(CNN) -- If the congressional "super committee" does not reach a deficit reduction deal by Wednesday's legally mandated deadline, I propose we take a page from the NBA owners and lock Congress out.

I'm serious. We, the taxpayers, are the owners of Congress and if Congress won't make a deal that helps our nation, then let's put a big padlock on the doors of the House and Senate -- or at least change the locks and not give them the keys.

Polls show that me and apparently 91% of my fellow Americans have never been more frustrated with the dysfunctional nature of "our" Congress. Congress' approval rating has fallen to an abysmal 9% -- to put this in perspective, herpes is now slightly more popular than Congress. Bed bugs really can't be that far behind.

I'm not sure who the 9% of voters are who think Congress is doing a good job -- I can only assume it's Congress' friends and families as well as some of the well-connected lobbyists who have reaped benefits.

Maybe the 9% are those pleased when Congress made history in August after waiting until the last minute to compromise on a budget deal, which led to the first downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor's.

Or possibly the 9% were impressed when House Democrats and Republicans joined together in a rare moment of bipartisanship a few weeks ago and voted in favor of a resolution by a whopping 396-9.

Was this vote to create jobs for the more than 25 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed? Or maybe this vote was to help Americans on the brink of foreclosure?

Nope, this vote was to address an issue that Congress felt demanded immediate attention: Affirming that our national motto is: "In God We Trust."

Wow, that should really put some food on the table of a hungry family whose unemployment benefits are close to expiring. I hope you take the time to "thank" Rep. J. Randy Forbes, a Republican from Virginia, for leading the courageous charge on that issue.

Instead of a congressional lock out, perhaps Donald Trump could host a new TV show entitled: "Congressional Apprentice," where each week members of Congress are given a task to help our nation. Those who fail will be met by Trump gleefully declaring: "Congressman ... You're fired!"

I'm at the point that when I hear about a king in a foreign nation dissolving the legislature in his country, I almost wish our president could do the same.

Despite all its negatives, Congress can take credit for one positive achievement: Inspiring more Americans to become engaged in politics as witnessed by both the rise of the Occupy movement and the tea party movement. Congress' failures have awakened both the left and the right of the American electorate.

I hope that both the Occupy and tea party groups (and everyone else in the middle) can agree on a concrete change to our electoral system, namely: Term limits for Congress. Even though Congress' approval rating had fallen to 21% at the time of the November 2010 congressional mid-term elections, the inherent advantages of incumbency for members of Congress are so powerful that still 87% of incumbents in the House and 90% in the Senate won re-election.

Term limits would mandate a turnover in the composition of Congress so that federal elected officials no longer focus on political concerns and making a career out of serving in Congress but instead on enacting legislation that benefits all Americans in the short time they will serve.

Term limits are the only way to ensure meaningful change of our Congress. But that won't be easy. To impose congressional term limits, the U.S. Constitution must be amended -- just as it was with the 22nd amendment, which set a term limit for our president. The problem is that absent a constitutional convention, the only way to start the process for a Constitutional amendment is that Congress -- the people with a 9% approval rating -- have to pass it by a two-thirds vote in each chamber before it

Question: What do NBA owners do that Congress should do?

Question: Who looks unlikely to reach an agreement by the deadline?

Question: What is the only way to force dramatic change?

Question: What is the way to force dramatic change

Answer: lock

Answer: congressional "super committee"

Answer: Term limits

Answer: Term limits

Summary:
Congress looks unlikely to reach a deficit reduction deal by deadline .
Dean Obeidallah: Follow NBA owners' example and lock out members of Congress .
The only way to force dramatic change is to limit congressional terms, he says .
Obeidallah: Stop political posturing, make a deal and revive nation's economy .


(CNN) -- If there is one thing that Africa can learn from the global financial crisis it's that the West doesn't always get it right, Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai told CNN. Two young boys plow their dry cornfield in Kwale, Kenya which has been blighted by drought. "It sends a message that anyone can make a mistake. Nobody has a blueprint and nobody is a know-it-all," she said of the current turmoil engulfing the global banking system. "I can tell you I never would have thought we could experience what we're experiencing in America now," she added. "Because for one we never would have thought that the Americans could be caught 'asleep,' not monitoring their financial system and therefore waking up one day and finding out that their most respected institutions are collapsing right and left." The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned the global financial crisis will have a "major impact," on low-income countries. In a recent report, "The Implications of the Global Financial Crisis for Low-Income Countries," the Fund singled out sub-Saharan Africa as particularly vulnerable to the crisis, as lower global growth reduces export demand and depresses commodity prices. And last month, anti-poverty campaign group ActionAid forecast Africa's income would drop by $49 billion dollars between 2007 and the end of this year. Most of that, it said, would be due to a fall in export earnings, aid and income from rich countries now in recession. "Although developing countries didn't make this crisis, it has become all too clear that they are in the firing line when it comes to suffering its worst effects," Claire Melamed, Head of Policy at ActionAid said in a statement accompanying the report. "There is a real risk that development will start to go backwards in many countries as the money dries up and that the recession will lead to worsening poverty and terrible consequences for the men, women and children caught in its grip," she added. Wangari Maathai said many Africans had become so accustomed to their daily struggles that they assumed life could not get any worse. "Some of the impact that the western banks or the Western people are experiencing we've been experiencing for decades," Maathai said. "We've been raising and educating children who cannot get any employment. Long ago our hospitals collapsed, our infrastructure collapsed, our education system collapsed. "That's why people are saying it can't get any worse, but you and I know it can get worse," she said. Now 69, Wangari Maathai has long campaigned for human rights and the empowerment of Africa's most impoverished people.  Watch Revealed: Wangari Maathai » More than thirty years ago she founded the Green Belt Movement, a tree-planting campaign to simultaneously mitigate deforestation and to give locals, especially women and girls, new purpose. They have since planted more than 40 million trees. In 2004, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote sustainable development, democracy and peace, and has recently repeated calls for Africans to 'rise up' and demand greater accountability from their governments.  See photos of Maathai receiving the Nobel Peace Prize » "What Africa needs to know is that now that the world has its own crisis in its own hand, if they don't take care of themselves and place themselves in a position where they can be assisted, they will suffer, the people will suffer," Maathai told CNN. Earlier this month, the group of 20 industrialized nations agreed an unprecedented rescue package worth $1.1 trillion to tackle the global economic crisis. It included $750 billion dollars for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), three times the Fund's previous lending capacity, as well "special drawing rights" to an additional $250 billion. Of the commitment, Maathai said: "I'm glad that the G20 identified that they must help the poor people, but the biggest problem for the poor developing countries in Africa

Question: who is nobel peace laureate?

Question: What has he said aobut the West?

Question: Who needs to take responsibility for the future?

Question: who need to take responsibility?

Question: Who said Africans need to take responsibility for the future?

Question: What is the name of the laureate winner?

Question: Who says West is fallible?

Answer: Wangari Maathai

Answer: doesn't always get it right,

Answer: Africa

Answer: governments.

Answer: Wangari Maathai

Answer: Wangari Maathai

Answer: Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai

Summary:
Nobel Peace Laureate says Africans need to take responsibility for future .
Wangari Maathai says global economic crisis shows West is fallible .
Maathai of the West: "Nobody has a blueprint and nobody is a know-it-all"


(CNN) -- If there's a blessing in the current swine flu epidemic, it's how benign the illness seems to be outside the central disease cluster in Mexico. But history offers a dark warning to anyone ready to write off the 2009 H1N1 virus. The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 sickened an estimated third of the world's population. In each of the four major pandemics since 1889, a spring wave of relatively mild illness was followed by a second wave, a few months later, of a much more virulent disease. This was true in 1889, 1957, 1968 and in the catastrophic flu outbreak of 1918, which sickened an estimated third of the world's population and killed, conservatively, 50 million people. Lone Simonsen, an epidemiologist at George Washington University, who has studied the course of prior pandemics in both the United States and her native Denmark, says, "The good news from past pandemics, in several experiences, is that the majority of deaths have happened not in the first wave, but later." Based on this, Simonsen suggests there may be time to develop an effective vaccine before a second, more virulent strain, begins to circulate. As swine flu -- also known as the 2009 version of the H1N1 flu strain -- spreads, Simonsen and other health experts are diving into the history books for clues about how the outbreak might unfold -- and, more importantly, how it might be contained. In fact, the official Pandemic Influenza Operation Plan, or O-Plan, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is based in large part on a history lesson -- research organized by pediatrician and medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan. Markel was tapped by the CDC to study what worked and what didn't during the 1918 flu disaster. Markel and colleagues examined 43 cities and found that so-called nonpharmaceutical interventions -- steps such as isolating patients and school closings -- were remarkably successful in tamping down the outbreak. "They don't make the population immune, but they buy you time, either by preventing influenza from getting into the community or slowing down the spread," Markel said.  Explainer: Flu facts » Markel describes a dramatic example in the mining town of Gunnison, Colorado. In 1918, town leaders built a veritable barricade, closing down the railroad station and blocking all roads into town. Four thousand townspeople lived on stockpiled supplies and food from hunting or fishing. For 3½ months, while influenza raged in nearly every city in America, Gunnison saw not a single case of flu -- not until the spring, when roads were reopened and a handful of residents fell sick.  Visit LIFE.com for photographs of the lethal flu pandemic of 1918 Nonpharmaceutical interventions, or NPIs, also proved effective in big cities such as New York, according to Markel. In fact, the sooner cities moved to limit public gatherings or isolate patients, the less severe their experience tended to be -- as much as an eight- or ninefold difference in case and death rates, he says. Based on this guidance, the CDC preparedness plan devotes dozens of pages to potential NPIs, from voluntary isolation to reorganizing company work schedules to reduce the density of people sitting next to each other in the office or while riding trains and buses. If it seems odd to base medical strategy on 90-year-old newspapers, the approach is increasingly popular. "There's a big case for looking at history," says Simonsen. "We call it archaeo-epidemiology. You go to libraries and places like that, dig around, collaborate with people like John Barry and try to quantify what really worked."  Map: where the flu is today » Barry is the author of "The Great Influenza," perhaps the signature history of the devastating 1918 pandemic. He says the historical record shows that isolating patients worked to slow the spread of flu in 1918, but that attempted quarantines -- preventing movement in and out of cities -- was "worthless." While Barry supports the CDC's general containment strategy, in the past he has publicly criticized Markel's work. After Markel's

Question: What season did the last 4 pandemics usually occur?

Question: What did past epidemics teach the CDC?

Answer: spring

Answer: the majority of deaths have happened not in the first wave, but later."

Summary:
CDC's national pandemic strategy rooted in lessons of past epidemics .
In four past pandemics, mild spring outbreak was followed by virulent fall sickness .
Expert: If its true this time, could allow time to develop effective vaccine .


(CNN) -- If you didn't know that Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro and Stephen Perkins were members of Jane's Addiction, you might think they belonged to three different bands -- and Farrell is the first to admit it.

"One guy's just a ball of sunshine. That's Stephen," the singer said. "Then Dave is like a black hole sometimes, like places where he goes. And me? I'm just like a pingpong ball put in the cosmos, man."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, pretty much sums up the genius of Jane's Addiction -- the friction of three disparate parts rubbing together, until finally, it explodes into a glorious musical fireball. It's a chemical reaction that, throughout the band's 26-year-history, has all too often imploded as well.

"I'm not really sure how many times we've parted ways," said Navarro, the group's guitarist. "I wasn't really one of the people who thought we wouldn't be back together, primarily because we've gotten back together so many times over the years. We don't break up anymore. We just go on five-year hiatuses."

The alternative rock pioneers are prepping the October 18 release of "The Great Escape Artist," their first studio album in eight years.

"The sound is definitely updated on this album," Farrell said. "The differences are that we are now working with synthesizers and computer software that goes with guitars, so you'll hear a lot of very modern sounds mixed in with what people call the ageless, or timeless, sound of Jane's Addiction."

With original bassist Eric Avery, Jane's Addiction put a soundtrack to the gritty Southern California underground arts scene of the late 1980s. The group's first studio album, "Nothing's Shocking," was an examination of love, lust, violence and drugs. By 1990, the band was all over rock radio with "Stop!" and "Been Caught Stealing," a pair of hit singles off its sophomore disc, "Ritual de lo Habitual." The new CD is only the group's fourth studio album.

"We pull from the environment," said drummer Perkins. "Jane's Addiction wrote our (first) music in Hollywood in 1986. You hear Los Angeles. You hear that Mexico is only 100 miles away from us. You can hear the struggle, and also the glory, of being a musician in L.A. Our music was never negative, but it had that strong urge. You wanted to go f**k, not to go punch. And I think Jane's still has that."

CNN visited the band during a video shoot for the new single, "Irresistible Force," on a Hollywood soundstage. Farrell, the lyricist, said the song chronicles how the universe was created. "I say the big bang was actually a conscious act of cosmic lovemaking."

Perkins, the pragmatist, has a different interpretation. "To me, the 'Irresistible Force' is what pulls me, Dave and Perry together. Ever since I was 13, I've been playing with Navarro. I met Perry when I was 17. And no matter how much we stopped playing with each other, and tried to get away from each other, it's the magnet -- it pulls us closer."

The band members discussed their reunion and new album and how they've avoid fistfights for nearly two decades:

CNN: How does it feel to have Jane's Addiction back together again?

Perry Farrell: I love performing with Jane's Addiction. I hope I get to do it all my life. It's healthy for bands to take a break every now and then. People are really looking forward to this new record because they're a little starved. I'm pulling the old woman's trick of making them want, and want, and need and desire.

CNN: Who's the peacemaker who calls and says, "Let's try this again?"

Dave Navarro: I don't really know how

Question: Who is the lead singer of the band?

Question: What band is Perry Farrell in?

Question: What genre is the album "The Great Escape Artist"

Question: What is the new single from "The Great Escape Artist"

Question: What is the name of the new single?

Question: Who visits the band during a video shoot?

Question: What is the name of the new release from the band?

Question: CNN visits band during video shoot for new single called what?

Answer: Perry Farrell,

Answer: Jane's

Answer: alternative rock

Answer: "Irresistible Force,"

Answer: "Irresistible Force,"

Answer: CNN

Answer: "The Great Escape Artist,"

Answer: "Irresistible Force,"

Summary:
The alternative rock pioneers are prepping the release of "The Great Escape Artist"
CNN visits band during video shoot for new single, "Irresistible Force"
Lead singer Perry Farrell says the song chronicles how the universe was created .


(CNN) -- If you sell it, they will come. Prices are expected to grow for Michael Jackson autographs like the one he gave this young fan in 2002. That's the hope at least for many offering Michael Jackson related merchandise and memorabilia, including autographed items and domain names, in the wake of his surprising death. Almost 20,000 items were up for sale after his death on the popular auction site eBay, where collectors could snap up everything from the rare to the ridiculous. Among the many T-shirts, record albums, DVDs and posters, there were also magazines about Jackson, dolls and copies of newspapers announcing his death. There were Michael Jackson gloves (sparkly, of course), masks, wigs, sunglasses and fedora hats. Anyone in the mood for some senior soda could try and win an auction for an unopened six-pack of Pepsi from the 1984 Jacksons world tour. For those seeking to establish Web sites, domain names were available including "ILoveYouMichael.com," which was selling for the "buy it now" price of $5,000. Officials at eBay said that compared with the daily average of the week prior, Thursday's gross merchandise volume for Jackson memorabilia increased by 275 percent and sold items increased by 210 percent. New listings were up 61 percent, while the average selling price of items had increased by 31 percent. Online merchant CafePress also offered a variety of items, including mugs, "R.I.P. Michael Jackson" magnets and dozens of T-shirt designs, including one screened with a drawing of tennis legend Billie Jean King and the words "not my lover." Some of the hottest items may turn out to be the ones bearing Jackson's signature. On eBay, bids for what the buyer claimed was a signed Michael Jackson  guitar had reached almost $1,300 by Friday afternoon. Jerry Ohlinger, owner of Jerry Ohlinger's Movie Material Store in New York, predicted that although Jackson was generous in giving autographs, the price for a legitimate autograph probably will at least double from the $150 to $300 range it was prior to his death. "He would sign autographs whenever he appeared in person," Ohlinger said. "For instance, he visited our store at least three times, and he signed autographs for all of the employees." As a comparison, Ohlinger said, an autograph for the late actress Marilyn Monroe, who also was known to sign a great deal during her lifetime, sells for about $5,000 because of great demand. As of Friday, items purported to be autographed photos of Jackson were ranging in price from just over $5 to several thousand dollars. There is no way to predict whether there will be a sudden influx in demand for Michael Jackson memorabilia and merchandise, Ohlinger said. All of the hoopla would probably tickle the pop icon, who Ohlinger said was himself a fan of star items. Whenever Jackson would visit Ohlinger's Manhattan store, he would shop for vintage photos of some of the legendary ladies of cinema, including his very dear friend Elizabeth Taylor, Ohlinger recalled.

Question: What site boasts much memorabilia?

Question: Do they have T-shirts?

Question: Who claims Jackson's autograph will double in price?

Question: Where are the items on sale at?

Question: What percentage did sales increase?

Question: What is percentage of sell raise of Jackson items  from last week?

Question: Whose memorabilia is being sold?

Question: By what percent did sales of Jackson related items increase?

Question: What is the name of the auction site?

Question: What is on the sale after Jackson death?

Question: What does the expert say about Jacksons autograph?

Question: What online auction site boasted thousands of items?

Answer: eBay,

Answer: many

Answer: Jerry Ohlinger,

Answer: eBay,

Answer: 210 percent.

Answer: 210 percent.

Answer: Michael Jackson

Answer: 275

Answer: eBay,

Answer: 20,000 items

Answer: Prices are expected to grow

Answer: eBay,

Summary:
NEW: Sold Jackson items on eBay increase 210 percent compared to last week .
Plenty of Michael Jackson merchandise goes on sale .
Online auction site ebay boasts thousands of items from T-shirts to soda .
Memorabilia expert predicts Jackson autograph to at least double in price .


(CNN) -- If you thought it was difficult managing your own money in 2007, consider the pressure of the task when you're dealing with $1.8 trillion of client assets.

Sallie Krawcheck has made Fortune's list of the World's Most Powerful Women every year since 2002

That's what Sallie Krawcheck does as Chairman and Chief Executive of Citi Global Wealth Management.

She joined the banking industry as a research analyst, but quickly rose through the ranks, gaining a reputation for honesty and integrity along the way.

Dubbed the "Mrs Clean" of Wall Street, Ms Krawcheck was credited with restoring investors' faith in analyst reports while head of retail brokerage firm Smith Barney.

She joined Citigroup in 2002, and spent some time as Chief Financial Officer before taking up her current role in March 2007.

Sallie Krawcheck has been a regular entrant on Fortune's list of the World's Most Powerful Women in Business -- in 2007, she made number 12.

John Defterios caught up with Ms Krawcheck in Dubai. He asked her for her views on the movement of capital outside the G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States).

Sallie Krawcheck (SK): I think what's happening right now, it's fascinating because in the United States and in developed Europe we're having a liquidity crunch -- someone might argue a liquidity crisis. And in fact, we are awash with liquidity in the Middle East and in Asia as well, so there's really a bifurcation that's occurring in the world.

And if you think about, oil doesn't even have to stay at the 90-plus dollar level it is; even at levels in the 70's, 60's, 50's, 40's, a tremendous amount of liquidity is being generated in these markets which is really being put back into the market. Yes, the investments are going up globally, but the governments here really are investing back in the infrastructure and the economies of this region. And so over time, you're really going to see... I think continue to see... a shift in economic activity on a relative basis from the more developed economies here to the Middle East as well as to Asia.

John Defterios (JD): It's coming almost as a perfect storm; we have a sub prime crisis, a 20 percent fall in the dollar in the last two years. In this window of time, is there a danger that the financial capitals build outside of Wall Street and it undermines its role?

(SK): I think there is no doubt that New York is losing its status as a financial capital of the world. If you think about some years ago, if you think about the internet bubble for example, where it was New York and California wasn't it? And you look at a whole range of reasons for it, and the sub prime crisis perhaps, the decline of the dollar perhaps. But you have overlapping regulators in the United States, you have very high taxes in the United States, you have a very litigious environment in the United States, and you have the emerging markets coming up, so capital is being raised outside of the United States. These things, some of which are negative for the United States, some of which are positive for the other regions, is accelerating a shift that was underway from New York, to London, to Hong Kong, to Singapore, and potentially to Dubai as well.

(JD): Some of the wealth funds are now on the radar of both Wall Street and Capitol Hill in Washington. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't say I want some of that liquidity but I only want part of that liquidity. What is the result of that do you think? Can you over-regulate the sovereign funds?

(SK): Oh, I think you can over-regulate the sovereign funds. I think the same question can be asked of the private equity funds and the hedge funds as well; where in a lot of countries

Question: what are the client assets worth

Question: Amount of client's assets?

Question: what magazine is mentioned

Question: What did Krawcheck say?

Question: Who wants to speak to Sallie Krawcheck ?

Question: Where is Sallie ranked by Fortune?

Question: Who is MME speaking with?

Question: Who is  ranked the 12th Most Powerful Woman ?

Question: what year is mentioned

Question: Who are the most powerful women in 2007 ?

Question: Who is the boss at Citi Global Wealth Management?

Question: Who did MME speak with?

Question: Who is the boss of  Citi Global Wealth Management?

Question: Who is Sallie Krawcheck?

Answer: $1.8 trillion

Answer: $1.8 trillion

Answer: Fortune's

Answer: happening right now, it's fascinating because in the United States and in developed Europe we're having a liquidity crunch -- someone might argue a liquidity crisis. And in fact, we are awash with liquidity in the Middle East and in Asia as well, so there's really a bifurcation that's occurring in the world.

Answer: John Defterios

Answer: 12.

Answer: Sallie Krawcheck

Answer: Sallie Krawcheck

Answer: 2007,

Answer: Sallie Krawcheck

Answer: Sallie Krawcheck

Answer: Sallie Krawcheck

Answer: Sallie Krawcheck

Answer: Chairman and Chief Executive of Citi Global Wealth Management.

Summary:
MME speaks with Sallie Krawcheck, boss of Citi Global Wealth Management .
Ranked by Fortune magazine as World's 12th Most Powerful Woman in 2007 .
Manages client assets worth $1.8 trillion, formerly bank's CFO .
Tells MME: "we're very bullish" on economic potential of the Middle East .


(CNN) -- If you're looking for love and not having much luck, maybe you could increase your success by getting a bit more passionate -- about helping others. Dave Chung and Kim Benty share a love of volunteer work in New Orleans. When singles write to advice columnists complaining about being lonely, they are often urged to volunteer. Duane Bates, the public relations director for Habitat for Humanity, says it's not unusual for their volunteers to meet on a building site and "end up together." Victor Fasolino was living in New Jersey and his future wife, Lora, was living in Seattle, Washington, when the two met in Hungary in 1996 while volunteering on a Jimmy Carter Work Project for Habitat. "I thought she was an attractive young lady," recalls Victor Fasolino, adding that they were working 10-12 hour days so it wasn't until the project was almost complete that they got to spend much time together. Both were committed volunteers and had signed up for a Habitat fundraising bike ride of 500 miles two weeks after they returned to the United States. They got to know each other while pedaling from Kentucky to Atlanta, Georgia. The two got married one year later atop a house they helped build during another project in Pikesville, Kentucky. Other volunteers had cleaned and scraped a ladder so the bride wouldn't get her wedding gown dirty climbing to the roof. The groom wore a tuxedo, a local minister officiated and a fiddler joined them on the roof to provide the music. This year, Victor, 56, and Lora Fasolino, 46, will again work on former President Carter's 2009 Habitat work project, building houses in five countries: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and China -- along the Mekong River in southeast Asia. In 2007, Dave Chung and Kim Benty found each other while helping Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans, Louisiana. Chung had been a pro golfer playing mini-tours in California and living half the year in Toronto, Ontario, when he got the urge to drive down to New Orleans to volunteer. "I really liked the place, and the people," says Chung. "The original plan was to come down here for two months and go to a friend's wedding, but I ended up staying." At first the 30-something golfer worked for Habitat for Humanity, learning plumbing and wiring. Then he went to work with Liz McCartney, 2008 CNN Hero of the Year, at the St. Bernard Project. Meanwhile, Kim Benty, 36, an interpreter for the deaf in the western New York town of Batavia, began a series of trips in July 2007 to work with volunteers in the same area. Benty was smitten after meeting Chung on her first trip, but he merely smiled and went back to work. "He was doing a little of everything, a runner, bringing supplies, our construction manager," Benty remembers. "I thought, you know, I am just another volunteer to him." There were several more trips, a few chance meetings -- but no sparks. But something changed when they met yet again in December 2008 at a friend's Christmas party. "We just hit it off that night," Chung says. Chung says he was attracted to her for a million little reasons: "She's attractive, fun to be around and both of us are kind of easygoing." But then it was time for Benty to go back to New York and for Chung to make the long drive to Canada to see his relatives. Chung's New Year's Eve plans fell though, so he asked Benty about coming down. They hung out for a few days and Chung was set to drive by himself back to New Orleans. "She hopped in the car with me, and came down. It really surprised the people who knew her," Chung says, "because she is the kind of person who likes to plan everything." "Ha, it did surprise people," Benty admits. "I am very

Question: Who got married?

Question: Where did the couple work?

Question: What organization did the couple volunteer for?

Question: Where did the couple get married at?

Question: Where did couple get married?

Question: What did the organization spokesperson say?

Question: What passion brought Carol and John Coonrod together?

Question: What organization were the couple working for when they met?

Answer: Victor Fasolino

Answer: New Orleans.

Answer: Habitat

Answer: atop a house they helped build

Answer: Pikesville, Kentucky.

Answer: it's not unusual for their volunteers to meet on a building site and "end up together."

Answer: a love of volunteer work

Answer: Jimmy Carter Work Project

Summary:
Couple who met working with Habitat for Humanity gets married atop house .
Organization spokesman says it's not unusual for volunteers to "end up together"
Passion for ending world hunger brings Carol and John Coonrod together .


(CNN) -- If you're on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site, you could be the next victim. Experts say cybercrooks are lurking just a mouse click away on popular social networking sites. That's because more cyberthieves are targeting increasingly popular social networking sites that provide a gold mine of personal information, according to the FBI. Since 2006, nearly 3,200 account hijacking cases have been reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. It starts with a friend updating his or her status or sending you a message with an innocent link or video. Maybe your friend is in distress abroad and needs some help. All you have to do is click. When the message or link is opened, social network users are lured to fake Web sites that trick them into divulging personal details and passwords. The process, known as a phishing attack or malware, can infiltrate users' accounts without their consent. Once the account is compromised, the thieves can infiltrate the list of friends or contacts and repeat the attack on subsequent victims. Social networking sites show there is ample opportunity to find more victims; the average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site. "Security is a constant arms race," said Simon Axten, an associate for privacy and public policy at Facebook. "Malicious actors are constantly attacking the site, and what you see is actually a very small percentage of what's attempted." As some social networking sites experience monstrous growth, they are becoming a new -- and extremely lucrative -- frontier for cybercrime. Facebook says it has 300 million users, nearly the size of the U.S. population, and it continues to attract users outside the college student niche. From February 2008 to February 2009, Twitter, a micro-blogging site where users post 140-character messages known as tweets, grew 1,382 percent to more than 7 million users. "They [cybercriminals] are very adept to using social engineering," said Donald DeBold, director of threat research for CA, an Internet security company. "Your friend is in trouble traveling in another country, 'I lost my wallet. I need help.' They exploit the curiosity aspect out of human nature." A few decades ago, malicious software and viruses were usually the result of a prank, but Internet security experts say today's attacks are profit-driven. A study from the Indiana University in 2005 discovered that phishing attacks on social networks operated with a 70 percent success rate. These users had fallen for the scam, opened the foreign link and released personal information. Cybercriminals are employing phishing and malware attacks for a number of reasons, including trying to redirect users to sites where profit is fueled by the number of visitors. They also try to elicit private information like passwords and bank account numbers to perform scams. Early this year, Twitter experienced several phishing attacks in which a Web page that looked identical to the widely recognized light blue Twitter page was a hoax. The company warned users to double-check the URL to ensure they were visiting the correct site. The Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 72,000 complaints about Internet fraud in 2008 that were referred to law enforcement agencies for further investigation. These cases involved financial losses amounting to $264.6 million, an increase from 2007. Each person lost an average of $931. "Most of us would want to help a friend in need, but if it's an online friend, and they want you to wire money, you should double-check," FBI spokesman Jason Pack said. Security experts said it makes sense that cybercriminals are turning to social networking sites. Personal information is abundant on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Each time users give out valuable information like birth dates or addresses, they could be providing hints about their password, security experts say. The American Civil Liberties Union has expressed concern about the information visible through Facebook quizzes and applications. "They'll have access to all that information, so they can sell it, they can share

Question: What was the amount of losses in 2008

Question: What was the number of accounts hijacked since 2006

Question: How many accounts of account hijacking cases have been reported by the FBI?

Answer: amounting to $264.6 million,

Answer: nearly 3,200

Answer: 3,200

Summary:
The FBI reports nearly 3,200 account hijacking cases since 2006 .
Online scam losses amounting to $264.6 million reported in 2008 .
Facebook has automated systems that detect compromised accounts .
MySpace.com creates blacklists of phony accounts .


(CNN) -- If you've been to the movies recently, you've probably been pummeled with trailers for interchangeable all-star action movies: "The Expendables," "The A-Team" and "The Losers." Mercenaries are in this year, and khaki is the new black.

"The Losers" is first out of the blocks, and it's a cheerfully vulgar shoot-'em-up that doesn't have a serious bone in its pumped-up body.

Based on Andy Diggle's Vertigo comic book (itself loosely inspired by the old DC comic), the movie doesn't really flow; it just spurts out in quick, oily jets. It's actually less like a comic book and more like a 90-minute trailer: all the best bits stuck end to end and the filler condensed into a pithy line or (better yet) a clubby music cue. (The Kills' "U R A Fever" comes up twice -- once for a fight scene and then again for a sex scene -- but there's no doubt the fight is the turn-on, and it lasts much longer, too.)

If you've seen the trailer, you'll feel you're halfway there, and if you caught co-writer Peter Berg in "Smokin' Aces" a couple of years back, you'll know what else is in store.

The Losers are some kind of CIA black ops squad, but only for a nanosecond. There are five of them, each with his own wardrobe fetish and each with a prescribed skill set: Clay is the leader (Jeffrey Dean Morgan from "Watchmen"), and he looks good with one shirt-tail hanging out. Jensen (Chris Evans) is tech support and comic relief in a series of nasty T-shirts. Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) is a sniper and never separated from his cowboy hat. Pooch (Columbus Short) is the driver and family man. Roque (Idris Elba, aka Stringer Bell from "The Wire") is second-in-command, a knife expert with a scar down his cheek.

They're a bit lightweight in star power -- Evans is the biggest draw and the most fun -- and they're not so badass that they're willing to take out a Bolivian crime boss when they realize he's surrounded himself with children.

In rescuing the kids, the Losers seal their own death warrant with their controller, Max, a super-patriot whose precise role in U.S. intelligence is shrouded in secrecy but who has been written as a cross between Dick Cheney and Dr. No (though Jason Patric, who plays him, resembles a psychotically soft-spoken Warren Beatty).

Left for dead in the jungle, the team is rescued, sort of, by a high-kicking beanpole with an open credit line. This is Aisha (Zoe Saldana), and she hires the Losers to bring down Max.

"How do I know I can trust you?" Clay wants to know.

"Because if I was lying, I wouldn't have used the words 'suicide mission,' " she very reasonably points out.

Locked into the faddish slam-cut video game look and filtered (perhaps in deference to a string of Central American locations) in malarial shades of green and yellow, "The Losers" wants to seem cutting edge, though it clings to a quaint Saturday morning serial black-and-white morality. Max isn't just down on kids, he plans to get his paws on "next-generation" weapons, kick-start a war or two, destabilize the developing world and put the U.S. back on top. Laughable!

Directed by Sylvain White ("Stomp the Yard"), the movie musters a modicum of snap, crackle and pop, but the whole shooting match is delivered in such an assiduously shorthand style that when the smoke clears, it's hard not to feel a teensy bit short-changed.

Question:
"The Losers" musters a modicum of what?
What does it muster a modicum of?
What is "the Losers"?
Who stars in "The Losers"?
What is "The Losers" based on?
Who stars in the film?

Answer: snap, crackle and pop,

Answer: snap, crackle and pop,

Answer: is first out of the blocks, and it's a cheerfully vulgar shoot-'em-up

Answer: (Oscar Jaenada)

Answer: Andy Diggle's Vertigo comic book

Answer: (Chris Evans)

Summary:
"The Losers" is based on Andy Diggle's Vertigo comic book .
Film stars Chris Evans, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Columbus Short and Zoe Saldana .
It musters a modicum of snap, crackle and pop, but it's hard not to feel short-changed .


(CNN) -- If you've ever had a group of friends who have meant the world to you, take a look at the old black-and-white photo that accompanies today's column.

If you've ever yearned to freeze time, to make the finest moments of your life stand still in their tracks so you can savor them a little longer, while knowing somewhere inside that such a thing is impossible, take a look at the faces of those three men.

Not so many years before that photo was snapped, the three of them were inseparable -- not only on a basketball court, but in the minds of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of admirers. Their names routinely appeared in the same sentences in newspaper sports sections from coast to coast. They inhabited the same column of agate-type box scores on winter morning after winter morning.

If you were young enough -- and, as the 12-year-old statistics kid who counted up their field goals, rebounds and free throws for the local Columbus, Ohio, television station that did the live broadcasts of their college games, I was young enough -- you allowed yourself to believe that the three friends would always be together.

It wasn't to be. It almost never is, whether you are friends as famous as they were, or as anonymous as most of the rest of us are. Which is why I love that bittersweet photograph so much. It is an inadvertent record of a moment that signifies how all friends, eventually, must take different paths, that nothing beautiful is destined to endure uninterrupted.

On the left in the photograph is Larry Siegfried of the Boston Celtics. In the center is Jerry Lucas of the Cincinnati Royals. On the right is John Havlicek of the Celtics.

In 1960, the three had been teammates on The Ohio State University basketball team that won the national collegiate championship. It was quite a squad; the coach was Fred Taylor, the two other starters were Mel Nowell and Joe Roberts, and there was a sharpshooting forward who came off the bench, a rather intense young man by the name of Bobby Knight.

The team was so smooth that, watching from the stands, you sensed they could read each others' minds. If you had never before quite understood what it looked like and felt like to be a part of a seamless unit, you found out every evening just by seeing them play. But the thing you could never really know -- the secret that belonged only to them, as it does with any group of friends -- was what it was like to be inside of it. They were separate people, but they were one.

Which is why the photograph of them taken barely three years later -- it was shot on October 17, 1963, in the Cincinnati Gardens -- is, in its low-key way, so mesmerizing. The friends, because of circumstance, have parted. The paths have split. This was to be the first game during which, as professionals, they competed against each other. The old team was history. At the opening tipoff, their goals were about to diverge.

The photo was snapped by a then-young man named Ed Keys, who had been taken to the game by his father, sportswriter Tom Keys. Ed Keys sent it to me recently because he thought I would understand.

Fifty winters ago -- the winter that Lucas and Havlicek and Siegfried and their Ohio State teammates won their national championship -- I somehow, as a junior high school student who wasn't even that good at math, talked the local television play-by-play man, Jimmy Crum, into letting me sit with him and help with the statistics. I watched those friends on the court at every home game on their way to the championship; I watched that magical basketball friendship form and grow and become so strong that their team became the finest in the country.

What must it be like to be part of a friendship that is played out so publicly -- part of hardwood recollections woven into the fabric of the lives of strangers who will never meet you?

Question: Who were best friends?

Answer: John Havlicek

Summary:
Three players on 1960 college championship team went on to the NBA .
Bob Greene says the three seemingly inseparable players were parted .
He says they plan to reunite at 50th anniversary reunion later this month .
The best friendships endure even though friends get parted, Greene says .


(CNN) -- Iggy Pop invented punk rock. That's how cool he is. His songs have been covered by the likes of Guns N' Roses, REM, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Sex Pistols. Iggy Pop: The wildest man in rock music. He is the wildest wild man of rock and his four-decade career has been marked by drug addiction, self mutilation and onstage nudity -- and at 61 years old he is showing no signs of growing old gracefully. Born on April 21, 1947, in Muskegon, Michigan, James Newell Osterberg grew up in a trailer park. When he began learning the drums as a teenager his parents gave up their bedroom to house his drum kit. It wasn't long before he took his talent out of the bedroom, playing with high-school band The Iguanas, from which he later took his stage name. After graduating from high school in 1965, Iggy formed a blues band called the Prime Movers. Following a brief stint at the University of Michigan he moved to Chicago, playing drums with local bluesmen, before returning to Michigan with his sights set on fronting a rock band.  Watch Iggy Pop show CNN around Miami » In 1967, he recruited guitarist Ron Asheton, his drummer brother Scott Asheton and bassist Dave Alexander and formed The Psychedelic Stooges. It was after seeing the Doors in concert, and inspired by Jim Morrison's confrontational stage persona, that James Osterberg reinvented himself as Iggy Pop, a drug-fueled, crazed whirling dervish of a front man, who would strut semi-naked around the stage, roll around in broken glass and dive headlong into the audience. The band shortened its name to The Stooges and released its eponymous debut in 1969. Right from the start there was clearly something different about Iggy Pop. At the height of flower power, when The Stooges' contemporaries were singing about peace and love, Iggy was singing "No Fun" and "I Wanna Be Your Dog."  See photos of Iggy in action. » The album was a brilliant mess of raw, blues-influenced garage rock, but it sold poorly, as did the 1970 follow up "Fun House," later described by Jack White of the White Stripes as "the definitive rock album of America." Watch Iggy Pop show CNN around Miami By this time, Iggy had begun the Heroin use that would plague his career and in 1971, The Stooges split up after being dropped by their record label. That same year, Iggy met David Bowie, who took him to England, re-united The Stooges and produced 1973's "Raw Power." With "Raw Power," Iggy and the Stooges created the blueprint for punk rock and made an album that would one day be regarded as a landmark in rock music, an album that Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain listed as his favorite of all time. Nonetheless, it was another commercial failure and in 1974, The Stooges split again. By this time, Heroin had taken over Iggy's life and in 1975 he checked himself into a Los Angeles mental institution in an effort to kick the habit. Bowie visited him there and took Iggy along on his 1976 tour, before the pair moved to West Berlin in an effort to get away from the temptation of drugs. It was there that Bowie produced and co-wrote Iggy's 1977 solo albums, "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life." The latter included the songs "The Passenger" and "Lust for Life," which have since become staples of TV ads and movie soundtracks, spawning countless cover versions. More commercial than The Stooges' records, Iggy's solo albums were met with critical acclaim and better sales, but never breakthrough into the mainstream. Songs that Bowie wrote with Iggy during this period were later included on Bowie albums, with "China Girl" becoming a hit single for Bowie. Iggy carried on touring and releasing albums throughout the 80s, without much commercial success, although the single "Real Wild Child" was a hit in the U.S. and UK. But

Question: What happened in 1975?

Question: Who produced the 3 classic albums?

Question: Who co-wrote and produced Iggy's The Idiot and Lust for Life albums?

Question: In what year did Iggy check himself into a mental institution?

Question: When did the group reunite?

Answer: he checked himself into a Los Angeles mental institution

Answer: David Bowie,

Answer: David Bowie,

Answer: 1975

Answer: 1973's

Summary:
Iggy Pop and The Stooges produced three classic albums in the 60s and 70s .
In 1975, Iggy checked himself into a mental institution in a bid to get off Heroin .
David Bowie co-wrote and produced Iggy's The Idiot and Lust for Life albums .
The Stooges re-united in 2003 and have since played all over the world .


(CNN) -- Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was absent again Tuesday from his Senate impeachment trial, but state senators who will decide whether to remove him from office heard him loud and clear on FBI recordings of his phone calls. Gov. Rod Blagojevich talks to CNN's Campbell Brown Tuesday night about his impeachment trial. Only four snippets of conversations were played for senators in the second day of the impeachment trial, and all pertained to horse-racing legislation. Prosecutors said the brief recordings focused on the governor's efforts to apparently raise campaign contributions in exchange for signing a horse-racing bill. In one recording from December 3, a lobbyist assures the governor that a race-track owner has pledged his "commitment." "He goes, 'I hope I'm gonna have it next week, but you have my commitment. I've always been there. I'm gonna be there,' " the lobbyist told Blagojevich of the race track owner. None of the recordings mentions money specifically. Meanwhile, Blagojevich continued an ambitious media blitz, appearing in interviews with CBS, CNN, Fox and The Associated Press. A day earlier, he appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live," ABC's "Good Morning America" and "The View."  Watch Blagojevich on "Larry King Live" » "I hate all of this," Blagojevich told CNN's Campbell Brown in an interview Tuesday. "This is a life-changing thing. I am about to be thrown out of office for accusations that are false and not true."  Watch Brown interview Blagojevich » He added, "But there's principles involved. And that is I did nothing wrong and I'd like an opportunity to prove it." The governor has railed against state Senate rules that restrict the calling of some witnesses and the presentation of some evidence. State Sen. Matt Murphy, part of the nine-member committee that put the Senate trial rules together, has said U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald asked both sides to "defer to the criminal prosecution" of Blagojevich and "limit witnesses." The House prosecution in the Senate trial is operating under the same restrictions, he said. Senators also heard testimony Tuesday from FBI Special Agent Daniel Cain, author of a 76-page affidavit released in December, when the governor was arrested on federal corruption charges.  Watch proceedings from Tuesday's trial » Among other allegations, federal prosecutors said the governor tried to trade or sell the Senate seat that would become vacant after Barack Obama became president. Cain testified about transcripts of federal tapes in the affidavit, mostly replying in the affirmative when House prosecutor David Ellis asked whether the portions of the affidavit were accurate. "In the end, we were very confident that it was the governor's voice in those conversations," Cain told House prosecutor David Ellis. Cain said FBI agents repeatedly listened to the governor's recorded conversations to make sure they were accurate. "Agents would listen to the recordings repeatedly as many times as necessary to verify the accuracy and quote," he said. Later, as senators tried to ask Cain about the recordings, a representative from the U.S. attorney's office was on hand to block some answers. After Blagojevich's arrest, the state House impeached the two-term Democratic governor in two votes, with only one dissenting vote each time. The second vote was needed because of the seating of a new House. Blagojevich has said the House impeachment vote was politically motivated.

Question:
Who was absent from the trial?
who is absent from trial?
Who heard the recorded phone calls?
Who is holding interviews?
Who did the senators hear from?
From who was the testimony?
Who heard recorded phone calls?

Answer: Gov. Rod Blagojevich

Answer: Gov. Rod Blagojevich

Answer: state senators

Answer: Gov. Rod Blagojevich

Answer: Rod Blagojevich

Answer: FBI Special Agent Daniel Cain,

Answer: state senators

Summary:
State senators heard recorded phone calls about horse-racing legislation .
Governor absent from trial, holding interviews with media outlets .
Senators also heard testimony from FBI agent who wrote affidavit .
U.S. attorney has asked both sides to "defer to criminal prosecution"


(CNN) -- Illinois will become the 17th state on Thursday to ban texting while driving, a safety worry that has caught the attention of the federal government. Texting poses a greater risk than talking or dialing while driving, a study says. Gov. Pat Quinn will sign an amendment to the Illinois Vehicle Code that prohibits writing, sending or receiving text messages while driving, said the governor's spokeswoman, Marlena Jentz. The bill does make texting exceptions for drivers who pull over to text or shift their car into park or neutral to message while stopped in traffic. Illinois will join a growing list of states looking to curb accidents linked to texting. Oregon and New Hampshire banned texting drivers in July, and Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia already have laws in place. Four U.S. senators announced their plan to push for a federal ban on July 29. U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the Obama administration will convene a summit to discuss how it can end accidents caused by distracted drivers. Despite the ongoing efforts to address the dangers of texting while driving, studies have not shown whether the laws affect accident rates, said Jonathan Adkins, communications director at the Governor's Highway Safety Association. The nonprofit association comprised of appointees from each state's governor's office has closely followed the texting while driving saga. But Adkins said that because of several factors that potentially play a role in an accident, to know whether texting caused an accident would require a subpoena or an admission by the driver. In New York and New Jersey, the impact has been measured by an increase in driving tickets, but too few states track that data, Adkins said. "With drunk driving it was important to pass tough laws, but the laws won't really have any effect unless they're enforced and the public knows about it and it's properly adjudicated," said Barbara Harsha the association executive director. "So passing a law isn't the solution, it's only part of it." Studies have shown that those who text while driving have an exponentially greater risk of an accident or near accident. A Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study found that truck drivers who texted while driving were 23 times more likely to crash or nearly get into wrecks than undistracted drivers. Compared with dialing, talking, listening or reaching for an electronic device, texting posed the greatest accident risk, the study found -- most likely due to the almost five seconds researchers found the drivers' eyes were off the roadway while texting, said Rich Hanowski, the director of the Center for Truck and Bus Safety at the transportation institute. The focus on texting while driving comes after a some high-profile accidents. In September, a California commuter train engineer missed a stop signal while trading text messages with a friend, leading to a collision with a freight train that killed 25 people, according to federal investigators. A mass-transit accident in Boston, Massachusetts, injured 62 people in May. The operator of a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority trolley was later charged with gross negligence after he admitted he had been texting seconds before the collision with another trolley, according to the Suffolk County district attorney and a National Transportation Safety Board official.

Question: What do spSenators want a federal ban on?

Question: What do studies say texting while driving increase the risk of?

Question: What amount of states banned texting?

Question: How many states have banned texting while driving?

Question: What causes increased risks of an accident?

Question: What did District of Columbia ban?

Question: Who wants a federal ban on texting while driving?

Question: Who want a federal ban on texting while driving?

Question: What does texting while driving increase?

Answer: texting while driving,

Answer: an accident or near accident.

Answer: 17th

Answer: 17th

Answer: those who text while driving have an exponentially greater

Answer: texting while driving,

Answer: Four U.S. senators

Answer: Illinois

Answer: accidents

Summary:
16 other states, District of Columbia ban texting while driving .
Studies say texting while driving increases risk of an accident or near accident .
It is difficult to measure success of no-texting laws, experts say .
Senators say they want federal ban on texting while driving .


(CNN) -- Imagine arriving at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia, one of the busiest and most bustling airports in the country. People are dashing about, waiting at checkpoints and scanning the screens for departure and arrival times. Invariably there are delays and since you aren't going anywhere anytime soon, you might as well enjoy the tunes playing over the public announcement system. Hey, isn't that the Peaches and Herb classic "Shake Your Groove Thing"? You haven't heard that in years! But wait, what are they singing? It sounds like "Shake Your Groove Thing," but the lyrics playing don't match the ones you know. Click on the image above to hear two of the airport's new songs. "Opening Day fresh, Opening Day fresh, Yeah, yeah Hartsfield-Jackson do it now Opening Day fresh, Opening Day fresh, Yeah, yeah Show 'em how we do it now! Show 'em how we do it now!" Welcome to parody with a purpose. As part of an initiative to keep the airport clean and get people excited about the airport's new shops and dining options, officials there bought the rights to three popular R & B classics: "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb, "Bustin' Loose" by Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers and "Fantastic Voyage" by Lakeside. With rights secured, Doug Strachan, Creative Innovations Manager for the City of Atlanta Department of Aviation, rewrote the lyrics and invited the original artists to record the revamped songs. "Whereas words reach the mind, music reaches the heart," Strachan said. "These are hit songs that people love ... real powerful, catchy and make you want to dance. If you can make someone dance, you can probably motivate them to do other things." So "Groove Thing" became "Keep It Opening Day Fresh," "Bustin Loose" morphed into "We're Steady Cleaning Up," and "Fantastic Voyage" was reborn as "Our New Concessions." Clean music with a clean message -- literally. The concept of "opening day fresh" refers to keeping the airport as clean as if it were opening day, which means smelling fresh and looking as spotless as possible. The catchy tunes are a way to subtly remind visitors that it takes a team effort to keep the airport sparkling. "Our New Concessions" reminds travelers about the facility's retail offerings and food service. Strachan said much effort was put into making sure the songs were produced in such a way that they were respectful to the song and the artist. "The whole idea is to make it sound as much like the original as possible," Strachan said. "If it's not really done with deft, then it kind of detracts from it rather than enhances it." Herb Fame, half of Peaches and Herb, loved the idea and was pleased to remake his classic. "Shake Your Grove Thing" "was a worldwide song and people recognize the melody," said Fame, who continues to perform. "It was fun to do and every time I come through the airport I listen to it." Mark Wood, lead vocalist of the group Lakeside, said Strachan did a great job transforming "Fantastic Voyage" into a new, yet familiar song. "It's important to send the message in a way that the message will get through," Wood said. "Ours is a song that people may have grown up hearing or they may have played for their kids and so you might have generations that can relate to it." Such messaging can be extremely effective, said Matt Wallaert, lead scientist for Thrive, an online financial advisory company for young adults. Wallaert, an expert in behavioral finance and social psychology, said the airport is obviously attempting to do something his company also aims for -- offering useful information in a way that is less stressful for the user. "If you put up a sign that says 'Do

Question: Visitors to what airport will hear familiar classics?

Question: What will vistors hear?

Question: Who re-record songs?

Question: What type of hits were reworked?

Question: What are the re-recorded songs meant to do?

Answer: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International

Answer: tunes

Answer: the original artists

Answer: "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb, "Bustin' Loose" by Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers and "Fantastic Voyage" by Lakeside.

Answer: make it sound as much like the original as possible,"

Summary:
Visitors to Atlanta's airport will hear some familiar classics .
Older R&B hits reworked to promote airport cleanliness .
Original artists re-record songs meant to gently prompt passengers .
Airport also using scent to help relax visitors .


(CNN) -- Imagine taking the best characters and elements of your favorite fictional universe and weaving them into a new story that captures the imagination of fans. In the dark, cinematic "Batman: Arkham Asylum," Batman must escape from a spooky psychiatric hospital. That's what Emmy-winning TV writer Paul Dini did in creating "Batman: Arkham Asylum," a video game coming out in late August. Buzz is building online for the dark, cinematic game, which reimagines a brooding Batman and his most notorious nemesis, the Joker, for an experience that's reminiscent of "The Dark Knight" blockbuster movie. You want mayhem, insanity and brutality? Get ready for all of it. "This is the Batman movie I would have liked to have written," said Dini, who was scheduled to discuss the game during a panel Saturday at Comic-Con International, the huge celebration of comic-book culture in San Diego, California. "This is him with all the good stuff." The atmospheric game pits Batman against Joker in a battle of wits and brawn after the Clown Prince of Crime traps the Caped Crusader inside Arkham Asylum, Gotham's psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. After the trap is sprung, the Joker releases the inmates, including some of Batman's most ferocious enemies: Bane, Harley Quinn, Mr. Zsasz, Poison Ivy and Killer Croc. Batman has appeared in video games since 1986, but none as ambitious or complex as "Arkham Asylum," which draws much of its inspiration from the character's comic mythology. The game will be released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. It's being developed by Rocksteady Studios and will be published by Eidos Interactive in conjunction with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Comics. (Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment is a division of Time Warner, which owns CNN.) As the lead writer for the game, Dini said he was given a clean slate to work from. Because there was no movie, graphic novel or comic tie-in to follow, he was able to create an original story. Dini's familiarity with the main character may help win the hearts and wallets of gamers. Winner of five Emmy awards, Dini has worked on Batman comic books and written episodes of "Batman: The Animated Series" and later, "Batman Beyond." Dini, who has also written for the ABC-TV hit "Lost," said he was influenced by Batman lore from character creator Bob Kane, the Batman comics of the 1960s and the Dark Knight graphic novels of Frank Miller. In creating his story's look and tone, Dini said he chose his favorite elements from different incarnations of Batman. For example, the game emphasizes Batman's intellect and use of technology by solving puzzles with the help of such tools as X-ray scanning and a pheromone tracker. "Detective work is a crucial game element," Dini said. "There are a lot of forensics aspects to the story." If you're expecting a Heath Ledger-like Joker in "Batman: Arkham Asylum," you may be disappointed. With his less-smudgy makeup, spiky green hair and maniacal cackle, Dini's creation looks and acts more like earlier versions of the iconic villain. Kevin Conroy voices Batman in the game, while the Joker is voiced by Mark Hamill, known to millions as Luke Skywalker in the "Star Wars" movies. Conroy and Hamill were scheduled to join Dini at Comic-Con this weekend. Both actors also did the voices in "Batman: The Animated Series," making the game feel very familiar. Sterling McGarvey, a senior editor for G4TV, said the game's developers were smart to rely heavily on the animated TV series. "An entire generation of Batman fans grew up with the animated Batman," he said. "It is a beloved, storied franchise with very few good games." The Internet is full of videos showing glimpses of the game, including movie-like trailers, demo gameplay, characters and layouts of

Question: Who is the Joker?

Question: Batman is reunited with which nemesis?

Question: what is name of new video game?

Question: Who is Paul Dini?

Question: Who is the lead writer of the video game?

Question: who is  lead writer?

Question: Who discussed the Comic-Con?

Question: What video game is upcoming?

Question: Who was the lead writer?

Question: What is the video game being talked about online?

Question: When will the game be released?

Question: What does the game reunite?

Answer: Mark Hamill,

Answer: the Joker,

Answer: "Batman: Arkham Asylum,"

Answer: Emmy-winning TV writer

Answer: Paul Dini

Answer: Paul Dini

Answer: Paul Dini

Answer: "Batman: Arkham Asylum,"

Answer: Paul Dini

Answer: "Batman: Arkham Asylum,"

Answer: late August.

Answer: Batman and his most notorious nemesis, the Joker,

Summary:
Online buzz is strong for upcoming "Batman: Arkham Asylum" video game .
Lead writer Paul Dini and others discuss the game at Comic-Con this weekend .
The game reunites a brooding Batman and his most notorious nemesis, the Joker .
There's no movie or comic tie-in to follow, so Dini could create an original story .


(CNN) -- Imagine the entire population of Kentucky forced out of their homes in the past 25 years, with many of the residents moving to a neighboring country. Displaced children at a camp in El Barrancon, Colombia, earlier this year. That's what has happened in Colombia, a country of 45 million where up to 4 million people -- roughly the population of Kentucky -- have been forced to flee fighting between government forces and an entrenched Marxist rebel group. So many Colombians have taken flight to escape violence that the nation has the second largest number of internally displaced people in the world -- surpassed only by Sudan in Africa. Oftentimes, the violence is not incidental. "Violence against civilians is a strategy of war for all the parties involved in the warfare," said Ellen Beattie, who worked for relief agencies in Colombia for 15 years. "That's the problem. They do it on purpose. They use it as a strategy. Vicious." Exact figures are hard to come by. Reliefweb, a United Nations Web site that provides information to humanitarian relief organizations, says nearly 400,000 Colombians were displaced last year. The Colombian government puts the number of displaced at 255,000 for 2008. Likewise, the Colombian government says nearly 3 million citizens have been displaced inside the country in the past few decades. But the non-governmental Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacements, known in Colombia as CODHES, estimates more than 4 million people have had to leave their homes since the 1980s. Mauricio de Vengoechea, a political analyst with the Newlink Group consulting firm, says about 200,000 Colombians have ended up in Ecuador, which has granted 5,500 residency permits in the past eight weeks. At the heart of the violence lies a guerrilla war with the Colombian government and paramilitary groups on one side and the FARC, which is the Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, on the other. The FARC has been waging war against the government since the 1960s and has major strongholds in the jungles of southwest Colombia, near the 366-mile (590-kilometer) border with Ecuador. Narcotraffickers also have strongholds in the area and are often allied with the FARC, who provide security and intelligence. Many times the rebels and the narcotraffickers are one and the same. The guerrillas use drug money to buy weapons. "There are large parts of Colombia where the state has no presence, no police, no army, nothing," said Myles Frechette, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia from 1994 to 1997. "That's where the narcotraffickers hang out." That makes it valuable territory for the guerrillas and narcos, said Beattie, executive director of the International Rescue Committee office in Atlanta, Georgia. "They're more willing to fight over land that is strategic," she said. "You've poured gasoline on the fire with that." As the army, paramilitaries and the guerrillas fight for territory -- often retaking land one side or the other had held before -- the civilian population gets caught in the middle. When one side comes in, Beattie said, everyone living in the area is suspected of having collaborated with the enemy. That sometimes leads to massacres, or at least kidnappings and death threats. "The majority of displacements in Colombia are not because of combat, but because people are directly threatened," said Gustavo Valdivieso, spokesman in Colombia for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. "They are told, 'Leave or be killed.'" Many times, indigenous populations in far-flung places suffer the most. That's what happened earlier this year to the Awa tribe in southwest Colombia. The FARC admitted in an Internet statement that guerrillas "executed" eight people February 6 in the town of Rio Bravo because the rebels believed the Indians were gathering information to give to the Colombian military. The Human Rights Watch organization said the guerrillas tortured some of the Awa before killing them with knives. Luis Evelis Andrade of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia said the FARC had targeted the Awa because the Indians don't want to get involved in the armed struggle and refuse to reveal

Question: What the worker said?

Question: What is the opinion of rescuer?

Question: which occurred between the government and the Colombian guerrillas?

Question: How long did civilians stay in a strategy of war?

Answer: "Violence against civilians is a strategy of war for all the parties involved in the warfare,"

Answer: "Violence against civilians is a strategy of war for all the parties involved in the warfare,"

Answer: war

Answer: 25 years,

Summary:
Colombian civilians caught in cross fire between rebels, government forces .
"Violence against civilians is a strategy of war," relief worker says .
Many civilians flee homes as a result of direct threats .
Ecuador is country closest to Colombia's killing fields, many flee there .


(CNN) -- In "Street Kings," Keanu Reeves' bad-boy cop Tom Ludlow may not play by the rules, but the film sure does. Keanu Reeves, second from left, and Forest Whitaker are shifty cops in "Street Kings." The movie is textbook Cop Noir. Directed by David Ayer, who wrote "Training Day" and directed "Harsh Times," from a script that originated with "L.A. Confidential" novelist James Ellroy, it's a story both men have told before and will doubtless return to again. Too bad that story -- the one about the constant struggle with an impure world, betrayal, disillusionment, retribution, all that jazz -- isn't told with much originality this time around. As Ludlow, a detective with a special LAPD vice squad, Reeves shoots first and asks questions much, much later. In his field the bad guys are easy to spot, and if Tom has to get his hands dirty, well, then he'll be careful to wipe away the residue before he calls it in. He works from the gut. We have Ludlow's number from the beginning: He wakes up, vomits, cleans his gun, and knocks back a couple of miniature bottles of vodka. Then he crashes a kidnappers' den and puts down four gangsters before they know what's hit them. "Don't worry," he tells the distraught little girls caged up in the back. "I'm a cop." It's probably superfluous to add that he's still nursing a grievous hangover from the wife who died in flagrante with a person unknown two or three years ago. It's also probably superfluous to mention that Internal Affairs (headed by Hugh Laurie) is beginning to sniff around Ludlow's unit. In particular, IA is talking to his ex-partner Washington (Terry Crews), a revelation that sends Ludlow reaching for his baseball bat. Before he can put Washington straight, though, his old pal is gunned down before his eyes by a couple of punks. Can Ludlow cover up his own potentially incriminating presence at the scene and still track down the cop killers? Hell, yes, even if he has to alienate everyone in the department before he's through. Reeves doesn't do much "acting" as such, but he doesn't need to: His performance is clean and spare, in synch with Ayer's clipped economy, and he has a doleful quality that goes some way to redeem a nasty and wretchedly naïve character. Alcoholism doesn't appear to have thrown off Ludlow's aim any, but it must have dulled his reasoning. A broody, intuitive detective should be able to piece together this boilerplate mystery without too much head-scratching, but Ludlow never stops to look even two steps ahead. (I guess he's not a James Ellroy fan.) But what he lacks in insight he makes up for in sheer determination, not to say blood-lust. In a neat touch, when it's time to cool off his public profile for a spell, the rogue cop is transferred to a desk in the complaints department -- surely his idea of purgatory, and, obviously, an utterly pointless occupation. Forest Whitaker boosts the energy level as Ludlow's paternalistic mentor, boss, and No. 1 fan: "You're the tip of the spear," he tells him. "Who else is going to hold back the animals?" Violent and cynical and a shade or two overdetermined, "Street Kings" ably demonstrates the pitfalls embedded in the pragmatics of "a necessary evil," or anyone who sets himself up as a law unto himself, but ultimately it can't conceive of a better alternative. After all, the rest is politics, a game that even the most hard-boiled anti-hero would never lower himself to enter. And, besides, he's seen it before. "Street Kings" is rated R and runs 107 minutes. For Entertainment Weekly's take, click here. E-mail to a friend

Question: Who is the star?

Question: Who stars in Street Kings

Question: What is the predicament of the cop?

Question: Which film is adequate with no surprises?

Question: What was Keanu Reeves character's name?

Question: Who plays a rogue cop who finds self in awkward position?

Question: Who is playing the rogue cop?

Answer: Keanu Reeves'

Answer: Keanu Reeves,

Answer: cover up his own potentially incriminating presence at the scene

Answer: "Street Kings,"

Answer: Tom Ludlow

Answer: Keanu Reeves'

Answer: Keanu Reeves'

Summary:
"Street Kings" has been done better before, says CNN.com's Tom Charity .
Movie stars Keanu Reeves as rogue cop who finds self in awkward position .
Film is adequate, but no surprises for those who've seen "Training Day"


(CNN) -- In 1909, Alice Ramsey blazed a path across America's landscape and society. Millions of women have followed in her tracks, few more precisely than Emily Anderson exactly 100 years later.

Anderson was the lead driver in a re-enactment last summer of Ramsey's journey, when she became the first woman to drive an automobile from coast to coast. Both women drove a 1909 Maxwell DA from New York to San Francisco, California, but they traversed two very different Americas.

"It really was a tremendous effort by so many people to get us across the country," Anderson, an event planner from Seattle, Washington, said. "It showed me the heart of America was open to us in a big way that I don't think would normally be so open had we been in a modern-day vehicle."

Antique car enthusiast Richard Anderson recruited his 34-year-old daughter to drive the 1909 Maxwell DA he and two friends built from parts they scavenged from around the globe, and hand-fabricated when necessary.

"It all came down to a lot of books and manuals and guessing and putting a puzzle back together again with no instructions," Emily Anderson said.

They got the car built and running in time to launch the drive on June 9 at 1930 Broadway, the address where Ramsey's journey began. Several of Ramsey's descendants were on hand, including two who rode along for a few miles.

Anderson's Maxwell soon suffered the first of many breakdowns.

"That was a bit defeating, especially since it was our first day and we were pretty jazzed and motivated to get moving and get on the road," she said.

Temporary repairs carried the car and crew about 1,800 miles to western Nebraska, where a master mechanic worked for more than five hours to fix the problem in a more permanent way.

"It was amazing to me that people would just stop their lives and do whatever they could to keep us moving," Anderson said.

By Anderson's side was Christie Catania, her close friend and co-pilot.

Catania described the co-pilot's job as "navigation, waving, talking to people in the back seat; I was also the blinker, the mirrors, comic relief ..."

Librarian-storyteller Sally Barnett rode in the back seat most of the way.

"I love old cars, and I had read about Alice Ramsey years ago. She's one of my heroine-mentors," said Barnett, 67, of Huntsville, Alabama. "... My part was to dress up as Alice and tell her story."

The Maxwell's fourth seat was reserved for sponsors, dignitaries and special guests along the way, Anderson said.

When she wasn't in the rear of the Maxwell, Barnett was riding in the back seat of other antique cars that fell into formation along the way, forming what enthusiast Leta Nichols of Orangevale, California, called "a 3,000-mile parade."

High-speed collisions with flying insects were a hallmark of the trip.

"You don't realize how valuable a windshield is until you ride in a car without a windshield, Barnett quipped.

"We were really acting as human windshields and bug-catchers," Anderson recalled. "A couple times a day we had a teeth-cleaning."

But at least the 2009 group had well-mapped, paved roads to travel on, part of the reason they were able to cross the country in 30 days, half the time it took Ramsey, who followed the general path of what would become the Lincoln Highway.

"We traveled at a faster rate simply because we could," Anderson said. "Alice only had 152 miles of paved roadway in 1909, and those roads were primarily within the cities. ... Otherwise it was all wagon trails, and that's some difficult terrain to cross."

The social terrain was equally difficult.

Ramsey "fit a category of woman in the early-20th century, late-19th century who was interested in quietly demonstrating that women were as capable as

Question:
What were they driving/
Which vehicle was used for the journey?
What was recreated?
Where did the journey start?
What did Emily Anderson do?
What did Anderson's Maxwell suffer?

Answer: 1909 Maxwell DA

Answer: 1909 Maxwell DA

Answer: a re-enactment last summer of Ramsey's journey,

Answer: New York

Answer: the lead driver in a re-enactment last summer of Ramsey's journey,

Answer: first of many breakdowns.

Summary:
Emily Anderson recreates Alice Ramsey's 1909 coast-to-coast auto odyssey .
Both women made the journey from NYC to San Francisco in a 1909 Maxwell DA .
Passing trucks kicked up debris and wind around the open car during 30-day trip .
Anderson's Maxwell suffered many breakdowns and lots of people helped along the way .


(CNN) -- In 1967, the Mamas & the Papas had a hit with a song that detailed, with bittersweet harmonies, the checkered history of the band. The song, written by the group's John Phillips and his wife, Michelle, was called "Creeque Alley."

Michelle Phillips, Denny Doherty and John Phillips, here in 1998, were members of the Mamas & the Papas.

If the song were to be updated today, it might have to be retitled "Creep Alley."

With the claims by John's daughter, Mackenzie, that she had an incestuous relationship with her father, the story of Phillips and his group -- in music, models of California dreams and California dreamin' -- takes on a darker hue.

The story was already tangled, a motley love- and drug-soaked tale of excess set to the group's distinctive four-part harmonies.

Phillips left his first wife, Mackenzie's mother, Susan Adams, for 18-year-old Michelle, whom he'd met in a San Francisco club while touring in the early '60s, according to the band's biography on Allmusic.com.

The band's lead male singer, Denny Doherty, later had an affair with Michelle; she was forced out of the group for a time. The fourth member, Cass Elliot, had an unrequited crush on Doherty, the biography noted.

After the Mamas & the Papas' success with such singles as "California Dreamin' " and the No. 1 hit "Monday, Monday," the Phillipses bought a Bel Air mansion from which they ruled over the Los Angeles music scene.

In his 1986 memoir, "Papa John," John Phillips, who died in 2001, remembered hosting parties for the Beatles when they visited town.

John Phillips, the band's primary songwriter, was at least six years older than the others and did not shy from the task of addressing the group's pain and confusion in song. In such songs as "Got a Feelin'," "I Saw Her Again Last Night" and "Trip, Stumble and Fall," he cast a cold eye on the band's romantic entanglements, even as his melancholy and sometimes cutting lyrics were often belied by those sunny harmonies and Lou Adler's slick production.

"One doesn't try to hold Cass and Denny and Michelle together," he said in a 1995 interview. "It's a useless task to start with. You just sort of stay out of the way and let things roll as they can."

In 1968, the group split up. There was a 1971 reunion that produced the contractually obligated album "People Like Us," but the experience was "horrible," John Phillips recalled in the liner notes to the group's anthology, "The History of the Mamas and the Papas."

The group members had mixed success after the breakup. Elliot, who died of a heart attack in 1974 (and not by choking on a sandwich, as urban legend has it), pursued a solo career; she had a handful of hits. Doherty and John Phillips also tried their hands at solo careers; the latter's 1970 "John, the Wolf King of L.A.," produced a minor hit and is now considered a classic but sold relatively poorly upon release.

More common were the stories of trouble. Michelle and John Phillips divorced in 1970; late that year, Michelle was married to Dennis Hopper for eight days.

John Phillips, who married Genevieve Waite in 1972, became increasingly immersed in drugs, says his Allmusic biography, to the point where he couldn't finish an album commissioned by the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In 1981, he was convicted of drug trafficking.

By that point, daughter Mackenzie says, she was also a full-blown drug addict.

"I grew up in a place where there were no rules ... which did not serve me well, and everybody, I think, knew that," she said on a reunion special for her '70s sitcom, "One Day at a Time."

Question: Did John Phillips have a live of excess?

Question: who died in 2001?

Answer: a motley love- and drug-soaked tale of

Answer: John Phillips,

Summary:
John Phillips' reputation taking hit with claims of incest by daughter Mackenzie .
John Phillips, who died in 2001, lived life of excess .
Mamas & Papas were leading California group of '60s, with tangled romantic links .
John Phillips was heavy drug user, once convicted of drug trafficking .


(CNN) -- In 1979, Jarreth Merz, then a young boy in Ghana, saw the dramatic results of a military coup. Watching on an old black and white television set, he and a group of his friends witnessed one of the nation's generals being blindfolded and shot to death by a firing squad. Shortly afterward, his family fled the instability of Ghana and returned to his native Switzerland.

But Africa stayed with Merz, who told his story at the TED Global conference in Edinburgh, UK, in July. He grew up to become an actor and found that he was increasingly being cast as a violent African or a terrorist. "How many terrorists could I possibly play before turning into one myself?"

"I had become ashamed of the other, the African in me."

After 28 years, Merz returned to Ghana to film the nation's 2008 presidential election and, as it turned out, to learn more about himself. "I realized that, when I'd left the country, free and fair elections in a democratic environment were a dream. And now that I'd returned, that dream had become reality, though a fragile reality."

In the first round of voting in Ghana, no candidate attained the 50% of the vote needed to gain the presidency, and an inconclusive runoff was held. People began questioning whether the elections were being manipulated. Merz said there was gunfire and he saw discouraging signs of a possible breakdown in civil order. "And my heart sank, because I thought, here we are again. Here is another proof that the African is not capable of governing himself. And not only that, I am documenting it -- documenting my own cultural shortcomings."

But rather than erupt in violence, the crowd started chanting "We want peace," and eventually, after new voting, a winner was certified and power was transferred peacefully, Merz said. "Ghana taught me to look at people differently and to look at myself differently. And yes, we Africans can."

In his film, "An African Election," Merz told CNN in an interview, "The political system, the democratic system, is tested to the utmost."

The lesson: "You don't have to rebel. You have the freedom to choose, and with that choice comes a responsibility."

Question:
what did the election help show?
when did he return to ghana?
What did the election help ?
what did Merz witness as a boy?
What did Jarreth Merz witness as a boy?
Who witnessed violent coup in Ghana ?
when did Merz return to Ghana?

Answer: "You don't have to rebel. You have the freedom to choose, and with that choice comes a responsibility."

Answer: 2008

Answer: power was transferred peacefully,

Answer: one of the nation's generals being blindfolded and shot to death by a firing squad.

Answer: one of the nation's generals being blindfolded and shot to death by a firing squad.

Answer: Jarreth Merz,

Answer: 2008

Summary:
As a boy, Jarreth Merz witnessed violent coup in Ghana .
His family left for Europe, but he returned in 2008 to film Ghana's election .
After close vote and a runoff, a winner was declared and power transferred .
Merz: Election helped show that democracy is viable in Africa .


(CNN) -- In 1980, in the pre-Internet, pre-download days when R.E.M. formed in Athens, Georgia, there was no alternative. There was no Americana. There was no grunge.

If you listened to pop music, there were essentially three divisions: Top 40 of the type you heard on the rapidly fading AM radio, the corporate rock of album-oriented FM and what was then called college radio -- a catch-all for the punk, new wave, electronic, low-fi and oddball music that almost never crossed over to the mainstream.

R.E.M. helped to change all that.

They weren't the only ones -- the New York art-punks of the late '70s, notably Talking Heads and Blondie, had hit the Top 40, and fellow Athens scenesters the B-52's had established a national following with their party-down rave-ups.

But it was R.E.M. that, in the words of Allmusic.com's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "transformed the American underground." If, in the '60s, teenagers gathered in their parents' garages in the hopes of being the next Beatles, in the '80s young adults knocked around dormitories in hopes of being the next R.E.M.: melodic, guitar-based and determined not to sell out to the corporate-music crowd.

R.E.M. was the great hope of fame-fantasizing, used-record-store clerks everywhere.

"They did this grass-roots thing that nobody had ever done," said Angie Carlson, a former member of the band Let's Active, which toured with R.E.M. in the mid-'80s. "They sort of bypassed big marketing, and were at the clubs networking with the cool fellow record-store people."

In R.E.M.'s wake came a breadth of artists who turned college radio into a home for guitar-based rock and power-pop: the Replacements, Jason and the Scorchers and the Del Fuegos, among many others. Years later, Nirvana emerged and the whole world broke open. Kurt Cobain, in fact, was a big R.E.M. fan.

Now R.E.M. has come to an end.

"To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band," read a message posted on the group's website Wednesday. "We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening."

The band didn't easily fit labels. Its early sound, led by Peter Buck's ringing guitar arpeggios, might best be described as folk-rock, equal parts Byrds-ian harmony and punk snarl. Alongside was lead singer Michael Stipe's reedy vocals and, more distinctively, his resonant, nonsensical lyrics, full of phrases such as "Cages under cage" and "Hear the howl of the rope." (Pre-Internet, a popular music-geek parlor game involved deciphering R.E.M. lyrics.)

And underneath Buck and Stipe was the rock-solid rhythm section of bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry, filling spaces with melodic bass lines and powerhouse percussion. R.E.M. may have had its artsy flourishes, but the band also -- in "American Bandstand" parlance -- "had a good beat you could dance to."

The band formed at a time when "underground" really meant something, said Carlson, now of Figure Eight Publicity.

"You couldn't trade (music) on the Internet. You had to know somebody or you had to go the club," she said. "And that's the other reason a band like that was able to thrive -- people went to see live music.

"And they had such a cool vibe in person. They were smart, they were funny, they were charismatic. All of that played into it."

Moreover, the band worked hard, providing a model for others to follow. In the '80s, starting with the 1982 EP "Chronic Town," there was

Question: What band helped lead the way for American bands?

Question: When  was REM formed?

Question: Who  helped lead the way for generation of American bands?

Question: when was the froup formed

Question: who helped lead the way

Question: When was the group formed?

Answer: R.E.M.

Answer: 1980,

Answer: R.E.M.

Answer: 1980,

Answer: R.E.M.

Answer: 1980,

Summary:
R.E.M. helped lead the way for generation of American bands .
Group was formed in 1980 in Athens, Georgia .
"They did this grass-roots thing that nobody had ever done," says fellow musician .
Group stayed true to muse, even after becoming million sellers .


(CNN) -- In 1991, Nirvana changed American rock music with an album that featured a naked baby on the cover. Fred Thorne played in bands for 18 years and says Kurt Cobain's legacy always stuck with him. Now, that naked baby is 17 years old and a high school graduate. The album, "Nevermind," is a classic beloved by music aficionados across the world. It soared to the top of the Billboard charts, swiftly ending the '80s era of dance pop and "hair metal" and replacing it with the "grunge" movement. In doing so, it irreversibly changed the tastes and even lives of millions of musicians and music lovers. "One song changed the way we look at rock music," said Russ Lancaster of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the first track on the record. "Just like the Beatles changed pop music 30 years prior, Nirvana's breakthrough album achieved the same level of power in terms of changing pop music. They weren't singing anymore about happy, funny songs. They were taking a real dark turn to pop music, and it changed everything. Back then it was really different to hear that on the radio. It opened up a floodgate of artists that might never have been heard before that." What artists, exactly? Lancaster says Pearl Jam comes to mind, and that the entire emo genre might never have come into existence if it wasn't for grunge. "It wouldn't have the visibility it has today without the stepping-stone that grunge gave it," he said. iReport.com: Passing grunge onto the next generation Pat Ferguson said grunge also was crucial to indie rock becoming mainstream. "What I appreciate 'Nevermind' the most for was paving the way for other indie bands that I really ended up liking to get put out into the mainstream. Not so much for the exposure they got, but so that everyone could more readily get their product," he said. "It was a world without iTunes, Rhapsody or Napster. The only way you got exposure to music that wasn't pop [or] country was living close enough to a university-run radio station or having a friend who had access to it. It wasn't long after the grunge era started that other indie rock bands like Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Superchunk, fIREHOSE and a wealth of others broke out and started becoming a bit more accessible." iReport.com: 'A lot of bands owe a lot to that record' For Derek Ivy, the influence of Nirvana is a little more personal. Hearing "Nevermind" and the band's other albums inspired him to learn guitar as a teenager, and he still plays in a band called Golden Hours. "Nirvana taught me to play music," said Ivy. "Everybody has the first few songs they ever learn to play, and for me it was mostly this Nirvana stuff. When I hear this album or think of it, I recall the countless afternoons I spent playing these songs on guitar and, later, drums. I remember learning every song on it, and pretty much every other Nirvana song." Ivy said Nirvana front man and songwriter Kurt Cobain was an important influence in his life, musically and otherwise. "Kurt Cobain was one of my earliest and greatest musical influences, as I'm sure countless others can attest to. And he's a tremendous influence on me in a lot of different ways," he said. "When Kurt died, I felt like I'd lost a personal friend, even though I didn't know him and I was only 14 at the time. It was sort of like, here you go, here's adulthood." iReport.com: 'My teenage years would have been considerably less bearable were it not for this band' Cobain was also a profound figure in Fred Thorne's life. Thorne played in bands for 18 years, and he said Cobain's success on the charts and ultimate suicide led him to heed the Nirvana front man's advice: "Be careful what you wish for." "

Question: What band paved the way for indie rock groups?

Question: Who was the lead singer of Nirvana?

Question: Who were influenced by Kurt Cobain?

Question: What is the name of the lead singer?

Question: Who opened the door for indie rock groups in 1990s?

Question: What was name given to that era?

Answer: Nirvana

Answer: Kurt Cobain

Answer: Derek Ivy,

Answer: Kurt Cobain's

Answer: Nirvana

Answer: of dance pop and "hair metal"

Summary:
iReporters share their memories of Nirvana and the "grunge" era .
Pat Ferguson says Nirvana opened the door for indie rock groups of the 1990s .
Fred Thorne and Derek Ivy say they were profoundly influenced by Kurt Cobain .
iReport.com: Share your memories of the grunge era .