text:
CHEICK KEITA (born 16 April 1996) is a professional footballer who plays as a left back. Keita began his senior career in Italy with Virtus Entella before joining English second-tier club Birmingham City in January 2017. He spent the 2017–18 Serie A season on loan to Bologna and the following season on loan to Belgian First Division A club Eupen, and was released by Birmingham at the end of the 2019–20 season. He was born in France, but has represented Mali at under-20 level and has been an unused substitute for the senior team.

Club career

Early career

Born in 1996 in Paris,[1] Keita started his youth football career at the local team, Paris FC.[2] He had been selected to attend INF Clairefontaine, and spent three years in Monaco's youth system before being released.[3]

Virtus Entella

After trials with French clubs failed to produce a contract, Keita joined the youth team of Italian second-tier club Virtus Entella.[4] On 17 January 2015, he was an unused substitute in a Serie B match against Bari.[5] Early the following season, on 12 September, the player made his senior debut in Serie B against A.C. Cesena at Stadio Comunale, playing the game as a starter under coach Alfredo Aglietti. He was shown a yellow card in the 32nd minute.[6][7] On 24 October, Keita was sent off after 75 minutes of the match against Bari for receiving two yellow cards.[8] He was again sent off on 26 March 2016 against Como, this time in stoppage time.[9] He played 32 games (including a game in the Coppa Italia) and was shown eleven yellow cards and two red.[10] After considerable transfer window interest from what website _TuttoB.com_ dubbed “half of Serie A”, Keita remained with Entella.[11] He made 14 league appearances in the first half of the 2016–17 season, with only one yellow card.[12]

Birmingham City

On 19 January 2017, Keita signed a three-and-a-half-year contract with Birmingham City of the EFL Championship (English second tier); the fee was undisclosed.[13] According to manager Gianfranco Zola, “Everybody speaks very highly about him in Italy and a lot of teams were interestedwe did very well to get him because everybody says he has got a big future.”[14] He made his debut on 4 February at home to Fulham, playing on the left of a makeshift back four, kept a clean sheet, and supplied the cross for Lukas Jutkiewicz's winning goal in what was judged a man-of-the-match performance.[15] He continued in the struggling side for the next six matchesall defeats[16]until a knee injury forced him out.[17] He was restored to the starting eleven in early April for the visit to league leaders Brighton & Hove Albion, but the _Birmingham Mail_{{'s}} correspondent thought his forward-thinking nature meant his selection was too risky while the team remained in relegation danger.[18] He finished the season with ten appearances, as the team secured their Championship survival on the last day of the season.[19] Keita was a second-half substitute in the opening match of the 2017–18 season, but picked up a groin injury that kept him out for a few weeks. Meanwhile, new manager Harry Redknapp signed Arsenal youngster Cohen Bramall on loan, and Bramall went straight into the starting eleven.[20]

Keita remained with Birmingham City for the 2019–20 season. He was brought into the matchday squad as cover on the left wing for an FA Cup match against Coventry City in February 2020, but was not used, and kept his place on the bench for a couple of league matches. Head coach Pep Clotet described him as “a player that is very much his own player, he has his own way of seeing the game that you either take it or you don't take it.”[21][22] He was released when his contract expired at the end of the season.[23]

Loan moves

Keita returned to Italy to join Serie A club Bologna on loan for the 2017–18 season.[24] He arrived with an adductor muscle injury that he expected to keep him out for two weeks,[25] but remained under treatment for some considerable time longer,[26] and did not take a full part in first-team training until well into November.[27] After two appearances for the club's Primavera side, he was included in the squad for the Serie A match at home to Cagliari on 3 December,[28][29] but remained unused.[30] Keita finally made his Bologna and Serie A debut on 18 April 2018, away to Sampdoria, as a second-half substitute for regular left wing-back Adam Masina; he became the first Malian to play for the club.[31] Head coach Roberto Donadoni said that he put Keita on rather than Ibrahima Mbaye because of his greater drive.[32] Keita made his only start in his third and last appearance for Bologna, in a 3–1 defeat against top-of-the-table Juventus. He struggled against the trickery of Juan Cuadrado, and was unable to cover properly for Juventus' second goal because he was pushed by its scorer, Sami Khedira.[33]

After left-back Kristian Pedersen became Birmingham's first signing of the 2018 summer transfer window, Keita joined Eupen of the Belgian First Division A on a season-long loan.[34] In the visit to Mouscron that “pitted the league's worst defence against the worst attack”, he scored the only goalhis first at senior level[35]when Silas Gnaka's shot was parried to his feet to give his team their first points of the season in their fifth match.[36] He missed several weeks with a muscle injury before returning to the side after the October international break.[37][38] He finished the season with 24 appearances.[39]

International career

Keita was born in France of Malian descent. He represented Mali at under-20 level,[40] and received his first call-up to the senior team in May 2016 for a friendly against Nigeria and an Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against South Sudan, but missed out through injury.[41] Manager Alain Giresse selected him again for a World Cup qualifier in November, but he remained an unused substitute.[42][43]

Career statistics

  Club              Season         League             National Cup   League Cup   Other   Total
  ----------------- -------------- ------------------ -------------- ------------ ------- ------- ------ ------- ------ -------
  Division          Apps           Goals              Apps           Goals        Apps    Goals
  Virtus Entella    2014–15[44]    Serie B            0              0            0       0
  2015–16[45]       Serie B        31                 0              1            0       —
  2016–17[46]       Serie B        14                 0              2            0       —
  Total             45             0                  3              0            —       —
  Birmingham City   2016–17[47]    Championship       10             0            —       —
  2017–18[48]       Championship   1                  0              —            0       0
  2019–20[49]       Championship   0                  0              0            0       0
  Total             11             0                  0              0            0       0
  Bologna (loan)    2017–18[50]    Serie A            3              0            —       —
  Eupen (loan)      2018–19[51]    First Division A   24             2            0       0
  Career total      83             2                  3              0            0       0

  : Appearances and goals by club, season and competition

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]

[19]

[20]

[21]

[22]

[23]

[24]

[25]

[26]

[27]

[28]

[29]

[30]

[31]

[32]

[33]

[34]

[35]

[36]

[37]

[38]

[39]

[40]

[41]

[42]

[43]

[44]

[45]

[46]

[47]

[48]

[49]

[50]

[51]

title: Cheick Keita

question: Who is Cheick Keita?

answer: He is a professional footballer who plays as a left-back.

question: How old was Keita when he joined Birmingham City in January 2017?

answer: 21 years old

question: How many yellow cards and red cards was Keita shown after playing 32 games?

answer: 11 yellow cards, 2 red cards

question: What youth team did Keita join before signing with Birmingham City?

answer: Virtus Entella

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: Cheick Keita is a professional footballer who plays as a left-back. Keita began his senior career in Italy with Virtus Entella before joining English second-tier club Birmingham City in January 2017. He spent the 2017–18 Serie A season on loan to Bologna and the following season on loan to Belgian First Division A club Eupen and was released by Birmingham at the end of the 2019–20 season. He was born in France, but has represented Mali at the under-20 level and has been an unused substitute for the senior team.


split: train

text:
TAIBAH AL-IBRAHIM (طِيبة أحمد الإبراهيم; c. 1945 – 28 December 2011) was a Kuwaiti writer who wrote the first science fiction book in Kuwait. She was candidate for The third constituency in Kuwait in 2008. She died in 2011 at the age of 66.[1] She received a certificate of appreciation from the literary and artistic services for the three science fictions “الإنسان الباهت”, “الإنسان المتعدد”, “انقراض الرجل” (The extinction of men). Al-Ibrahim was candidate for The third constituency in Kuwait in 2008. She said “she would press for equality between the two genders and to render divorce applicable with the consent of the man and the woman.” She called for “separation of religion from the state because there is a difference between religious people and a religious state, to keep the religion at distance from human errors.”[2]

Bibliography

-   الإنسان الباهت : published in 1986
-   الإنسان المتعدد : published in 1990
-   انقراض الرجل (The extinction of men) : published in 1990
-   ظلال الحقيقة : in 1995
-   مذكرات خادم : First part was published in 1986 and the second part in 1995
-   لعنة المال (The curse of money): (a fantasy novel, a symbol of Arab Countries)
-   أشواك الربيع (Spring thorns): social-romantic novel, a teenage girl dreams of 1979
-   القلب القاسي (Cruel heart): a social-mystery novel
-   حذار أن تقتل (Beware to kill): a political short story

Notes

[1]

[2] Female candidate from ‘3rd’ calls for equality between two genders, ARAB TIMES, FRIDAY, 9 May 2008 , p.3

title: Taibah Al-Ibrahim

question: Who was Taibah Al-Ibrahim?

answer: She was a Kuwaiti writer who wrote the first science fiction book in Kuwait.

question: What were some thoughts that Ibrahim stood firmly behind?

answer: She pushed for the equality between the two genders and to render divorce applicable with the consent of the man and the woman.

question: How many works were published by Taibah Al-Ibrahim?

answer: According to the article, nine works were published by her.

question: After Ibrahim died, what did she receive?

answer: After her death, she received a certificate of appreciation from the literary and artistic services for the three science fictions she wrote.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: This article describes the ground-break work Taibah Al-Ibrahim published in Kuwait, and the achievements she received.


text:
The two soldiers briskly walked down the concrete semicircle of a hallway, one of many connecting the South Suffolk bunkers together. The roaring of Soviet bombs on the surface barely shook the underground structure, but those minor vibrations were enough so that everyone and everything was dusty-even the air was gray. The door at the end of the hallway was simply marked as “101.” One knocked, and the sound echoed through the hall. Quickly, a small latch was slid open, and a single blue eye looked them over, slid it back, and opened the door. The owner of the eye, a young private who would still be in high school if not for the ongoing conflict, saluted the two soldiers. Both returned it.

Inside, an old, grandfatherly man in a loud sweater with a long, white beard was listening to Christmas music. Upon seeing the entering soldiers, he shut off the state-issued radio. For all his apparent jovial nature, the room was darker and dustier than any other. None of the cleaners wanted to come in here, and when they did they attempted to clean it as fast as possible. With the radio off, it was easier to understand why.

The moaning.

It wasn’t loud. In fact, it was just barely audible, to the point where one wouldn’t notice it except with the lack of any other source of noise. The source was a pit with chains leading into it. Inside were but a few small children-or what the State had labeled as ‘The Plague of the Isles.’

Celts.

The old man interrupted the sound of the moaning, with a voice that was much like the soldiers had imagined Santa to sound like when they were but young children.

“Well? What has the Permanent Secretary sent you here for?” One of the soldiers-a young corporal with the name of Benjamin-spoke up.

“Project K6, sir.”

“What about it?”

“Is it ready for use?”

“I wouldn’t use it yet, though it can be tested.”

“Sir... The Soviets have breached the Bodicaea line. They’re less that 10 miles from the outskirts of London.”

“Yes, yes. I know that. But let me show you something.”

He waved them over to the pit. Looking down, they saw four emaciated children, chained together and to the walls.

The Captain spoke up. “Sir, I believe this could be counted as a success.”

The old man-Professor Herbert-looked at him with complete derision.

“Most of that is the joint effects of seeing their parents burnt alive and being underfed for the past month. K6 hasn't changed anything, as far as we know. Still, the rat experiments are promising.”

“Permanent Secretary Ottinger won’t be happy about this.”

“The problem is that we haven’t been given enough time. If you-”

“Sir, the State has given all the time it will. K6 is needed now!”

“I don’t think tha-”

“We are the embodiment of the will of the State, and if you do not follow our instructions, you are going against the State's own will. Hand K6 over.”

Professor Herbert sighed.

“Fine. Mark!”

The private at the door stood and walked to them.

“I want you to give these men... 4 vials of the K6 virus. As for you two,” he said, turning to the pair of soldiers. “I want you to inform the PS that this needs to be dropped far away from the Isles themselves. Berlin or Vienna will give us enough of a buffer that by the time the virus reaches us, if it actually infects anyone that is, we’ll be far enough away that we can successfully inoculate the Anglic population of the Isles.”

The Corporal smiled, giving an affirmative to the professor. “Remember, sir, it’s all for the best. Once the Communists and the Celts are destroyed, the State will thrive.”

“I suppose, but at what price prosperity?”

“Sir...”

“I know, I know. The hypocrisy is astounding. Ah, well, best not to think of it.”

The moans rose again from the pit with the ensuing silence.

“The State must thrive.” The professor saluted.

“The State must thrive.” The soldiers briskly exited.

Behind them, the moans were cut out by the sound of Christmas.

title: The State Must Thrive

question: What does the text say about reindeer?

question: What is the role of Christmas in the story?

answer: Christmas is mentioned as a background detail, indirectly establishing the time of year in which the story is set. It also serves as juxtaposition to the horrors of war: Christmas music on the state-issued radio disguises the moans of children being tortured and the professor doing the torturing is described as resembling Santa.


text:
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We are proud to have free double glazing quoting service. This lets you design your product online and get a bespoke price. This is easy to use and can be used on our entire range.

We offer competitive prices and work with a variety of budgets. We are consistently open and honest with our pricing, ensuring you are getting the best double glazing deal with us.

We strive to accommodate each customer’s double glazing delivery to their chosen delivery address. We will decide on a date and an approximate time that best suits your schedule.

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Get in touch with us today to find out our prices. You can fill out our contact form, and we’ll happily answer any queries you have for us.

Alternatively, you can call us directly on 01782 593 968. Our friendly team will be happy to help you. We look forward to hearing from you!

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question: Summarize the types of products that Contech offers.

answer: The company offers double glazing and double glazed products, including conservatory roofs, aluminium roof lanterns, aluminium and uPVC windows, and composite and aluminium doors. According to the website there is a wide range of each of these types of product and room for customization. There is emphasis placed on retaining heat and energy efficiency.

question: Summarize the services offered by Contech.

answer: They offer advice to customers on product choices, and free design and consultancy. They also deliver double glazing to customers' chosen delivery address. In addition to this they offer technical support.

question: Summarize the way in which the website supports Contech customers.

answer: Apart from displaying the range of products, the website has a free online quoting services that allows the customer to input their specifications and receive a tailored price. They can also ask questions using the contact form. The company's number is provided for customers to call directly.

question: Summarize the flaws of Contech's service.


text:
Tom Salle, center, owner of Meat the Live Butcher was joined by volunteers and members of the White Center Eagles to celebrate their effort to support the White Center Food Bank. Together they raised more than $25,000.

Together with the White Center Eagles and the community, Tom Salle and Meat the Live Butcher raised $25,600 for the White Center Food Bank in an effort celebrated in a recent dinner.

John Carney, from the food bank, said that will feed 7,000 families, or 21,000 people, and the amount collected was 4,300 lbs. of food.

question: Who is the owner of Meat the Live Butcher?

answer: Tom Salle.

question: How much money did the group raise?

answer: More than $25,600.

question: How many families will this money feed?

answer: 7,000 or 21,000 people.

question: How much food was collected?

answer: 4,300 pounds of food.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: Tom Salle, the owner of Meat the Live Butcher worked with volunteers to support the White Center Food Bank. They raised more than $25,000; enough to feed 7,000 families and the equivalent of 4,300 pounds of food.


text:
Nano, which was unveiled in January 2008 at the Auto Expo with much expectations of being the people's car, could not live up to the billing

TOPICS
Tata Nano  |  Nano  |  Tata Sons

-

    ALSO READ

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    Ahead of NCLT verdict, Cyrus Mistry fires fresh salvo at Tata Sons

    Ratan Tata, Venkat had no vested interests at AirAsia India: Tata counsel

    Cyrus Mistry himself sought guidance from Ratan Tata, says Tata's counsel

    Tata Sons should consider buying Shapoorji Pallonji's stake: Tata Trusts

-

Tata Motors' small car Nanois inching closer towards the end of its journey with just one unit produced in June, although the company maintained that no decision has been taken yet on stopping its production.

The entry level car, brainchild of Ratan Tatawho envisaged giving a safer and affordable alternative to families riding on two-wheelers, sold just three units last month in the domestic market.

In a regulatory filing, Tata Motors said there was no export of Nanoin June this year. It had shipped 25 units in the same month last year.

In terms of production, only one unit was produced last month as against 275 units in June 2017.

Domestic sales were at three units in June as against 167 units in the year-ago month.

When contacted for comments on whether the company has taken a decision to stop Nanoproduction, a Tata Motors spokesperson said, "We are well aware that the Nano in its present form cannot continue beyond 2019 and may need fresh investments to survive. No decision has been made yet in this regard."

The spokesperson further said, "Meanwhile, we continue to produce Nano catering to customer demand in key markets."

Nano, which was unveiled in January 2008 at the Auto Expo with much expectations of being the people's car, could not live up to the billing.

The car was launched in the market in March 2009 with an initial price of close to Rs 100,000 for the basic model despite cost escalations, with Ratan Tatainsisting that "a promise is a promise".

However, from the beginning, Nano courted trouble. It was originally planned to be rolled out from Tata Motors' proposed plant at Singur in West Bengal, where it faced intense political and farmer protests against land acquisition.

The company had to shift its production to a new plant at Sanand in Gujarat.

Instances of the car catching fire initially after it was launched didn't help its cause either.

Ratan Tatahad admitted that the company made the mistake of promoting the Nano as 'the cheapest car'.

It become a loss-making model for Tata Motors with ex-Tata Sonschairman Mistry, who was abruptly removed from the post, even went on to claim that the Nano "consistently lost value, peaking at Rs 10 billion".

Mistryalso termed the Nano as one of the "legacy hotspots" and there was "no line of sight to profitability for the Nano, any turnaround strategy".

He had also claimed that Tata Motors did not stop producing the car due to "emotional reasons".

[] Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.
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First Published: Thu, July 05 2018. 01:09 IST

question: When was Nano launched?

answer: The car was launched in the market in March 2009.

question: Is Nano production in loss?

answer: Yes.

question: Is the Nano production going to stop?

answer: No decision has been made in this regard.

question: How much does a Nano cost?

answer: A Nano costs close to Rs.100,000.

question: Write a ~8 sentence summary.

answer:
Tata Motors launched the affordable Nano in March 2009. But the car hasn't been doing so well recently. Only one unit was produced last month against 275 units in June 2017. A spokesperson said that the company is well aware of the situation but has not made any decisions regarding shutting the production.

Nano has been in trouble from the very beginning. First, they had to shift their production facility. That was followed by the car initially catching fire.

The ex-chairman of Tata Motors claims that the company did not stop the production due to "emotional reasons."


text:
John glances down from the road for just a second to wipe the stray ashes of a particularly rogue cigarette from his vest. Still dark, but night's knack for alleviating the mind of responsibility will soon be brushed away just as casually by first light.

We drive in silence, but a comfortable one, not one where the mind is painfully aware of each passing second sans conversation. I lean my head against the passenger side window at such an angle that you'd think the passing oaks were skyscrapers. Every exhalation frosts the glass and the skyscrapers lose a touch of clarity. I move to wipe the condensation then think better of it. It occurs to me that from inside this temporary home I prefer a softer exterior.

We hit a major road for the first time since the start of the drive and I stifle some of reality's throes by closing my eyes. I open them a few seconds later and see for the first time just how empty the road really is. A highly congested passage in the light, 4am darkness lends our path a sort of eerie vacancy, like something out of a movie.

"I always love this part," a voice half-whispers from the backseat. It occurs to me then that this really is a movie, with showings every weekend, not always the same but with similar runtimes and ensemble cast. This scene is a familiar one to our four beloved leads, and marks the most bittersweet act of the film- it's conclusion.

A light fog settles around the street lights blurring by and as far in front of the car as its headlights can illuminate. I no longer care about the breath on my window for it seems God himself has exhaled down on our glass planet, dusting its surface as far as Earth's curvature would allow. We rocket forward like a meteor in reverse, following our contrail, chasing an unobtainable darkness lying about ten or so feet in front of the car. Perhaps now a company of strings swells and quiets the audience. Cut to exterior of lone car drifting. I write my name on a foggy canvas, seeing clearly through the letters.

"Who's first?" John asks. The backseat is silent. We approach atmosphere.

"I'm closest."

John wordlessly accepts my indirect answer and keeps right at a fork. Something jumps in my chest and I push it down. We can all feel the heat now.

I say goodbye to the uniformly distant streetlights of the main road and am greeted by the more irregular glow of softer, residential ones. They seem to console at each passing

"It's okay it's okay it's okay" What do they know.

Every house we pass sports its own mailbox, front yard, and driveway.  This place is older than the 1950's suburban sprawl so each home is similar but not identical. They cluster then fade, the train picking up once again after a patch of trees passes or around the curve of a cul-de-sac. Porch lights wink at me through branches. Still dark, I think maybe dawn won't come. The heat is almost unbearable.

We navigate a labyrinth of dark roads till finally reaching our destination.  As the car rolls to a stop I know that now is when the people on Earth can spot us. A good telescope or naked eye in a dark place will do the trick. Look closely this will go fast.

I swing my legs outside and let my body follow. Somewhere far away I hear the sound of my car door closing. We're burning we're burning. I turn around to face John and the two in the backseat. We are silent now, uncomfortably, and I say the first thing I think

"Thanks."

As soon as I hear it I wonder why I said it. Favors like rides home are unspoken courtesy, a tradition more than a gesture. Perhaps John notices my face twist in embarrassment.

"Yeah," he says, but wisely, knowingly, simultaneously acknowledging and dismissing my having said anything.

"Wow there it goes," someone somewhere says.  We burn red-orange for two seconds at most then smolder and fade once more into black space.

Then they are gone and I am left alone in the street in front of my house. The strings are silent, the fog is lifting. I feel for my key and hope that I've lost it. Clutching its cold outline in my pocket I make my way towards the house, growing ever-further away from my home. I imagine I now hurdle quickly and unimpressively towards Earth's surface. In moments I will crash into some sprawling ocean. I take a few steps forward and smell perfume, see hair and hear laughing. Maybe you saw me flying. Cut to close-up, our protagonist wracked with memory. Then medium, slow fade. The dark blue of the ocean water matches the hue of the early-morning sky above me. No longer dark.

Sunrise,
loveset.

title: Haley's Comet

question: What does the story reveal about the characters' trip?

answer: The narrator, and three other friends, are implied to have gone on a drive away from their hometown and are returning in the early hours of the morning. They appear to have driven through trees and return to an old-fashioned town or residential area. The characters enjoy the trip in silence and drop each other off as a courtesy.

question: Why is the narrator reluctant to return to their house?

answer: Their mind is much more at peace on the drive and with the silence. They imagine themselves to be similar to a comet streaking towards the Earth and feel trapped to be back at home. It is implied that they lack a sense of attachment to their home and are unhappy with the girlfriend / wife they live with, instead longing for the memories of the drive and the ability to escape from responsibility.

question: What does the story tell us about the narrator's relationship with the others in the car?

answer: The narrator is very comfortable and at ease with John and the other passages, although they don't talk. They appear to participate in this nighttime drive every weekend, which seems to have some qualities of a ritual or tradition. There seems a reluctance to acknowledge the reality of what they are doing or that their drive is coming to an end. Rather the narrator holds an understanding that the experience should be enjoyed quietly with the others.

question: What does the passage say about what the narrator does on a day-to-day basis?


text:
DERIC PAYTON MCCABE (born August 28, 2008) is an American actor. He plays Charles Wallace Murry in Ava DuVernay's adaptation of the fantasy novel _A Wrinkle in Time_ (2018); he was chosen out of thousands of child actors after seven months of searching.[1]

McCabe was born in Whitefish, Montana, but his family moved to Los Angeles, California when he was just over a year old. Deric has an older sister named Jadie.[2][3] He is of Filipino descent.[4]

Filmography

  Year   Title                 Role                    Notes
  ------ --------------------- ----------------------- ------------
  2016   _XXIII Boss_          Lucca                   Short film
  2017   _Stephanie_           Moppet
  2017   _Hold On_             Paul Duran
  2018   _A Wrinkle in Time_   Charles Wallace Murry
  2020   _Home Before Dark_    Spoon                   TV

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4] http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/288467/deric-mccabes-message-filipinos-im-proud-filipino-represent/

title: Deric McCabe

question: Who plays Charles Wallace Murry in A Wrinkle in Time (2018)?

answer: Deric Payton McCabe

question: Where was Deric Payton McCabe born?

answer: Whitefish, Montana

question: Who directed A Wrinkle in Time (2018)?

answer: Ava DuVernay

question: What is Deric Payton McCabe's ancestry?

answer: Filipino

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: Deric Payton McCabe is an American actor best known for playing Charles Wallace Murry in Ava Duvernay's adaptation of the fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time.


text:
Suddenly I’m awake in a lit room. My son’s room, I’m sure I turned off the lamp. Maybe not. No, I’m sure I did. If I didn’t then I wish I had. It isn’t the lamp being on that has stricken me with fear however. It’s what the light, that should be off, now reveals in the darkness.

In the wallpaper of my son’s room there is a face. I can see it clear as day and by the looks of it, it can see me back. The pattern of sail boats, some with open sails and some without, usually aligned vertically from floor to ceiling, have moved. Nothing else in the room has followed the sailboats into the realm of the impossible. My son’s teddy bear still sits hunched over on his dresser unmoved from when I placed it there before bed. The pile of toys has held it’s shape as a pile of toys, never striving to be anything more. Anything evil.

The sails, mangled together, through and around, conjoined in what is clearly a face. Two sunken closed eyes the size of my head. Hundreds of little sail boats as eyelids. A man’s face. I’m sure of it. Either way, face or not, this is not the pattern of my son’s wallpaper. Too terrified to move because what if it does?
Something just moved in the bed beside me. Under the covers. My bones would have leapt from my body had every muscle not been dead with fear. I didn’t think I could be more scared but now something is moving. My son rolls over and continues to sleep. A relief, it wasn’t Death, come to get me. Death is still on the wall. Back to the face after reassuring myself my son wasn’t going to wake up. My son! I fell asleep with him. How many nights has he slept under the gaze of this face? Were all his nightmares more than dreams? Should I have insisted that he no longer sleep with Mommy and Daddy? He had to be a big boy.
The eyes are open. All the little sails flipped back to reveal an onyx knot of little black sailless boats tightly formed into perfect pupils.

Then the teddy bear sits up. I scream.
Awake now in a dark room. Someone flicks the light on. My son, the light on his side, in his room. The wallpaper back to it’s meaningless pattern. Teddy, back to sleep on the dresser. My pillow, wet from the nightmare leaking out of my head.
I wipe my hair from my eyes and look at my son. At only six he worries when his father screams in the dead of night. I’m still terrified, nightmares linger far longer than dreams and I can’t shake the feeling that the room is watching me. We turn every light in the house on and go downstairs. I drink a glass of water; my son, a glass of milk.

Can’t shake it. It’s still dark out and I find no comfort in staring out the kitchen window.
“You saw him didn’t you?” My son asks.
“Come on, you can sleep in our room tonight.” I tell him. “Daddy just had a bad dream.”
We both know it isn’t true but we can talk about it in the morning.

We go back to my room and snuggle in close to my wife. She is warm with ignorance of what just occurred and it somehow makes me level headed about all of it. Makes me start to question what I had seen. It was all just a dream. It had to have been. It’s the only logical conclusion.
I see Teddy’s head poke up from the foot of the bed. The lights go out. I scream because that’s all there is to do then-

title: Scream

question: Why has the son not told the father about the face before?

answer: He probably has and the father and mother no doubt rejected his contentions as bad dreams or an overactive imagination.

question: What is the long term solution to the problem? The boy can't move permanently into his parents' room.

answer: Sell the house and move into a new one. Throw the bear away.

question: Why is the evil confined to the boy's room?

answer: Perhaps it has to do with the presence of the child or perhaps something evil happened in the room.

question: Is it just a nightmare?

answer: It probably is. The boy doesn't say what it is he saw. Children have active imaginations and in this case so does the Dad

question: Write a ~12 sentence summary.

answer:
The narrator wakes in his son’s lit room, though he’s sure that he turned off the lamp. Though the rest of the room looks normal, a man’s face is staring at him from the wallpaper, woven together from the sailboats.

He wonders how many times his son has to fall asleep beneath this evil gaze. The eyes are open. Then the teddy bear sits up and the narrator screams. He wakes in a dark. His son switches on the light. The six-year-old worries when his father screams in the night.

They go to the kitchen and the boy says “You saw him, didn’t you?”. The two climb into the double bed with mom. It was just a bad dream. Then, Teddy looks over the headboard.


text:
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question: Write a ~0 sentence summary.


text:
(FIRST IN A SERIES)
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - The search for Nelson Mackay Chavarria - family man, government lawyer, possible subversive - began one Sunday in 1982 after he devoured a pancake breakfast and stepped out to buy a newspaper.

It ended last December when his wife, Amelia, watched as forensic scientists plucked his moldering bones from a pit in rural Honduras. Spotting a scrap of the red-and-blue shirt her husband was wearing the day he disappeared, she gasped: "Oh my God, that's him!"

Along with Amelia Mackay, the nation of Honduras has begun to confront a truth it has long suspected - that hundreds of its citizens were kidnapped, tortured and killed in the 1980s by a secret army unit trained and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The intelligence unit, known as Battalion 316, used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves.

Newly declassified documents and other sources show that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy knew of numerous crimes, including murder and torture, committed by Battalion 316, yet continued to collaborate closely with its leaders.

In order to keep U.S. dollars flowing into Honduras for the war against communism in Central America, the Reagan administration knowingly made a series of misleading statements to Congress and the public that denied or minimized the violence of Battalion 316.

These are among the findings of a 14-month investigation in which The Sun obtained formerly classified documents and interviewed U.S. and Honduran participants, many of whom - fearing for their lives or careers - have kept silent until now.

Among those interviewed were three former Battalion 316 torturers who acknowledged their crimes and detailed the battalion's close relationship with the CIA.

U.S. collaboration with Battalion 316 occurred at many levels.

* The CIA was instrumental in training and equipping Battalion 316. Members were flown to a secret location in the United States for training in surveillance and interrogation, and later were given CIA training at Honduran bases.

* Starting in 1981, the United States secretly provided funds for Argentine counterinsurgency experts to train anti-Communist forces in Honduras. By that time, Argentina was notorious for its own "Dirty War," which had left at least 10,000 dead or "disappeared" in the 1970s. Argentine and CIA instructors worked side by side training Battalion 316 members at a camp in Lepaterique, a town about 16 miles west of Tegucigalpa.

* Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, who as chief of the Honduran armed forces personally directed Battalion 316, received strong U.S. support - even after he told a U.S. ambassador that he intended to use the Argentine method of eliminating subversives.

* By 1983, when Alvarez's oppressive methods were well known to the U.S. Embassy, the Reagan administration awarded him the Legion of Merit for "encouraging the success of democratic processes in Honduras." His friendship with Donald Winters, the CIA station chief in Honduras, was so close that when Winters adopted a child, he asked Alvarez to be the girl's godfather.

* A CIA officer based in the U.S. Embassy went frequently to a secret jail known as INDUMIL, where torture was conducted, and visited the cell of kidnap victim Ines Murillo. That jail and other Battalion 316 installations were off-limits to Honduran officials, including judges trying to find kidnap victims.

The exact number of people executed by Battalion 316 remains unknown. For years, unidentified and unclaimed bodies were found dumped in rural areas, along rivers and in citrus groves.

Late in 1993, the Honduran government listed 184 people as still missing and presumed dead. They are are called "desaparecidos," Spanish for "the disappeared." Mackay is the first person on the list to be found and identified. The discovery of an identifiable body has enabled prosecutors to try to bring his killers to justice.

To this day, the events in Honduras have been little noticed, an obscure sideshow to a highly publicized struggle in the region. ,, They came about as the Reagan administration was waging war against a Marxist regime in Nicaragua and leftist insurgents in El Salvador.

Honduras, a U.S. ally, was used by Washington as the principal base for its largely clandestine effort. Keeping Honduras secure from leftists was Battalion 316's mission.

"I think it is an example of the pathology of foreign policy," said Jack Binns, a Carter appointee as ambassador to Honduras who served from September 1980 through October 1981. "The desire to conduct a clandestine war against Nicaragua out of Honduras made us willing to go beyond turning a blind eye and made us willing to provide assistance to people doing these things even though we knew they were doing them."

Elliott Abrams, former assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs from December 1981 to July 1985, when he was appointed assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, vigorously defends the Reagan policy.

"Disappearing people - murdering people, was not the policy of the United States. Nor was it our policy to avert our eyes," Abrams said.

Abrams and other Reagan administration officials said that while fighting communism was the primary goal, they encouraged military leaders in Central America to curtail human rights abuses. In contrast to the Carter administration, which had emphasized human rights in crafting foreign policy, they tackled the issue privately, Abrams said.

"A human rights policy is not supposed to make you feel good," he said. "It's supposed to do some good in the country you're targeting."

No one was safe

Some of the victims of Battalion 316 were subversives, involved in such crimes as bombings and robberies. Nelson Mackay, an easy-going man of Australian descent, had many friends in the military. But he was suspected of arranging gun sales to a radical student group.

Many others were kidnapped and killed for exercising the same freedoms that the United States said it was fighting for in Latin America. Victims included students demonstrating for the release of political prisoners, union leaders who organized strikes for higher wages, journalists who criticized the military regime and college professors demanding fair tuition for the poor.

Among the kidnapped were 14 who described their treatment in interviews with The Sun. Nine said members of Battalion 316 clipped wires to their genitals and sent electric currents surging through their bodies.

"They started with 110 volts," said Miguel Carias, an architectural draftsman who was held captive with Nelson Mackay for a week in 1982. "Then they went up to 220. Each time they shocked me, I could feel my body jump and my mouth filled with a metal taste."

Former members of Battalion 316, interviewed in Canada where they are living in exile, described how prisoners were nearly suffocated with a rubber mask wrapped tightly around their faces. The mask was called "la capucha," or "the hood." Women were fondled and raped, the torturers said.

The body of Mackay, who was 37 years old and the father of five, showed signs of other tortures.

Farmers who found Mackay's body in 1982 and later buried it reported that his hands and feet were tied with rope and a noose was around his neck. A black liquid spilled from his mouth. The farmers recognized the substance as "criolina," a thick, black liquid rubbed on cattle to kill ticks and mites.

Stalking the victims

Before being kidnapped and tortured, suspects were stalked by Battalion 316.

Jose Valle, a former battalion member now in Canada, describes a typical surveillance: "We would follow a person for four to six days. See their daily routes from the moment they leave the house. What kind of transportation they use. The streets they go on."

Once the battalion determined the time and place an individual was most vulnerable, the person was kidnapped, often in daylight by men in black ski masks. They ambushed their victims on busy streets, then sped off in cars with tinted windows and no license plates.

The prisoners of Battalion 316 were confined in bedrooms, closets and basements of country homes of military officers. Some were held in military clubhouses at locations such as INDUMIL, the Military Industries complex near Tegucigalpa.

They were stripped and tied hand and foot. Tape was wrapped around their eyes.

Those who survived recall interrogation sessions that lasted hours. Battalion members shouted obscenities, accused them of being terrorists, and told them they would never see their families again if they did not answer questions and confess.

Milton Jimenez, former leader of a radical leftist student group, .. endured such interrogation. He and several college housemates were kidnapped by military police on April 27, 1982. When Jimenez refused to answer questions, he said, the officers told ,, him they were going to kill him. "They said they were finishing my grave. . . . I was convinced that I was going to die."

They stood him before a firing squad. They aimed their guns at him, promising that it was his time to die. But they never fired.

Eventually, he was released.

"They never accused me of anything specific," said Jimenez in an interview in Tegucigalpa, where he is now a lawyer. "They said they knew I was a terrorist and they asked, 'Who are your friends?'"

Simple methods

There was nothing sophisticated about the torture employed by Battalion 316. In addition to la capucha - a piece of rubber cut from an inner tube that prevents a person from breathing through the mouth and nose - they used rope to hang victims from the ceiling and beat them, and extension cords with exposed wires for shock torture.

Gloria Esperanza Reyes, now 52, speaking in an interview at her home in Vienna, Va., describes how she was tortured with electric wires attached to her breasts and vagina. "The first jolt was so bad I just wanted to die," she said.

Jose Barrera, a former battalion torturer interviewed in Toronto, recalls such pleas from prisoners. "They always asked to be killed," he said. "Torture is worse than death."

Battalion 316 got its early training from Argentines, who had been invited to Honduras by General Alvarez, himself an honors graduate of the Argentine Military Academy.

"The Argentines came in first, and they taught how to disappear people. The United States made them more efficient," said Oscar Alvarez, a former Honduran special forces officer and diplomat who was the general's nephew.

"The Americans ... brought the equipment," he said. "They gave the training in the United States, and they brought agents here to provide some training in Honduras.

"They said, 'You need someone to tap phones, you need someone to transcribe the tapes, you need surveillance groups.' They brought in special cameras that were inside thermoses. They taught interrogation techniques.

"The United States did not come here and say kill people," he added. "I never saw any efforts by the United States to create death squads."

General Alvarez's chief of staff, Gen. Jose Bueso Rosa, also describes the U.S. role in developing the battalion. "It was their idea to create an intelligence unit that reported directly to the head of the armed forces," he said. "Battalion 316 was created by a need for information. We were not specialists in intelligence, in gathering information, so the United States offered to help us organize a special unit."

(In 1986, Bueso was convicted in U.S. District Court in Miami of participating in a failed drug-financed plot to kill former Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordoba.)

In the United States and in Honduras, the CIA trained members of the unit in interrogation and surveillance, former Battalion 316 members and Honduran officers said.

The training by the CIA was confirmed by Richard Stolz, then-deputy director for operations, in secret testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 1988.

In testimony declassified at The Sun's request, Stolz told the committee: "The course consisted of three weeks of classroom instruction followed by two weeks of practical exercises, which included the questioning of actual prisoners by the students.

"Physical abuse or other degrading treatment was rejected, not only because it is wrong, but because it has historically proven to be ineffective," he added.

He confirmed that a CIA officer visited the place where 24-year-old Ines Murillo was held during her captivity.

Interviews with members of Battalion 316 confirm Stolz's testimony: The CIA taught them to apply psychological pressure, but not physical torture. But former battalion members and victims say the CIA knew that torture was being used.

Florencio Caballero, a former battalion member, recalls the instruction and the reality.

"They said that torture was not the way to obtain the truth during an interrogation. But Alvarez said the quickest way to get the information was with torture," he told investigators of the Senate intelligence committee.

The Senate investigators interviewed Caballero in Canada as part of the same investigation in which Stolz testified.

In an interview with The Sun, Oscar Alvarez also recalls the reality.

"What was supposed to happen was that the intelligence unit would gather information and take it to a judge and say, 'Here, this person is a guerrilla, and here's the evidence," he said. "But the Hondurans did not do that." Slashing his finger across his neck, he said, "They took the easy way."

And, he said, "U.S. officials did not protest."

Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the CIA, said: "As a matter of policy, we don't comment on liaison relationships." But, he added, "The notion that the CIA was involved in or sanctioned human rights abuses in Honduras is unfounded."

A man, a mission

When Alvarez took command of the Honduran armed forces in 1982, at the age of 44, Washington had a man ideally suited to its mission to combat Communist insurgency in Central America.

"Gustavo Alvarez was very much out of national character - dynamic, firm, uncompromising," said Donald Winters, CIA station chief in Tegucigalpa from 1982 to 1984. "He knew where he wanted to go."

Alvarez was the son of a high school principal who made him recite poetry to overcome a stutter. But his preferred reading was military history. He so admired Germany's "Desert Fox" of World War II, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, that he named one of his sons Erwin and another Manfred, after Rommel's son.

General Alvarez made no secret about his belief that terror and violence were the only ways to deal with subversives. As commander of the national police force known as Fuerza de Seguridad Publica (FUSEP), he had already created an intelligence unit that would become known as Battalion 316.

On Feb. 6, 1981, while still FUSEP commander, but already selected as head of the Honduran armed forces, he told Binns of his admiration for the way the Argentine military had dealt with subversives and said that he planned to use the same methods in Honduras.

The U.S. ambassador was shocked. In an urgent cable to superiors in Washington, he described the conversation:

"Alvarez stressed theme that democracies and West are soft, perhaps too soft to resist Communist subversion. The Argentines, he said, had met the threat effectively, identifying - and taking care of - the subversives. Their method, he opined, is the only effective way of meeting the challenge.

"When it comes to subversion, [Alvarez] would opt for tough, vigorous and Extra-Legal Action," Binns warned.

Four months later, Binns was outraged to learn of the violent abduction and disappearance of Tomas Nativi, a 33-year-old university professor and alleged subversive. Nativi was dragged from his bed on June 11, 1981, by six men wearing black ski masks, according to witnesses and a 1993 Honduran government report.

He has not been seen since and is presumed dead.

In his cable on the incident to Washington, the ambassador said: "I believe we should try to nip this situation in the bud. I have already asked [CIA] chief of station to raise this problem obliquely with ... Alvarez (whose minions appear to be the principal actors and whom I suspect is the intellectual force behind this new strategy for handling subversives/criminals)."

Falling on deaf ears

Binns recommended that the U.S. government act to stop the military violence by threatening to withhold military aid. "Those suggestions drew a thunderous silence from Washington," he said in a recent interview at his home in Tucson, Ariz. "My message was not a message anyone wanted to hear."

The Reagan administration had made it clear that it would diminish the criticism of human rights abuses by its allies in places such as Central America where it wanted to go on the offensive against the Communist threat.

Thomas O. Enders, former assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs and a chief architect of the early Reagan strategy, described the change of policy in a recent interview in New York, where he is a managing director of Salomon Brothers Inc., an investment banking firm.

"We didn't think that we could effectively sustain the resistance to the guerrillas in Central America without being willing to give significant public support to their governments," Enders said.

"We were afraid that the approach that had been adopted by the Carter administration, which was highly critical of them and would result in their demoralization, would fail to convince the Soviet Union or the Salvadorans, Hondurans and others that we really meant business."

In the Reagan strategy, Honduras, which the United States had used before to advance its objectives in Central America, was ideally located between Nicaragua and El Salvador. General Alvarez seemed an ideal partner.

"Alvarez was a darling of the Reagan administration," said Cresencio S. Arcos, U.S. Embassy press spokesman from June 1980 to July 1985 and ambassador to Honduras from December 1989 to July 1993.

While General Alvarez's star was rising, President Reagan was issuing orders for an aggressive, largely secret thrust against communism in Central America.

By March 9, 1981 - after less than two months in office - Reagan signed a presidential "finding" that ordered the expansion of covert operations authorized by the Carter administration, to "provide all forms of training, equipment, and related assistance to cooperating governments throughout Central America in order counter foreign-sponsored subversion and terrorism."

On Dec. 1, 1981, he ordered the CIA to work primarily through "non-Americans" against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and leftist insurgents in El Salvador.

The "non-Americans" were to include Argentines, paid for by the CIA, Enders said in an interview last month. He said there did not seem to be any alternative to using the Argentines, despite their poor record on human rights.

"There were not many people with counterinsurgency experience," Enders said. "How many people were there who were Spanish speakers? [Human rights] was obviously a concern, but when we got through looking at it, we didn't see that we had any clear choice."

By the end of 1981, the Reagan administration had replaced Ambassador Binns with John Dimitri Negroponte, a man viewed as committed to the administration's decision to confront communism in Latin America.

USS Honduras

The partnership with Honduras and General Alvarez expanded. Military aid to Honduras jumped from $3.9 million in 1980 to $77.4 million by 1984.

The tiny country eventually was crowded with so much U.S. military equipment and personnel that some started referring to it as "the USS Honduras."

While the U.S. government heaped money and praise on Alvarez, evidence of human rights abuses mounted.

One accusation came from Col. Leonidas Torres Arias, after he was ousted as intelligence chief for the Honduran armed forces.

In August 1982, he told a packed news conference in Mexico City about Battalion 316, "a death squad operating in Honduras that was being led by armed forces chief, General Gustavo Alvarez." He mentioned three victims by name, including Nelson Mackay.

At the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, U.S. officials were confronted with personal and written appeals for help from relatives of the disappeared.

Former Honduran Congressman Efrain Diaz Arrivillaga said he spoke several times about the military's abuses to U.S. officials in Honduras, including Negroponte.

"Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence," he said. "They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed."

Negroponte, now U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, has declined repeated requests by telephone and in writing since July for interviews about this report, including most recently in a hand-delivered letter to the embassy in Manila.

Almost every day, Honduran newspapers published stories about the military's violence and full-page ads with pictures of the missing. In 1982 alone, at least 318 stories were published about military abuses.

Some directly named Alvarez.

"General Alvarez, as a human being, I beg you to free my children," read one headline from El Tiempo on April 30, 1982.

Members of the Honduran Congress drafted resolutions calling for investigations into the disappearances.

Relatives of Battalion 316's victims marched by the hundreds through the narrow streets of Tegucigalpa demanding the return of the missing.

"Alive they were taken! Alive we want them back!" they chanted, mostly wrinkled old women with white scarves covering their heads, carrying posters with drawings of their missing sons and grandsons.

But, determined to avoid questions in Congress, U.S. officials in Honduras concealed evidence of rights abuses.

"There are no political prisoners in Honduras," asserted the State Department human rights report on Honduras for 1983.

By that time the embassy was aware of numerous kidnappings of leftists and had participated in the freeing of two prominent victims whose abduction and torture had become embarrassing.

Specific examples of brutality by the Honduran military typically never appeared in the human rights reports, prepared by the embassy under the direct supervision of Ambassador Negroponte. Those reports to Congress were required under the Foreign Assistance Act, which in most circumstances prohibits the United States from providing military aid to nations whose governments engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights.

The reports from Honduras were carefully crafted to leave the impression that the Honduran military respected human rights.

The end of Alvarez

By 1984, other Honduran officers began to worry that Alvarez had dragged the country too far into violence against their own people.

Col. Eric Sanchez, now retired from the armed forces, thought Alvarez was "obsessed."

Recalling a conversation with Alvarez about Battalion 316, Sanchez said the armed forces chief told him: "One had to fight Communists with all weapons and in every arena, and not all of them are fair."

Gen. Walter Lopez, currently one of Honduras' three vice presidents, recalled in an interview: "(Alvarez)was dangerous. He was pushing our country to do something we did not want to do. We were willing to be trained professionally, but only to defend our country. Not for so-called undercover operations."

On March 31, 1984, Alvarez's military career came to a sudden and unexpected end.

Accused of misappropriation of funds, he was ousted by his own officers. One junior officer held a gun to the general's head and handcuffed him. He was put on a military plane for Costa Rica.

Later the same year, Alvarez and his wife and five children landed in Miami, where they lived for five years. He joined an evangelical church in Miami and embraced religion with as much passion as he had embraced the fight against communism.

In 1988, Alvarez said he had been urged in a dream to go back to Honduras and preach the gospel. Shunning offers of protection from friends in the military, he preached on street corners, saying, "My Bible is my protection."

On Jan. 25, 1989, five men dressed in blue and wearing hard hats surrounded his car and riddled it with bullets from machine guns. Moments before he died, bleeding from 18 wounds, Alvarez asked: "Why are they doing this to me?"

The assassins have never been found, but a group called the Popular Liberation Movement claimed responsibility.

In a statement, the group referred to Alvarez as a psychopath who tried "to escape popular justice by disguising himself as a harmless and repentant Christian."

A widow's defense

Lilia Alvarez, the general's widow, defends his memory.

"He knew they would criticize him for what he did. ... There were some illegal detentions, and maybe the army executed some people, but think about how many lives were saved. Thousands of people were saved because my husband prevented a civil war."

The Honduran government has taken several steps forward in the pursuit of the truth about the disappearances of the 1980s.

In a 1993 report, "The Facts Speak for Themselves," the government lists the name of each of the disappeared and admits that it did not protect its citizens from the abuses of the military.

"Extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and the lack of due process ... characterized these years of intolerance," stated the report of the National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights in Honduras. "Perhaps more troublesome than the violations themselves was the authorities' tolerance of these crimes and the impunity with which they were committed."

The report represents the first time that the Honduran government has admitted that the disappearances occurred and that it shares responsibility.

Within a year after he became president of Honduras in 1994, Carlos Roberto Reina took further steps to identify those responsible.

"Those of us who lived in that time are committed not to relive it," said Honduran Attorney General Edmundo Orellana. "We are committed to building a society that says, 'Never again.' "

One of the most important developments in that task was the discovery of an identifiable body of a "desaparecido" - Nelson Mackay. With an identified body, a murder investigation could be undertaken. The case has been helped by the willingness of Miguel Carias, his alleged co-conspirator, to testify.

In an interview, Carias described their last encounter.

They were together in a brown brick house on the northern edge of Tegucigalpa that Battalion 316 used as a secret jail. Mackay was held in a bedroom, his hands and feet tied with rope. Carias, locked in the closet, heard Mackay praying.

"Hail, Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women ..."

Mackay's voice grew louder as he recited the prayer over and over.

"I told him, 'Mackay please shut up. I am going crazy with all your prayers,'" Carias said.

Mackay kept on. "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death ..."

"I never heard or saw Nelson again," Carias said.

More than a decade after the execution of Mackay and others, forces in Honduras still seek to thwart the investigation into the crimes of the Honduran military.

Carias is kept under round-the-clock guard. Two other Honduran witnesses in previous inquiries have been killed.

The Honduran human rights commissioner, Leo Valladares, has received so many threats that, in April, he moved three of his children out of Honduras. The move was hurriedly arranged after one of Valladares' bodyguards was gunned down on a bus. No arrest has been made in the slaying.

Despite this sort of intimidation, the relatives of the disappeared remain determined. Once a month, they meet in front of the Honduran Congress, in the center of Tegucigalpa, and pass out fliers with the names and faces of the missing.

Fidelina Borjas Perez, 66, has been searching for her son, Samuel, since he disappeared in January 1982 from a bus traveling to Honduras from Nicaragua.

"One day I hope God lets me find my son, even if it is only his cadaver," she said.

Not one of the relatives believes that the disappeared are alive. But they want to know how their relatives died and who is responsible.

"We are never going to stop looking," says Maria Concepcion Gomez, whose common-law husband, a union leader, disappeared in August 1982. Sitting in her living room beneath a picture of The Last Supper, she said: "We are never going to get tired. If the army is hoping that we will forget or that we will give up, they are wrong."

Nelson Mackay's widow, Amelia, shared that determination.

A few weeks after her husband disappeared, she stopped her public search for him because of telephone threats against her children. Instead, she worked long hours to keep them enrolled in private schools.

During the day she worked as an administrative assistant at the Honduran Foreign Ministry. At night, she baked cakes and sold them to friends to supplement her income.

She stashed beneath her bed a box containing her husband's dental records, his identification card listing his height and weight, and a photograph of him wearing the red-and-blue checked shirt he wore the day he disappeared.

"I could not sleep at night," she remembered. "I would walk around the dark house thinking maybe he would come home. Maybe he would appear."

The first 'banana republic'

Honduras is the original "banana republic," a term coined to describe the country's political and economic dependency on U.S. fruit companies during the early 1900s.

The north coast of Honduras, the country's richest farm region, was controlled by U.S. fruit companies at the turn of the century. By 1914, they owned nearly a million acres of Honduras' most fertile territory.

The fruit companies built Honduras' only rail lines to transport produce, installed their own banking systems, and bribed politicians and union leaders to do their bidding.

Almost none of the wealth stayed in Honduras, the poorest country in Central America.

Population: 5.2 million

Average per capita income: $540 per year

Education: Nearly half of the people have not finished sixth-grade. 40 percent are illiterate.

Home life: 55 percent live in rural areas or slums that surround Tegucigalpa, the capital, or San Pedro Sula, the nation's second-largest city.

Religion: Roman Catholic Honduras is not the only place in Latin America where the Central Intelligence Agency has collaborated with repressive regimes.

It was disclosed this year that a Guatemalan army officer linked to two high-profile killings was a paid CIA agent. One of the victims was an American innkeeper in Guatemala, the other a leftist guerrilla married to a Baltimore-born lawyer.

CIA officials allegedly knew that the Guatemalan, Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, was involved in the killings, but concealed the -- information.

Created in 1947, the CIA has conducted covert operations in Latin America since its inception. In 1954, the CIA engineered a coup launched from neighboring Honduras that overthrew Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman and installed a military regime.

The CIA supported the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973, then launched a covert program to enhance the reputation of Chilean strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet. U.S. officials have admitted that the CIA paid former Panamanian military ruler Manuel Antonio Noriega more than $160,000 as an intelligence source.

In the 1980s, the CIA expanded its activities in Latin America. The agency trained and funded a clandestine paramilitary force known as the "contras" to attack the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

In El Salvador, Col. Nicolas Carranza, then-Treasury police chief, reportedly was on the CIA payroll during the 1980s as an informant. Carranza and the Treasury police have been linked to right-wing Salvadoran death squads.

In one of its most controversial Cold War actions, the CIA orchestrated the failed invasion of Cuba by a force of Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.

With the end of the Cold War, questions are being raised about the role of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. The intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, are undergoing an intense re-evaluation by a presidential commission that is expected to report its findings early next year.

question: What did US/CIA backed paramilitary organizations have in common in Latin America?

answer: They all used violence and crimes against humanity as tactics to curtail so called subversives.

question: Who did the CIA back and train in Honduras?

answer: Battalion 316.

question: What tactics did Battalion 316 employ?

answer: Kidnapping, torture, and murder.

question: How long has this been going on?

answer: Since the beginning of the Cold War.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: The US has been intimately involved with violent paramilitary groups throughout Latin America since the inception of the Cold War. Funding and extensively training them, the CIA has more than turned a blind eye toward the violence that has ensued, it's encouraged them. Evidence of human rights abuses throughout Latin America have mounted. From the Carter to the Reagan administrations, the US has consistently downplayed the crisis in it's effort to curtail the communist threat.


text:
JOEL DAVID SMALLBONE (born 5 June 1984) is an Australian singer and actor. He is a member of the Christian pop duo for King & Country along with his brother Luke Smallbone. He played the role of James Stevens in the 2016 film _Priceless_.

Early life

Smallbone was born in Sydney, but moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1991.[1] He is the brother of Luke Smallbone and younger brother of Christian recording artist and speaker Rebecca St. James. Smallbone is also the brother-in-law of Jacob Fink, former bassist for the band Foster the People.[2]

Smallbone's father was a music promoter, and Joel recalls, “going to these rock concerts, sitting on my father's shoulders, plugging my ears...Honestly, in a lot of ways I feel like music chose me and as I grew older, I made a clear decision to fully lean into it.”[3]

Career

[Smallbone with For King & Country performing at Kingdom Bound 2015] Smallbone did background vocals for his sister Rebecca as well as operating lights and managing the stage.[4] He collaborated with his brother Luke and in 2008 they released their first EP, _A Tale of Two Towns_, performing under the name Austoville.[5] The group was signed to Warner Bros. Records and later changed its name to For King & Country.[6]

Smallbone began his acting career in 2014 by playing King Xerxes in _The Book of Esther_ and as Jake Reeson in _Like a Country Song_.[7] In 2016, Smallbone was cast in the leading role of James Stevens in the film Priceless.[8]

Smallbone won two Grammy awards in 2014 and was nominated for another Grammy in 2016[9][10]

Discography

Filmography

  Year   Title                   Role            Notes
  ------ ----------------------- --------------- -------
  2014   _The Book of Esther_    King Xerxes
  2014   _Like a Country Song_   Jake Reeson
  2016   _Priceless_             James Stevens

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

title: Joel Smallbone

question: What pop duo is Smallbone a part of?

answer: For King & Country

question: When was Smallbone born?

answer: June 5, 1984

question: What was the first film Smallbone acted in?

answer: The Book of Esther

question: What awards has Smallbone won?

answer: He won two Grammy awards in 2014

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Joel David Smallbone is an Australian Christian pop singer and actor. He is a member of the Christian pop duo For King & Country. He won two Grammy awards in 2014 and was nominated for another in 2016.


text:
RAÚL ARGEMÍ (1946–present) is an Argentinean writer, resident of Buenos Aires, after 12 years living in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He is a crime writer. His work has garnered diverse awards in Spain, amongst them the Dashiell Hammett award, and it has been translated into French, Italian, Dutch, and German.

Biography

Born in La Plata, capital of the Buenos Aires province, Argentina, Raúl Argemí had begun working early in his life in the scenic arts as an author and theatre director. In the beginning of the 1970s he was involved in the armed struggles of Argentina, joining the ranks of ERP-22 de Agosto (For further information about ERP, see People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina)). He lived underground until he was arrested in 1974. He spent the entire argentinian military dictatorship (named by its leaders National Reorganization Process) rule incarcerated, and after the end of military rule and the return of democratic government, he was freed in 1984. At this time he started his journalistic work, an activity in which he is still occupied. During his stay in the city of Buenos Aires he held the position of Chief of Culture, and Director of Claves magazine, and he also collaborated in the Southern Cone edition of Le monde diplomatique. In 1986 he moved to the Patagonia region of Argentina, where he worked in the regional press. The landscape’s strong character in this southerly region of the world entrapped him: the majority of his novels have the Patagonia as a backdrop.

In 2000 he moved to Spain, country in which his career in the written arts made a significant jump, and his novels started to be published frequently, many of which had been the result of long years of work during his life in Patagonia. Hand in hand with his books, the awards started arriving, as well as the translations for other European markets. In 2013 he moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he works at magazine Miradas al Sur.

Works

-   _El gordo, el francés y el ratón Pérez_. Buenos Aires, 1996. Catálogos.

- Translated to French: Le gros, le français et la souris. 2005. Rivages/Noir.

-   _Los muertos siempre pierden los zapatos_. Sevilla, 2002. Algaida.

XXI Felipe Trigo Novel Award

- Translated to French: Les morts perdent toujours leurs chaussures. 2007. Rivages/Noir.

-   _Negra y Criminal_. Barcelona, 2003. Zoela. Novel written between 12 different authors: Andreu Martín, Alicia Giménez Bartlett, Francisco González Ledesma, Jaume Ribera, amongst others.
-   _Penúltimo nombre de guerra_. Sevilla, 2004. Algaida.

Dashiell Hammett 2005 Award, XIII Luis Berenguer International Novel Award, 2005 Brigada 21 Award to the best original novel in Spanish, Novelpol 2005 Award, Hammett 2005 Award.

- Translated to Italian: Penúltimo nome di battaglia. Editorial Nuova Frontiera, 2006.

- Translated to Dutch: Alias. Editorial De Boeekenplank, 2007.

- Translated to German: Chamäleon Cacho. Unionsverlag, 2008.

-   _Patagonia Chu Chu_. Sevilla, 2005. Algaida.

VII Francisco García Pavón Narrative Award

- Translated to Italian: Patagonia ciuf ciuf. Editorial Nuova Frontiera, 2007.

-   _Siempre la misma música_. Sevilla, 2006. Algaida.

XXVIII Tigre Juan Award, 2005[1]

-   _Retrato de familia con muerta_. Barcelona, 2008. Roca.

L'H Confidencial Award, 2008

-   _La última caravana_. Barcelona, 2008. Edebé.

- Translated to Italian: L´ultima carovana della Patagonia. Editorial Nuova Frontiera, 2010.

-   ''(Various Authors) Matar en Barcelona (antología de relatos). Barcelona, 2009. Alpha Decay.

[1]

title: Raúl Argemí

question: When was Argemi born?

answer: 1946

question: Where was Argemi born?

answer: La Plata, capital of the Buenos Aires province, Argentina

question: Where do the majority of Argemi's novels have as a backdrop?

answer: Patagonia, Argentina

question: Where does he work now?

answer: Miradas al Sur, a magazine

question: Write a ~5 sentence summary.

answer: Raul Argemi is an Argentinean writer. He was born in 1946 in La Plata, capital of Buenos Aires. He was imprisoned during the Argentinean military dictatorship, but was finally freed in 1984. His novels frequently feature Patagonia as a backdrop. He currently lives in Buenos Aires and works for Miradas al Sur, a magazine.


text:
SOMEWHERE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

The men aboard the platform strapped themselves into their seats, the commanding officer pulling his helmet down and sliding in his ear protection. A hard buzz from the terminal in front of him, followed by a voice in his ear. "Firing in ten seconds. Firing main cannon."
The whole world seemed to rattle. A nine ton slug was launched out of one of the largest artillery platforms ever constructed- With the shell already in the upper atmosphere just moments later. "Shell away. ETA: 20 minutes before impact." The technician read off the readings, removing the safety strap from his seat and slowly rising to a stand.

On the other side of the world, a cataclysmic battle was raging. A combined fleet of American, Chinese and Russian forces were battling what should be a biological impossibility- A creature that dwarfed the tallest buildings and gave the average mountain a run for it's money. It was hideous, a gross amalgamation of a jellyfish and a shark. It would send arcs of electricity from the tendrils lining it's back to knock planes out of the sky and boil the frothy ocean below, screaming in rage when broadsides punched into it's leathery skin.

A rookie approached the artillery platform's commanding officer. "Uh- How often do these things happen?" He asked, looking over the satellite feeds of the battle, as the beast tore a battleship in half with it's mighty jaws. "I mean- Giant monsters? Up until a week ago, I didn't know these existed."

"They don't. It takes everything and more to prevent knowledge of these beasts from hitting the public. There will be naval exercises- Missile tests, you name it- And that's us fighting these things, trying to keep them from the shore." He lit a cigar, eyes drifting across the screen.

"But look at that thing-"

"It's insane to believe, but imagine this. We know more about Mars than we do about the ocean floor. Who knows what's down there?" He checked his watch. "...Aaaannnnd.."

The shell fired moments ago collided with the beast's back, sinking into the creature's flesh and exploding- From the inside out, painting thousands of feet with vicious pink and red bile and grime. The artillery platform crew erupts into applause.

The officer stepped away from the crowd, drawing a line over a name on a whiteboard. 'SOUTH CHINA SEA MONSTER' is now eliminated. He pointed the pen at the recruit, who was staring at the screen in shock. "You seriously thought 'Giant Aquatic Beast Elimination' was a -joke-?"

title: Another day in the office

question: Why is the rookie surprised?

answer: He learns that the mountain-sized creatures are real, and the largest armies fight them often.

question: Where do the giant creatures come from?

answer: The commander implies that they are from the depths of the oceans.

question: What's the time period of the story?

answer: The use of missiles that travel through the upper atmosphere implies that the technology is somewhat modern. It could be similar to the technological level of our world sometime around 1960 and onwards.

question: Why do the officers in charge of fighting the giant monsters want to keep their existence a secret from the general populace?

answer: I don't know; it's not mentioned in the story.

question: What's the acronym of the military branch fighting the monsters?

answer: It's G.A.B.E from "Giant Aquatic Beast Elimination".

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Somewhere in the mountains, a rookie soldier is shocked to learn that the combined American, Russian, and Chinese forces are battling a giant sea monster the size of mountains. The platform they inhabit launches a nine ton slug that travels through the upper atmosphere to hit and destroy the South Chine Sea Monster. The commanding officer tells the rookie that they are doing their best to keep the monsters a secret from the world.


text:
bductor. But, Mulu ran away one night. "I escaped from the abductor's house while he and his friends were drinking and dancing. I went to the toilet and then I escaped through a fence and ran away."

She then hid for nearly a year in the house of one of her uncles. "After nine months, I could not stand hiding anymore, so I decided to go back to school," Mulu says nervously, looking at her hands.

Later, her parents received a letter from another suitor asking to marry Mulu, but she refused. The 39-year-old man turned up at the house and kidnapped her with her parents' consent. "I managed to get my parents to agree for us to be tested for HIV. I had heard about it at school and on the radio. I was negative but my abductor was positive."

With the test results in her hand, Mulu managed to convince her parents to cancel the wedding.

  I managed to get my parents to agree for us to be tested for HIV. I had heard about it at school and on the radio. I was negative but my abductor was positive.

Unlike Mulu, however, several young girls at Alem Gena school, 30 km south-west of the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, have been forcibly abducted on their way to school and married under duress in exchange of a few sheep or sacks of grain.

"Abduction is a regular phenomenon around here," explains Hundessa Negesso, the headmaster of the 1,500-pupil primary school. "Over the last eight months, seven girls have been abducted. Last year we had three, and none of them came back to school.”

Abduction is a legitimate way of procuring a bride in southern Ethiopia. The practice has been going on so long that no-one can remember how it all began. The usual procedure is to kidnap a girl, hide her, and then eventually rape her. Then, having lost her virginity or becoming pregnant, the man can claim her as his bride.

At this stage, the prospective husband will call the village elders to negotiate the bride's price and to act as middlemen between his family and that of his bride.

According to Hundessa, poverty is a key reason for abduction. "If they marry the girl legally they have to pay a lot of money to her parents. But when it is abduction, they take her by force, then the elders intervene to mediate. They then pay a very little amount of money or cattle to marry the girl," the headmaster added.

A wedding can cost up to 15,000 birr (US $1,800) in the countryside - a lot of money in a country where nearly 50 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.

According to surveys conducted in 2003 by the National Committee on Traditional Practices in Ethiopia (NCTPE), the prevalence of marriage by abduction is 80 percent in Oromiya Region, where Mulu lives; and as high as 92 percent in Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR); with a national average of 69 percent.

Not always lucky

In many ways, Mulu was luckier than most. Another schoolfriend of hers, Aberash, was 12 when she was forced to marry a 30-year-old man who beat and raped her, causing lasting injuries. Aberash managed to escape and went to her parents' home. But with the consent of the village elders, she was forced to return to her husband.

Eventually, with the help of a teacher, she went back to school and is now trying to get a divorce.

Poverty also means many parents accept their daughter's abduction. "Parents don't have money for their children to go to school so they prefer for them to be abducted and married and be settled," Elleni Mamo, from the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, explains.

"From the point of view of the community, these early marriages are not really a problem for the parents. Traditionally they represent a way to be able to give financial security to their daughter," explains Kefyalew Ayano, who also works for UNICEF.

The girls who are forced to marry face a number of problems, and often suffer health problems as a result of having sexual relations from an early age. "Most of these girls would just like to go to school like their brothers, but once married they generally have to stay at home, cook and take care of the house. Then they become pregnant and risk a lot of complications," Mamo explains.

"These girls are being violated physically and emotionally. We must work together to educate the boys, girls - and communities as a whole - that this is not an acceptable practice. We must work together to stop these acts of violence," Björn Ljungqvist, the UNICEF representative to Ethiopia, told Irin.

Since 2004, the Ethiopian penal code forbids girls to get married before the age of 18, and punishes marriage by abduction with up to 20 years imprisonment. This is being seen as a real step forward according to a number of humanitarian agencies, but one which needs to be promoted and implemented.

UNICEF and other charities are encouraging families to go to the police rather than to village elders to sort out abduction cases. The message is being spread through schools, communities and radio programmes.

But despite this law, Mulu remains worried she may be abducted again. "I don't want someone to take me by force. I want to go to school and study, then I will see," Mulu says, hoping one day to become a teacher herself.

lw/cmh/jm

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

question: Who is Mulu?

answer: not explicitly answered, but it seems as though Mulu is a girl who was abducted but managed to flee from her captor.

question: How many girls have been abducted?

answer: Seven girls have been abducted from the Alem Gena school in the last eight months.

question: Where and how did the practice of abduction begin?

answer: The practice has been going on for so long that no one can remember how it began. Poverty is usually what drives men to abduct the girls, as a legitimate marriage costs a lot of money.

question: Why do parents accept the abduction of their daughters?

answer: Poverty is the reason some parents accept the abduction, because they don't have money for them to go school so they would rather them be abducted and married off.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: This article details the practice of abduction into marriage in Ethiopia. Poverty is a reason for both men doing this and the parents of women accepting this practice, as marriage dowry is expensive and raising and educating a child is also expensive.


text:
When I was a boy, I slept in the room where my great-grandfather hung himself.  Not the actual room, but he had to pass through my room to get to the room with exposed rafters.   To me, there was little difference.  I would lie awake, seeing the old man, who I was named for, slouch through my temporary bedroom, head low, shoulders slumped in despair.  I imagined him throwing the rope over a rafter and then pulling it tight, like a sailor unfurling a sail.  I witnessed as he mounted the stool (though sometimes it was one of the mismatched kitchen chairs my grandmother had accumulated, and likely the one I’d sat in for dinner), slipped his head through the noose, and kicked the stool away.  I imagined him choking, and then lazily yawing back and forth until the body was discovered some hours later.

I slept fitfully during those nights.  The air was sticky and miserable; the crickets and spring peepers were a far cry from the street noise at night back home.  Mostly, I was terrified that the old man’s bones would find their way back to the place of his final moments, and if that happened, wouldn’t he be angry that I had taken his name?  I thought he might.

June would inevitably make way for July; the days marched inexorably to August, the month my banishment ended.  Safe in my own bed, with the air conditioning, the street noises, and some six hundred miles between the hanging room and me, next summer was an eternity away.  I knew that when I endured my annual exile again, I would be braver, and I would be secure in the knowledge that my great-grandfather’s spirit would not disturb my sleep.

I was always wrong.

title: Untitled Flash Fiction (295 Words).  Criticism/critique welcomed.

question: How did the narrator's grandfather die?

answer: By hanging himself in the room where the narrator sleeps.

question: What is the narrator afraid of?

answer: The narrator is afraid of their grandfather's bones returning to where he died.

question: Does the narrator overcome their fear?

answer: No matter how many times they leave in the fall for school they are always still afraid when they return.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator remembers sleeping in the same room their grandfather hung himself in during their childhood. They always used to be afraid that their grandfather's bones would return to haunt them. They think that when they return from their exile [school] in the next summer they will have conquered their fear, but they never do.