 20-year-old girlfriend, used the gun two days later to fatally shoot McNair -- a former Tennessee Titans quarterback and married father of four -- and herself in McNair's condominium in downtown Nashville. Gilliam had been convicted of second-degree murder and attempted armed robbery in Florida in 1993, according to the new release, and those felony convictions meant that he could not legally be in possession of a firearm. Along with Serpas, the announcement of the arrest was made by Edward M. Yarbrough, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee; James M. Cavanaugh, the Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives' Nashville Division; and Mark Gwyn, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. CNN's Shelby Lin Erdman contributed to this report ." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Police say Adrian Gilliam told them he sold gun to McNair's girlfriend on July 2 .\nOn July 4, Sahel Kazemi shot the quarterback to death, then killed herself .\nGilliam had felony convictions in Florida from 1993, police say ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "PARIS, France (CNN) -- Debris from Air France 447, which crashed en route from Brazil to France last month, killing 228 people, has arrived in France, the French air accident investigation agency BEA said Wednesday. Searchers have discovered hundreds of pieces of wreckage from Air France Flight 447. \"The debris ... will be sent to Toulouse where they will be examined at the Center of Aeronautics Tests of Toulouse (a branch of the Defense Ministry) under the control of the police and the BEA investigators,\" said the French air accident investigation agency BEA. The wreckage was transported to France from Brazil by the ship \"La Ville de Bordeaux,\" according to the plane's manufacturer Airbus. It will be taken overland to Toulouse by truck. Flight 447 went down in the Atlantic Ocean in stormy weather as if flew from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France on June 1. Only 51 bodies were recovered, and the search is ongoing for the cause of the crash. The search for the data and voice recorders from the plane entered a second phase last week, according to France's accident investigation agency. The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder -- commonly known as \"black boxes\" -- stop giving out acoustic broadcasts after 30 days. But investigators decided to continue listening for the \"pings\" for another 10 days after that. On July 10, two U.S. naval vessels and the French Navy submarine called off their search for the recorders, which investigators hope will shed light on exactly how and why the plane crashed. The second phase of the search will involve France's oceanographic ship \"Pourquoi Pas?\" which carries specialized exploration and intervention vehicles, according to the BEA. The French vessel will conduct new searches using diving equipment and towed sonar, the BEA said. Finding the recorders is of \"capital importance\" and \"no effort must be spared in achieving this end,\" Air France has said. \"We want to stress that for the sake of the families, we hope that the search for the black boxes will be successful,\" an Air France representative told CNN. The crash was the worst in Air France's 75-year history. Earlier this month, investigators revealed that the plane bellyflopped intact into the Atlantic Ocean. Investigator Alain Bouillard said it was still not clear what caused the crash. The mountainous ocean floor in the search area ranges from 3,280 to 15,091 feet, BEA officials have said in the past, making the search for the recorders -- and the rest of the plane's debris -- difficult. \"It is as if it fell in the Andes (mountains),\" Olivier Ferrante, chief of the BEA search mission said. Brazil called off the search for bodies on June 27, having found 51 of the 228 people who died, according to the military. Investigators have also found more than 600 parts and structural components of the plane, along with luggage, Bouillard said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Debris from Air France 447, which crashed last month, has arrived in France .\nPlane went down off Brazil on June 1, killing all 228 aboard .\nFrench oceanographic ship will conduct new searches for data recorders ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House did not intend to show any disrespect toward Nancy Reagan when it failed to invite the former first lady -- a vigorous supporter of stem-cell research -- to a bill-signing ceremony on the subject, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday. Nancy Reagan watches President Obama sign the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act Tuesday. \"I think she speaks in real personal terms about the issue,\" Gibbs told reporters. \"And I think her candor and her courage have been heartening, and we certainly meant no slight to her whatsoever.\" On Monday, Vanity Fair published an interview with Nancy Reagan on its Web site in which she suggested the Obama administration missed an opportunity by not inviting her to witness President Obama signing a measure in March expanding federal support for stem-cell research. The former first lady has long promoted such steps despite objections from many in the GOP. She has argued that expanded stem-cell research could have helped her husband, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease. \"I would have gone, and you know I don't like to travel,\" she told the magazine. Watch more on Gibbs' reaction to the controversy » . \"Politically, it would have been a good thing for (Obama) to do. Oh well, nobody's perfect. He called and thanked me for working on it. But he could have gotten more mileage out of it,\" she said. Gibbs' comments also come the same day Mrs. Reagan attended a White House ceremony marking Obama's signing of legislation authorizing a Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission. The 11-member commission will plan activities marking Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday on February 6, 2011. Watch Obama laud Reagan's optimism » . Mrs. Reagan is slated to attend the unveiling of a new statue of President Reagan on Wednesday morning at the Capitol and then share a private White House lunch with first lady Michelle Obama. Obama issued an apology to Mrs. Reagan earlier this year after joking in a news conference that she held seances during her years in the White House -- an apparent reference to reports she consulted with astrologists during her husband's presidency." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Former first lady Nancy Reagan is a strong supporter of stem-cell research .\nMrs. Reagan tells magazine: Obama should have invited me to stem-cell bill signing .\nShe's slated to attend the unveiling of a new statue of President Reagan Wednesday .\nShe witnesses signing of Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission legislation ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(Sunset) -- Great things to do and see, and memories (you can still make) of summer at the lake. With clear blue water and picturesque boulders, Sand Harbor is the place to swim in Lake Tahoe. The scene . Families dot the beaches, and boaters dominate the lake; traffic slows on State 89, and the Truckee River overflows with inner-tubers. Still, from North Lake to Emerald Bay, and South Lake to Incline Village, you'll find plenty of peace, quiet, and to-die-for beauty. Cruise the lake . Skip the stern-wheeler paddleboats packed with tourists for a wine-and-cheese sunset sail on the Tahoe Cruz. Departs daily from Tahoe City Marina in Tahoe City, California; $60; reservations required; tahoesail.com or 530/583-6200. Walk on water . Stand-up paddleboarding is the latest craze. Give it a shot, or go for a sit-on-top kayak from Tahoe Paddle & Oar (paddleboard or kayak rental from $20 per hour; 8299 N. Lake Blvd./State 28, Kings Beach, California; tahoepaddle.com or 530/581-3029). Sunset.com: Lake Tahoe landmarks . Jump in . Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park's Sand Harbor area is popular for its gentle turquoise coves and fine white sand. Get there before 10 a.m. to avoid the crowds. $8 per vehicle; on State 28, 3 miles south of Incline Village, NV; parks.nv.gov or 775/831-0494. Skinny-dip . For a quiet swim, hike 0.5 mile to Secret Cove and Chimney Beach, where those who hate tan lines like to hang out. Trailhead is off State 28, 2 1/2 miles south of Sand Harbor; 530/543-2600. Wine and dine . Christy Hill serves a killer chile relleno with an equally killer lake view. (Closed Mon; 115 Grove St., Tahoe City, California; average entrée price around $30; 530/583-8551). The deck at Sunnyside Resort has a party scene and the best Hula Pie this side of Hawaii. (Most entrées between $20 and $30; 1850 W. Lake Blvd./State 89, 2 miles south of Tahoe City, California; 530/583-7200). Sunset.com: Make your own lake dinner menu . Hang with the locals . Built in 1859, Chambers Landing Bar and Restaurant is set at the end of a pier. Arrive by boat or car, but if you're the designated driver, steer clear of the Chambers Punch. Most entrées $12 or less; 6400 W. Lake Blvd./State 89, Homewood, California; 530/525-9190. Stay in a cabin . Carved wooden bears are everywhere at the woodsy Cottage Inn. From $158, including breakfast; just south of Tahoe City, California; 800/581-4073. Sunset.com: The West's best national parks . Splurge on a room . Book a suite at the West Shore Cafe & Inn, then wait for a bald eagle to fly past your window. Rooms from $350; Homewood, California; 530/525-5200. Pitch a tent . Easy swimming access and hot showers make for blissful family camping at D.L. Bliss State Park (from $25; reserveamerica.com or 800/444-7275). For views, the best sites are 148, 149, 151, 153, and 156. If Bliss is full, try Nevada Beach Campground, on the east side (from $28; recreation.gov or 877/444-6777). Enter to win a monthly Room Makeover Giveaway from MyHomeIdeas.com . Copyright 2004-2009 Sunset magazine. All rights reserved." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Consider a wine-and-cheese sunset sail on the Tahoe Cruz .\nTake a dip at Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park's Sand Harbor .\nTry the best Hula Pie this side of Hawaii at Sunnyside Resort ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LONDON, England (CNN) -- Events commemorating the bombing of an American airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie were taking place Sunday in both the UK and the U.S. to mark the 20th anniversary of the attack which killed 270 people. Mourners gathered at a wreath-laying ceremony Sunday to mark the Lockerbie bombing. All 259 people on board Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York were killed when the plane exploded in midair on December 21, 1988. A further 11 people died on the ground as debris rained down on Lockerbie. In Scotland, mourners watched as a commemorative wreath was laid at Dryfesdale Cemetery, the site of a permanent memorial and remembrance garden to the victims of the attack. Canon Michael Bands, who led the service, said that the disaster had \"long ceased to be a Lockerbie event and become a world event.\" \"It is awful that we should gather today on this stormy sort of day to feel the sadness again of the tragedy that took place here 20 years ago,\" Bands said, according to the UK's Press Association. Services marking the exact time of the attack at 1903 GMT were also due to take place later in local churches. A private service for relatives of victims and former Pan Am employees will also take place at London's Heathrow airport, where the airliner began its final flight. In the U.S., remembrance services were scheduled to take place at Arlington National Cemetery and at New York's Syracuse University, which lost 35 students in the bombing. Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond said the anniversary marked an opportunity to reflect on \"the lasting links that have been established with those in other nations who were touched by the disaster.\" \"I know that through the events being organised in Lockerbie, at Syracuse University, and at other locations in the UK and the U.S., that fitting tribute will be paid to those who so tragically lost their lives and those, in the south of Scotland and beyond, whose lives have been affected by the atrocity.\" A former Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, was convicted of the bombing in 2001. Al Megrahi, who is serving a life sentence in Scotland's Greenock Prison, last month lost an appeal to be released because he is suffering from advanced prostate cancer. Al Megrahi has always denied any involvement in the bombing. He was convicted after prosecutors argued he had placed the bomb, hidden in a suitcase, on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt, Germany. There, prosecutors said, the bomb was transferred onto the Pan Am jet that went first to London's Heathrow Airport and then was to continue to New York. The prosecution maintained that Megrahi, who worked at Malta's Luqa Airport, was an agent for the Libyan intelligence services and had been seen buying clothes that were in the suitcase that contained the bomb. In 2007 Scottish judges granted Megrahi the right to make a second appeal against his conviction on grounds that he may have suffered a miscarriage of justice. That process is ongoing. Another man -- Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima -- was also tried in the bombing but was acquitted. Libya has formally accepted responsibility for the bombing, though Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi later denied any culpability. The north African country has paid out more than $500 million to the families of victims of the attack as part of a wider $1.5 billion settlement to end its legal liability in U.S. terrorism cases and restore diplomatic full relations with Washington." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Events marking 20th anniversary of Lockerbie airliner bombing to be held Sunday .\n270 killed when Pan Am flight from London to New York exploded in midair .\nServices to be held in Scotland, at Heathrow Airport and in U.S.\nLibyan intelligence officer convicted of attack in 2001 currently serving life sentence ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States on Tuesday imposed financial sanctions on an Iran-based company that it said is a cover for North Korea's missile proliferation network, the Department of the Treasury announced. Hong Kong Electronics in Kish Island, Iran, was added to the list of \"designated proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their supporters\" for working with two others already on the list: North Korea's Tanchon Commercial Bank and the Korea Mining Development Trading Corp. (KOMID), according to a Treasury news release. The designation under Executive Order 13382 freezes any U.S. assets of Hong Kong Electronics and prohibits any transactions with the company by U.S. individuals, companies or financial institutions, the statement said. \"North Korea uses front companies like Hong Kong Electronics and a range of other deceptive practices to obscure the true nature of its financial dealings, making it nearly impossible for responsible banks and governments to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate North Korean transactions,\" said Stuart Levey, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury. \"Today's action is a part of our overall effort to prevent North Korea from misusing the international financial system to advance its nuclear and missile programs and to sell dangerous technology around the world.\" The Treasury statement alleged that Hong Kong Electronics has transferred millions of dollars of proliferation-related funds on behalf of Tanchon and KOMID since 2007. It also accused Hong Kong Electronics of facilitating the movement of money from Iran to North Korea on behalf of KOMID. Tanchon, a commercial bank based in Pyongyang, North Korea, is the financial arm for KOMID, which the Treasury statement described as North Korea's premier arms dealer and main exporter of goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons. Both Tanchon and KOMID were previously subjected to sanctions under Executive Order 13382 and sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council, according to the Treasury statement. It said both also had ties with other sanctioned entities, including Iran's Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, which it called the Iranian organization responsible for developing liquid-fueled missiles." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hong Kong Electronics called a cover for North Korea's missile proliferation network .\nU.S. Treasury says company's U.S. assets frozen, transactions in U.S. prohibited .\nIt says company worked with bank, arms dealer tied to other sanctioned entities .\nGoal is to stop misuse of financial system to advance arms programs, Treasury says ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Men who are circumcised are less likely to get sexually transmitted infections such as genital herpes and human papillomavirus (HPV), but not syphilis, according to a study of adult African men published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Circumcision rates have traditionally been higher in the U.S. than in Europe, but they've been on the decline. The finding adds to the evidence that there are health benefits to circumcision. It was already known that circumcision can reduce the risk of penile cancer, a relatively rare disease. In a previous study, the same research team found that adult circumcision could reduce the risk of HIV infection. Efforts to increase the practice of male circumcision in areas with high rates of sexually transmitted infections, including Africa, could have a tremendous benefit, say the study's authors. Genital herpes has been associated with an increased risk of HIV, and HPV can cause genital warts as well as a higher risk of anal, cervical (in women), and penile cancers. Health.com: Is your partner cheating? How to protect yourself . In the United States, infant circumcision is declining. About 64 percent of American male infants were circumcised in 1995, down from more than 90 percent in the 1970s. Rates tend to be higher in whites (81percent) than in blacks (65 percent) or Hispanics (54 percent). Some opponents say the removal of the foreskin is an unnecessary surgical procedure that may reduce sexual sensitivity in adulthood. In Jewish and Muslim cultures, young or infant boys are routinely circumcised for religious reasons. Circumcision rates have traditionally been higher in the U.S. than in Europe, but the American Academy of Pediatrics currently says that the medical benefits are insufficient to recommend circumcision for all baby boys. In the new study, a research team at the Rakai Health Sciences Program in Uganda -- in collaboration with researchers from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, and Makerere University in Uganda -- conducted two clinical trials involving 3,393 uncircumcised men ages 15 to 49. All the men were negative for HIV and genital herpes (also known as herpes simplex virus type 2); a subgroup of men also tested negative for HPV. Roughly half of the men underwent medically supervised circumcision at the start of the trial, while the other half were circumcised two years later. Overall, circumcision reduced the men's risk of genital herpes by 28 percent (10.3 percent of uncircumcised men developed genital herpes compared with 7.8 percent of circumcised men) and HPV infection by 35 percent (27.8 percent of uncircumcised men were infected with HPV compared with 18 percent of circumcised men). Circumcision did not, however, protect against syphilis. (About 2 percent of men in both groups contracted syphilis.) Health.com: A sexual risk taker comes to terms with drinking, depression, and STDs . Study coauthor Thomas C. Quinn, M.D., professor of global health at Johns Hopkins University, says that choosing circumcision, whether it's the parents of an infant or an adult male for himself, is and should remain an individual decision. \"But the critics need to really look at the benefits versus the risks,\" he adds. \"By now a large body of evidence has shown that the health benefits clearly outweigh the minor risk associated with the surgery. In our study, we didn't see any adverse effects or mutilation. We're recommending supervised, safe, sterile environments -- not circumcision out in an open field with rusty instruments.\" Increasing circumcision rates in Africa may not only help men, but would likely protect women too, possibly lowering the rates of female cervical cancer, the authors say. Ronald H. Gray, M.D., professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University and study coauthor, says that the researchers plan to look at whether male circumcision reduces the transmission of HPV to female sexual partners. Health.com: 10 questions to ask a new partner before having sex . Even in the United States, this study has relevance, says Anthony Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (which funded one of the trials). \"In this country, circumcision for infant boys remains a personal decision for the parents,\" he says. \"This makes us rethink whether doctors should be more aggressive in recommending that it at least be considered. If parents say no just because generations before them have said no, they should learn more about the significant health benefits before making that choice.\" Roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults have had at least one HPV infection, according to an editorial by Matthew R. Golden, M.D., and Judith N. Wasserheit, M.D., both of the University of Washington. Although vaccines against some of the most dangerous HPV strains have been approved for girls ages 13 to 26, the vaccines are expensive and routine Pap tests are still necessary to pick up cervical cancers. Health.com: How to tell your ex you have an STD . Golden and Wasserheit note that \"rates of circumcision are declining and are lowest among black and Hispanic patients, groups in whom rates of HIV, herpes, and cervical cancer are disproportionately high.\" Medicaid, which insures many low-income patients in these populations, does not pay for routine infant circumcision in 16 states. The study authors hope that this growing evidence in favor of circumcision will persuade policy-making bodies, both in the United States and in other countries, to officially recommend the procedure -- which could make patient education and insurance coverage more likely. It's not clear why circumcision may affect infection rates. But the study authors suggest that penile foreskin may provide a moist, favorable environment for herpes and HPV to survive and enter cells on the skin's surface. Once the foreskin is surgically removed, the risk of infection may be reduced. Health.com: Men can lose their sex drives too . They also note, however, that male circumcision is not completely effective in preventing sexually transmitted infections. Safe sex practices, including consistent condom use, are still necessary to provide the best protection. Enter to win a monthly Room Makeover Giveaway from MyHomeIdeas.com . Copyright Health Magazine 2009 ." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Study: Circumcision reduces risk of HPV infection and herpes, but not syphilis .\nCircumcision known to reduce risk of HIV infection and penile cancer .\n64 percent of American baby boys circumcised in '95, down from 90 percent in 70s ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Anger is growing in Mexico over a fire at a government-run day care center that claimed its 46th child this weekend. Maria Jesus Coronado Padilla mourns for her 2-year-old daughter, who died in the Hermosillo fire. Parents of the dead children and their supporters have held two noisy rallies in Hermosillo, the city in northwestern Mexico where the fire broke out June 5. They blame the government for laxity in enforcing safety regulations, for conducting a weak investigation and for failing to punish anyone in the 10 days since the fatal blaze. \"It is my fault for trusting them,\" parent Roberto Zavala said at a rally Saturday in front of the Sonora governor's office. \"I am responsible for the death of my child. Mr. Governor: Here is one of those responsible you are looking for. Come get me. I am waiting for you.\" The rally was televised nationwide by CNN affiliate TV Azteca. \"If there is no justice from the authorities, there will be vengeance from the people,\" Zavala shouted to great cheers. The crowd chanted \"renuncia, renuncia\" (\"resign, resign\") toward the office of Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours Castelo. He did not appear at the rally. Bours told CNN on Monday that he understands parents' anguish but has not heard any calls for his resignation. \"What we are seeing is natural,\" he said. \"There are destroyed families. It's natural that people express their sadness and, in some cases, anger. And there are those who are using this for political purposes.\" The investigation, he said, is \"complex and advancing.\" Mexican President Felipe Calderon has promised a full investigation. Officials have said an air-conditioning unit in a government-run warehouse in the same building as the ABC day care center caused the fire. The privately owned day care was leased by the government to provide low-cost service to parents. Many prominent Mexicans have joined the parents in saying the government is not doing enough to find out what happened and to punish the responsible parties. \"There are 46 children, and nothing is happening,\" said radio and TV commentator Eduardo J. Ruiz-Healy. \"Nobody is responsible. Federal authorities say nothing major happened. There are 46 dead children, and no one will go to jail for it.\" Ana Maria Salazar, another TV and radio commentator, also has voiced her anger -- in newspaper columns, on Facebook and on her blogs. Salazar, who lives in Mexico City, grew up in Sonora state and traveled to Hermosillo last week. \"I just returned from Hermosillo, Sonora,\" she wrote Wednesday on her blog. \"Sorrow for the death of the [then] 44 children is now transforming into outrage. The death of these children has impacted Hermosillo, the state of Sonora and Mexico.\" She's still angry, she told CNN on Monday. \"My concern is that there are 46 children who died in what appears to be negligence and that nobody's going to be punished,\" Salazar said. In addition, she said, the government has not conducted any investigations to see if other day care centers are safe. \"What is unacceptable,\" Salazar said, \"is that nothing has been done to make sure this doesn't happen again.\" The United Nations Children's Fund's representative in Mexico, Susana Sottoli, said all day care centers in the nation should be investigated, the state-run Notimex news agency reported Monday. Last week, Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said officials had found safety irregularities at the ABC day care center in 2005. He declined to detail those irregularities but said authorities are investigating if anything was done about them. ABC day care officials denied Monday ever being told of safety problems. Critics point to cozy business relationships between the owners of the ABC day care and government officials. News reports have said one of the co-owners is a cousin of Calderon's wife. Two state government officials whose wives also are ABC co-owners resigned last week. In all, six officials have resigned or been fired since the blaze. The well-regarded El Universal newspaper published a column and a story Monday taking the government to task. The article says a Universal investigation revealed that family members and political allies of the governor own at least 13 day care centers in Sonora state. The ABC day care is not one of them. Bours, who was elected governor in 2003, called the article \"malintentioned.\" \"Some of my relatives had those [day care centers] since before I was governor,\" he said. \"This is a low blow by people who want to link one thing with another.\" But Ruiz-Healy calls the day care industry in Mexico \"a business run by politicians and politicians' wives.\" And he rails at what he sees as arrogance by government officials, whose actions, he said, have led to \"a total crisis of credibility.\" \"There have been a series of events that insult our intelligence,\" Ruiz-Healy said. \"The political class is divorced from reality and from the rest of the country.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Parents, their supporters have rallied in Hermosillo, where fire broke out June 5 .\nThey say government didn't enforce safety rules, is conducting weak investigation .\nSonora governor says investigation is \"complex and advancing\"\nUN representative says all day care centers in Mexico should be investigated ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "NEW YORK (CNN) -- A technical snafu left some Visa prepaid cardholders stunned and horrified Monday to see a $23,148,855,308,184,500 charge on their statements. Josh Muszynski noticed the 17-digit charge while making a routine balance inquiry. That's about 2,007 times the size of the national debt. Josh Muszynski, 22, of Manchester, New Hampshire, was one Visa customer aghast to find the 17-digit charge on his bill. Adding insult to injury, he had also been hit with a $15 overdraft fee. He noticed that his debt exceeded the world GDP while making a routine balance inquiry on his online Bank of America account. According to his statement, he had spent the profound sum in one pop at a nearby Mobil gas station -- his regular stop for Camel cigarettes. \"Very, very panicked,\" he jumped in his car and sped to the station. Had they perhaps noticed any \"outrageous\" charges come across their books recently, he inquired of the cashier there. She checked the records. They had not. Watch the story of an astounded customer in Memphis, Tennessee » . Muszynski wondered aloud what he might possibly have asked to purchase for such an astronomical price. \"Can I buy Europe on pump 4?\" He next called Bank of America, the issuer of his Visa prepaid debit card. The bank kept him on hold for two hours, during which time he contemplated the impossibly bleak financial future that might await him. He also felt a stab of fear that he had saddled all his unborn grandchildren -- and their grandchildren -- with a lifetime of debt. \"Down the generational line, nobody would have any money.\" Finally, a bank representative told him that the $23 quadrillion charge -- and the $15 overdraft fee -- would be stricken from his account. Muszynski compared the giant debt reprieve to receiving \"an amazing Monopoly card that says, 'Bank error in your favor.' \" In a statement, Visa said the rogue charges affected \"fewer than 13,000 prepaid transactions\" and resulted from a \"temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services ... [which] caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts.\" The company assured customers that the problem has been fixed and that all falsely issued fees have been voided. \"Erroneous postings have been removed ... this incident had no financial impact on Visa prepaid cardholders.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "$23,148,855,308,184,500 charge is about 2,007 times the size of the national debt .\nVisa customer in New Hampshire, also hit with $15 overdraft fee, finds out online .\nStatement said he'd spent the big sum at gas station where he buys cigarettes .\nCard issuer strikes charge and fee, blames \"temporary programming error\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(InStyle) -- The multi-talented star Mandy Moore shares her stylish secrets. Mandy Moore spins in a Chaiken cashmere dress and Ibisco belt. 1. Start defining your style . \"It all goes back to wanting to be an individual. I have my days of not feeling super-great, but that's universal. My style has evolved as I've become more aware of myself as well as what looks good on me -- and what doesn't.\" 2. Find labels that work for you . \"It's always nice to have a running tally of designers that fit your body well and that you feel comfortable in for any number of events. It makes you feel less limited.\" 3. Identify shapes that flatter . \"I'm not super-picky about color. I'm more picky about the cut of a garment. I look terrible in anything bias-cut for instance, and I prefer Empire waists.\" Mandy explains other fashion choices » . 4. Dresses are secret weapons . \"I love dresses! If it's flowy and loose, you don't have to worry about what shape you're in, frankly. Plus there's something romantic and ethereal about vintage dresses that I adore.\" 5. When in doubt, bring a belt . \"I'm looking at my dress today, and I wish I had brought a belt with me because it looks like a gigantic tent. Having a belt to define your waist is always better than hiding behind something.\" 6. What really makes you look good . \"If you're confident and you feel good, people pick up on that. And it doesn't really matter what's happening from the neck down. I'd rather be comfortable than anything else.\" InStyle.com: Witness Mandy's amazing style transformation . 7. Some trends won't flatter you -- avoid them. \"I tried footless leggings and then I realized, this is not a trend for me. When something stops at your midcalf, it can be somewhat shortening. But I feel like long tights make any look ladylike and classy.\" 8. Find a great tailor . \"I've been having trouble finding jeans lately. So I've been buying vintage high-waist trouser jeans and having them tailored. My tailor understands my body. She's always encouraging me to wear stuff tighter.\" 9. Hoop earrings work on everyone . \"My friend Raina's always telling me to wear hoops. She's like, 'Even if you're in jeans, a T-shirt and flats, hoops are sexy, cool, and everyone looks good in them.' \" 10. Give yourself a break . \"You have to take a break and treat yourself. I treat myself by getting massages, manicures or pedicures. I treat myself by having a cookie or frozen yogurt, or whatever it may be, because I know I work hard and I deserve it.\" E-mail to a friend . Get a FREE TRIAL issue of InStyle - CLICK HERE! Copyright © 2009 Time Inc. All rights reserved." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mandy Moore offers style tips: Avoid unflattering trends .\nDon't worry about your shape with flowy, loose dresses .\nFind a great tailor ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Music fans who buy concert tickets during Live Nation's \"No Service Fee Wednesday\" may be surprised when they check their receipt and see some service fees were charged. Concertgoers expecting service-free tickets during a Live Nation promotion may still find fees. Live Nation's announcement for the promotion -- and stories based on their news release -- did not mention the concert promoter's narrow definition of a \"service fee.\" \"Fans will still be asked to pay parking fees (usually $6) as well as in some cases facility fees and/or charity fees,\" Live Nation spokesman John Vlautin wrote in a reply to CNN's request for clarification. Still, the promotion will save consumers several dollars on amphitheater lawn seats bought from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. Vlautin did not respond to CNN's question about why the promotion was called \"No Service Fee Wednesday\" if there were still fees added to the base cost of each ticket -- or why it was not disclosed in the announcement. Service fees tacked on to ticket purchases -- averaging a third of the base price -- have long been a source of grumbling from concertgoers. \"People get a little ticked off when they think they're paying $20 for a ticket and as they progress along the various pages of the electronic transaction they see more fees added along the way,\" said Ray Waddell, who writes about live music tours for Billboard magazine. When buying tickets online using a credit card, the buyer does not see the total charged -- with the added fees -- until after they've submitted the order. Live Nation discloses this in its \"terms and conditions\" statement: . \"Live Nation Ticketing may assess a convenience charge on each ticket purchased and/or ordered for certain events.\" The parking fee, which does not actually pay for a parking space, is on each ticket -- even if the fan doesn't drive to the show. \"We have always charged it this way to alleviate traffic issues that occur when the fee is taken at the lot entrance,\" Vlautin said. A facility fee is \"charged at some venues and goes to defray the cost of venue maintenance,\" he said. Vlautin did not respond to CNN's request for a detailed list of service fees that will be waived during \"No Service Fee Wednesday.\" Live Nation only began selling tickets to its own concerts last year, just months before announcing plans to merge with Ticketmaster -- the world's largest ticket-seller. Before that, Live Nation promoted shows but had no infrastructure to sell tickets, and it contracted out to Ticketmaster or others to sell them. The Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger plan has drawn criticism. The Justice Department launched an investigation of the proposed merger in February. Neither Live Nation nor Ticketmaster executives would respond to questions about the merger. However, Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff did talk about it before a U.S. Senate subcommittee earlier this year. \"[The merger] will give us greater flexibility in how we promote, market and sell tickets to events. It will give us a pathway to alternative pricing and fee structures. And we will be better able to develop new and innovative products and services that enhance the fan experience and make all forms of entertainment more accessible to everyone.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Live Nation promotion doesn't mention narrow definition of a \"service fee\"\nCompany says no service fees charged from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Wednesday .\nSpokesman tells CNN: Fans will still pay parking, facility or charity fees .\nBillboard writer says \"people get a little ticked off\" when they see the charges ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- A Los Angeles-area man has been charged with murder in the death of his wife while on a cruise along the Mexican coast, an FBI spokesman told CNN sister network HLN. Shirley McGill, 55, was found dead on Tuesday in her cabin on the Carnival Elation. Shirley McGill, 55, was found dead in her cabin on the Carnival Elation on Tuesday as the ship, after a five-day cruise to Cabo San Lucas, was heading back to its origination point of San Diego, California, authorities said. Robert McGill, who is in his mid-50s, is charged with murder on the high seas, FBI Special Agent in Charge Keith Slotter told HLN. The FBI and the Carnival cruise line said that a domestic dispute Tuesday night resulted in the woman's death, but did not elaborate on how she was killed. The FBI said the cause of death would be determined through autopsy. Another passenger became suspicious that foul play had taken place \"for a variety of possible reasons,\" Slotter said, and notified ship security. When security checked the couple's room, Shirley McGill was found dead inside, he said. Authorities believe she had been dead for no more than a couple of hours. Watch Slotter describe how the body was found » . Robert McGill was arrested on board the ship and was kept in its brig for the remainder of the cruise, the FBI said. After the ship docked, he was taken into federal custody, as crimes on the high seas fall under federal jurisdiction. FBI agents boarded the ship to start the investigation as the vessel neared San Diego, with the Coast Guard transporting the agents about 10 miles offshore. Agents were completing their work on the ship Thursday, having interviewed about 50 passengers and processed the crime scene, Slotter said. He would not elaborate on the domestic dispute, saying authorities are still trying to piece together what happened. The 2,052-passenger Carnival Elation had departed on the cruise July 11. CNN's Scott Thompson contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Shirley McGill, 55, was found dead in her cabin on the Carnival Elation on Tuesday .\nHusband Robert McGill, in mid-50s, charged with murder on the high seas, FBI says .\nFBI and Carnival cruise line said domestic dispute Tuesday night led to death ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LONDON, England (CNN) -- Police say they are investigating the disappearance of more than $400,000 worth of jewelry from a photo shoot involving Lindsay Lohan in London on June 6. Jewels are missing from an Elle magazine photo shoot of Lindsay Lohan. \"Items of jewelry went missing from an Elle photoshoot ... and the matter is now being investigated by the police,\" the fashion magazine said in a statement to CNN. \"Elle has no reason to believe that Lindsay Lohan was in any way responsible and has no further comment to make.\" Lohan's representative told CNN the actress was \"happy to cooperate,\" and that \"No one has contacted Lindsay\" about the investigation. The magazine would not say whether the 22-year-old actress wore the jewelry in the photo shoot, and could not say when the photos would be published. \"The theft was reported to a central London police station on 8 June 2009 after earrings and a necklace, believed to be diamond and estimated to be worth in the region of £250,000 [$410,000], were found to be missing approximately two days earlier,\" London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement. No arrests have been made, the police said. Big Sky Studios in London, where the shoot took place, refused to comment. CNN's Nicola Goulding, Max Foster, Laura Perez Maestro and Jonathan Wald contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Police are investigating disappearance of jewelry from Lindsay Lohan photo shoot .\nLohan was doing photo spread for Elle magazine .\nMagazine: \"No reason to believe that Lindsay Lohan was in any way responsible\"\nLohan's representative told CNN the actress was \"happy to cooperate\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian authorities are investigating the recent killing of a model-turned-bodyguard. Anna Loginova in a photo shoot for the Russian edition of Maxim magazine. Anna Loginova, a 29-year-old former successful model, ran a private security firm of female bodyguards, highly trained in martial arts, demanding high prices to protect Russian billionaires. One notable client was Russian boxer Kostya Tszyu. A carjacker pulled Loginova out of her Porsche Cayenne Sunday in Moscow. Loginova grabbed onto the door handle as the car picked up speed and she was dragged along the street before letting go as the car sped away. \"An intruder just threw her out of the car\" Russian police stated, \"She grabbed the door handle, but when the car picked up speed, she let go.\" Her fearlessness proved fatal. Loginova died on the scene from serious cranial injuries. The vehicle was later found abandoned in southern Moscow. Luxury car theft is common in Moscow. Loginova told Maxim magazine in a recently taped interview that she fought off a car thief just four months ago. \"I stepped out of my car and closed the door when I suddenly saw a young man near me. He grabbed me by the arm in which I was holding the car keys,\" she was quoted as saying. \"By reflex, I used a jiu-jitsu technique. I twisted his arm and hit him on the face with my elbow. The guy obviously was not expecting such a reaction. He fell down on the rear windshield, which gave me enough time to grab my gun. He immediately jumped into his Honda and drove away,\" Those who knew her said she was never deterred by danger. For many Russians she was a feminine icon, bridging the glamorous world of modeling and the rough underbelly of Russian crime. \"I think she was kind and sweet, not like a terminator, not like Sigourney Weaver in 'Aliens'\" said Igor Cherski from Maxim magazine \"but I feel that she was not afraid of anything, there was no fear in her eyes.\" E-mail to a friend ." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Russian model-turned-bodyguard Anna Loginova killed in Moscow during carjacking .\nLoginova recently told a magazine that she fought off a car thief four months ago .\nFor many Russians she was a feminine icon, bridging glamorous and crime world ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Dionne Warwick was one of the thousands of guests to attend Michael Jackson's memorial service Tuesday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Dionne Warwick said Michael Jackson brought a new insight to things people should be paying attention to. Warwick talks with CNN's Larry King about the moving tributes during the service and the legacy left behind by the \"King of Pop.\" King also talks with Warwick's son, Damon Elliott, who has been a friend of Jackson's since childhood and was writing a song with Michael just before his death. The following is an edited version of the interview. Larry King: What did you think of the event, Dionne? Dionne Warwick: Well, it was probably one of the most emotional mornings and afternoons that I've spent in a very long time. It was done with a great deal of style and class. King: He would've liked it? Warwick: He would've loved it. He would've loved it. King: How did you and Michael hook up, Damon? Damon Elliott: From Mom. We shared moms. When I was very little, I used to beg her probably at least once a week, \"Mom, you have to take me out to the house, you have to take me out to the house.\" She'd always say, \"I'm on tour right now, baby. But when we I get home, we'll go see Michael.\" And one day we did, and he showed up, I think, in my living room or somewhere. King: You were writing a song at his death? Elliott: Yes. Actually, I was working on some music for the new record that I was going to get over to Jermaine. And the night before he passed away, it's crazy we were writing a song. King: How great a singer was Michael Jackson? Warwick: Michael was... King: A singer -- a pure singer? Warwick: And he could sing. Yes. Yes. It was more than the magic of everything else that he did. He was a brilliant singer. King: What was he like to work with, if you were working on a song together? What was that experience like? Elliott: Well, from a distance, I got to work with Michael. I mostly worked through Jermaine, who was another amazing talent. But just all the brothers, you know, they have so much conviction and so much feeling in their delivery. Watch Jackson family address crowd » . And Michael was like the greatest teacher to all of us -- producers, dancers, singers, songwriters. He just had it all. He would come in and beat box a melody and you'd try to emulate it on a drum machine and it just was impossible. So you'd just keep what he did. King: What's Michael Jackson's legacy? Warwick: The wonderful things that he did for this entire world. I think he brought a new insight as to the things that we really should be paying attention to. He did it brilliantly, and I think that's his legacy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Singer Dionne Warwick: Jackson's memorial service was done with style, class .\nWarwick's son was writing a song with Jackson days before his death .\nDamon Elliott: \"Michael was like the greatest teacher to all of us\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(The Frisky) -- You don't have to be Jennifer Aniston to think that the four women who Krazy-Glued a cheater's penis to his stomach were way harsh and beyond psycho. If your ex's loved ones ask why you broke up, it's OK to admit he cheated on you, writer says. But in our less scrupulous/mature moments, many of us want to punish a particularly nasty ex, especially if he was a cheater. Ladies, let's keep it legal (and Krazy Glue-free), OK? Here are 10 ideas: . 1. Email his crappiest crap e-mail to Jezebel.com's Crap E-mail From A Dude and when they publish it, discreetly post the link as your GChat away message. 2. Call up your hottest platonic male friend, grab your digital camera and go do something adorable together. Now it's time to create a Facebook photo album full of pics of you looking smiley. (Bonus points if your ex was slightly paranoid that this guy had a thing for you). The Frisky: Possible to remain friends with an ex? 3. Permanently adopt that comfy sweatshirt he left at your place. Especially if he's the one who caused the breakup, he probably doesn't have the cojones to ask for it back now. 4. Gain that extra 10 lbs that fills you out nicely, like Joan Holloway on \"Mad Men\"... 5. ...or lose that extra 10 lbs so you can fit into your sexy jeans again. Either way, this also requires a Facebook photo album. The Frisky: How Joan Holloway gives me confidence . 6. You might hear from his mom, sisters, or other family members you were close to after the breakup, especially if you dated for a long time. Airing too much of your dirty laundry to them will make you look like a psycho. But if he did cheat on you (and you didn't cheat back), it couldn't hurt to mention how his bad behavior led to the split. The Frisky: 10 rules on way men and women eat . Dude sure as hell didn't tell them the truth about why you broke up! And any mom or sister worth her salt will tear your ex a new one when they learn that's why he lost a great girl like you. The Frisky: Continue relationships with an ex's loved ones? 7. Ignore every single text, Tweet, Facebook poke and email from here on out. But kept posting stuff on your social networking sites on the regular. 8. If you're a songwriter or a poet, well, you know what to do. The creep who caused Ani Di Franco's song \"Untouchable Face\" probably hasn't forgotten what he did. 9. Penning aggressive-aggressive emails (as opposed to passive-aggressive ones) is always therapeutic. The Frisky: Passive aggressive notes Web site . 10. Spend a few months feeling down. Indulge in some therapy. Do some fun things single women do. Work extra-hard at your job and get a promotion. Go take a trip or buy some new clothes. Whenever you're ready, go meet a new guy. Fall in love. Have tons of great sex. Laugh a lot. Talk about baby names and where you want your honeymoon to be. The next time you run into your ex, mention all the great things that have happened in your life since you broke up ... or just smile. The Frisky: Happy to be single . TM & © 2009 TMV, Inc. | All Rights Reserved ." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If your ex cheated on you, there are legal ways to get even .\nDo whatever it takes to look your best, post pix on Facebook with male friend .\nIf his mom or sister ask about breakup, tell them he cheated on you .\nIgnore all social media contact from him. But post a song about his cheating ways ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean wants to set the record straight. Carrie Prejean says pageant officials wanted her to make appearances for Playboy and a gay movie premiere. Prejean garnered widespread criticism when she declared her opposition to same-sex marriage in a response to a question posed to her during the Miss USA pageant. Prejean was allowed to keep her Miss California USA crown in May, despite a controversy over topless photos and missed appearances. However, state pageant Executive Director Keith Lewis took her crown on Wednesday, saying it was a business decision based solely on \"contract violations.\" Prejean offered her side of the story when she spoke with CNN's Larry King on Friday. She also discussed whether she would sue to reclaim her title and her future plans. The following is an edited version of the interview. Larry King: You've had a couple of days now, Carrie, to think it all over and it's sunk in. What are your feelings today? Carrie Prejean: I'm definitely a little bit surprised just by the way that I found out about this. You know, I was called by the media to inform me that I was fired. King: Are you saying the pageant didn't call you? Prejean: No. I haven't received any phone calls. In fact, my lawyer found out from the media, as well, before we received any contact. I still have not, to this day, received any contact from Mr. Lewis. King: Now, since they were so supportive of you at the time and after the Trump announcement, what do you make of the fact that they didn't call you? Prejean: Well, I think Mr. Trump was definitely in the middle. And I think that, you know, he has only heard one side. Ultimately, at the end of the day, you have to think about, Are you going to release Mr. Keith Lewis or are you going to release Carrie Prejean? I think that they had to release the beauty queen at the end of the day. King: How do you respond to (charges from Lewis)? Prejean: Well, Larry, all I can tell you was this basically comes down to the answer that I gave the night of the pageant. As you can see, Mr. Lewis does not agree with the stance that I took. I think he's very angry. I think he's hurt. He said in a previous statement that he's deeply saddened and hurt that -- what Carrie Prejean believes in -- a marriage is between a man and a woman. Politics and religion have no play in the Miss California family. My question is, then why was the question asked at the pageant in the first place? If politics has no role in the pageant, why was I given this question? It was a hidden personal agenda that judge No. 8 asked, and I think that they were not ready for my answer that I gave. King: Let's say they were upset by your remarks. They didn't like your answer. Why didn't they just tell Donald Trump, we're unhappy and let's pick the runner-up or whatever? Prejean: He absolutely did. I mean Keith Lewis held a press conference in Los Angeles and didn't invite me to the press conference and, you know, awarded the first runner up as the new ambassador of California. That is just undermining me and undermining his own titleholder from day one. Watch how e-mails between Prejean, Lewis may have contributed to firing » . As far as the other appearances, I've had some inappropriate appearances that Keith Lewis has asked me to do. And I'm sure you're aware of them already -- one of them being Playboy; another one being a reality show which is being filmed in Costa Rica. So had I said yes to these, I mean, I would have been out of the country. Again, Playboy, I couldn't believe. I was completely shocked that he would even pass this along to me. Another one was a gay movie premiere that he wanted me to attend incognito. He actually said he wanted me to wear a hat and go in disguise and attend this movie premiere promoting gay marriage and then come out with a statement the next day saying that Carrie Prejean attended a gay movie premiere. It just doesn't seem right, Larry, does it? King: Are you now sorry you even entered. Or, in retrospect, has this been a boom for you publicity-wise? Prejean: You know, this isn't something that I signed up for, Larry. I simply entered in a pageant, the Miss California USA contest, and I gave an answer that a lot of people weren't expecting. The bottom line, I took a stand, and I think I am now being punished for the answer that I gave. This isn't about contracts. This isn't about me missing out on appearances. If you want to ask Keith Lewis any appearances that I have made prior to the Miss California U.S. pageant, I will guarantee you, Larry, he will not even -- he can't even tell you an appearance that he -- he scheduled for me. This isn't about appearances. This isn't about a breach of contract. This is about Keith Lewis not agreeing with the stance that I took on saving traditional marriage. And from day one, he wanted me out. King: Well, are you going to sue, Carrie? Prejean: That's -- you know, that's something that is not something that I want to -- I want to do. I think that what's going on is wrong. And I think that there is definitely some information that is missing. And I know that sooner or later, the truth will come out and people will recognize here who's right and who's wrong. King: What are your lawyers telling you to do or advising you to do? Prejean: You know, that's up to my lawyers to determine whether or not they think that there will be a lawsuit involved. But that's not up to me, at this point. King: What are you going to do right now, career-wise? Prejean: Well, first of all, I want to thank the millions of viewers. I know you have so many viewers on your show, Larry. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you to all the Californians who have supported me, who backed me, who sent me thousands of letters and e-mails. I just want to thank you so much for your prayers, for your support. And I know that when God is for you, no one can be against you. So thank you. King: Can you tell us what you're going to do, though? Prejean: I'm not sure. Definitely some -- a lot of offers -- opportunities have come my way, a lot of offers. I'm just really excited. I feel relieved. I feel just so blessed and so honored to have represented the state of California. And I'm ready to move on with my life and just be where God leads me." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Carrie Prejean says she learned she lost Miss California USA crown from media .\nPrejean: Pageant director asked me to make \"inappropriate appearances\"\nPageant officials say Prejean's firing due to \"contract violations\"\nPrejean's response to question on same-sex marriage raised eyebrows ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "ALSIP, Illinois (CNN) -- A Cook County cemetery where hundreds of graves were dug up and allegedly resold has been declared a crime scene, meaning that relatives of people believed buried there will not be allowed to visit for several days, an official said Friday. Family members and police gather outside the Burr Oak Cemetery office in Alsip, Illinois, on Wednesday. \"It would be the height of irresponsibility for me to invite people in, to raise expectations and then crash them,\" Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart told reporters in a news conference held at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. He pleaded for patience, saying he hoped to reopen the 150-acre cemetery to the public in five to seven days. Dart said the scope of the investigation has broadened to include \"Babyland,\" a section of the cemetery intended for children. \"A lot of women came up to me and asked for help with Babyland,\" he said. \"To a person, every one I talked to could not find any of their children in Babyland.\" Watch sheriff discuss gruesome revelation » . A large number of grave sites \"are completely missing,\" he said, adding that he had received more than 5,000 telephone inquiries and 1,700 e-mails about the matter since the investigation began. As many as half of the complaints were about missing headstones, 25 to 30 percent were about loved ones who had been relocated, he said. He cited the experience of one family looking for 10 relatives buried there. \"They couldn't find anybody,\" he said. In addition, in some cases there are no records of burials having taken place, despite relatives' insistence that they did, he said. In other cases, records have been altered, destroyed or found in people's houses, he said. \"Our office has to investigate over 5,000 grave sites due to the vast amounts of inquiries from grieving family members,\" he said. Dart said he himself walked through the cemetery on Friday and what he saw was disturbing. \"I found bones out there,\" he said. \"I found individuals wandering aimlessly looking for their loved ones who can't find them.\" Some people told him that an entire area that used to have gravestones facing in one direction now has them facing in another direction, he said. \"This is getting bigger,\" he said. \"We don't have an end in sight ... more people have not found relatives than have found them.\" More than 2,000 families have descended on the cemetery since authorities uncovered what they say was a scheme to resell the plots, excavate the graves, dump the remains and pocket the cash. Four people face felony charges for their alleged involvement. He had said earlier this week that the number of disturbed graves was around 300, but said Friday that number was sure to rise. One family arrived on Thursday to bury a woman in a plot they had purchased and found the plot was already occupied, he said. Authorities also discovered Emmett Till's original casket in a dilapidated garage on the cemetery grounds. The casket had been replaced by a new one after Till's body was exhumed in 2005. \"There was wildlife living inside of it,\" Dart said of the old casket, found in the corner of a garage filled with lawn care equipment and other \"piles of things.\" Till was killed in August 1955 in Mississippi after the 14-year-old reportedly whistled at a white woman. His body was exhumed 50 years later as part of a renewed investigation into his death. The Chicago Tribune reported that he was reburied in a different casket. Thousands of people had viewed Till's body in the original casket in Chicago shortly after he was killed, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said at the news conference. \"His mother had the gut and grit to say that 'I want America to see what they did to my baby's body,'\" Jackson said about Till, whose body was mutilated. \"More than 100,000 saw his body lying at the church. It is said that those who saw his body were never the same again,\" he said. \"Emmett Till's lynching redefined emotions in our culture in very fundamental ways. So to see his casket in this state of desecration and neglect is very painful.\" Cemetery groundskeepers told investigators that Till's grave was not among those disturbed in the alleged resale scheme, Dart said earlier this week. Carolyn Towns, an office manager for the cemetery; and Keith Nicks, Terrance Nicks and Maurice Daley, all gravediggers, have each been charged with dismembering a human body, a felony charge for which sentences range from six to 30 years, authorities said. Steven Watkins, an attorney for Towns, said his client is innocent. The public defender's office in Cook County said it had represented the three others at the bond hearing but could not provide a statement for them. Authorities began investigating the cemetery -- where, along with Till, blues legend Dinah Washington and some Negro League baseball players are buried -- about six weeks ago after receiving a call from its owners, who said they suspected \"financial irregularities\" regarding the business, Dart said earlier this week. He said the owners are not believed to be involved in the alleged scam." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Officials say there was scheme to resell plots, excavate the graves, dump remains .\nFour people face felony charges for their alleged involvement .\nEmmett Till's original casket found in dilapidated garage on cemetery grounds .\nCemetery closed temporarily so officials can investigate ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Once-missing Virginia Tech mental health records regarding a student who killed 32 people and himself in a campus rampage were released Wednesday. Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members on April 16, 2007, then killed himself. The records cover all the interactions between Cho Seung-Hui, 23, and Virginia Tech's Cook Counseling Center during November and December 2005 -- the only times the center saw Cho, the university said, and nearly two years before his April 16, 2007, shooting spree. They were found recently at the home of Dr. Robert Miller, the center's former director. According to the university, Miller's attorney has said the records were inadvertently taken from the center when Miller left his job there more than a year before the shootings. The records detail a phone evaluation by the counseling center on November 30, 2005, and on December 12, 2005. Cho was evaluated in person following his release from a mental health facility on December 14, 2005. He was sent to the facility on a temporary detention order, the records indicate, after a female student filed a complaint with university police that Cho had been instant-messaging her and left a message on her dry erase board. The records from the facility, Carilion St. Albans, note that Cho told his suitemate he might as well kill himself because \"everybody just hates me.\" The records said Cho stayed overnight at the facility. \"Essentially, it does not appear that he had any serious intent when he made the suicidal statement,\" the records said. \"He was counseled about the need to act responsibly.\" In each of the three evaluations at the Cook Counseling Center, Cho \"explicitly denied any intent to hurt himself or others and there was no evidence to the contrary,\" Virginia Tech said in its statement. \"At the time of his last appointment, Cho was completing his fall 2005 semester exams and was scheduled to spend the holiday break with his family. He was provided with emergency contact information. \"As we know, Cho never called or returned to the Cook Counseling Center, and more than a year elapsed between the time he was evaluated by counseling center professionals and the tragic events of April 2007.\" The records also contain a December 14, 2005, e-mail to the center from a university housing official, documenting Cho's \"history of erratic behavior and counseling-based issues at the time of his referral to Carilion St. Albans.\" Cho's suitemate had notified police because he had made suicidal statements and had \"blades\" in his room, said the e-mail. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said last month the files were discovered at Miller's home in connection with a civil lawsuit, but did not elaborate. The records' absence was a mystery and a concern during the investigation, he said. The governor said his office was asking the Cho family for permission to make the records public. Cho's family agreed earlier Wednesday to the records' release. \"The family has consistently favored and urged disclosure of their son's and brother's records in the interest of advancing the investigation into the tragic events of April 16, 2007, as well as ensuring that the families of the victims have as much information as possible,\" said family attorney Bernard DiMuro in a letter to Mike Melis, Virginia assistant attorney general. \"The unavailability of pertinent counseling center records during more than two years of investigation and review has created needless uncertainty and understandable speculation that has compounded the suffering of the survivors, families and the Virginia Tech community as a whole,\" the university said in a statement. The records confirm facts already established by the panel that reviewed the incident, the university said. But \"Virginia Tech remains deeply dismayed by the prolonged unavailability of the records and looks forward to the completion of the Virginia State Police investigation into their unauthorized removal from the Cook Counseling Center.\" CNN's Eric Fiegel contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Files show dialogue between Cho Seung-Hui and VT's Cook Counseling Center .\nReport: Cho talked to suitemate about suicide because \"everybody just hates me\"\nUniversity says it was \"deeply dismayed by the prolonged unavailability\" of the files ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Cars have Global Positioning System devices to pinpoint where drivers are when they get lost, so why can't GPS be used to locate the exact position of planes when the worst happens? There is currently no way to constantly track planes as they fly over oceans. It took search and rescue teams over 30 hours to locate the wreckage of the Air France plane that crashed in the Atlantic on Monday. It appears that the aircraft's onboard GPS system was little help to rescuers in the mission. Although details of Air France flight 447's fate remain uncertain, in some air accidents, this critical time could mean the difference between life and death for any survivors. Michel Roelandt, aviation expert for Eurocontrol, a European air navigation safety organization, told CNN that nearly all modern planes are fitted with GPS navigation systems. How sophisticated those the communications and navigation systems are is down to individual airlines when they fit out their planes, an Airbus spokesperson told CNN. On board GPS systems are primarily navigation tools for the crew, and do not currently enable a constant tracking of a jet by a ground crew at all times. Planes receive a position signal, but don't transmit that back. This is not a problem when a jet is flying over land or in coastal areas, as it is tracked by radar. Over oceans radar does not work as it relies on line-of-sight tracking from a ground station. On oceanic flights a flight crew will know its exact position via GPS, but it is not able to be tracked by air traffic control. It is left to someone in the cockpit to relay information via satellite communication to air traffic control or a ground station. \"Airlines often have a contract with a private operator to provide their satellite communications. Some companies pay for it, some have free contracts,\" Roelandt said. Modern jets equipped with an Aircraft Communication, Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), like the A330-200, are also able to send automatic digital signals. These are not instigated by the crew but report automatically on the plane's systems and relay information to a receiving station. In AF447's case that was Air France's head-quarters in France. According to an Airbus spokesperson, it is up to an airline to determine how much information is sent in a data signal; it may or may not include location details. Shortly before the AF447 disappeared, its automatic system initiated a four-minute exchange of messages to Air France's maintenance computers, indicating that \"several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down,\" Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said on Monday. When the Air France Airbus A330-200's systems failed these messages would no longer have been able to be transmitted. They did relay the plane's location, but the plane continued flying for an unknown period of time, so the precise location where it went down could not be known. Once a plane loses its electronic system, the automatic data messages can no longer be sent, and in those circumstances no one on the flight deck would be able to transmit a message either. Aviation experts have stated that the idea of GPS tracking has not been part of any safety review within the aviation industry. The general consensus has been that a trained flight crew is on hand that always has the capability to be in contact with someone on the ground should an emergency arise. In the case of Air France Flight 447, it appears that the crew had no time to relay an emergency message. As well as searching for wreckage, a crashed plane can be found by pin-pointing the location of the in-flight black box recorder. Black box flight recorder devices contain flight deck data and crew voice recordings. When a plane has crashed black box recorders automatically emit a honing signal, located via radar. Emitting a regular ping for 30 days it can be picked up via radio waves, meaning there is a limit to the distance from the device search and rescue teams can be before they can pick up the signal. According to Airbus the capabilities of tracking a black box is down to the airline; satellite tracking of black box recorders is not a standard requirement. The Air France jet was equipped with a satellite-tracked black box recorder, but it is thought that depths of the ocean in the crash area are too deep for it to be located It's also possible, although unlikely, that the location of a troubled aircraft could be pinpointed by military defense satellites, experts said. Some U.S. military satellites employ heat-sensitive cameras that scan the skies for missiles and could possibly detect a plane if it were not obscured by clouds, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a public policy organization whose Web site provides news on weapons systems and the defense industry. Upgrading from radar to satelitte . The aviation industry is moving toward replacing its traditional radar-based tracking system with a satellite one that would allow air traffic control to know where a plane is at all times. However the new systems would still not enable air traffic control to track planes over remote ocean areas. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has begun implementing a system, nicknamed NextGen, in which GPS signals would transmit an aircraft's precise location to air traffic controllers via ground receivers. The system would allow planes to fly more direct routes instead of zig-zagging between radio beacons. The FAA is testing the system in pockets of the U.S. and plans to be using it by the end of the year in the Gulf of Mexico, much of which is out of radar range. The agency hopes NextGen will cover the entire country by 2013. Roelandt says a similar system will be implemented in Europe by 2015. \"It means planes will automatically transmit the GPS position to the ground and surrounding aircraft within about 150 miles,\" he said. \"In the far future the idea is to be in a free flight condition,\" where pilots have more flexibility in their routes while GPS keeps planes safely separated. In a trial last year using an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast system, two Airbus planes were able to change altitude safely while cruising over oceanic airspace. At present, airliners flying over oceans are usually not permitted to change altitude, because oceanic airspace beyond a certain distance from land cannot be controlled by radar. Controllers and pilots keep the planes on vectors, or defined highways in the sky, to maintain safe distances between aircraft. The ADS-B system is being developed internationally. But the expense of outfitting planes with GPS is dwarfed by the cost to upgrade from radar to satellite tracking of planes. According to a 2006 FAA report, it would cost $4.6 billion to change to a satellite-based system in the U.S. \"It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation,\" Roelandt said. \"If you don't put an implementing rule on this equipment, airlines won't install it as it's a costly operation for them. It is ongoing, and will be installed on European commercial airliners, but it takes time as always.\" CNN's Brandon Griggs and Emanuella Grinberg contributed to this story." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GPS on airliners can't help locate planes, as they receive but don't send signals .\nPilots know their position over an ocean but don't automatically share that data .\nBoth the U.S. and Europe are implementing GPS-based air traffic control systems ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Indonesian authorities believe two suicide bombers checked into the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta and carried out coordinated bombings Friday morning, killing themselves and at least six victims and wounding more than 50 others. A body is removed following the blasts at the Ritz-Carlton and the nearby J.W. Marriott hotels in Jakarta on Friday. It is unclear what group is behind the attacks on the Marriott and the adjacent Ritz-Carlton hotel, Indonesia's National Police Chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso said at a news conference. He warned that the death toll could rise. Four of the six victims in Jakarta's hotel bombings were foreigners, the Indonesian Healthy Ministry said Saturday. The ministry identified two of the dead as Australian, one from New Zealand and one from Singapore. Another victim was Indonesian and the sixth remained unidentified. Eight American nationals were among the wounded, according to the U.S. State Department. Investigators are also analyzing closed-circuit television footage from the Marriott that shows a man, sporting a baseball cap and pulling a wheeled suitcase, heading toward the JW Marriott Hotel's lobby-level restaurant seconds before the deadly blast. Five victims and one suicide bomber were killed at the Marriott, according to police spokesman Inspector General Nanan Soekarna. Minutes later, another suicide bomber struck the adjacent Ritz-Carlton, killing one person and the bomber. Indonesian national police confirmed that the man seen in the CCTV video, distributed by Indonesian television, is being investigated in connection with the blast. \"We are suspecting the man in the footage because the time frame matches with the time of the bombing,\" national police spokesman Nanan Soekarma said. \"It is obviously premature to confirm it right now as we will have to wait for the lab results and the investigation to conclude.\" Indonesian authorities have detained several witnesses and others for questioning, and have sent forensic evidence from the scene for testing, a spokesman for Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said. \"It's all being studied now,\" Dino Patti Djalal told CNN. Yudhoyono warned that it is still too early to determine who was behind the attacks. \"This terrorist action is thought to be the work of a terrorist group, even though it is not certain whether this is the terrorism which we are familiar with up until now,\" the recently reelected president said. See images of the aftermath » . The bombings at the two luxury hotels -- which are connected by an underground tunnel -- happened shortly before 8 a.m. (9 p.m. Thursday ET), first at the Marriott and then 10 minutes later at the Ritz-Carlton, police officials said. Both blasts struck the hotels' restaurants and several prominent international business leaders were among the casualties. Watch footage of the scene of the blasts » . An unexploded bomb was found on the Marriott Hotel's 18th floor where several suspects believed to be linked to the bombings were staying, Hendarso said. Indonesian investigators believe the bombers checked into the Marriott on Wednesday and were scheduled to check out on Friday, he added. It is unclear how they got around the \"robust security\" at the hotels, according to Alan Orlob, security chief for Marriott Hotels. Ritz-Carlton is a subsidiary of Marriott. Orlob said there had been no indication of any \"immediate threat in Jakarta.\" Watch Orlob describe security measures » . Security has been extremely high at the Marriott hotel in Jakarta since it was struck by a car bombing in August 2003 that killed 12 people. Suspicion immediately fell on Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the Islamist terrorist network with ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network that was tied to the 2003 Marriott attack and the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed more than 200 people, mostly foreign tourists. Hendarso said the type of explosives found were similar to those found in a recent raid on a home in West Java that was linked to Noordin Top, a suspected leader of a small JI splinter group that espouses the use of large-scale terror attacks to push for the establishment of Islamic states in the region. So far, there has been no claim of responsibility for the latest attack. Al Jazeera English reported that it was in touch with a JI member who denied any involvement in Friday's hotel bombings. Watch analysts discuss potential suspects » . The fatalities include New Zealand national Timothy David McKay, 60, according to Indonesia's state-run Antara New Agency. McKay -- the CEO of Holcim Indonesia, a cement company -- was at the hotel for a breakfast meeting with fellow prominent business leaders, the Jakarta Post reported. Indonesian media also reported that two directors of Freeport Indonesia, the largest copper and gold mining company in Indonesia, were wounded in the attacks on the two hotels. English soccer team Manchester United canceled its trip to Indonesia after the bombing. It had been scheduled to check into the Ritz-Carlton on Sunday. Hotel guests said the first blast at the Marriott shook the building. The second blast at the Ritz-Carlton apparently struck the hotel restaurant on the second floor, according to witnesses. The force of the blast blew out the windows on the Ritz-Carlton's second floor. \"The shocking part was entering the lobby, where the glass at the front of the hotel was all blown out and blood was spattered across the floor, but most people were leaving calmly,\" hotel guest Don Hammer said. Greg Woolstencroft said he had just walked past the hotels to his nearby apartment when he heard an explosion. \"I looked out my window and I saw a huge cloud of brownish smoke go up,\" he told CNN in a telephone interview. \"I grabbed my iPhone to go downstairs ... and then the second bomb went off at the Ritz-Carlton, so I then ran around to the Ritz-Carlton and I was able to find that there had been a massive bomb that went off in this ... restaurant area and the explosion had blown out both sides of the hotel.\" Woolstencroft said he saw a body that \"looked like someone who had been a suicide bomber or someone who had been very, very close to the explosion.\" The chief technology officer for a television station said he had lived at the Ritz for a year before moving to his nearby apartment, and had been impressed by the facility's security. \"I just don't know how someone could get in there with a bomb, given the level of security and screening that people have to go through,\" he said, citing armed guards at checkpoints and thorough searches of people, bags and vehicles. CNN's Kathy Quiano and Andy Saputra in Jakarta, Indonesia contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Police say bombers had earlier checked into Marriott hotel .\nDeath toll in bomb attacks now six with at least 50 injured .\nPolice defuse bomb found on 18th floor of JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta .\nIndonesian president: Too early to determine who was behind the attacks ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LONDON, England (CNN) -- A high-pitched device used to combat anti-social behavior among young people has been called \"unfair\" by children's campaigners in England. \"The Mosquito\" has been used to combat anti-social behavior among young people across England . The Children's Commissioner for England, who oversees children's rights, has called for a ban on the ultra-sonic gadget, known as \"The Mosquito,\" which disperses young people by emitting sharp, piercing sounds. The device causes discomfort to younger ears by exploiting their ability to hear very high frequencies -- a power which declines once they reach their 20s. But human rights groups say the machine infringes civil rights and creates a divide between young and old. Launching the \"Buzz Off\" campaign, England's Children's Commissioner Al Aynsley-Green said: \"I have spoken to many children and young people from all over England who have been deeply affected by ultra-sonic teenage deterrents.\" Aynsley-Green said about 3,500 of the devices are in use across England to split up gatherings of youth in areas such as parks and shops. \"These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving,\" he added. Youth leaders backed the campaign, adding that The Mosquito fails to address the root problems of anti-social behavior among youths -- and may even push teenagers to congregate in unsafe areas. \"Police, local authorities, and business instead should work collectively with young people and their communities to address the underlying causes of anti-social behavior in areas that cause concern,\" said Fiona Blacke, chief executive of the National Youth Agency, a government-funded group that works with young people on social development. The Mosquito was invented by Howard Stapleton, from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, and is manufactured by Compound Security Systems. The company describes The Mosquito as an \"ultrasonic teenage deterrent\" and \"the most effective tool in our fight against anti social behavior.\" It says the device has a range of 15 to 20 meters and teenagers are \"acutely aware of The Mosquito and usually move away from an area within an average of 8 to 10 minutes.\" The company says The Mosquito has proved popular with shop keepers who buy it to move along gatherings of teenagers and anti-social youths. It could not be contacted for a response to criticism of the deterrent. Railway companies have also placed the device to discourage youths from spraying graffiti on trains and station walls, Compound Security said. The controversial gadget was first used by shopkeeper Robert Gough, from South Wales. He told The Times newspaper: \"Either someone has come along and wiped them off the face of the earth, or it's working.\" However, Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: \"What type of society uses a low-level sonic weapon on its children? Imagine the outcry if a device was introduced that caused blanket discomfort to people of one race or gender, rather than to our kids. \"The Mosquito has no place in a country that values its children and seeks to instill them with dignity and respect.\" E-mail to a friend ." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Campaigners want to ban ultra-sonic device used against young people .\n\"The Mosquito\" emits sharp sounds that can only be heard by under 20s .\nAbout 3,500 of the devices are used in England to disperse young people .\nHuman rights groups say they create divide between young and old ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "BRYCEVILLE, Florida (CNN) -- Michael Ratley was known as a hero. Michael Ratley will spend the rest of his life in jail, without parole, for killing his wife with a hammer. In December 2006, Ratley carried his 2-week-old son, Aiden, and his wife, Effie Ratley, 29, from the flames as fire engulfed their Bryceville, Florida, trailer. Days after the fire, a teary-eyed Ratley told local media that love drove him to save their lives. \"I might have lost everything physical, but I've still got my two most precious things,\" Michael Ratley told CNN affiliate WJXT-TV at the time. A month later, Effie Ratley was dead, bludgeoned with a hammer in a bedroom of her in-laws' home, not far from the trailer's ashes on a dirt road marked only with a black arrow on a wooden sign. The man who was hailed as a hero for saving his wife was convicted in July of murdering her. On Tuesday, a Nassau County Court jury in Yulee, Florida, said he should spend the rest of his life in prison for the crime. Circuit Judge Robert Foster sentenced the 25-year-old to life without possibility of parole. What changed a heroic husband into a hammer-wielding wife killer? Hero gets life for murder » . During the trial, no motive was offered. On January 27, 2007, with his parents downstairs watching TV with the door shut and his infant son in the other room, prosecutors said, Ratley put on a pair of thick black gloves, grabbed a heavy-duty hammer and went into the bedroom where his wife was lying down after taking some medication. He lifted the hammer and \"savagely and brutally beat her on the head over and over\" -- at least seven times, said Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda. During the trial, Ratley said he had nothing to do with the slaying. His defense lawyers argued that an intruder, who Ratley alleged attacked him in the barn the night before, was the culprit. But prosecutors said that was part of Ratley's plan, setting up for a scenario in which an intruder killed his wife by cutting the wire on their window. Testifying on Tuesday, his friends and family spoke of him as a church-going, gentle man who always went out of his way to help others -- the elderly at a nursing home, a neighbor whose husband was slain and sick family members. \"He has always been a caring, nonviolent person,\" said his mother, Cindy Ratley. \"He'd give you the shirt off his back.\" Cindy Ratley said it had been her dream to have her close-knit family living together on her secluded 20 acres. Witnesses for Ratley tried in court to give a picture of the son, grandson, and friend they said he had always been, with the defense calling the murder a \"single, horrible snapshot\" in Ratley's overwhelmingly positive life. They urged the jury to give Ratley's son a chance to know his father, one who cares and loves deeply for him, they said. As his mother and others left the witness stand in the packed and divided courtroom, they each told Ratley they stood behind him and loved him. As they walked back to sit down, many mouthed, \"I love you.\" The prosecutors argued Ratley's character couldn't be clearer, based on his actions. \"Unfortunately, the best example we have of his character is in what he did. This shows his best character,\" de la Rionda said, showing the jurors gruesome photos of Effie Ratley's injuries. De la Rionda disputed the description of Ratley as a wonderful father. \"This loving father had no problem whatsoever -- a short distance from his son -- exterminating the life of his son's mother,\" he said. Michael Ratley met Effie Williams when she was having car trouble. He offered to buy a new tire for her and change it. Effie Ratley, who enjoyed listening to '50s music and watching black-and-white movies, was thrilled when she and her husband had their baby, her family told the court Tuesday. \"Her son was her pride and joy,\" said her stepmother, Joy Williams, wearing a purple and pink \"Justice for Effie\" bracelet. \"But she never knew more than six weeks of her motherhood dreams.\" By all accounts, the Ratleys' relationship had its rocky points. They were married, separated and remarried. Michael Ratley's family said that the first time the couple got married, they were worried he wasn't mature enough, that he needed to grow up, and they said the couple definitely had growing pains. \"He didn't know if he could love her enough, because he only wanted the best for her,\" Donna Stanley said, talking about her nephew. Effie Ratley's father, Duane Williams, cried on the stand Tuesday as he talked about his only daughter. His voice quivered as he tried to explain how he feels her loss each day. \"She's the first thing I think about in the morning when I wake up,\" he said, his voice wavering. \"And the last thing before I go to bed.\" Neither Effie or Michael Ratley's families wanted to speak about the sentencing after the hearing, but de la Rionda said Effie's family was pleased with the result. \"They were always hoping for [the] death [penalty], but they're happy he's going to get life and he's not going to be able to get out,\" de le Rionda said. \"He's going to die in prison.\" While the announcement of the sentence, which spared him from death, was greeted with a pronounced \"Yes!\" from Michael Ratley's family inside court, the gravity of the situation seemed to hit during a short recess. His grandmother began sobbing. Family members comforted her until Cindy Ratley sat down next to her. The two cried and embraced for a couple of minutes. Michael Ratley looked over, saw his grandmother upset, and he, too, began to cry." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Michael Ratley, 25, sentenced to life without parole for murdering wife .\nProsecutors: Ratley beat wife with hammer four weeks after rescuing her from fire .\nFamily says Ratley was gentle man; attorneys call murder \"single, horrible snapshot\"\nEffie Ratley's family recall her spirit, love for newborn son ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- House Republicans on Wednesday presented what they called a \"sorely needed\" alternative to Democrats' proposals to overhaul health care. Rep. Eric Cantor says Republicans are drafting a plan to ensure all Americans have access to affordable coverage. Republicans want to make sure all Americans have access to affordable coverage, Rep. Eric Cantor, the House minority whip, said Wednesday. \"We do so by making sure we keep down costs and incorporate the ability for folks to pool together to access lower costs, to bring private sector into the game and keep government out,\" Cantor said. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have detailed how they would pay for their proposals. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, said his party's plan will cost \"far less\" than that of the Democrats and \"provide better results for the American people.\" Rep. Dave Camp, R-Michigan, who co-authored the GOP plan, said it's important to make sure the bill is one with a \"common-sense approach.\" \"We are not going to have a bill that is larger than the GDP [gross domestic product] of most countries, which is what we are beginning to see roll out,\" said Camp, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. \"Clearly, if we move forward and this bill is on the floor, we are going to have to have a bill that is paid for and that's going to depend on what the scores come back.\" A score is a preliminary estimate of the cost of proposed legislation. A preliminary review by the Congressional Budget Office of a plan being drawn up in the Senate found it would cost about $1 trillion over 10 years to extend health insurance to 16 million people who otherwise would not be covered, about a third of the roughly 45 million now uninsured. Camp said that the House Republican proposal calls for refundable tax credits for lower-income Americans. But Camp and Republicans have not determined key details for their proposal, including the amount of those tax credits or who precisely could be eligible. House Republicans on Wednesday planned to release a two-page summary of Camp's proposal, which CNN Radio obtained. Some highlights include: . This Republican alternative bill also contains several health care ideas that are increasingly championed by both parties. This House Republican plan comes a day after fellow Republican Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois and other moderates in the so-called Tuesday Group released their proposal, which spelled out many of the same ideas as the Camp bill. Kirk contends his plan is less partisan but said he supports Camp's effort. CNN's Lisa Desjardins contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "NEW: Rep. Eric Cantor says plan keeps \"government out\" of health care market .\nHouse Republicans plan to release two-page summary of health care bill .\nPlan's author says it's important bill have \"common-sense approach\"\nNeither Democrats nor Republicans have detailed how they would pay for proposals ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- It's a high-tech, high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse. Ryan Kelly, a Web designer from London, England, says his software was used to attack an Iranian Web site. As the Iranian government seeks to crack down on the online networks being used by protesters who question the nation's election results, a community of Net-savvy users -- both inside and outside the country -- are working to try to stay one step ahead. \"To the Iranian government hackers who keep attacking the places they see as a threat, you are wasting your time,\" wrote one anonymous poster to a message board loaded with eyewitness accounts of violence, plans for protests and notices about people reported missing or dead. \"You are completely outnumbered. There are thousands of Iranians who want to be free and people who support them for every one of you there is.\" That site, with a server in California, was unable to be accessed for a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon. The error could have been caused by too many people trying to access the site at the same time. The same error would be caused by a so-called \"denial of service\" attack -- using a program to flood a site with thousands of hits in a short time. Access to networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and photography site Flickr have been blocked in Iran, where the government also has been accused of blocking text-messaging, launching denial of service attacks and spreading misinformation to protest communities online. Watch CNN's Octavia Nasr explain how voices of dissent are getting out » . But Web users have been able to get around those roadblocks by the thousands, thanks to Internet proxies -- Web servers set up in other countries that allow Iranians to hide their computer's Internet Protocol address from censors within the country. \"I think the filters and the restrictions have been going on for so long in Iran that the experienced people are already prepared for this,\" said Jon Pincus, a former Microsoft project manager and digital activist who works on projects promoting online freedom. The networking sites have been crucial in sharing information among protesters. Equally important, they've helped spread word to news organizations now barred from covering massive anti-government demonstrations and the violence that reportedly has led to the deaths of an untold number of demonstrators. Many blogs, message boards and Web pages sharing information from inside Iran are urging users to log on through programs such as Tor, a free Web page designed to allow users to surf the Web and communicate with each other anonymously. The Web page bounces a user's information through relays -- other networks provided by volunteers all over the world -- preventing someone monitoring an Internet connection from seeing what sites are visited on that connection. The measures haven't always been successful. In Twitter posts and on various Web sites, protesters in Iran on Wednesday described having their online access shut down. Pincus compared it to Chinese dissidents trying to crack their country's stringent rules for Internet use. iReport: Share your photos, video and stories from Iran . \"Word continues to get through, but basically it's very, very difficult,\" Pincus said \"Many people who try are caught.\" In Iran, \"there's been a noticeable decline already in the amount of photos and video that's coming down,\" he said. \"That says that, thus far, the government is succeeding.\" Early Thursday morning, a Twitter user with a new account and who was not following anyone else on the site was posting false information -- including a report that opposition candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi had conceded the election and that a demonstration had been canceled because government tanks were in the street. The Twitter user posted the phone number of a \"safe house\" and urged other demonstrators to call it. Other users quickly began spreading word that they think the user is a government agent. But the fight is ever-changing and moving on, proponents said. On Twitter, users all over the world were changing their personal information and time-zone settings to make it appear they live in Iran. It's an effort, they said, to provide cover for people really posting in the country. \"Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches,\" read a message on a Web page titled \"Cyber War Guide for Beginners.\" \"If we all become 'Iranians' it becomes much harder to find them.\" Kevin Arth, 40, of Reno, Nevada, is one of the Twitter users who took up the call. \"I don't know how it started,\" said Arth, who is pursuing a degree in computer science. \"I was monitoring things that were going on at Twitter and at some point somebody said, 'Here's what we're doing.' \" Arth said he's not sure how effective the technique is -- there are other ways for Iran's government to track Internet users -- but for him it's a show of support as much as anything. \"It's easier to fight a battle when you know you've got support behind you,\" he said. And at least some members of the community are taking the fight to Iran's government and its supporters -- using some of the same online scrambling techniques they believe are being used against them. Ryan Kelly, a Web designer from London, England, said his free software meant to refresh pages on sports and auction Web sites automatically appears to have been used to attack Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Web site. Watch how Kelly's software works » . He received an anonymous e-mail asking him to take his site down Tuesday, he said. He then discovered traffic at his site had risen from a typical 700 visits a day to 41,000 on Monday. \"I suppose I am taking sides because I've put the site back up,\" he told CNN. \"But I have no problems with it being used in this way.\" CNN's Peter Wilkinson in London contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Iranian government trying to stop Internet communication from protesters .\nCommunity of Net-savvy users are working to try to stay online .\nIranians getting help from people around the world with foreign servers .\nTwitter users change settings to appear they're in Iran to give Iranians cover ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Need some social etiquette advice for the digital age? Brad Pitt's got your back in this month's cover story from Wired Magazine. In Wired's new cover story, Brad Pitt offers etiquette for the digital age. So Brad, should people talk on the phone while they're using the restroom? \"No, you can't talk on the phone!\" Pitt tells the magazine. \"Do you want the guy next to you to hear your entire conversation? \"That's why you should only text in the bathroom. Just be sure you don't hit the wrong button and end up putting a photo of your junk on Twitter. Trust me, you don't want those followers.\" Watch a CNN video about cell phone etiquette » . Humor covers for Pitt's lack of tech credentials as the Hollywood hunk and star of Quentin Tarantino's new film, \"Inglourious Basterds\" offers up a range of tongue-in-cheek advice for Wired readers. He touches on subjects ranging from managing your online persona to looking at porn on your work computer. Wired says Pitt approached the magazine with ideas for the story. The magazine, which is owned by Conde Nast and is a CNN.com content partner, collaborated with Pitt and contributing photographer Dan Winters to create the article. \"How to Behave: New Rules for Highly Evolved Humans\" hits newsstands July 21. Wired said in an e-mail that the piece is a re-think of the celebrity magazine profile. On the cover, a photo shows Pitt wearing a Bluetooth device in his ear. \"Rule No. 52: Ditch the headset. He can barely pull it off -- and you are not him,\" a blurb on the magazine front says. Most of the article is delivered in a spoof question-answer format. Pitt contributes several answers, as do regular Wired writers. One question asks if a person who exaggerated his or her salary on an online dating profile should confess. \"Hell no,\" Pitt writes. \"Everyone lies online. In fact, readers expect you to lie. If you don't, they'll think you make less than you actually do. So the only way to tell the truth is to lie.\" A question about viewing pornography at work is paired with a photo of Pitt scanning a copy of Hustler magazine at an office desk. A half-eaten doughnut sits on the table in front of him. \"Don't just look at it at work, bring in your old porn mags and scan them there!\" Pitt writes in the magazine. \"It's like converting your vinyl to MP3s. Fill up your hard drive, and when you need a break from spreadsheets, just open a favorite pictorial.\" Pitt's OK with porn, but he's less understanding of people who want to answer urgent cell phone calls during movies. \"It may be a brief interruption -- just a few seconds -- but what if someone sitting near you is trying to make a decent bootleg? Did you ever think of that? Now all those street-corner copies are permanently defiled by your so-called 'emergency,' \" he writes. \"Don't be so damn selfish.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Wired Magazine's cover story features spoof tech advice from Brad Pitt .\nThe Hollywood hunk is promoting his new movie, \"Inglourious Basterds\"\nPitt says talking on the phone at the urinal is rude; you should text instead .\nPitt: Online communication is based on lies: \"The only way to tell the truth is to lie\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Security remains a top concern, as Afghanistan holds its second-ever presidential election Thursday, prompting the government to ask for a ban on media coverage of violence. An Afghan police officer walks near a bank in Kabul where an armed robbery ended in a gunbattle. Afghanistan's government has ordered the media to refrain from covering possible attacks on election day in an effort to \"ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people.\" \"If anybody broadcasts or gives news about any movements or activities of terrorists, domestic media offices will be closed, and foreigners will be kicked out of the country,\" according to a statement from Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Zahir Faqiri. He said the order is in line with Afghanistan's constitution, which allows for such mandates \"in exceptional situations\" to protect \"national interest and national security.\" Escalating violence in the capital, Kabul, this week has made some Afghans think twice about whether to venture out to vote. \"If we are not at peace, why should we vote, who should we vote for?\" asked Ferishta, 21, who last weekend lay in a blood-soaked shirt and was connected to an intravenous drip after a suicide bombing. But at least one independent news agency refused to heed a blackout on reports of violence. Restricting media freedoms has no basis in the Afghan constitution, said the Kabul-based Pajhwok News Agency. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul insisted that press freedoms are necessary to ensure credible elections. \"While we recognize the sovereign rights of the Afghan government and note their intention to encourage Afghans to turn out and vote, we believe that free media reporting is directly linked to the credibility of the elections and continue to support the freedom of the press and responsible reporting,\" spokeswoman Fleur Cowan said in an e-mail. On the eve of the election, roadside bombs killed three Afghan election workers in the southern province of Kandahar, and four others were killed Tuesday in the northern province of Badakshan, Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor said. Amid the violence, the candidates wrapped up last-minute campaigning with the hope that the elections can showcase their country's fledgling democracy. \"We're at a moment of truth,\" said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, an independent advisory and analysis organization. An incumbent president and about 40 challengers, including two women, are on the ballot, vying for the votes of what the election commission says are an estimated 17 million registered Afghans against a backdrop of war, graft, poverty and illiteracy. More than 3,000 donkeys, 3,000 cars and three helicopters will traverse harsh terrain to carry voting materials to remote polling stations, the election commission says. And 30 observer groups, domestic and international, will be on hand to help guard against fraud, it says. At the heart of every vote will be the two biggest impediments to progress in one of the poorest nations in the world: stifling corruption and an increasingly bloody Taliban insurgency. International donors are helping pay for the $223 million electoral undertaking, and hundreds of U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers have moved into strife-torn southern Afghanistan to protect voters against possible Taliban attacks. The top U.S. envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, expressed optimism that Thursday's vote would be Afghanistan's moment to shine. It's tough to organize elections during a war, he said, but the reality is that violence during elections is commonplace in many parts of the world. \"Afghanistan has never had a contested election,\" Holbrooke said. \"So this is a remarkable experiment in democracy and something that Afghanistan needs to give legitimacy to the new government.\" That legitimacy has become a key issue in the campaign. Frontrunner President Hamid Karzai's chief challengers -- former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah -- have both lashed out at the incumbent for failing to rein in corruption. In its annual global corruption perception index in 2008, Transparency International ranked Afghanistan 176 out of 180 countries and said graft is \"a major factor impeding the country's stability and future growth.\" Ghani said the most significant challenge Afghanistan's next president will face is earning back the trust of the people. \"This government has lost it,\" he said in a recent interview. \"There is no sense of trust, not only in the current leadership but in the political class as such. And in the capacity of the state or the international community to improve the lot of our people.\" Ghani characterized Karzai as a \"very poor manager\" who failed to deal with pressing issues and create any sense of momentum for the nation moving forward. As a guest on CNN's \"Fareed Zakaria GPS\" this month, Ghani said Afghanistan's corruption had metastasized into a cancer that was \"eating through the society.\" Abdullah argued that people's dissatisfaction with the Karzai government has helped strengthen the insurgency. \"There is no doubt there is a hard-core element in it,\" he said. \"But there are thousands of people under the same brand, Taliban, [who] have joined the insurgency because of other reasons.\" The insurgents are filling a vacuum left by Afghanistan's Western-backed government, which foreign diplomats and military commanders concede suffers from nepotism, corruption and predatory practices. During a recent political debate, Karzai admitted that corruption was a problem but offered no specific cures. He also has been blamed for what has become the bloodiest summer since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Most polls, however, show Karzai with a commanding lead. Latifa, a Kabul housewife, said she was pleased with Karzai's stewardship and would vote for him. \"Like raising a child for seven years, in seven years he has helped our Kabul, our Afghanistan, stand on its own two feet,\" she said. \"We didn't know an election before; we hadn't seen a parliament.\" But can a nation as troubled as Afghanistan carry out fair and free elections? Some observers of Afghanistan and human rights activists have voiced their doubts. Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, said Thursday's election will be the most difficult he has encountered in his life. Besides the violence and corruption, a weak infrastructure and a high illiteracy rate will add to election woes, he said. The problems were reflected in a new Gallup Poll that found fewer than one in four voting-age Afghans are confident the election will be fair and transparent. Voting in Afghanistan, Eide said, is not yet the kind of democratic expression understood in the West. \"If you look at the well-established democracies in the West, for instance, that's not possible under these circumstances,\" he said. \"But what my objective is that we have credible, inclusive elections where the result will be accepted by the people. That is our level of ambition, and I think we will achieve that.\" Eide said that a significant number of polling stations in Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni and Wardak provinces will not be able to open for security reasons. He said ballots ought to be counted at the polling center itself instead of transporting them elsewhere and increasing the possibility of fraud, encountered in the last election in 2004. Of the 4.6 million new registered voters, 39 percent are women. So thousands of women had to be employed to search burqa-clad female voters at polling places. Human Rights Watch, however, said this week that the recruitment drive for women began too late and as a result, not enough women will be available for security checks. \"Women voters have been badly let down by their government and its international backers,\" said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. Women's votes will be closely watched in Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime stripped women of equal rights and education, essentially hurtling them back to the Stone Age. But despite the violence, despite the threats from the Taliban to disrupt the voting, enthusiasm filled the air this week. A campaign rally resembled more a rock concert than a political event in Afghanistan, as Kabul stadium transformed into a sea of blue, Abdullah's campaign color. Supporters hoisted banners and sported T-shirts emblazoned with Abdullah's face. Not old enough to vote, another young woman named Ferishta -- this one 15 years old and a beauty school student -- attended a rally for Ghani with many of her classmates. \"We want a president who is peaceful and caring,\" she said. \"We don't want any more bombs. In these bombs, so many Afghans have died, one person's son, one person's child.\" But no one can predict whether abounding energy will translate into high turnout. Not in a war-ravaged nation. Not when bombs were still exploding just hours before balloting was to begin. CNN's Atia Abawi, Ivan Watson, Kevin Flower and Moni Basu contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Afghan media blackout called amid fresh violence in Kabul .\nSeven Afghan election workers killed by roadside bombs .\nCorruption, insurgency expected to be voters' top issues .\nPresident faces major challenges from two of his former ministers ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- You don't have to tell the Reverend J. Peyton that these are hard times in Indiana. He's been seeing it for years. The Reverend J. Peyton leads the Big Damn Band in playing the blues. Even down south in rural Brown County, which the country-blues guitarist and his Big Damn Band call home, the struggles on \"Main Street\" are more than just a political catchphrase. They're a reality. The Rev, as he likes to be called, is well aware of the hardships elsewhere in his state, too. In the northern Indiana county of Elkhart, where President Obama held a highly publicized town hall meeting to discuss the economy and his stimulus package, the unemployment rate has more than tripled over the past year to almost 19 percent -- more than double the national average. \"The writing's been on the wall for a long time,\" says The Rev. \"To me, this isn't anything new. It's new that people are covering it -- it's new that it's on the news.\" The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band, made up of The Rev, his wife Breezy on washboard and his brother Jayme on drums, has been touring the country almost nonstop for several years, and they've had a chance to see the harsh realities of the American dream up close. They've made their personal struggles, their family's setbacks and stories from people they meet into lyrical fodder -- and despite the grim subject matter, put on an enthusiastically upbeat, memorable performance in each town they play. Watch the Big Damn Band perform \"Worn Out Shoe\" » . \"We don't take it lightly,\" The Rev says. \"I just hope that when people come to the show, we're able to make them feel a lot of different things -- make 'em laugh with us and make 'em hurt with us.\" It's a tradition as old as the blues. The Rev says on the band's Web site, \"I feel like I got to directly be involved in a song. Maybe if I played a different genre of music I'd feel like I could get away with [making stuff up], but this style of music is too honest; you can't lie to people, because they'll see right through it.\" For The Rev, part of being brutally honest also means keeping it simple, allowing listeners to be engaged with the music without having to search for hidden meaning. Among the songs from the band's latest album, \"The Whole Fam Damnily,\" are \"Can't Pay the Bill,\" \"The Creek's Are All Bad\" and \"Walmart Killed the Country Store.\" The band gets its ideas from personal experience, says The Rev. \"I ain't got cable where I live,\" he says. \"I stay up on current events as well as I can, but I don't really draw from newspapers. I draw from my family and friends.\" Reviewers have praised the work. \"The band bring to their retro-fabricated rootsy Americana an utterly gripping compulsion,\" wrote the (UK) Independent's Andy Gill, giving \"The Whole Fam Damnily\" four out of five stars. The Big Damn Band is also the cover story in the April/May issue of Blues Review magazine. What the songs purposefully lack in lyrical flair is made up in sparkling musicianship. The Rev picks his way across old standard-tuned National resonators and acoustic guitars, adding a little slide here and there; Breezy rattles away with metal-tipped baseball batting gloves and washboard, while Jayme keeps rhythm on a rather modest drum set, highlighted by a 5-gallon pickle bucket. It's simple, heartfelt country blues at its best, played by a family that revels in its blood ties. And that's good enough for The Rev. \"You get by through things that don't cost much, like music, like laughter, like food. You know, those are the things that I think get you by.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band is an Indiana-based blues group .\nSong titles include \"Walmart Killed the Country Store\"\nThe Rev: Band wants to \"make 'em laugh with us and make 'em hurt with us\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Elvis Presley. Marilyn Monroe. Jim Morrison. Officials won't say where Michael Jackson was buried, but family gathered at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Their graves are public shrines for fans and followers. Countless people from all over the world make pilgrimages to their burial sites, hoping to draw close to those they adored from afar. Now Michael Jackson's gravesite will become the next holy grail. A private gathering for the pop icon was held Tuesday at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California. Afterward, his casket was taken to the public memorial service at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. But it remains unclear whether his body has been interred -- or where. Officials at Forest Lawn won't disclose where Jackson's body is being buried. If his final resting place is at Forest Lawn, fans who wish to visit will have to overcome the funeral company's stringent security patrols. A Los Angeles Police Department official told CNN that the force hoped Jackson would be buried outside of its jurisdiction for fear officers might be assigned to protect the grave for months. There has been some speculation that Jackson's body will eventually be moved to Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County, California. But that would require the family to obtain zoning exemptions and settle legal disputes, which could take years. Jackson retained only a small share of ownership in the ranch. If a public memorial were created at Neverland -- or anywhere -- it might easily surpass the tombs of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley as the most-visited gravesite. \"If it gets moved somewhere more public, I think a lot of people will come visit,\" said Steve Goldstein, author of L.A.'s Gravesite Companion: Where the VIP's RIP. \"He'll probably take over as the most visited grave site over Marilyn.\" Fame follows celebrities in life and in death. \"There's always a fascination with celebrities, but it's rude to stalk people and sit outside their houses,\" says Jim Tipton, founder of findagrave.com, a site that lists the grave records of more than 34 million celebrities and ordinary citizens. \"But once they are interred into the ground, anyone who wants to go can go.\" Tipton's fascination with locating earthly remains began 15 years ago, when he saw mobster Al Capone's grave in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois. He and many others who are avid about visiting celebrity and historical graves dub themselves \"grave hunters.\" They seek the dead for various reasons. Some go out of simple curiosity. Others are history lovers. Many are fans who deeply admired the stars. Some say they feel a connection to the celebrities by standing beside their graves. At Elvis Presley's Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, guests visiting the grave can stay at the retro Heartbreak Hotel and visit the museum to learn more about the King of Rock and Roll. Westwood Memorial Park and Cemetery in Los Angeles houses Hollywood notables including sex symbol Marilyn Monroe and comic Rodney Dangerfield. The most recent celebrity to be buried there is actress Farrah Fawcett, who died of cancer last month. Visitors can access the cemetery easily, and even tour buses drop by. \"I'm a product of that era, of Charlie's Angels,\" said Jayne Osborne, a self-proclaimed grave hunter who visited Fawcett's grave a week ago. The 48-year-old education administrator began searching for celebrity graves in the early 1970s. Since then, she's visited hundreds of celebrity resting places in Southern California. \"I wanted to pay my respect.\" At Westwood, the most popular grave site remains Monroe's. Fans often decorate her grave with flowers and cards. Her headstone is slightly darker than the others from so many fans touching it, grave hunters say. In Père-Lachaise, the largest cemetery in Paris, France, American singer Jim Morrison's grave is tattooed with graffiti and artwork. Morrison fans like to leave candles, poems and gifts as tokens of appreciation. At one point, fans were so rowdy that a stone block was put in place in an attempt to seal the grave from fans trying to unearth it. After unsuccessful attempts by French authorities to move the tomb to another site, security officers were placed at the grave. Similar trouble plagued Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon, Georgia, where members of the Allman Brothers Band were buried in the early 1970s. Thousands of fans journeyed to visit the graves and party there, leaving behind cigarette butts and empty alcohol bottles. Relatives fought to have an iron fence erected around the graves. Some celebrity graves prove tempting to visitors, like that of heartthrob actor James Dean. His headstone in a public cemetery in Fairmount, Indiana, has been stolen twice. Forest Lawn Memorial Park remains one of the most exclusive Hollywood burial sites. The staff is tight lipped, refusing to release the whereabouts of anyone buried there, except to family members. Security cars constantly patrol the grounds. \"We don't advocate or promote any visitation out of respect for the privacy of the family,\" said William Martin, a spokesman for company. Company officials wouldn't say whether Jackson's body was, or could be, tucked into one of the cemetery's locked gardens where celebrities like Humphrey Bogart, Jean Harlow and Sammy Davis Jr. are laid to rest. If Jackson is buried in Forest Lawn, that won't stop fans and grave hunters from trying to sneak in, says Karen Fogarty, a paralegal from the San Fernando Valley area in California and an occasional celebrity grave hunter. \"It's going to keep Forest Lawn on their toes,\" she said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Celebrities' graves become public shrines for fans and followers .\nGrave hunters say people will try visit Michael Jackson's burial site .\nForest Lawn Memorial Park employees won't say whether Jackson's body is there .\nFuneral company has stringent security patrols." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "BUNNELL, Florida (CNN) -- Faith Coleman had no health insurance when she learned she had cancer, but she describes her battle with the illness as \"one of the absolute greatest blessings\" of her life. Faith Coleman's ordeal as an uninsured cancer patient drove her to help others without health insurance. \"Having kidney cancer was one of the best things that ever happened to me ... because I can truly empathize with patients,\" said Coleman, 54. That compassion inspired Coleman to open a free clinic in her Florida community to help other uninsured people in need of medical care. In July 2003, Coleman, a nurse practitioner, learned she had a malignant tumor growing on her right kidney. But as a contract worker for several doctors, she did not receive health insurance. Coleman's treatment totaled about $35,000, and she was forced to take out a mortgage on her house to help pay for it. \"I [fell] through the crack ... and I [had] a great job and a good education,\" said Coleman, a mother of six. Realizing that her financial and health woes were not unique, Coleman -- now in remission -- became determined to help those in similar situations access medical treatment. \"I have been given another chance, and I felt that it was important for me to make a difference and to help other people,\" she said. So after her recovery in 2004, Coleman approached Dr. John Canakaris. The local physician with 60 years of experience had been treating the indigent population for years. Canakaris was eager to reach more patients in need. The two worked together to establish the Flagler County Free Clinic in Bunnell, Florida, which provides medical care for the uninsured. It has treated more than 6,700 patients. The clinic opened its doors in February 2005, with eight volunteers treating eight patients. Since then, it has expanded to 120 volunteers who see about 80 patients every other weekend. Coleman said she's seen an increase in the number of patients at the clinic, which serves people who meet federal poverty guidelines. \"If you see 100 cars in the parking lot, that's us!\" Coleman said, describing how she tells people the way to find the clinic. \"We have what I call 'controlled chaos.' It's just busy, busy, busy, go, go, go.\" Watch the \"controlled chaos\" at the clinic » . Health insurance: 'Nebulous, fairy-like thing' Flagler County has a 15.5 percent unemployment rate -- the highest in Florida -- according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Living without medical insurance often is the only way for some local struggling families to make ends meet, Coleman said. \"When your health insurance [premium] is the same or more than your mortgage payment on your home, which one do you think they're going to choose?\" Coleman asked. \"They have to live. They have to eat. Insurance becomes the nebulous fairy-like thing that's flying around out here. It would be nice to have because it's silver and shiny and pretty, but it's too expensive to hold on to. So it has to go,\" she said. The clinic, which operates out of a building donated by Canakaris and other doctors for use on the weekends, is not affiliated with any hospitals, Coleman said. The local Rotary Club, churches and private contributions help fund the operation. In addition, physicians volunteer to see patients recommended by the clinic, and an imaging center donates two X-rays and two CAT scans per month. Coleman says she and her team generally treat common illnesses like diabetes, hypertension and other chronic diseases, but adds \"we've also found a lot of cancers.\" Many diagnoses have led to life-saving treatments. Watch Coleman interact with patients at her clinic » . \"I had this lump growing in my throat on the right side and it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and I didn't have any insurance,\" said Franklin Dias, a cancer survivor. \"Ms. Coleman called in one of her buddies who said this is an emergency ... [then] I was in the hospital.\" Today, Dias is cancer-free. And to show his appreciation of the clinic, he bakes. \"I paid them in banana bread, zucchini bread, pumpkin bread,\" Dias said. Emilio Viera, a Cuban immigrant, also credits Coleman with saving his life. \"She was perfect, she was precise, she was accurate,\" said Viera. \"I'll be very grateful all my life to Ms. Coleman. She's 'Faith,' and when you have five minutes with her she makes you have faith.\" Want to get involved? Check out the Flagler County Free Clinic and see how to help." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Faith Coleman was uninsured when she found out she had kidney cancer .\nHer experience inspired her to help others with similar financial, health issues .\nShe co-founded a free clinic in Florida to help the uninsured access health care ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Department of Homeland Security will investigate a Halloween costume party hosted by a top immigration official and attended by a man dressed in a striped prison outfit, dreadlocks and darkened skin make-up, a costume some say is offensive, the department's secretary said. Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called the man's costume \"offensive.\" Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and host of the fundraising party, was on a three-judge panel that originally praised the prisoner costume for \"originality.\" Myers later apologized for \"a few of the costumes,\" calling them \"inappropriate and offensive.\" She said she and other senior managers \"deeply regret that this happened.\" A department photographer photographed Myers with the man, but the images were deleted after the costume were deemed offensive, ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said. Between 50 and 75 people attended the party, which was a fundraiser for the Combined Federal Campaign, a federal government collection of charities. Nantel said one employee, whom she declined to identify, was wearing a black-and-white striped prison outfit, dreadlocks and a skin \"bronzer\" intended \"to make him look African-American.\" But, she said, it was not immediately apparent that he was wearing the make-up. \"Most people in the room didn't realize he was wearing make-up at all,\" she said. \"It was unintentioned. The employee did not mean to offend although there were some employees that were rightfully offended by it,\" Nantel said. Myers and the other judges \"noted his costume for originality.\" \"There were a couple of people who were offended,\" Nantel said. \"When it was confirmed through a conversation with the employee that he was wearing make-up,\" Nantel said, the employee was counseled and Myers sent out a note to employees apologizing. In a November 2 email to ICE employees, Myers wrote, \"It is now clear that, however unintended, a few of the costumes were inappropriate and offensive. While we were all thrilled to be a part of the CFC fundraising effort, I and the senior management at ICE deeply regret that this happened.\" She reminded all employees to be compliant with the department's diversity training requirement. Myers has served as head of ICE since January of 2006 but is still awaiting Senate confirmation. An ICE congressional liaison said ICE officials briefed congressional staffers about the costume party this week as a courtesy. But at least one congressional staffer said they approached ICE after receiving an anonymous fax about the incident. Myers called House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, about the incident and is expected to meet with him before the end of the week, a Thompson spokeswoman told CNN. Myers also contacted the National Association of African-Americans in the Department of Homeland Security. In a letter to NAADHS members, the group's vice president, Sjon Shavers, said the group \"appreciates (Myers) reaching out to us so quickly in order to keep us apprised of the matter and we commend her on moving so swiftly toward appropriate corrective action.\" As head of ICE, Myers heads the law enforcement agency charged with enforcing immigration law inside the United States. It is the second largest investigative agency in the federal government, with more than 15,000 employees, including 6,000 investigators. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff \"supports the actions that Assistant Secretary Myers has taken,\" DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner said. \"We do not tolerate inappropriate behavior at DHS.\" \"The Secretary has asked for an inquiry into the facts surrounding the incident. Once the facts have been determined, we will take all necessary and appropriate actions,\" Keehner said. E-mail to a friend ." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Man in prison outfit, dreadlocks and darkened skin make-up came to party .\nParty host was Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement .\nShe and other judges at first gave man praise for costume's \"originality\"\nBut some were offended and Myers later apologized in an email to employees ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LONDON, England (CNN) -- Charging chesty women more for their bras doesn't win a lot of support, British retailer Marks & Spencer acknowledged Friday as it announced an end to the surcharge on its larger lingerie. Marks & Spencer have apologised for charging chesty women more for bras. \"We boobed,\" screamed a full-page Marks & Spencer ad, which appeared in British newspapers Friday. Marks & Spencer gave in to campaigners who argued that the higher prices of the bigger bras was unfair. The retailer charged as much as £2 ($3) more for all sizes DD and up. \"It's true that our fantastic quality larger bras cost more money to make, and we felt it was right to reflect this in the prices we charged,\" the ad said. \"Well, we were wrong.\" It follows a nearly year-long campaign by members of the Facebook group Busts 4 Justice. The women behind the site argued other chain retailers didn't charge extra for bigger sizes, so Marks & Spencer shouldn't, either. And it pointed out that the store doesn't charge extra for larger sizes of clothing, so it shouldn't charge more for larger undergarments. What's your view? \"We would like to thank everyone who has supported us on this issue; especially the thousands of brilliant, busty women that have joined forces with us. We couldn't have done this without you,\" the two administrators of the group, Becky Mount and Beckie Williams, posted Friday on Facebook. \"Busts 4 Justice remain committed to making things better for busty women on the high street, but for now we're happy just to be able to encourage all ladies to reward themselves and their boobs with some properly fitted, fairly priced lingerie.\" Marks & Spencer is a stalwart British chain, known for classic wardrobe staples and low prices. Its underwear department is the first stop for many British shoppers and is especially famous for reliable basics. And to give customers an added lift, Marks & Spencer also announced it is cutting the prices of all of its bras by 25 percent for the rest of May. \"I think even though we all obviously held a bit of a grudge against buying our bras from M&S we should really be grateful they got rid of the surcharge and have given us the super generous 25 percent off,\" Mount wrote on the group's site Friday. \"They may get cleared out by the time the weekend is over!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Marks & Spencer is ending its surcharge on larger lingerie .\nRetailer takes out adverts admitting \"we boobed\"\nCampaigners argued that the higher prices of the bigger bras was unfair ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- -- A poor decision by a regional airline was being blamed Friday for Continental Airlines passengers getting stranded overnight as their plane sat on a tarmac in Minnesota, federal transportation officials said Friday. Passengers on a Continental flight operated by ExpressJet sat on the tarmac for nearly six hours on August 8. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said a representative of Mesaba Airlines improperly refused requests by the plane's captain and crew to let passengers off the plane. They were stuck on the tarmac in Rochester on August 8 from 12:38 a.m. to about 6 a.m. with nothing but pretzels to eat, LaHood said. \"There was a complete lack of common sense here,\" LaHood said in a written statement. \"It's no wonder the flying public is so angry and frustrated.\" Mesaba, based in Eagan, Minnesota and owned by Delta Air Lines, was the only carrier able to assist Continental Flight 2816, which was on its way from Houston, Texas, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, when it was diverted because of strong thunderstorms, LaHood said. Watch how pilot tried to get passengers off plane » . The flight's 47 passengers described crying babies, overflowing toilets and cramped conditions. According to a Department of Transportation preliminary report, Mesaba's representative refused to help passengers off of the plane, incorrectly saying the airport was closed to passengers for security reasons. In audiotapes released by the Transportation Department, the unnamed captain of the aircraft can be heard pleading with an airline dispatcher to find a way to get the passengers off the plane. \"We're stuck here with no lavs, no nothing -- no food,\" he says. \"And they won't let them get off because the terminal is closed.\" Later, the dispatcher tells the captain that he has spoken to the commuter airline's representative and that \"she says there is nothing she can do to help us out. She's not going to let them off the plane.\" \"That's ridiculous,\" the captain responds. LaHood, who called the incident a \"nightmare,\" said federal regulations allow passengers to get off of a plane, enter an airport and reboard without being screened by safety personnel as long as they remain in a secure part of the terminal. Mesaba said Friday that its employees tried to help. \"Mesaba respectfully disagrees with the DOT's preliminary findings as they are incongruent with our initial internal review of the incident,\" CEO John Spanjers said in a written statement. \"Because Continental Express Flight 2816 diverted to an airport where they have no ground handling service, Mesaba offered assistance as a courtesy during this delay. \"While the investigation is ongoing, Mesaba is fully cooperating with the Department of Transportation and looks forward to the final report.\" Mesaba is a wholly owned subsidiary of Northwest Airlines, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines. Delta CEO Richard Anderson said the airline is working with Mesaba, Continental and the Department of Transportation to help determine exactly what happened. In the department's statement, LaHood said that the Continental crew was not at fault for the passengers being stuck. \"In fact, the flight crew repeatedly tried to get permission to deplane the passengers at the airport or obtain a bus for them,\" he said. Department of Transportation investigators have interviewed passengers, the flight crew, airport workers and others during an investigation expected to be completed in the next few weeks. The department \"is considering the appropriate action to take against Mesaba,\" according to the statement. The investigation did show that while the crew of the flight, operated by carrier ExpressJet, did all it could, higher-level officials should have become involved in the effort. The Aviation Enforcement Office has proposed regulations requiring airlines to have plans for how to handle lengthy tarmac delays." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Continental passengers were stuck on airplane nearly six hours .\nSecretary LaHood calls incident a \"nightmare,\" says crew did all it could .\nRegional airline Mesaba was only one that could have helped, feds say .\nMesaba says it disagrees with feds' findings, offered to help ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "HERMOSILLO, Mexico (CNN) -- Parents in northern Mexico on Sunday began to bury the children who died in a horrific day care fire as Mexican authorities raised the death toll from the blaze to 41. Maria Jesus Coronado Padilla mourns her 2-year-old daughter, Paulette Daniela Coronado Padilla on Sunday. A large crowd of mourners attended a funeral for six of the victims Sunday afternoon in Hermosillo, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of the U.S. border. The cause of Friday's fire at ABC Day Care wasn't known, but investigators concluded that the fire didn't start inside the building, said Eduardo Bours, the governor of Sonora state. Neighbors described parents arriving at the day care center completely desperate on Friday, seeing it engulfed in flames and knowing there was no way to get the children out. The building had two doors, one of which was padlocked shut, and windows were too high for the children to reach, officials said. Some parents rammed their vehicles into the building to try to free the trapped children, witnesses told CNN. Watch parents gather at site of fire » . \"When we went out and ran towards the nursery, teachers already had many children outside, those who could walk properly,\" said one man at the scene, who did not give his name. \"A pickup truck broke down the walls. The dad of one of the kids broke down one of the walls with his car driving in reverse, and that helped us a bit.\" Others said they waited for hours for news of their children. Watch a town in deep shock » . \"They didn't tell us anything, nothing, until like 6 p.m.,\" said Ofelia Vasquez, whose 4-year-old son Herman was in the building. She said she eventually was told he was at Chavez Hospital. \"We went there and we saw that he was badly burned, 75 percent of his body was burned,\" she said. Herman Vasquez died after surgery, his mother said. As of Sunday afternoon, 26 children remained hospitalized, 12 of them in critical condition, Sonoran authorities said. Another 10 children had been transported to other hospitals: eight to Guadalajara, one to Ciudad, Obregon, and two to Sacramento, California. A team of 29 medical experts in Hermosillo was deciding if any more victims would be moved to the Shriners Hospital for Children in Sacramento, or elsewhere. In addition, six adults were injured, Sonora spokesman Daniel Duran said. \"Without a doubt this is the worst disaster we've had,\" Bours told CNN. President Felipe Calderon traveled to Hermosillo on Saturday. He arrived with Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont and Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova to get firsthand updates from doctors and investigators, the state news agency Notimex reported. Calderon ordered the nation's attorney general to investigate the blaze. Most of the victims died from smoke inhalation and not burns, Bours said. But the fire was serious enough for the roof to collapse, he added. At the time of the blaze, 142 children were inside the ABC Day Care. The day care is for children ages 2 to 4, but Bours confirmed that children even younger were among the victims. All the children at the center had been accounted for by Saturday evening, Bours said. A severely burned 3-year-old girl arrived Saturday at the Sacramento hospital -- where pediatric burn treatment is a specialty -- and was in critical condition, according to Dr. Tina Palmieri, assistant chief of the burn unit. The child was burned over 80 percent of her body, the doctor told reporters. She said the hospital normally can save just over half of the children with burns that severe. In Hermosillo, a large crowd gathered outside of the emergency entrance of the city's general hospital and many people consoled each other, video from the scene showed. \"They told me that this happened in a matter of five minutes,\" Hermosillo Mayor Ernesto Gandara told reporters after surveying the scene." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "NEW: Funerals for children killed in Mexican day care center fire begin .\nNeighbors describe panic, horror as parents try to rescue kids from burning building .\nOne door was padlocked shut and children couldn't get to high windows, officials say .\nAt least 41 children die in fire; dozens more in hospitals in Mexico and U.S." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- A small plane crashed Friday near an Ohio-area high school during a football scrimmage. Spectators at a high school football scrimmage watch as a plane goes down Friday in Ohio. Spectators at a practice game at Harrison High School watched from the bleachers as the plane went down at 8:08 p.m. ET, said police officer Jennifer Coyle, who witnessed the incident. Two people on the plane died at the crash scene, authorities said. According to CNN affiliate WLWT, witnesses said the plane was heading toward the football field when it suddenly dropped, crashing in a gravel pit near the school. \"It looked like he was going straight for the boys on the field, but then just did a straight nosedive,\" Mindy Brinson told WLWT. It is not yet known what caused the plane to crash. Harrison is in the southwest corner of Ohio. CNN's Dave Alsup contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Plane crashes near football scrimmage at Ohio high school .\nWitness says plane was headed toward field when it did a sudden nosedive .\nTwo people on board died in the crash, authorities say ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (CNN) -- Automated messages sent from Air France Flight 447 just before it crashed Monday indicate the plane's systems were providing contradictory information about its airspeed, the jet's manufacturer said on Friday. Friends and relatives of the 228 people aboard Air France Flight 447 attend a memorial service Thursday in Brazil. That suggests the pilots may have been flying too fast or too slow through the violent weather they encountered before the crash, officials said. In addition, investigators have said the plane's autopilot disengaged, cabin pressure was lost and there was an electrical failure before the disaster. Airbus confirmed on Friday that in the wake of the crash it sent a Telex to operators of all Airbus models reminding them what to do when speed indicators give conflicting readings. The spokesman said the notice does not mean there is any major flaw in the aircraft, but is simply a reminder to pilots about what to do in the cockpit if they get conflicting information about air speed. Message transmissions from the aircraft in the final moments before it crashed Monday into the Atlantic Ocean show there was an \"indicated inconsistency in measured air speeds,\" Airbus said. The company did not elaborate. Experts said that could mean the pilot's and co-pilots' sensors were showing different speeds. \"If they're malfunctioning, it can give a false read that can be misinterpreted in the cockpit, and a disaster can follow,\" said Peter Goeltz, the former managing director of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. While the pilots themselves sent no distress calls, the aircraft's computer system relayed about four minutes of automated messages indicating a loss of cabin pressure and an electrical failure, according to investigators. Airbus said it sent the Telex Thursday night after the action was recommended by the French investigating agency, which plans to hold a news conference Saturday morning in Paris, France. Watch as experts question whether recovery is possible » . Meanwhile, the hunt for debris continued Friday, a day after a Brazilian air force official said debris plucked from the ocean was not from the Air France jet. A U.S Navy P-3 temporarily based in Brazil has flown three missions -- on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday -- in assisting the Brazilian government search for debris, but found nothing connected to the disaster, U.S. Southern Command spokesman Maj. Darryl Wright said. Earlier Friday, Goeltz said the search for Flight 447's voice and data recorders is becoming more difficult as ocean currents disperse debris from the crash site. \"The clock's ticking\" in the search for the plane's recorders, he said. \"The batteries on these locator devices attached to the black boxes have a limited life span -- just 30 days,\" he said. \"The longer time goes on, the further away from the actual crash site the debris floats.\" All 228 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus 330 are presumed to have died when the plane disappeared northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, an archipelago 355 kilometers (220 miles) off the northeast coast of Brazil. The flight originated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and was en route to Paris. Map of Flight 447's flight path » . While the ocean depth in the area where the plane is thought to have crashed presents a challenge, the challenge may not be insurmountable, Goeltz said. \"We've recovered boxes as deep as 6- or 7,000 feet,\" he said. \"We've recovered debris from as much as 10,000 feet.\" Authorities have said the depth of the water in the area ranges from 3,000 meters (9,840 feet) to 7,500 meters (24,600 feet). Cmdr. Christophe Prazuck of the French Ministry of Defense said Friday that a French research vessel was expected to arrive this weekend in the search area carrying a deep-diving submersible. The submersible would try to pinpoint the recorders, but must rely on another vessel to retrieve them, he said. The submarine helped recover artifacts from the Titanic disaster. Meanwhile, France's transportation minister warned that \"extreme prudence\" should be used in releasing information about why the plane crashed. It is possible the plane experienced a total electrical failure, officials have said. Goeltz said it is possible the jet's speed indicator was faulty. \"That could really be disastrous and it's happened before,\" he said, speaking generally. If it malfunctions, \"it can give a false read into the cockpit that can be misinterpreted,\" he said. Investigators also said the autopilot system may have failed. A Spanish pilot reported seeing an \"intense flash\" near where the plane is believed to have crashed, the Spanish carrier Air Comet said on Thursday. The co-pilot and a passenger on the flight from Lima, Peru, to Lisbon, Portugal, also said they saw a light. Air Comet said the pilot's report has been sent to Air France, Airbus and the Spanish civil aviation authority. CNN's Mike Mount contributed to this story." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "French officials: Sub could find recorders; other vessel needed for their retrieval .\nAirbus: Automated messages indicate contradictory info provided on airspeeds .\nSuch a problem \"could really be disastrous,\" ex-U.S. aviation safety official says .\nExpert: Finding where recorders lie on seabed harder as debris scattered ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Some lucky Michael Jackson fans got the e-mails they were hoping for Sunday, saying they've won two free tickets to Tuesday's memorial service. Some memorial tickets went out to \"friends and family\" on Sunday. \"OMG OMG OMG OMG i got tickets to the michael jackson memorial service!!!\" Deka Motanya wrote Sunday afternoon in a Twitter message. The 8,750 fans chosen were summoned to Dodger Stadium Monday to pick up their tickets and have a wristband placed on their arms to prevent them from reselling them. The Michael Jackson memorial, set for 10 a.m. (1 p.m. ET) Tuesday in the Staples Center arena, is expected to be a star-studded and emotional tribute to the entertainer, who died June 25. Twitter.com served as a seismograph Sunday as fans anxiously watched their inboxes for an e-mail from AEG Live, the memorial organizer and Staples Center owner. More than five hours after the notifications were to be sent, none had been received. \"Come on and let me know, Staples ... did I win tickets to Michael Jackson's memorial?\" read one tweet posted at 3 p.m., four hours after the e-mails were supposed to start flowing. One woman wrote she \"is checking her e-mail anxiously to see if she got tickets to the Michael Jackson memorial at the Staples Center.\" Just before 5 p.m. (8 p.m. ET), Twitter erupted with messages of excitement: . \"I won the Michael Jackson tickets for Tuesday!!!! Heading to LA tmrw!!!!\" read one tweet that linked to a photo of an iPhone screen with the e-mail. Watch reporters prepare for Tuesday's service » . \"Apparently my dad's friend who hates Michael Jackson, may have won tickets tu the memorial service... Step-mom's freaking out..!\" Other messages came from disappointed fans who did not get the e-mails: . \"I guess i didnt make the drawing to win tickets to Michael Jackson Memorial!!! go figure, I'm sadden and hurt :-(\" The odds of winning the tickets were long -- just one of every 182 were chosen. Organizers used a computer to choose 8,750 names from 1.6 million who registered online since Friday. Motanya, 27, works in a doctor's office in San Francisco, California. She scrambled Sunday night to line up plane tickets so she and her boyfriend could fly to Los Angeles Monday to claim her tickets. \"Oh yeah, I'm going,\" she told CNN. \"I'm e-mailing my boss saying I've got to leave early because I'm going to L.A.\" Each winner gets two tickets, bringing the number awarded in the lottery to 17,500. Just 11,000 of those are for seats inside the Staples Center, while the other 6,500 are for viewing the memorial telecast across the street at the Nokia Theater. iReport.com: \"Surreal journey\" to get tickets . Winner must meet other requirements \"in order to avoid the reselling of tickets,\" according to a news release from the Jackson family. The notification gives them a secret code and instructions to appear at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday to claim their tickets. Along with their tickets, they will get the wristbands \"one of which will be placed on their wrist at that time,\" the family statement said. \"Fans attending the memorial service must have both a valid ticket AND a wristband,\" the Jackson family statement said. \"Wristbands that have been ripped, taped or otherwise mutilated will be void.\" The Jackson family set aside 9,000 Staples Center seats to give out to people they choose, according to organizers. Some people were seen picking up those \"friends and family\" tickets at Dodger Stadium on Sunday afternoon. Two wristbands, one blue and one gold, were given out with each ticket. Ticketholders were instructed that they must wear the wristbands to validate their tickets. Police have said no one will be allowed near the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles without tickets or media credentials." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Just before 5 p.m. (8 p.m. ET), Twitter erupted with messages of excitement .\nEach winner gets two tickets, bringing the number awarded in the lottery to 17,500 .\nThe odds of winning the tickets were long -- just one of every 182 were chosen .\nPolice: No one will be allowed near memorial without tickets or media credentials ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Vietnam veteran and Bronze Star recipient who volunteered to return to the Army and serve in Afghanistan became the oldest U.S. service member to die in combat there, the U.S. military announced Friday. First Sgt. Jose San Nicolas Crisostomo was killed by a roadside bomb in Kabul on Tuesday while riding in an armored Humvee. His body was flown to the United States early Thursday morning. Crisostomo of Spanaway, Washington, was 59. He would have turned 60 later this month, according to KING television in Seattle, Washington. He was one of a very few service members who served in Vietnam and in current U.S. military operations, his record shows. He twice received the Bronze Star, which is awarded to U.S. troops for combat valor. Crisostomo also received the Purple Heart for being wounded in combat, according to his records. It was not clear from his official records if he received the medals for combat in Vietnam or Afghanistan. His records also indicate he received numerous other commendations. He also served during the first Gulf War in 1991 and received the Kuwait Liberation Medal. He jointed the Army in 1969 and retired in 1993, then volunteered to serve again in 2008. According to his records, his position in the Army was automated logistical specialist, but it was unclear in what capacity he was serving while in Afghanistan. Earlier this year, a 60-year-old soldier was killed in Iraq, becoming the oldest U.S. service member killed in either the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "First Sgt. Jose San Nicolas Crisostomo killed by a roadside bomb in Kabul .\nHe served in Vietnam, retired, rejoined Army in '08 to serve in Afghanistan .\nCrisostomo of Spanaway, Washington, was Bronze Star, Purple Heart recipient ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Some of the strongest support for health care cooperatives' place in the national effort to reform the nation's health care system comes from those who experience a co-op's care every day: doctors and patients. Co-op patient Norman Nistler says he didn't even realize he was a part of a health care co-op. Co-ops are non-profit organizations, so any money that is earned goes back to be used on patients and other costs. Patients also elect a governing board, which is in stark contrast to operations under private health insurance plan. Proponents point to two co-ops as evidence they are an alternative in the health care reform debate: HealthPartners in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, Washington. HealthPartners has been in business for half a century and served more than a million people in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Some decades-long members said they didn't know they were with a co-op. \"I watch a lot of it on television now. There's a lot of talking about co-ops, but I didn't realize this was a co-op,\" said patient Norman Nistler. The co-op was able to save millions, officials note, by switching to generic drugs and cutting tobacco use among its members by double the Minnesota state average because doctors help patients to quit. Darla Andrews, a patient at the co-op, said she and her doctor have easy access to her records. \"It's all digital, so it works out good for me. It's more convenient.\" Dr. Eric Seaver, who works at Group Health. \"We can communicate with patients through secure e-mail for routine questions or concerns that in the private world physicians often aren't able or won't do because there's just no motivation to do that. There's no reimbursement. ... Here with Group Health's model, it's all about providing patients the care that they need when they need it in a form that works best for them.\" Group Health lists Microsoft and Starbucks as organizations that use its system. \"I have great contact with the doctors,\" said Group Health member Dave Jacobs. \"I'm treated like a person, not a number.\" \"My care has been absolutely exceptional. And that's because I believe I'm going to a private medical facility, dealing with doctors one-on-one and not a bureaucrat,\" he said. \"Part of the great value in that structure is that our patients are actively engaged, not just in the organization and governance but actively engaged in finding ways to engage themselves in their care itself,\" said Scott Armstrong, president and CEO of Group Health Cooperative. \"We all know that an engaged patient leads to a better health outcome. So much of health care is actually the responsibility of us as individuals.\" Aaron Katz, of the University of Washington Health Services, says the group health model could be viable nationally, but only if there are tougher restrictions on insurance companies. The reason co-ops are successful, he says, is because they employ their own doctors, specialists, pharmacies and can reduce the amount of tests and procedures that drive up costs. Seaver says his co-op emphasizes evidence-based medicine and making decisions in patient care based upon \"the best evidence that we have available for what's effective and what is ineffective.\" \"I think what we're finding in this model is doing the right thing for the patient is the best thing not just for the patient but also for the system as a whole,\" he said. \"I feel like I'm able to practice medicine the way I had envisioned back in medical school.\" Working at Group Health \"has been a breath of fresh air for my career,\" he said. CNN's Dana Bash, Ed Hornick, Lesa Jansen, Chris Welch and Patrick Oppmann contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Co-ops are non-profit organizations where patients elect a governing board .\nHealthPartners and Group Health Cooperative are often cited as successful plans .\nPatient: \"I'm treated like a person, not a number\"\nDoctor says co-ops let him connect with patients using e-mail ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Described as \"an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane,\" Hurricane Bill was churning closer to the Atlantic island of Bermuda on Wednesday, forecasters said. Most forecast maps show Hurricane Bill passing to the west of Bermuda. Although Bill is not expected to make a direct hit on the island, forecasters cautioned that the storm is large and will generate large swells on Bermuda as well as the islands of the northeast Caribbean Sea over the next day or two. Swells may also affect the eastern United States on Friday and Saturday, the National Hurricane Center said. CNN meteorologists said Bill could cause cause dangerous rip tides and some coastal flooding in the northeast United States and could move very close to or make landfall in Newfoundland, Canada, early next week. In addition, Bill may strengthen further over the next couple of days, forecasters said. As of 5 p.m. ET, Bill's center was about 335 miles northeast of the Leeward Islands and about 970 miles south-southeast of Bermuda, the hurricane center said. \"It's a little too early to evaluate what kind of direct impact Bill may have,\" said Jack Bevin, a senior hurricane specialist. \"Most of the computer guidance has the storm passing between Bermuda and the U.S. coastline, then turning northeastward.\" Other models show Bill turning more sharply out to sea and not affecting any areas, he said. Bill's maximum sustained winds were at 135 mph Wednesday afternoon. It was moving northwest at near 20 mph and was expected to continue that motion over the next day or so, turning north-northwest by late Friday. Five-day forecast maps show Bill passing to the west of Bermuda before turning to the northwest. \"Bill is a large tropical cyclone,\" the National Hurricane Center said. Hurricane-force winds extended up to 85 miles from its center, with tropical storm-force winds extending up to 230 miles out. CNN Radio's Andrew Spencer and Lee Garen contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Storm is not expected to make a direct hit on Bermuda .\nBut island, eastern United States could see large swells .\nCategory 4 hurricane's maximum sustained winds are at 135 mph ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hamid Dabashi is the author of \"Iran: A People Interrupted.\" He is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. His Web site is http://www.hamiddabashi.com/. Hamid Dabashi says allegations of rape and torture are testing Iran's Islamic Republic as never before. (CNN) -- Troubling news of kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder is flooding out of Iran. Neda Aqa Soltan was murdered point-blank in the streets of Tehran for the whole world to see; while Sohrab Arabi was killed far from any global attention and his body given to his mother quietly to bury, as was the tortured body of Mohsen Ruholamini. These names have assumed symbolic significance for many more innocent young men and women murdered by the custodians of the Islamic Republic with a wanton disregard for the lives and liberties of its own citizens. Not just murder, but the rape of young men and women also is on the shameless roster of the Islamic Republic. After years of sporadic charges and troubling rumors, finally a courageous cleric has put a stamp of public recognition on atrocious practices in the theocratic state. Mehdi Karrubi -- one of the revolutionary founders of the Islamic Republic, a high-ranking cleric, a presidential candidate, a former speaker of the house and now a widely popular political activist -- has published a letter, addressing it to the former president and current head of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He accuses the security officers of the Islamic Republic of repeatedly and violently raping young women and men while they are in custody. Since the publication of this letter, a massive outpouring of testimony and reports has come out, corroborating Karrubi's charges that rapes of young women and men are a widespread, common practice in the Islamic Republic. These are not light charges for any state, for any republic, let alone for an Islamic Republic. These charges are no longer brought by expatriate, and at times discredited, opposition. It is the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic, with impeccable revolutionary credentials, who are bringing these charges, as others are coming out and corroborating them in excruciating detail. The Islamic Republic has never faced such a deep crisis of legitimacy in its turbulent 30-year history. As widely evident, it is not just the regime's claim to a \"republic\" that is in question and in jeopardy, but, perhaps far more seriously, it is its claim to Islam that has troubling consequences for more than 1.3 billion Muslims around the world. People in the streets of Tehran are chanting, paraphrasing a famous slogan of the 1979 revolution, \"Independence, Freedom, Iranian Republic,\" pointedly replacing \"Iranian\" for \"Islamic.\" Though this a perfectly legitimate demand, given the criminal record of the Islamic Republic, by no means is this sentiment a common denominator of the growing opposition to the regime. To the degree that, at least in part, he represents this uprising, Mir Hossein Moussavi, as a pious and practicing Muslim, continues to insist that he wishes to restore the ideals and aspirations of the Islamic revolution within the constitution of the state. Never have the two opposing ideas of an \"Islamic Republic,\" and Muslims living in a democratic republic seemed so at odds with each other. The 30-year experience of the Islamic Republic shows fundamental flaws in defining a state apparatus in the exclusive terms of a militantly legalistic Islam, while at the same time Iranians, the overwhelming majority of them Shiite Muslims, have repeatedly demonstrated, under this regime, they are perfectly capable of democratic behavior. Not just as immigrants in the E.U. nations and the U.S., but as citizens in Iran, millions of Muslims have shown they are integral to the democratic institutions embedded in the notion of a nation-state. What is in question is the viability of an Islamic republic -- or for that matter, a Jewish state, a Christian empire, a Hindu fundamentalist government -- or any state or movement that is defined not by the democratic apparatus of citizenry, but by exclusionary membership in a world religion. As in the rest of the Muslim world, Islam is integral to Iranian society. But not exclusively so. Over the last 30 years, a radically legalistic interpretation of a cosmopolitan faith has been force-fed into a multifaceted political culture -- and today all the world can see the violent convulsion of the system. There has been much talk of the need for an Islamic \"reformation\" over the last few years. But what Islam needs is not a Christian-style Reformation. What Islam needs is a restoration of its historically cosmopolitan character in which Muslims and non-Muslims live in peace and prosperity, and which they now need to retrieve in order to live in peace and prosperity in a world that is not entirely Muslim. By virtue of living in a democracy, and having endured indignities of rampant Islamophobia in their own country, American Muslims have a historic role to play, by way of sending a delegation to Iran, connecting to this grassroots democratic movement in a Muslim nation, and helping it restore its cosmopolitan character in pursuit of enduring democratic institutions. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Hamid Dabashi." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hamid Dabashi: Rape and torture allegations being made in Iran .\nHe says a prominent cleric and activist has accused security forces of wrongdoing .\nThe charges threaten the Islamic Republic's standing within the faith, he says .\nDabashi: Iran needs to restore notion of Muslims and non-Muslims living in peace ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Editor's note: Uwe Reinhardt is James Madison professor of political economy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. From 1986 to 1995 he served as a commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Committee, established in 1986 by Congress to advise it on issues related to the payment of physicians. Uwe Reinhardt says health costs are rising at unsustainable pace, gobbling up middle-class incomes. (CNN) -- Watching the angry outbursts at town hall meetings on health reform and the continuing public ambivalence about current efforts to reform our health system almost makes me wish that the reform effort fails. Perhaps Americans need to be taught a basic lesson on the economics of employment-based health insurance before they will feel as smugly secure with it as they do now and before they will stop nitpicking health-reform efforts to death over this or that detail. And America's currently insured middle class will be increasingly desperate if health reform fails. Millions more such families will see their take-home pay shrink. Millions will lose their employment-based insurance, especially in medium and small-sized firms. And millions will find themselves inexorably priced out of health care as we know it. Milliman Inc., an employee benefits consulting firm, publishes annually its Milliman Medical Index on the total health spending by or for a typical American family of four with private health insurance. The index totals the family's out-of-pocket spending for health care plus the contribution employers and employees make to that family's job-related health insurance coverage. The Milliman Medical Index stood at $8,414 in 2001. It had risen to $16,700 by 2009. It is likely to rise to $18,000 by next year. That is more than a doubling of costs in the span of a decade! Since 2005, the index has grown at an average annual compound rate of 8.4 percent. Suppose we make it 8 percent for the coming decade. Then today's $16,700 will have grown to slightly over $36,000 by 2019. Economists are convinced that this $36,000 would come virtually all out of the financial hides of employees, even if the employer pretended to be paying, say, 80 percent of the employment-based health insurance premiums. In the succinct words of the late United Automobile Worker Union leader Douglas Fraser: . \"Before you start weeping for the auto companies and all they pay for medical insurance, let me tell you how the system works. All company bargainers worth their salt keep their eye on the total labor unit cost, and when they pay an admittedly horrendous amount for health care, that's money that can't be spent for higher [cash] wages or higher pensions or other fringe benefits. So we directly, the union and its members, feel the costs of the health care system.\" (\"A National Health Policy Debate,\" Dartmouth Medical School Alumni Magazine, Summer 1989: 30) Unfortunately, very few rank-and-file workers appreciate this fact. Aside from their still modest out-of-pocket payments and contributions to employment-based insurance premiums, most employees seem sincerely to believe that the bulk of their family's health care is basically paid for by \"the company,\" which is why so few members of the middle class have ever been much interested in controlling health spending in this country. The price for that indifference will be high. If efforts at better cost containment fail once again, and health care costs rise to $36,000 on average for a typical American family of four under age 65 -- as almost surely it would -- that $36,000 will be borne entirely by the family. That family's disposable income would be much higher if the growth of future health spending was better controlled. And, as noted, many smaller firms will stop altogether providing job-based health insurance. It would be a major problem for families with an income of less than $100,000 a year. In 2007, only about 25 percent of American families had a money income of $100,000 or more. Close to 60 percent had family incomes of less than $75,000. Here it must be remembered that the wages and salaries of the solid American middle class have been relatively stagnant in recent years and are likely to remain so for the next decade. Unemployment is not likely to fall significantly soon, regardless of what stock prices do on Wall Street. Indeed, often stock prices rise as firms lay off workers to drive up profits through leaner payrolls. This prospect -- relatively stagnant family incomes combined with family health-care costs that double every decade -- is what America's middle class should contemplate as it thinks about the imperative of health reform. It is a pity that this central issue seems to have been shoved aside by mendacious distortions from Sarah Palin, Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh and other extremist commentators seeking to frighten Americans with their prattle about \"death panels\" and \"pulling plugs on granny\" that no bill before Congress even remotely envisions. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Uwe Reinhardt." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Uwe Reinhardt: Consider what will happen if health reform fails .\nHe says health costs have already doubled in a decade .\nReinhardt says dollars spent on health care come out of wages for middle class ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- One person died and six were injured when a cargo train derailed, causing an explosion and massive fire in Illinois, a fire chief said Saturday. A train carrying chemicals derailed and burned for hours, forcing the evacuation of about 600 homes . Crews were still fighting the blaze at midday, but expected to have it fully contained in the afternoon, said Rockford Fire Chief Derek Bergsten. \"It's under control and we're taking every precaution not to harm firefighters or residents,\" Bergsten said, adding that federal and state environmental officials were on scene monitoring air and soil samples. The fatality was a woman, said Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia. The cause of death had not been determined because Fiduccia was unable to get close enough to examine the body. Bergsten said six people were injured, and all train workers were accounted for. The train was carrying chemicals that burned for hours, forcing the evacuation of about 600 homes in the town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Chicago, authorities said. Officers were called to the scene near Rockford about 8:30 p.m. Friday, a city police spokeswoman said. The derailment involved automobiles, but it was unclear whether they were on the tracks, she said. Three motorists who were stopped at a train crossing were burned, one severely, Bergsten said. One of the victims, who tried to run from the blaze, suffered second-degree burns on his hand while trying to shield his neck from flames, according to Bergsten. At least 14 cars of the 114-car train caught fire after the derailment, officials said. The rest of the Canadian National Railway train -- including 70 cars carrying ethanol, a colorless, highly flammable liquid -- was disconnected and moved away from the blaze, Bergsten said. CNN's Greg Morrison and Shawn Nottingham contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "NEW: Woman dead after train derails, erupts into flames in Rockford, Illinois .\nSeveral cars of the train were carrying ethanol, authorities say .\nExplosion forced evacuation of nearly 600 homes ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- They were taken before Marilyn Monroe became branded as the voluptuous blonde who oozed sex appeal in dozens of Hollywood films. A 24-year-old Marilyn Monroe poses for Life magazine in August 1950. They were taken before rumors of an affair with President John F. Kennedy swirled and her mental breakdowns became public. They were taken before the beautiful actress's mysterious overdose that resulted in her death at the age of 36. In a collection discovered by Life.com last month, unpublished photographs of Monroe reveal a softer, more innocent 24-year-old budding starlet in a more peaceful time, before her fame peaked. Her flawless face bears a natural look with minimal makeup, unusual for the star, who was often glamorized in photo shoots with lipstick, designer dresses and expensive jewelry. Monday would have been Monroe's 83rd birthday. In one photo, the young Monroe lies in bliss, reading on a park bench, which editors at Life.com believe was shot at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California. In another, her face is serene as she is perched over a bridge barefoot. The shoot, which dates to 1950, was conducted by Life photographer Ed Clark. It's a side of Monroe that the American public has rarely seen. \"She hasn't really exploded as a star, yet she was on the brink of something big,\" says Dawnie Walton, deputy editor at Life.com, a Web site harboring more than 7 million Life magazine photographs. The site was launched in March. \"I was amazed looking at her face. Although she looks very innocent, there is something very ... sexy.\" Last month, Walton stumbled upon the rare photographs while combing through the company's digital photo archives. Apparently, no one at Life.com even knew they were ever taken. Upon investigating the photos, Walton says, she found there were few notes left on the negatives. She says the photos were probably taken for a cover shoot that was never used. Monroe appeared on her first Life magazine cover in 1952. See some of the previously unpublished photos of Monroe » . \"It just got lost and stowed away,\" Walton said. \"It was just ... somewhere in a warehouse in New Jersey.\" At the time the photos were shot, Monroe had her first small breakout role as a mistress in \"The Asphalt Jungle.\" The star was better known as a model at the time, though she'd had a handful of cameos in films. Photographer Ed Clark told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune a friend from 20th Century Fox alerted him that the studio had just signed \"a hot tomato.\" \"She was unknown then, so I was able to spend a lot of time shooting her,\" Clark said. \"We'd go out to Griffith Park and she'd read poetry. I sent several rolls to Life in New York, but they wired back, 'Who the hell is Marilyn Monroe?' \" Photographs later in the 1950s and early 1960s would display a much more confident and sexual Monroe -- images that would become iconic in popular culture. There is the famous photograph of a busty Monroe in a white halter dress, standing with her skirt blowing up in 1955 for her role in \"The Seven Year Itch.\" In 1962, American photographer Bert Stern shot a tipsy, sometimes nude Monroe in a series of delicate shots that would be known as \"The Last Sitting.\" Monroe died about six weeks later, on August 5, 1962. Life.com staff members say there are 15 million photographs in the Life archive dating back to the late 1850s, even before Life officially began publishing in 1936. Two years ago, the publication began slowly transferring the photographs into a digital archive. From time to time, unpublished photographs will be found that the company doesn't know existed. Other times, the photographs may have been taken but never selected to be used for publication. Last March, to commemorate the 11th anniversary of Frank Sinatra's death, Life.com released a series of unpublished photographs of the singer. In April, Life.com released newly recovered, never-before-seen photographs of Martin Luther King Jr. taken by a Life photographer on the day King was assassinated at a Memphis, Tennessee, hotel in 1968." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Unpublished photos of Monroe shot by a Life photographer surfaced in May .\nThe photos, taken in Los Angeles, California, show a more innocent Monroe .\nLife.com has over 7 million images, and lost images are occasionally recovered .\nThe Monroe pictures were \"in a warehouse in New Jersey\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- If an e-mail popped up in your inbox promising a house for $100, you'd expect to see it sent from a guy in Nigeria asking you to wire him several thousand dollars first. Zeb Smith lies on his front lawn and spends a quiet afternoon with his neighbors. But this depressed housing market dream is real. And Detroit, Michigan, artist Jon Brumit and his wife, Sarah, are living it. The couple never counted on owning a home. \"It's not that we have a little money,\" Jon Brumit said, laughing. \"I'm saying we have no money.\" But the couple began entertaining the idea of a permanent nest when their friends Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert, also artists, started taking advantage of foreclosures in the city, where the average home price dipped to $11,533 in April, according to the Detroit Association of Realtors. Dragging down the average are homes that are long abandoned or foreclosed on that are selling for pennies on the dollar. Detroit already had the lowest market value houses in Michigan before the latest rounds of job losses at GM and other huge employers, market analysts say. \"Those artists are doing a good thing; they are at least helping to stabilize neighborhoods that would be all but lost,\" said Mike Shedlock, an investment adviser who blogs frequently about Detroit's economy. For less than a few thousand dollars, Cope and Reichert snapped up a dilapidated bungalow in a north Detroit neighborhood called \"BanglaTown,\" for its unexpected mix of Bangladeshis, African-Americans, Polish and Ukrainians and the occasional shady character. Scrappers had cleaned the house to the bone. The copper had been stolen; the electrical wiring was stripped. But no matter. Here was a chance for Cope and Reichert, who run a popular Detroit art store, to rehabilitate the 1920s brick house into a bastion of energy savings, with solar panels, LED lights, recycled wood and high-end insulated windows. They're installing a security system that exemplifies elegant efficiency with hurricane-proof windows and steel doors replacing burglar bars. They are also experimenting with running their air-conditioning on a car battery. The project became known as the Power House. Cope and Reichert wanted to create a central place to power homes nearby and, in turn, revive a neighborhood's sense of community. The trick was getting their friends not only to cheer the concept but invest in it by moving next door. \"It was much easier than we thought it might be,\" Cope said. \"We told everyone that Detroit is an interesting city to work in as an artist, and the neighborhood is diverse. But, really, it came down to money.\" \"I kept telling Mitch, 'Wow those are an awesome, ridiculously good deals but if you find anything that's less, let me know,\" Brumit said. \"Like, if something comes along for next to nothing, cool.\" A few weeks later, Cope e-mailed Brumit a photo of an abandoned home on his block. Its windows were boarded up and plywood was nailed across the front door. The huge hole in the roof was courtesy of the fire department. A neighbor said the house had been set on fire -- twice. Pricetag: $100. Brumit called a real estate agent with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who confirmed that bids on the foreclosed property started at $95 for the property, $5 for the house. There were no back taxes -- no one seemed to be sure who once owned the house, it had been empty for so long, Brumit said. Cope, also a designer and builder, and an inspector did a walk-through. \"Inspection was fine and Mitch told me the foundation was good,\" Brumit said. \"He just said, 'If you didn't mind scraping some peeling paint, doing some surface treatments, putting in new utilities, windows and repairing the roof ... this could be pretty interesting.'\" Now, when he's not hauling loads of rubble away or knocking out walls to create a single, open studio space, Brumit's searching Craigslist for a furnace. In exchange for designing the business Web site of a local barn recycler, he's getting materials to turn that hole in his roof into a skylight. \"I saw it as a project,\" the artist said. \"I'm a builder. I've been building skateboards since I was 12.\" Skateboards are one thing. Rebuilding homes where the plumbing has been ripped out or the cabinets destroyed in a fit by an upset foreclosed homeowner is another. Michigan housing authorities acknowledge that there's little incentive for people who aren't quite as handy as Brumit. In two weeks, the state will begin offering $25,000 to anyone who buys a home, as long as they pay 1 percent of the total cost and live in it. Landlords or speculators aren't eligible. Part of a $263 million grant given to Michigan and other states under 2008's Housing and Economic Recovery Act, the funds are intended to help buyers bring trashed properties up to code, according to Mary Townley, a director with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. She and other housing officials CNN spoke with said Michigan's economy has some extremely frustrating woes. A report from the nonprofit think tank Brookings Institution said Detroit had the lowest performing economy out of 100 U.S. cities it analyzed -- scoring the worst in unemployment and average wages, the highest foreclosure rates and the lowest market value homes. The artists in BanglaTown are careful to say they are not looking to change a city. Their goal is simply to improve a neighborhood, one house at a time. New neighbors, freelance photographer Corine Vermeulen-Smith and her husband Zeb Smith, a designer, are always checking out www.freecycle.com, where a stainless steel kitchen sink can be bought for $65. The Smiths bought their 660-square-foot home for $549.99 from Cope and Reichert, who originally purchased the foreclosed home for $500. \"We knew the property, we knew it had been sitting there empty for at least a year, and it had been trashed,\" Vermeulen-Smith said. \"But we wanted to own a home.\" All the copper in their \"micro-home\" had been ripped out, as well as every electrical outlet, Vermeulen-Smith said. Trash had to be hauled out in several loads. \"You have to get over that fear that the house had that history, that you're going to be a victim of a crime or something,\" she said. \"Crime is everywhere. My husband and I have lived in the city for a long time; we know that people look out for each other here. We don't have that kind of fear.\" Careful not to entice thieves again, the Smiths replaced the copper with plastic. They are considering taking the home completely off the grid by installing a mini-wind turbine, but for now they are happy to put in the basics. A bathtub from Habitat for Humanity cost them $100. And Zeb Smith, who works at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, brings home wood the museum would otherwise toss when installations close. \"This is, for us, very exciting to believe that we could totally reinvent a space,\" she said, \"and prove that having a home isn't about having money.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Detroit artists buy a trashed, abandoned house for $100, fix it up .\nOther artists have bought cheap houses in the same neighborhood .\nThe Power House was the first home, meant to power the other houses nearby ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Pop star Michael Jackson will avoid foreclosure on his Neverland Ranch property with a new loan, a Jackson insider told CNN Wednesday. Michael Jackson owes millions of dollars on his sprawling property in the Santa Ynez Valley in California. Documents show that Neverland Ranch in Los Olivos, California, is scheduled for a public auction on March 19 at Santa Barbara's downtown courthouse. But the Jackson source said that won't happen. \"Michael Jackson's ranch is not going to be auctioned off at the courthouse,\" the Jackson insider said. \"The financing is all being worked out.\" \"There are plenty of lenders willing to work with him. The real estate market is very bad right now and Jackson is being affected just like many other Americans,\" the source said. The Santa Barbara County Recorder's Web site lists a \"notice of trustees sale\" by Jackson and his property lenders, Financial Title Company, filed Monday. In California, title companies typically represent lenders in foreclosure cases. A notice of trustees sale cannot be posted earlier than 90 days after a notice of default is filed. That notice is not filed unless a loan is in substantial default, sometimes six months or more past due. A real estate source inside Santa Barbara County said the trustees filing is only the first step in a long process that could drag on for months. The real estate source said other options are available to Jackson, including selling the ranch directly to another party or making a payment on his $24.5 million Neverland debt that would satisfy the trustee. The recorder's Web site also reveals there was a release of lien on Jackson on February 4, showing he paid off all or part of delinquent taxes to the state of California. \"It seems unlikely that someone would pay off back taxes, only to let the ranch go up for auction a few weeks later,\" said the real estate source. Jackson has not lived at Neverland since June 2005, after a Santa Barbara County jury found him not guilty of child molestation charges. E-mail to a friend ." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A public auction has been set for March 19, according to court documents .\nJackson owes $24.5 million on the property .\nJackson insider: \"The financing is all being worked out\"\nThe singer has not lived at Neverland Ranch since June 2005 ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Watch more from Talk Asia's interview with Edison Chen in these online exclusive clips. From how his family reacted to the scandal, to what he feels he learnt from the whole experience, Chen gives his thoughts and opinions to CNN's Anjali Rao in Hong Kong." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Exclusive online only extra footage from Talk Asia's Edison Chen interview .\nChen talks about how the scandal affected his family .\nGives his thoughts on what he thinks he has learnt from the experience .\nWatch the full Talk Asia interview with Edison Chen ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- A bit of music history was lost Friday morning when flames gutted the Georgia Theatre in Athens, Georgia. The Georgia Theatre in Athens, Georgia, smolders after firefighters put out a morning blaze. The 19th-century building was a cornerstone in the alternative rock music scene that gave the world the B-52s, R.E.M. and the Indigo Girls, said Doc Eldridge, president of the local Chamber of Commerce. The theater, in downtown Athens near the University of Georgia campus, suffered heavy damage from the fire, which was discovered at 7 a.m., according to Athens-Clarke County government spokeswoman Sandy Turner. \"The facade is still there, but it's very bad,\" she said. \"From the big names to the no names, countless of musicians and groups have left their mark on the Athens music scene from the stage of the Georgia Theatre,\" Eldridge said. iReport: Photos of theater burning . Sheffy McArthur was a University of Georgia student when he and two friends converted the movie theater into a music venue in 1978. \"The B-52s paid us to play there, imagine that,\" McArthur said. Sea Level, a blues-jazz-rock group that grew from the remnants of the Allman Brothers Band, played the first show in the theater in January 1978, McArthur said. It became the place \"for alternative music, instead of cover-type stuff for real artists to play,\" he said. Wilmont Greene took over the theater five years ago and began renovations. R.E.M., which formed in Athens in 1980 and became one of the first popular alternative bands, played in the 600-seat theater in the group's early days. In recent years, the theater served as host for album release parties and benefit shows by R.E.M., which is based in a building just down the street. \"All of us here certainly wish Wilmont Greene and his staff the best of luck and Godspeed in their efforts to rebuild the Athens landmark,\" an R.E.M. statement said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Georgia Theatre in Athens, Georgia, gutted by fire Friday morning .\nHistoric theater known for playing host to notable bands, including R.E.M.\nTheater was the place \"for alternative music,\" said first owner ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- A U.S. Marine based on Okinawa has been arrested in connection with the reported rape of a 14-year-old Japanese girl, the island's police force said Monday. Police said the assault was reported Sunday night in the Chanton entertainment district on Okinawa, a major hub for U.S. forces in the Pacific. The 38-year-old American was arrested shortly after the report, police said. The Marine was not identified, and there was no immediate comment from the service on the allegation. Previous criminal cases against American troops have triggered widespread protests by Okinawans since 1995, when three American servicemen were found guilty of raping an Okinawan schoolgirl. Under U.S.-Japanese military agreements, the U.S. government has custody over service members suspected of crimes while on duty. In addition, the U.S. military is not required to turn over those accused of crimes until an indictment is issued. E-mail to a friend ." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Marine, 38, arrested after report of the rape .\nPrevious cases against U.S. troops have triggered protests by Okinawans .\nIn 1995, three servicemen were found guilty of raping an Okinawan schoolgirl ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- You pay for checking your baggage, for snacks and for extra legroom. Word is one airline has even toyed with charging you to use the toilet. So it makes perfect sense to some fliers that heavier passengers should pay for spilling over into the next seat. Earlier this year, United Airlines formalized a policy that charges some larger passengers for a second seat. Frequent flier Ross Murphy, 54, has been sandwiched between larger fliers in coach, and he believes they should have to shell out for a second seat. \"They have a right to sit in the seat next to me,\" said Murphy, who travels cross-country at least 15 times a year to watch his sons' sporting matches. \"But they don't have a right to sit in my lap.\" A growing number of airlines are forcing bigger passengers to pay more as they cope with the costly and uncomfortable quandary that arises when obese passengers cannot squeeze into a single coach seat. With airlines trimming flight schedules -- meaning fuller passenger loads this summer -- the issue is bound to spur some awkward encounters. Chart: Compare some of the common airline fees . \"It's a growing problem, no pun intended,\" said George Hobica, president of AirfareWatchdog.com, a site that is part of Smarter Travel Media LLC, which provides airfare deals and advice. \"Everyone suffers. The obese people suffer and the people who are skinny and get spilled over on suffer as well.\" U.S. obesity rates have mushroomed during the last 25 years, but the width of a coach airplane seat has changed little, remaining between 17 and 18 inches in most commercial planes. More than one-third of Americans fall into the obese category, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This makes traveling in tight spaces vexing for airlines trying to bolster profits by selling the maximum number of seats. The Federal Aviation Administration does not regulate seat width, but it does require passengers be able to sit belted and with both arm rests down to comply with safety standards. In April, UAL Corp.'s United Airlines formalized a policy that says passengers who are unable to safely fit into one seat must pay full price for a second seat. They may receive it free if the plane has vacant seats. Flight attendants on the airlines are responsible for making sure passengers are fitting in their seats and may ask a heavier passengers requiring two seats to pay extra. Robin Urbanski, a spokeswoman for United, said the company received 700 complaints in 2008 from passengers who were upset because a larger passenger encroached on his or her seat. \"This new policy was created for the comfort and well-being of all our guests on board,\" Urbanski said. A survey conducted this year by Europe's low-fare airline Ryanair found a third of the 100,000 passengers polled believed a \"fat tax\" should be instituted, requiring heavier passengers to pay more. Most U.S. airlines have a policy or plan for dealing with heavier passengers, though some are not formalized like United's. Officials worry heavier passengers squished into one seat may pose a safety hazard when a plane must be evacuated during an emergency. Southwest Airlines has had a \"customer of size policy\" for more than 20 years, requiring passengers to buy a second seat on a full plane if their body crosses the armrest boundary. The company will issue refunds if unoccupied seats are available, which they say is the case 97 percent of the time. Airlines with open seating policies such as Southwest find it easier to relocate passengers in need of an extra seat. On all airlines, passengers can buy first-class or business-class seats, which are wider. But those tickets cost more than a coach seat. Experts at Boeing Company, an aircraft manufacturer, say 17-inch seats can accommodate 95 percent of the traveling public. They say studies have found most seat space invasions happen because of wider shoulders and not derrieres. Still, some larger passengers who need more than one seat believe being charged extra is discriminatory and the airlines are not accommodating the growing American waistline. \"The airlines need to be making bigger seats,\" said Peggy Howell, a spokeswoman for the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, a group based in San Francisco, California. \"It's not safe to be cramming us into two seats.\" Lawsuits have been filed by heavier passengers and by those who complain about large passengers encroaching on their space. The courts have ruled the airline policies are within their rights. In the United States, there aren't any discrimination laws to protect obese people, attorneys say. (In some employment discrimination cases, attorneys have been able to win by proving obesity was a genetic disease beyond the person's control.) In 2003, the issue of passenger weight surfaced when a commuter plane crashed on takeoff from Charlotte, North Carolina, because of excess weight and a maintenance error. The accident prompted the FAA to increase the estimated weight per passenger by 10 pounds, including 20 pounds of carry-on luggage. For example, the average weight for a passenger traveling in the summer (including carry-on luggage) went from 180 pounds in 1995 to 190 pounds in 2003. \"We realized after that accident that the weights we were using probably didn't reflect the current state of the American traveling public,\" said Les Dorr, a spokesman with aviation safety at the FAA. In 2004, a CDC scientist studied the effects of obesity on the airline industry. The scientist calculated his findings based on data revealing the average weight of an American had increased by 10 pounds in the 1990s. He estimated the extra weight cost airlines $275 million extra for fuel in 2000. The figures are likely higher today, with fuel costs rising. Scott Cluthe, 57, who works in the radio industry in Houston, Texas, a city known for its obesity epidemic, said average-sized passengers should not have to incur the higher fuel cost caused by the airline's heavier customers. \"A small child needs to pay for a flight, so why wouldn't an obese person?\" said Cluthe, who flies several times a year, mostly in coach, for personal trips. \"I'm not a discriminatory person, but we have to look at the reality of the situation. It's getting a little crowded in here.\" Some larger passengers don't mind paying for the second seat. Other heavier fliers argue while tall passengers pay a fee for legroom, the fees are only a fraction of the price of a entire seat. Air France offers obese passengers booking a second seat up to 33 percent off the ticket price, depending on the type of seat and availability. Mike Vasey of Cheyenne, Wyoming says even some normal-sized people can't fly comfortably when they are packed in the cabin like sardines. Vasey, 45, who considers himself a large guy at 400 pounds and over six feet tall, usually pays for two seats. \"I'd rather be comfortable first ,\" he said, \"and worry about discrimination later.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Obesity rates have grown in the last 25 years but plane seat sizes remain the same .\nA growing number of airlines are creating polices to deal with heavier passengers .\nHeavier passengers cost more fuel and space, say some passengers .\nNational Association of Fat Acceptance says it's unsafe to cram passengers ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- A 23-year-old beauty queen and seven men arrested in vehicles loaded with weapons and cash near the central Mexico city of Guadalajara have been transferred to Mexico City, the state news agency said Wednesday. Laura Zuniga and seven men were found in vehicles with guns and $50,000, Mexican police say. Laura Zuniga and the men were traveling Monday night in two vehicles that contained AR-15 assault rifles, 38-caliber specials, 9 mm handguns, cartridges and $50,000 in cash, said Luis Carlos Najera Gutierrez de Velazco, secretary of public security for the state of Jalisco. Police, who had received a tip that armed men were in a home, detected the vehicles in the city of Zapopan as authorities were en route to investigate the call, Najera said Tuesday. Inside one of the vehicles, authorities found Angel Orlando Garcia Urquiza, 29, who is Zuniga's boyfriend and the brother of \"one of the greatest capos [bosses] of narcotraffic,\" Ricardo Garcia Urquiza, a member of the Juarez cartel already in police custody, Najera said. All eight were filed before the news media Tuesday. Zuniga, wearing blue jeans and a gray sweater, raised her handcuffed wrists to cover her face in a police picture. Watch footage of the eight arrested and weapons seized » . They were transported in a heavily armed 30-vehicle convoy late Tuesday to Guadalajara International Airport and flown to Mexico City, the official Notimex news agency reported. The federal organized crime team in Mexico City will investigate, and the suspects will face arms charges, Najera said. Zuniga is from Culiacan in the state of Sinaloa, a center of drug activity. In July, she won the title Our Sinaloa Beauty. That gave her the right to compete two months later in the national Our Mexico Beauty in Monterrey, where she won \"The Election of the Queens,\" one of five special recognitions, and came in third overall. In October, she won the title \"Hispanoamerican Queen 2008\" in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Mexican newscasts referred to her Wednesday as \"Miss Pistols\" and likened her situation to \"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.\" According to the Nuestra Belleza Mexico Web site, she is to represent Mexico in next year's Miss International contest. A statement issued Wednesday by Lupita Jones, director of Our Mexico Beauty, said the organization will wait to see what happens in the legal system. \"In order to determine the situation with Miss Laura Zuniga, Our Mexico Beauty will be watching the case and will take appropriate action once the results of the authorities' investigation are known,\" said the statement, published on the Web site for CNN affiliate Televisa Mexico." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "NEW: Mexican newcasts refer to arrested beauty queen as \"Miss Pistols\"\nMexican police: Laura Zuniga, seven men face arms charges, federal probe .\nZuniga, men found in vehicles with weapons, $50,000, police say .\nZuniga set to represent Mexico in next year's Miss International contest ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- One year ago, a sheriff's dispatcher in Orange County, near Orlando, Florida, received a strange 911 call. A small child was missing -- and had been for a month. Casey Anthony didn't tell anyone for 30 days that her daughter, Caylee, was missing. The child's grandmother was frantic, talking a mile a minute. But her mother seemed unemotional, disconnected from the drama around her. So began the Caylee Anthony case, a mystery that became a nightly fixture on cable television and captivated true-crime buffs across the country. Today, the tot's 23-year-old mother, Casey Anthony, is in jail, charged with first-degree murder, and faces the death penalty if convicted. She denies harming her daughter or having anything to do with her disappearance. Her attorney, Jose Baez, has said that once all the facts are known, it will become clear that his client is innocent. While reports of missing children are not unusual -- a Haleigh and a Haylee are two recent examples -- several elements came together in the Caylee case to make it a high-profile news story, said Robert Thompson, who heads the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. \"The fact that it's a toddler had that really dramatic, 'this is our worst nightmare' thing. It doesn't get any more dramatic than that,\" he said. \"Then, of course, there's Casey herself.\" The 30-day delay in reporting Caylee's disappearance, along with the frequent release of police documents containing the personal details of the family's life, whetted the public's appetite. See how the case unfolded » . \"By that time, it becomes self-fulfilling,\" Thompson said. \"Once the story gets into the inbox of places that cover this thing -- Dateline, America's Most Wanted, Greta van Susteren, Nancy Grace, Geraldo -- it becomes a packaged drama. We want to know how it turns out.\" Caylee's body was found December 11, six months after she disappeared and just a few blocks from her grandparents' house. The remains were bagged and partially buried in a swampy, vacant lot. Duct tape covered the child's mouth. But the cause of Caylee's death is just one of many questions that remain unanswered a year later. And the answers are not likely to come soon, if at all. Casey Anthony's trial, originally scheduled to begin October 12, has been pushed back until some time next year. Thousands of pages of court files have been made public. Police questioned Anthony's friends and boyfriends, pored through her cell phone records, went through her computer, and seized her digital photo albums. They even analyzed her sleep patterns. But the picture that emerges is far from clear. The story begins at about 9:40 p.m. on the evening of July 15, 2008, with Cindy Anthony's call to 911. The call capped a day in which she and her husband, George, a retired police officer from Ohio, received an impound notice and tracked down their daughter's abandoned white 1998 Pontiac Sunbird -- and then their daughter, Caylee's mother, who was staying with a boyfriend. \"I found out my granddaughter has been taken,\" Cindy Anthony told the 911 dispatcher. \"She has been missing for a month. Her mother finally admitted that she's been missing. ... We're talking about a 3-year-old little girl!\" \"I need to find her,\" Cindy Anthony continued. \"I told you my daughter was missing for a month. I just found her today, but I can't find my granddaughter. She just admitted to me that she's been trying to find her herself. There's something wrong. I found my daughter's car today, and it smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car.\" George Anthony told police later that the car gave him \"a bad vibe.\" \"I got within three feet of it. I could smell something. You look up and you say, please don't let this be. Please don't let this be,\" he said in a July 24 police interview. A cadaver dog confirmed for police the scent of human decomposition in the car trunk. Casey Anthony's friends told police she said she hit an animal with the car. But many of her stories did not check out, investigators said. Although Casey Anthony has frequently fallen out with her parents, they have always insisted that she is innocent. They haven't visited her in jail for months, in part because authorities record the visits and release them to the public. During the search for Caylee, some say Casey Anthony didn't behave the way one would expect of a worried mother. She went to nightclubs and sent hundreds of text messages to friends, according to cell phone and text transcripts and investigative reports released by police. Those phone and text records also showed that she hardly mentioned her missing daughter. At one point, police analyzed her sleep patterns, finding that the cell phone calls and text messaging ceased for only three or four hours a night at about the time Caylee disappeared. For weeks, curiosity seekers camped out in lawn chairs outside the Anthony home, where the family had posted large flyers asking, \"Where is Caylee?\" When the crowd grew unruly, Cindy Anthony waved a hammer and George Anthony shouted back at the hecklers. Authorities say they also found traces of chloroform, a knock-out drug, in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car. And they said that on her computer, they found Internet searches of missing children and chloroform Web sites. Investigators first labeled Casey Anthony a person of interest, and later, a suspect. She was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder on October 14. But Thompson, the pop culture professor at Syracuse, cautions that the final curtain hasn't fallen on this drama. \"It isn't necessarily a slam dunk,\" he said. \"We have the JonBenet Ramsey case to show that we may think one thing, and it isn't so.\" Early in that investigation, authorities said John and Patsy Ramsey were \"under an umbrella of suspicion\" in their daughter's death, but they later were cleared. \"These things are capable of twisting around,\" Thompson said. \"But that's another element that makes them interesting.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cindy Anthony called 911, reported Caylee missing a year ago .\nChild already had been missing for a month .\nCasey Anthony was arrested several times, charged with murder in October .\nCaylee's skeleton was found in December in vacant lot near family's home ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- She's only 23, but Deepika Padukone is already living a life millions would envy. From calendar model to Bollywood big-time: Deepika Padukone. The model-turned-actress was spotted in a music video and then cast in one of the biggest grossing films in Bollywood history. She still only has three movies under her belt, but star status has already been bestowed upon her. With no family connections to the film industry and not being from Mumbai, Padukone traveled a route to movie stardom millions could only dream of. After deciding to become a model at the age of 16, she was picked out of a music video by acclaimed director Farah Khan and cast in her next film opposite Shahrukh Khan. \"Om Shanti Om\" went on to become not only a hit in India, but also gained wider acclaim among western audiences. \"I completely didn't expect it. When I met Farah I thought she was joking. And at that point it seemed too good to be true. Shahrukh is someone who I've grown up watching, and I didn't think that I deserve being a part of such a huge film. It's only later, when I met Shahrukh and when things actually started happening, when I realized that this is for real,\" she told CNN. Despite her meteoric rise to fame and work on some big budget films she believes she's learning the job of being an A-list Bollywood actress. \"I had great debut, a successful film, but after that...I would think it's quite difficult to choose the right film. You never know what's right and what's wrong,\" she said. \"Things for me changed quite overnight, actually. I remember a couple of months before the film release, not too many people knew me. In November 2007 when my film released and immediately after that I had to travel to New York, to Dubai and to London, and suddenly everyone on the streets started recognizing me, especially the Indians. That's when I realized that things have changed.\" With the public attention has come the inevitable media spotlight on her private life. She says she never experienced the \"casting couch\" but is consistently romantically linked with other Bollywood stars, and there were rumors about a relationship with Indian cricketer MS Dhoni. \"As someone who didn't know how to deal with it, yes it was really difficult for me initially to read about myself or to read about things that are untrue. But I think slowly you start learning to deal with these things.\" Padukone's father was a professional badminton player, and she played too as a teenager, traveling across the country to compete in tournaments. But by her late teens she decided she wanted to be a model and got the full support of her parents. \"I trained, I lost some weight. I then got a portfolio done. I sent it to Bombay to a couple of agencies and waited for awhile. I think that period is really the most challenging. Because that's really the time that one can really go wrong. The waiting period. You can really make some wrong decisions and go completely wrong,\" she told CNN. \"I had the support of my family. I didn't get carried away. I think I was patient enough to wait for the right assignment to come my way.\" As a model she appeared in commercials and music videos. Since her move into the movie business more commercial endorsements have come her way, but in an industry notorious for its high turnover of starlets she is aware that for actresses there is often a limited shelf-life. \"For me my life now is my work. But I know that at some point I will have to have a life beyond my work. And I know that today there's me, tomorrow there will be someone else. Maybe I'll be here for 5 years, maybe I'll be here for many, many years. \"I'm definitely going to work hard and make sure that I can be here for as long as I can, but I'll also make sure that people don't get bored of me. And...yes, let's see how it goes.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Padukone was picked out from a music video to star in \"Om Shanti Om\"\n23-year-old began career as a model and has appeared in three movies so far .\nShe has no family connections to movie industry ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Brad Pitt gets top billing in Quentin Tarantino's \"Inglourious Basterds,\" but Austrian actor Christoph Waltz may have turned in the most memorable performance as a Nazi \"Jew Hunter.\" Christoph Waltz attends a special screening of \"Inglourious Basterds\" in New York. Waltz, a 52-year-old veteran of German television, was hardly known outside of Europe, until now. Tarantino, insisting on actors with geographic origins similar to their characters, chose Waltz to play a complex and unforgettable villain: Nazi Col. Hans Landa. Landa mixes charm, humor and intelligence with great cruelty and opportunism as he travels through Tarantino's unpredictable screenplay. Waltz calls Landa \"one of the great villains in dramatic literature.\" His performance earned Waltz the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, but the actor credits the writer for creating a \"multifaceted and layered\" character. \"It's what Quentin [Tarantino] has written, and let me tell you, that's plenty,\" Waltz said. \"Because I could still be sitting there trying to figure out what else is in there. And it's bottomless.\" The opening scene of \"Inglourious Basterds\" is itself a short film in the style of a spaghetti western, starring Waltz as \"The Jew Hunter.\" Watch the stars of the movie discuss the film » . \"It was pure Tarantino to me in that it blended so many different elements perfectly, of tension and comedy, dialogue and excitement,\" actor B.J. Novak said of the scene. Waltz's character uses three languages in his encounter with a French dairy farmer who was hiding a Jewish family under his farmhouse floor. \"The feature that makes me such an effective hunter of the Jews is, as opposed to most German soldiers, I can think like a Jew, where they can only think like a German or, more precisely, a German soldier,\" Landa tells the farmer. Landa's motivation is more complex than the typical Nazi depicted in a past movies. A literature scholar could build a career around studying the character, Waltz said. \"Landa is one of the great villains in dramatic literature from the very beginning, for specific reasons, and it's a real job to find out the reasons,\" he said. \"You sit there and you study and you study.\" The role provided him \"ample opportunity to show other sides,\" Waltz said. \"That's the fantastic thing with Landa, is it's so multifaceted and layered.\" But Waltz said he will be careful about repeating a similar role. \"This is the best villain there is, and now it has to be significantly different for me to consider,\" he said. His three-decades-long acting résumé shows the diversity of his talent. His 1996 portrayal of Roy Black, one of Germany's most beloved pop stars, earned him one of Germany's highest acting honors. Waltz, now with a Hollywood agent, hints that scripts are coming his way because of the \"Inglourious Basterds\" exposure. One disadvantage of playing the villain in a Tarantino film is that the director insisted that Waltz not pal around with cast mates while away from the set. \"It might be a good idea not to establish this buddy-buddy situation, to keep everybody on their toes a little bit,\" he said. \"That awkward distance that they kept from me made it easier.\" Pitt, however, did approach him early in the filming, he said. \"The fact that he is one of the biggest stars didn't come into that equation after he eliminated it,\" Waltz said. \"He approached me literally with open arms, and that was that.\" \"Inglourious Basterds\"-- rated R -- hits theaters Friday, August 21." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Christoph Waltz plays Nazi Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's new movie .\nPerformance earned Waltz the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival .\nHis three-decades-long acting résumé shows the diversity of his talent .\nThe German television veteran was hardly known outside of Europe, until now ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Hurricane Bill spun northward toward the New England coast Saturday with wind and rain as officials warned beach lovers to head indoors for the night. Signs at Lighthouse Beach at Chatham, Massachusetts, warn beach-goers Saturday of rough waters. At 11 p.m., the center of the Category 1 storm was about 195 miles southeast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, the National Hurricane Center said. Forecasters said the island can expect 1 to 2 inches of rain, and Outer Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard may receive only an inch. Swells as high as 19 feet are expected Monday night, Coast Guard Petty Officer Jordan Berryman told CNN in Chatham, Massachusetts. \"It's been generally calm but tonight we recommend that everybody stay off the beach,\" he said. The storm continued its northerly pace of nearly 25 mph. A gradual change to the north-northeast is predicted for Sunday. Bill's sustained winds remained at 100 mph, with higher gusts. \"The surf is definitely big,\" Emily Chibaro of Nantucket told CNN Radio Saturday. \"The south shore part of the island is closed off to all people on the island.\" iReport.com: Are you bracing for Hurricane Bill? A gradual weakening is expected Saturday night and Sunday as the hurricane moves north of the Gulf Stream, a swift, warm Atlantic Ocean current. The core of the storm should pass New England offshore Saturday night, and approach Nova Scotia on Sunday. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said tropical-force winds from the outer bands of the storm were forecast to hit his state at 9 p.m. ET, earlier than expected. The speed of tropical-force winds range from 39 mph to 73 mph. Watch the waves crash on Massachusetts beach » . A tropical storm warning was issued for the coast of Massachusetts from Woods Hole to Sagamore Beach, including the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The hurricane itself is predicted to stay offshore, the hurricane center said. The most intense period of the storm should be between midnight and the predawn hours of Sunday, the governor told reporters in a conference call. Patrick cautioned boaters to expect high seas and to avoid the area around Cape Cod. Forecasters have warned of dangerous riptides, or undertows, along the New England coast and points north. \"Waters will be unsafe even for strong swimmers,\" the governor warned. Rip currents, or riptides, are strong seaward flows of water that occur where there's a break in the shoreline. They are difficult to detect. Watch CNN's Bonnie Schneider talk about rip currents » . Patrick said advisories will be posted, and beaches on the cape were closed. He urged residents to stay home. President Obama and his family are scheduled to arrive Sunday for a vacation at Martha's Vineyard. \"We look forward to welcoming him to Massachusetts as soon as he can safely get here,\" Patrick said. Hurricane Bill skirted Bermuda, leaving rain in its wake. The tropical storm warning for Bermuda was discontinued. Canada's weather service, Environment Canada, issued a tropical storm warnings and hurricane watches for parts of Nova Scotia. Watch how Nova Scotians are preparing for Bill » . A tropical storm warning means tropical storm conditions are expected somewhere within the warning area within 24 hours. A watch means conditions are expected to change within 36 hours. Total rain accumulations of 3 to 5 inches with isolated amounts of 7 inches are expected near the track of Bill across Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. CNN's Susan Candiotti and CNN Radio's Brendan Gage contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "NEW: In Massachusetts, Coast Guard recommends \"everybody stay off the beach\"\nPresident Obama and family scheduled to arrive Sunday at Martha's Vineyard .\nMassachusetts governor: Intense weather expected overnight to Sunday morn .\nForecasters warn of dangerous riptides along New England coast and north ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(CNN) -- Billy Joel and his wife, Katie Lee Joel, are separating. Billy Joel married Katie Lee in 2004. \"After nearly five years of marriage, Billy Joel and Katie Lee Joel have decided to separate,\" a joint statement on behalf of the pair said. \"This decision is a result of much thoughtful consideration. Billy and Katie remain caring friends with admiration and respect for each other.\" Billy Joel, 60, and Katie Lee Joel, 27, were married in 2004. Billy Joel is the multimillion-selling musician behind such albums as \"The Stranger,\" \"52nd Street\" and \"Storm Front.\" Katie Lee is a food critic and chef. The marriage was the third for Billy Joel. His marriage to Elizabeth Weber ended in divorce in 1982 after nine years. He married his second wife, model Christie Brinkley, in 1985; they divorced in 1994. Both Joels have retained attorneys, according to a report in the New York Daily News. Billy Joel's publicist, Claire Mercuri, told the Daily News the singer was bearing up well. \"Billy's doing fine,\" Mercuri said. \"He's looking forward to resuming his Face2Face Tour with Elton John.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Billy Joel separating from wife of almost five years, Katie Lee Joel .\n\"This decision is a result of much thoughtful consideration,\" said joint statement .\nMarriage was Billy Joel's third ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (CNN) -- Forty-one bodies have been recovered from the crash of Air France Flight 447, the Brazilian Navy Command and Aeronautical Command said Tuesday. Brazilian military personnel on Tuesday carry the remains of one of the passengers of the Air France crash. Sixteen bodies pulled from the Atlantic Ocean Tuesday were taken to Fernando de Noronha for transportation Wednesday afternoon by helicopter to the air base in Recife, Brazil. The 25 bodies previously found were put aboard a Brazilian frigate. Searches for the remaining bodies will continue overnight, the navy and aeronautical command said in a written statement. The Airbus A330 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean June 1 en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France, carrying 228 passengers and crew. The first bodies were recovered about 320 kilometers (200 miles) northwest of the Brazilian archipelago of Saint Peter and Saint Paul; Tuesday's recoveries were 80 kilometers (50 miles) away. It was not clear whether the bodies had drifted in the 1-2 knot currents or whether their separation suggested that the jet may have broken apart in the air. Watch bodies being returned to land » . Meanwhile, the French, who are leading the investigation, were increasing their naval efforts. The nuclear submarine Emeraude was expected to reach the search area Wednesday to search for wreckage, including the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. And the French sent two tugs towing 40 tons of recovery equipment, a surveillance ship and a ship equipped for amphibious operations. The United States is also sending equipment to help with the search. Watch challenges faced by search crews » . Brazilian authorities said the plane debris will be taken to France for investigation but the bodies would undergo forensic tests in Recife. The cause of the crash is not known, but investigators are looking at the possible role of airspeed sensors known as Pitot tubes, among other factors. Air France has agreed to replace the sensors on its Airbus A330 and A340 jets, a pilots' union said Tuesday. The airline said Saturday that it began replacing its fleet's sensors last month. Another Air France pilots' union, ALTER, has advised its pilots not to fly planes until their Pitot tubes are replaced. ALTER, the smallest of three Air France pilots' unions, would not say what percentage of the carrier's pilots it represents. Watch an explanation of what could have caused the crash » . The biggest union, SNPL, said Tuesday it has accepted Air France's assurances that no Airbus A330 or A340 will take off unless at least two of its three Pitot tubes have been replaced. Union spokesman Eric Derivry added that there is no indication that the Pitot tubes caused the accident. Air France said over the weekend that it began to notice in May of last year that Pitot tubes sometimes briefly iced up at high altitude on A330s and A340s. That caused \"a loss of airspeed data,\" according to the airline -- that is, the pilots didn't know the plane's speed. Air France decided to replace all its probes starting April 27, following laboratory tests earlier in the year, the airline said. That is the program the pilots say the airline has promised to complete within days. The location of the crash has not been determined, because ocean currents have moved the bodies and debris. Map of Flight 447's flight path » . The ocean depth where the debris and bodies have been found varies, but averages about 3,000 meters (nearly 9,900 feet) deep, according to the University of New Hampshire/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Joint Hydrographic Center. The search area covers 200,000 square km (77,220 square miles), nearly the size of Romania, Brazilian officials said. Brazilian officials emphasized Monday that finding bodies was their main priority. The French are in charge of finding the voice and data recorders. Fourteen aircraft -- 12 Brazilian and two French -- were participating, along with five Brazilian ships and one French frigate. The U.S. Navy will contribute two high-tech acoustic devices to listen underwater for the emergency beacons that are attached to the voice and data recorders. The \"towed pinger locators,\" which help search for emergency beacons on downed aircraft to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet -- will be placed aboard two French tugs that are part of the search efforts, the official said. CNN's Karl Penhaul, Ayesha Durgahee, Niki Cook, Jim Bittermann and Barbara Starr contributed to this report." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "First bodies recovered from the crash of Air France 447 returned to land .\nAir France agrees to replace within days speed sensors, pilots' union says .\nAir France said it began replacing parts in April .\nThe location of the crash has not been determined ." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You are a summarization AI. Provide a succinct and relevant summary of the provided text." }, { "from": "human", "value": "(InStyle.com) -- A hit TV show. An Emmy. A summer blockbuster. A new company. A wedding! Katherine Heigl has every reason to smile for our camera. A star -- and a trio of gorgeous looks -- is born. The Ingénue: \"This is my favorite look of the three just because it's sexy but not overtly so,\" Heigl says. \"I like simple hair and makeup.\" There has been a self-tanning mishap . As Katherine Heigl crosses the parking lot of the sandwich shop at the Roosevelt Golf Course at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, she walks stiffly, holding her arms away from her like a paper doll and apologizing profusely for running 10 minutes late. Earlier, she'd sprayed her entire body with self-tanner, which refused to dry. She resorted to having her fiancé, musician Josh Kelley, take a blow-dryer to her (didn't work). So here she is, in a strapless, ankle-length Juicy Couture sundress (donned to accommodate the residual stickiness), fanning herself and wondering how mottled the tan will be when (or if) the lotion ever sets. Not that one bum experience could turn her off beauty products. \"I love everything new,\" says Heigl, 28, who, in addition to being nominated for an Emmy for best supporting actress on \"Grey's Anatomy,\" just started a production company at Fox. \"When I was in Rhode Island filming this summer, I went to Sephora for the first time. It was like my holy mecca.\" She recently had her bathroom vanity renovated with a high counter to make more room for the large drawers below that hold her well-organized loot. Then there's her deal with Coty to be the face of Nautica's new women's fragrance in January. Considering this fondness for all things beauty -- as well as Heigl's impressive acting range -- she plays TV dramedy as deftly as cinematic romantic comedy, as in the mega-hit \"Knocked Up\" and next year's 27 Dresses -- it seems natural for her to be In Style's first ever triple-cover girl. These three looks take her from girl-next-door to red-carpet knockout to pixie-coiffed vamp. The star, whom pals call Katie (and Hollywood calls the Next Big Thing), popped out her retainer to talk about makeup, breakouts and what boys like. KATHERINE HEIGL: I'm so sorry, I have to take out my Invisalign before I eat. IN STYLE: Who knew you wore them? I guess that's the point of Invisalign. KH: I got them because of this wonky tooth. I was like, OK, I can't take it. It's awesome because every two weeks you switch to a new retainer. Pretty much the perfect way to describe Invisalign is Netflix for your teeth. IS: Right -- the things we do for beauty. So, how did you like being transformed into three such different looks? KH: It was fun. I was working with such great hair and makeup people. And to have these professionals turning you into someone else is pretty neat. IS: Do you ever go without makeup? KH: There was a time when I would. Now that I get followed by photographers, I'm really paranoid about it. I do not want to be the \"Look What This Celebrity Looks Like Without Makeup\" picture. I'm clearly vain, and I don't need that. Plus, I like products. IS: How often do you go through your drawers and purge? KH: Often, because people send me a lot of stuff now, which is exciting. I love getting those boxes. [Into the tape recorder:] Send me a box of makeup, Stila! When that happens, I feel like I have to clean out and give stuff to my sister, mom and friends because there comes a point of gluttony that I can't accept. IS: How do you think you express your personality through style? KH: I'm a big hair-up person. Last night at work they put my hair in two French braids to keep it flat under the scrub cap. I thought it looked cute and that I could pull it off after I'd slept on it. And ... no. So I thought I could recreate it myself ... no again. As far as clothing style goes, I fluctuate almost as much as I do with beauty products. I like to shop for sweaters -- maybe it's the New Englander in me. I'm building a house in the mountains in Utah, so I tell myself I'm \"preparing\" for that. I like sweaters -- they're like scrubs -- you don't have to suck it in or worry about the bloat. IS: Do you know how you want your hair and makeup at your wedding? KH: I have an idea, but it's so dependent on the dress, and I haven't gotten there yet. My sister is getting married too, so we looked for dresses together. After about five stores I was like, \"I'm done.\" Everyone says, \"You just know when you put that dress on.\" My sister found the right dress just like that. So I know it can happen. But it's grueling. IS: Wait, so your mom has two daughters getting married within months? KH: My poor mother is probably like, \"Why, God? Why?\" But I hired a planner. I want the day to be spectacular, but mostly I want it to be fun. And I don't want to freak out or stress. IS: Does your fiancé have any particular opinions about your look? KH: Josh wouldn't mind if my hair was brown, if it was still long -- that's such a boy thing. IS: Would you ever wear a wig out? KH: I'd contemplate it, but I don't know if I actually have the courage to pull it off. I once wore a long hair-extension ponytail, and someone asked me if it was real, like I was one of those dolls when we were little, and the hair just cranks out. IS: How would you describe your skin? KH: My skin is sensitive, so everything bothers it. And I'm the jerk who keeps switching products and making it worse. IS: How do you treat a breakout? KH: I got a great product at Ona Spa called Sebuspot. I've tried so many that were disappointments, but maybe I stand too close to the mirror examining my pores. If I backed up, things might look fine. IS: What do you always carry in your bag? KH: Powder, because I get shiny. And lip balm, either the Smith's Rosebud Salve or C.O. Bigelow's Mentha Lip Shine in Black Cherry Soda from Bath & Body Works. It's shiny with a little shimmer and tastes so good. IS: An In Style.com reader wants to know how you maintain a healthy body image in Hollywood. KH: I train with Harley Pasternak. I love him with my whole soul and follow his 5-Factor diet. I first said, \"I'm never going to be -- nor do I want to be -- an uber-athletic girl.\" It's just not me and I don't have that kind of discipline. He said, \"I just want you to be healthy.\" A lot of what we focus on is posture. I slump into myself when I get stressed. If I were going to play an action hero, I'd have to get that look. But I'd never maintain it. For me it's never about achieving a look that's impossible. E-mail to a friend . Get a FREE TRIAL issue of InStyle - CLICK HERE! Copyright © 2009 Time Inc. All rights reserved." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Grey's Anatomy\" actress Katherine Heigl has own production company .\nStar of hit movie Knocked Up\" is getting married .\nDoesn't go without makeup for fear of ugly photographs .\nSays shopping for wedding dress is \"grueling\"" } ]