Editor's note: Taresh Moore is a student at Winston Salem State University in North Carolina. The 21-year-old senior traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the inauguration. Alfred Bouey is a World War II veteran and a grandson of slaves. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Alfred Bouey, an 84-year-old African-American, still remembers the stories from his grandfather about the scars on his body from the beatings he took as a slave in the South. Bouey, of Oak Park, Illinois, attended Tuesday's inauguration of President Obama. Words can't express his excitement and happiness about witnessing history. A World War II veteran, he never thought he would live to see a black president in America. Bouey grew up in Arkansas and saw racism firsthand. He witnessed his mother being mistreated by whites in the South, but he never saw her give up. He eventually left Arkansas for Chicago. Bouey attended the inauguration after winning Brookdale Senior Living's Experiences of a Lifetime contest. Residents at various Brookdale Senior Living communities nationwide shared their experiences and submitted their wishes as part of the contest. Bouey shared his story and said he'd like to be there when Obama was sworn in. "My grandfather and grandmother were whipped and beaten, and had the scars to prove it," he said. With CNN.com's help, Taresh Moore spoke with Bouey about the inauguration ceremony. Below is a transcript of their interview. Moore: How are you today? Bouey: I'm great. I couldn't feel any better right now. Moore: How did it feel to take part in this historic inauguration? Bouey: It felt very great. I can't find any words to express my happiness. I am speechless and full of joy. Moore: What will you remember most about the inauguration? Bouey: I will remember that I was actually there. I lived to see this historic event. I'm 84, and I had the chance to witness this. Not too many people had that opportunity, and I am honored. Moore: How did you feel when you found out that you and your family were going to Washington, D.C., to take part in the inauguration? Bouey: I was happy. At first when I was asked to take part in the survey, I didn't mind sharing my story because I had many stories to share. When I found out I had the opportunity to go, I was very grateful. I couldn't wait to get here. Moore: Did you ever believe you would live to see an African-American president in your lifetime? Bouey: No. I never thought I would live to see one. Growing up, my mother wanted me and my brother and sister to get an education. And we all did. An education will take you far, and we see that it did for our new president and for me. But I'm glad I lived to see this. It's a wonderful experience, and I am very proud of it! Moore: How was it growing up in the South? Bouey: I was born in Philadelphia and moved to Arkansas at the age of 1. Growing up, everything was segregated -- in the schools, restaurants and just everywhere. Blacks couldn't do this and we couldn't do that. I came to the point where I got tired of it all in the South and just moved away. I moved to Chicago on June 2, 1946. Moore: Was it better in Chicago? Bouey: Yes, a lot better. Better opportunities for blacks. Moore: You have lived a life that has seen the scars on the body of a former slave, who was your grandfather, to seeing America's first African-American president all in one lifetime. How does that make you feel? Bouey: I feel that America has come a long way. And I mean a very long way. My grandfather had scars from slavery. My mother wasn't a slave, but she still was beaten in the cotton fields

Question: who is alfred bouey

Question: What is the age of Alfred Bouey?

Question: Where did Alfred Bouey grow up?

Question: Alfred Bouey's mother was mistreated by who?

Question: who attended obama's inauguration?

Question: what did bouey see in his childhood?

Answer: World War II veteran and a grandson of slaves.

Answer: 84-year-old

Answer: Arkansas

Answer: whites in the South,

Answer: Taresh Moore

Answer: saw racism

Summary:
Alfred Bouey, 84, attended the inauguration of the nation's first black president .
Bouey, who grew up in Arkansas, saw his mother being mistreated by whites .
"It's good to see the white Americans appreciate and show love to the new president"
Bouey says, "I am ... full of joy"


Editor's note: Ted Epperly, M.D., a family physician in Boise, Idaho, is president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, which represents more than 93,000 physicians and medical students nationwide. He spent 21 years in the U.S. Army, including service as a family physician, chief of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital emergency room during Desert Storm and Desert Shield, and deputy commander of an Army medical center. Ted Epperly says recruiting more primary care doctors would improve access to quality health care. (CNN) --   Clayton Christensen, Jason Hwang and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan are right about one thing in their CNN commentary titled "We don't need more doctors."  America's health care system is broken. It requires significant reform if patients are to have access to convenient, affordable and -- most importantly -- high-quality care that results in good outcomes. But they have missed a central point. We need more primary care physicians now and we will need even more in the future as the baby boom generation ages. If Americans are to see meaningful health care reform, they must have a primary care doctor to whom they can turn for everyday problems: annual physicals and preventive care, diagnosis and treatment for common illness, and diagnosis and treatment of complex, chronic conditions, referral to subspecialists, and coordination of care provided by a team of professionals. Our current system has a serious and growing shortage of these primary care physicians. Today, only 30 percent of physicians provide primary care and 70 percent subspecialize in a single organ system or disease. We need a system in which patients get the right kind of care at the right time in the right place by the right type of provider. They need health services that provide not just convenient hours for minor health problems, but also medical expertise that ensures consistent, ongoing care; accurate diagnoses of symptoms; coordination with pharmacists, other specialists and allied health professionals such as physical therapists; consistent follow-up; and convenience. All at an affordable cost. Several health reform proposals set forth by President Obama and Congress would move federal policy in that direction. How? They incorporate convenience, efficiency, continuity of care and access to a system that relies on the patient-centered medical home -- a concept in which physicians coordinate care with a team of health professionals, offer evening and weekend office hours, and use electronic communication with patients and members of the health care team. But this concept won't be fulfilled unless we have health reform that increases the number of primary care physicians. Right now, America has a current and worsening shortage of primary medical care. Christensen, Hwang and Vijayaraghavan contend that increasing the number of physicians also leads to "greater intensity of care, but not better health outcomes." But their argument leaves out a major caveat. Although a greater number of subspecialists does increase the intensity, number and cost of services, research by Barbara Starfield at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health consistently demonstrates the opposite occurs in communities with more primary care physicians, particularly family physicians. Starfield concludes that an increase of one primary care physician per 10,000 population resulted in a reduction of 34.6 deaths per 100,000 population at the state level. Katherine Baicker, professor of health economics at Harvard School of Public Health, and Amitabh Chandra at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government confirm these findings. Their research shows that increasing the number of primary care physicians results in a significant increase in the quality of health care and a reduction of cost to patients. However, increasing the number of subspecialists was associated with higher costs and poorer quality. At issue, then, is not the total number of physicians, but the number of family physicians and their primary care colleagues. Demographics, an aging population and resulting increased demand for services will require a significant increase in the number of these physicians. Given the long-term process required to train primary care physicians, we will continue to struggle with a shortage of primary care physicians, and that shortage will affect patients' access to care. Family physicians now are working to fill some of those gaps, according

Question: Who commented on primary care doctors?

Question: What does America need more of?

Question: Do studies show that primary care doctors improve health-care outcomes according to Epperly?

Question: What is the name of the doctor who believes that America needs more primary care doctors to expand access?

Question: What do studies show that primary care doctors improve?

Question: What do primary care doctors improve?

Question: what does he say the studies will improve

Question: who said we need more care doctors

Question: What are doctors seeking to make more easily available?

Answer: Ted Epperly

Answer: primary care doctors

Answer: quality health

Answer: Ted Epperly

Answer: access to quality health

Answer: access to quality health

Answer: access to quality health care.

Answer: Ted Epperly

Answer: quality health care.

Summary:
Dr. Ted Epperly: America needs more primary care doctors to expand access .
He says studies show primary care doctors improve health-care outcomes .
Epperly: Doctors are seeking to make services more easily available .


Editor's note: The Rev. Donald Cozzens is writer in residence and adjunct professor of theology at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. A priest of the Diocese of Cleveland with a doctoral degree, he is the author of several books on the Catholic Church, including "Sacred Silence: Denial and the Crisis in the Church" and "Freeing Celibacy," both published by Liturgical Press. For another view on this topic, read here. The Rev. Donald Cozzens says the debate over celibacy for priests will be around for decades. (CNN) -- It's an issue that simply won't go away. In spite of signals from the Vatican discouraging even discussions of obligatory celibacy for Catholic priests, the almost 1,000-year-old rule is under the microscope. And it will be for decades to come. Here's why. In the Catholic tradition, even though sex is cast as sinful unless expressed in the conjugal embrace of husband and wife, it is held as fundamentally good, a part of God's creation. The church even holds that marriage (including spousal lovemaking) is a sacrament -- something sacred that contributes to the sanctity of husbands and wives. In light of this official teaching, it is dawning on many Catholics that mandatory celibacy for priests, a canonically imposed discipline of the church, is precisely that -- a discipline. They are asking, "How is it that a discipline of the church has been allowed to trump a sacrament of the church?" In effect, the church is saying that should God call a man to the priesthood, God will not, at the same time, call that individual to the sacrament of marriage. It's right to ask, how does the church know this? Public opinion surveys indicate that most Catholics, priests included, believe the discipline of celibacy needs a serious review. Recently the retired archbishop of New York, Cardinal Edward Egan, observed that obligatory celibacy is open for discussion. It is not, Egan noted, a matter of dogma. For decades now, bishops from Asia, Europe and the Americas have asked Vatican officials to consider optional celibacy for priests. The church's official response is consistent and succinct: As a precious gift from God, the discipline of celibacy for priests will remain in place. This, in spite of the inherent paradox lying just below the claim that the gift of celibacy is a precious gift of God to the priesthood and the church: How can a gift be legislated? The church answers that if a man is called to the priesthood, God will grant him the gift of celibacy. Many priests today wonder how church leaders know this. Reading the mind of God in this matter --  in any matter of church discipline -- is risky business. More and more Catholics today are coming to understand that celibacy as a universal law for priests had its origins in the 12th century and that during the church's first millennium, priests and bishops --  and at least thirty-nine popes -- were married. Still, most well-read cradle Catholics are surprised to learn that St. Anastasius, pope from 399 to 401, was succeeded by his son, Pope St. Innocent I, and that a century later Pope St. Hormisdas' son, St. Silverius, also was elected to the papacy. Even in our secular world, it's common to speak of church-based ministry as a calling, a vocation. Isn't it possible that God would call an individual to the priesthood and to the sacrament of marriage? God apparently did so for more than half the church's history. How do we know that God isn't doing so today? For some years now I've been teaching in the religious studies department at John Carroll University in Cleveland. I've asked dozens of serious, healthy young students if they have given any thought to being a priest. They seem flattered by the question. With only one exception, each has answered, "Yes, I've thought about being a priest, but I want a family." There are, of course, other factors, urgent and pressing, that will

Question: What is 1000 years old?

Question: Were popes ever married?

Question: What gift should be considered optional?

Question: Church views marriage as what?

Answer: obligatory celibacy for Catholic priests,

Answer: at least thirty-nine

Answer: celibacy

Answer: a sacrament

Summary:
The Rev. Donald Cozzens: Celibacy is 1,000 years old but not intrinsic to the church .
Many popes were married in the first millennium of the church, Cozzens says .
Cozzens says church views marriage as sacred; why should priests be denied it?
Cozzens: Celibacy is a gift that should be optional, not mandated by the church .


Editor's note: The Rev. Robert Barron is Francis Cardinal George Professor of Faith and Culture at Mundelein Seminary and author of several books, including "Eucharist," "Word on Fire: Proclaiming the Power of Christ" and "The Priority of Christ: Toward a Post-Liberal Catholicism." Barron is the director of WordOnFire.org, a global media ministry based in Chicago, Illinois. For another view on this topic, read here. The Rev. Robert Barron says celibacy sets the priest apart as a symbol of the world to come. (CNN) -- The scandal surrounding the Rev. Alberto Cutie has raised questions in the minds of many concerning the Catholic Church's discipline of priestly celibacy. Why does the church continue to defend a practice that seems so unnatural and so unnecessary? There is a very bad argument for celibacy, which has appeared throughout the tradition and which is, even today, defended by some. It goes something like this: Married life is spiritually suspect; priests, as religious leaders, should be spiritual athletes above reproach; therefore, priests shouldn't be married This approach to the question is, in my judgment, not just stupid but dangerous, for it rests on presumptions that are repugnant to solid Christian doctrine. The biblical teaching on creation implies the essential integrity of the world and everything in it. Genesis tells us that God found each thing he had made good and that he found the ensemble of creatures very good. Catholic theology, at its best, has always been resolutely, anti-dualist -- and this means that matter, the body, marriage and sexual activity are never, in themselves, to be despised. But there is more to the doctrine of creation than an affirmation of the goodness of the world. To say that the finite realm in its entirety is created is to imply that nothing in the universe is God. All aspects of created reality reflect God and bear traces of the divine goodness -- just as every detail of a building gives evidence of the mind of the architect -- but no creature and no collectivity of creatures is divine, just as no part of a structure is the architect. This distinction between God and the world is the ground for the anti-idolatry principle that is reiterated from the beginning to the end of the Bible: Do not turn something less than God into God. Isaiah the prophet put it thus: "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my thoughts above your thoughts and my ways above your ways, says the Lord." And it is at the heart of the First Commandment: "I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods besides me." The Bible thus holds off all the attempts of human beings to divinize or render ultimate some worldly reality. The doctrine of creation, in a word, involves both a great "yes" and a great "no" to the universe. Now there is a behavioral concomitant to the anti-idolatry principle, and it is called detachment. Detachment is the refusal to make anything less than God the organizing principle or center of one's life. Anthony de Mello looked at it from the other side and said "an attachment is anything in this world -- including your own life -- that you are convinced you cannot live without." Even as we reverence everything that God has made, we must let go of everything that God has made, precisely for the sake of God. This is why, as G.K. Chesterton noted, there is a tension to Christian life. In accord with its affirmation of the world, the Church loves color, pageantry, music and rich decoration (as in the liturgy and papal ceremonials), even as, in accord with its detachment from the world, it loves the poverty of St. Francis and the simplicity of Mother Teresa. The same tension governs its attitude toward sex and family. Again, in Chesterton's language, the Church is "fiercely for having children" (through marriage) even as it remains "fiercely against having them" (in religious celibacy). Everything

Question: What is the question asked by the Rev?

Question: Who rejects the "marriage is spiritually suspect" defense?

Question: What sets the priest apart as a symbol of another world?

Question: What did the Rev. Robert Barton say?

Answer: Why does the church continue to defend a practice that seems so unnatural and so unnecessary?

Answer: Barron

Answer: celibacy

Answer: celibacy sets the priest apart as a symbol of the world to come.

Summary:
The Rev. Robert Barron: Why does Church back practice that seems unnecessary?
He says he rejects the "marriage is spiritually suspect" defense of celibacy .
But celibacy sets the priest apart as a symbol of another world, he says .


Editor's note: The author has ridden motorcycles more than 125,000 miles since 1999, including solo trips from Georgia to California and Canada. She takes us inside the world of motorcycle travel. Bikers approach Mount Mitchell, North Carolina, during a road trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains. SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, Virginia (CNN) -- We were parked at a peaceful, shady overlook beside Virginia's Skyline Drive, admiring the green mountains and the river far below, when Keith realized he needed a new rear tire, and he needed it now. A bald tire is a serious problem when you're traveling by motorcycle: We don't carry spare tires, for obvious reasons, and a blowout on two wheels could be life-threatening. Keith decided he could make it 100 miles to the Harley-Davidson dealership in Richmond, Virginia, as long as we kept it slow, so our seven bikes headed that way. It's been said that a great trip in a car is like watching a first-rate movie -- but a great trip on a motorcycle is like living the movie. For our road trip, we had chosen an eight-day itinerary from our homes outside Atlanta, Georgia, through the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia, then east to the Atlantic shoreline and south along the coastal islands of the Outer Banks. The trip offered a spectacular ride up the Blue Ridge Parkway, a winding two-lane that clings to the ridgeline through North Carolina and Virginia. The elevation often reaches 5,000 feet or more, so temperatures were cool despite a heat wave down below.  See map » Our motorcycle motorcade passed panoramas of blue-tinged mountains and rolling meadows set off by split-rail fences. We motored through dense forests whose overhanging branches turned the road into a cool green tunnel. Rhododendrons and mountain laurels in bloom lined the road.  See photos of this Harley road trip » It all looks better from a motorcycle, because you're so immersed in it -- not just looking out from inside a cage of steel and glass. In fact, we call cars cages and the people who drive them -- you guessed it -- cagers.  See how motorcycle travel differs from car travel » The smells were intense: fresh-cut hay, pine trees baking in the sun, honeysuckle -- and sometimes, the not-so-pleasant aroma of ripening roadkill. Songs of determined birds rang out over the rumble of the motors. Riding a motorcycle on a road like this is a physical pleasure, too, as you lean right, then left, then right, to guide the bike smoothly through the parkway's sweeping curves. You swoop, you glide -- it's like dancing, or like those dreams where you're flying. In Virginia, Skyline Drive offered an abundance of wildlife. We saw five deer in 40 miles, including a small fawn with its mother -- none of them close enough to threaten a collision, and all of them smart enough to run the other way when they saw us coming. Finally we arrived at the dealership in Richmond to replace Keith's balding tire. We knew we'd be there for a while -- so we made ourselves at home. We ordered pizza to be delivered and Neil brought in his laptop so everyone could upload their snapshots. It might seem strange for customers to take over a retail establishment, but a Harley dealership always feels like home. There's a strong sense of community among motorcycle riders (and by extension, the stores). Almost all riders wave to other riders on the road, whether they're on Harleys like ours or small, speedy sport bikes or huge, silent Honda Gold Wings. Bikers fall into conversations with other bikers as if we already know each other because -- in a way -- we do. We've all experienced the same joys and aggravations -- but it's mostly joys. One of those pleasures is how people go out of their way to be helpful or to strike up a conversation with a group of bikers. All kinds of folks wave to us on the road -- from

Question:
what were they riding?
where did they go
where is the road trip?
how many days were there?
how many people were involved

Answer: motorcycles

Answer: For our road trip, we had chosen an eight-day itinerary from our homes outside Atlanta, Georgia, through the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia, then east to the Atlantic shoreline and south along the coastal islands of the Outer Banks.

Answer: through the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Answer: eight-day

Answer: seven

Summary:
Bikers: Motorcycle road trips are more exciting than in other vehicles .
"It's like dancing, or like those dreams where you're flying," says Harley owner .
Follow CNN.com writer's road trip through Blue Ridge Mountains, Outer Banks .
Eight-day ride includes tire repair, wildfire, Kitty Hawk, pirate lore, wild ponies .


Editor's note: The following story, based on testimony in Phillip Garrido's trial for a 1976 kidnapping, contains some sexually explicit material. Phillip Garrido is show in an early mug shot taken in connection with the 1976 rape and abduction case. (CNN) -- Fifteen years before the girl was held captive in the shed, there was the woman in the warehouse -- and at least one other woman who escaped capture. Phillip Garrido, who with his wife is charged in the 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, had been convicted of kidnapping before. When he stalked, kidnapped and raped Katie Callaway Hall on November 22, 1976, he fulfilled an overpowering sexual fantasy that he had methodically planned for weeks, according to court records obtained by CNN. He told police it was his second kidnapping attempt of the day. Those facts came to light in Garrido's 1977 trial, in which he was convicted and sentenced to 50 years for kidnapping and rape. In her testimony, Hall said Garrido asked for a ride in her car, then bound and handcuffed her before taking her to a small warehouse in Reno, Nevada, where he repeatedly raped her for 5½ hours. It was not an act of impulse. "He told me he had been renting it [the small warehouse] for a couple weeks, preparing it," Hall testified.  Watch how Garrido prepared for and explained the kidnapping » It is CNN policy to withhold the identity of alleged victims of sexual assault. But in this case, Hall recounted her ordeal last week in an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," saying it changed her life forever. "I had to tell everyone I met what had happened to me -- because I didn't feel like myself. It was as if I had to explain why I wasn't 'normal,' " she said.  Watch Hall describe her ordeal » She was not his first victim that day. The trial transcript reveals that Garrido told authorities that one hour before Hall's kidnapping, he tried to kidnap another woman, who wrestled away and escaped. And, police in Antioch disclosed last week that Garrido was charged with raping a 14-year-old in 1972, but the charges were dropped because the victim refused to testify.   Watch details of the 1972 case » In the case involving Hall, CNN reviewed the 1977 trial documents, which include Garrido's psychiatric evaluation and the testimony of Hall and Garrido. The documents reveal a pattern of behavior that Garrido is accused of repeating in the 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, who was recently found after being kept in a shed for 18 years. The 32-year-old documents also detail Garrido's self-described struggle with drugs and his efforts to control his sexual obsessions.  Can sex offenders be cured? » Garrido and his wife, Nancy, have pleaded not guilty to charges involving Dugard's abduction, but police say he admitted kidnapping her in his initial interview. Police say Garrido and his wife kidnapped Dugard outside her home in South Lake Tahoe, California, and took her to an elaborate compound hidden in the backyard of their Antioch, California, home more than 160 miles away. Tucked behind overgrown trees and a fence were tents, outbuildings and a soundproof shed where Dugard lived with the two daughters she had with her captor. Out of sight Garrido took great pains to make sure nobody could find the camp, not even the parole officer who visited twice a month at times, police said. Hall, too, was taken directly to a carefully prepped small warehouse after her kidnapping. As they drove from South Lake Tahoe, California, where she was abducted, to Reno, she tried to persuade Garrido to rape her in the bushes. "I asked him, couldn't we just pull over and get it over with," she testified. But Garrido was determined. "You might as well get that our of your mind; you are going with me, you have got no choice," Hall testified Garrido told her, according to court transcripts. "I have

Question: What did to their victims?

Answer: raped

Summary:
Trial transcripts show Phillip Garrido tried to kidnap woman before Katie Hall in 1976 .
Garrido methodically prepared places to bring kidnapped Hall .
Kidnap suspect spoke in trial about his drug-fueled, uncontrollable sexual urges .
"You are going with me, you have got no choice," Hall recalls Garrido saying .


Editor's note: The n-word appears in this piece because CNN feels the context in which it is used is pertinent to the story of James "Little Man" Presley. James "Little Man" Presley has worked in the cotton fields of Sledge, Mississippi, since he was just 6 years old. SLEDGE, Mississippi (CNN) -- James Presley stands amid chopped cotton, the thick Mississippi mud caked on his well-worn boots. A smile spreads across his face when he talks about voting for Barack Obama and what that might mean for generations to come. His voice picks up a notch. He holds his head up a bit higher. "There's a heap of pride in voting for a black man," he says. At 78, Presley is a legend of the past living in the present and now hopeful for the future. A grandson of slaves, he's one of the few men left in America so closely tied to his slave past, still farming cotton on the same land as his ancestors. He's picked cotton since he was just 6 years old. He and his wife of 57 years, Eva May, raised 13 children and six grandchildren in a cypress-sided house in the middle of cotton fields in northwestern Mississippi. He was a sharecropper most his life, but rarely qualified for food stamps.  Watch "Obama, he come up like" » His father died in 1935 when he was 5, and he had to step up and be the "Little Man" of the house, a nickname that has stuck seven decades later. He's lived a raw-knuckled life where hope moved at a molasses-slow pace. The last time he had hope for a better future was four decades ago -- first with President John F. Kennedy and then with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Obama has changed everything to the poor in these parts. iReport.com: What does Obama's presidency mean to you? "I'm a church man," he says. "And I kind of figured this here is about like it was with Moses with the children of Israel. On that day, when he gets to be president, we're all going to be rejoicing." Does he have plans to celebrate on Inauguration Day? "Oh man, it's gonna be nice. I believe we're gonna have a good time," he says. "I never thought one would get there."  See photos of the weather-beaten home where Little Man raised so many children » As the nation prepares for Obama's inauguration on January 20, CNN.com traveled to Sledge, Mississippi, a forgotten town of about 500 people in the heart of the Mississippi Delta that some consider to be the birthplace of blues in America. Nearly 20 percent of residents over the age of 60 live below the poverty line, according to the 2000 census. That number nearly doubles, to 37.5 percent, for residents under the age of 19. About three-quarters of the population are black. Two-thirds of the people here make less than $35,000 a year. Presley says the fact the nation will have a black president will have a ripple effect in poor communities like his. For the first time ever, he says, black parents and grandparents can tell youngsters in rural America that through education, anything is possible -- that the White House isn't just for white folks. Three of his children graduated from college. Two have died -- one as a youth, one as an adult. It never gets easier, he says, no matter what age they die. Obama has already brought inspiration to future generations of his own family. "I might be dead and gone, but it's going to be a good thing to me, because I know that they ain't gotta go through what I went through. They'll have a better time, a more joyous time, than what I had when I come along. It is gonna be grand to them and to me, too." "

Question: How old was James when he started working the cotton fields?

Question: What is James Presley's age?

Question: Who was James "Little Man" Presley?

Question: What were Presley's grandparents?

Question: What is Jame's Presley's nickname?

Question: What is James Presley's nickname?

Question: When did James father die?

Answer: 6 years

Answer: 78,

Answer: is a legend of the past living in the present

Answer: slaves,

Answer: "Little Man"

Answer: "Little Man"

Answer: died in 1935

Summary:
James "Little Man" Presley, 78, has worked cotton fields since he was 6 years old .
"There's a heap of pride in voting for a black man," says the grandson of slaves .
His dad died when he was 5; Obama "knows what it is to come up without a father"
His message: "The important thing in life is to try to live and do the best you can"


Editor's note: The staff at CNN.com has been intrigued by the journalism of VICE, an independent media company and Web site based in Brooklyn, New York. The reports, which are produced solely by VICE, reflect a very transparent approach to journalism, where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process. We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers.

Brooklyn, New York (VICE) -- When people talk about fashion week, they are usually referring to London, Paris, New York and Milan. When I discovered that Islamabad was having its first ever fashion week, I was especially intrigued. In a country where the majority of women cover up and similar events in the past have been threatened with fundamentalist attacks, this had to be about promoting Pakistan's textile industry in a strangled economy. The majority of Pakistan's population wears traditional Shalwar Kameez or Burkha, are vehemently religious, poor and enjoy about a 50% illiteracy rate. I quickly learned that there are pockets of Pakistani society that have Western sensibilities, which warrants the fashion industry to grow and justifies the need for a fashion week.

The British High Commission advises against all but essential travel to Pakistan. After pondering how essential fashion journalism is, against the wishes of my family I flew out to Islamabad in January with the director William Fairman to document an event so incongruous with the Pakistan we see on the news, people thought we'd made it up. This fashion week represented an exclusive elite of Western-centric Pakistanis.

I managed with relative ease to secure carte blanche to film fly-on-the-wall at the event, with the exception of filming people boozing or blaspheming on camera.

For example, before we left I was warned I'd better cover up and wear long dresses, which is evident in the film. As soon as I arrived I realized that I needn't have worried, that most of the girls at the fashion week dressed like Western girls. It was just one example of how Pakistan is misunderstood in the West.

See the rest of Pakistan Fashion Week at VICE.COM

For a week I watched relatively scantily-clad models on a runway in a blast-proof basement of a 7-star hotel just a short drive from the Islamic militant hubs in the troubled northwest. There was a latent atmosphere of volatility: fundamentalists don't have to try hard to work out that these hotels are crawling with Westerners and Pakistani liberals 365 days a year. As a result, the seats at the fashion shows were often half-empty. Social events such as these are few and far between in Pakistan. A young Pakistani rapper we met while out there told us how he struggles to perform live, as live events are often shut down for risk of militant attacks. More than serving as a platform for the textile industry and an attempt at improving Pakistan's world image, the Fashion Week was predominantly just something for people to do, a distraction from the adversity of daily life there.

I spent a week in the care of Pakistan's affluent elite, and my time with them taught me that Pakistan is an acutely divided country of extremes. There is a great deal of resentment towards this outmoded elite from the rest of the country. There is no middle class as we know it. This privileged community lives in compounds with armed guards at their gates. They employ a live-in staff and a chauffeur. They inhabit a bubble of ersatz Western life. One woman told me she thought that fashion, not drones, was the answer to Pakistan's problems. Whether this is the case, or not, remains to be seen.

Question: What country did the vice visit?

Question: Who went to Pakistan for a behind-the-scenes look at fashion week in Islamabad?

Question: VICE goes to Pakistan for a behind-the-scenes look at what?

Answer: Islamabad

Answer: William Fairman

Answer: fashion week

Summary:
VICE embeds with rebel groups on the front lines in Libya .
Journalists were surprised by how young some rebels were .
When asked why they were fighting, "freedom" was the common answer .


Editor's note: The staff at CNN.com has been intrigued by the journalism of VICE, an independent media company and Web site based in Brooklyn, New York. The reports, which are produced solely by VICE, reflect a very transparent approach to journalism, where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process. We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers.

Brooklyn, New York (VICE.COM) -- While the average American's understanding of the conflict in Kosovo is a simple, two-sided Sneetch-battle between the mountainous region's dominant Serbian minority and oppressed Albanian majority, the reality is a lot more convoluted than a Wikipedia page or morning radio parody of the Beach Boys' "Kokomo" can accurately convey. In addition to the Serbs in the north and Albanians in the south, Kosovo is host to a pizza pie of smaller ethnic groups like Gorans, Illyrians, and Roma scattered in enclaves throughout the entire country.

During the 1998-1999 war, as the Serbian Yugoslav Army and NATO-backed Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army vied with each other to see who could rack up the most atrocities, these sub-minorities were victims of a disproportionate amount of collateral brutality. Especially the Kosovo Roma, more widely known as "gypsies." Of the 250,000 people displaced from their homes by the fighting, an estimated 90,000 were Roma, a figure which is a little more jarring when you realize the region's total Romani population is just a little north of 100,000.

To help them deal with the refugee problem, the United Nations invited Paul Polansky, an American activist for gypsy rights, then working in Prague, to the city of Mitrovica to act as a liaison for the burgeoning community of Roma's so-called Internally Displaced People.

"The UN were having gypsies running into schoolhouses seeking shelter from the Albanians who were chasing them out of their homes," says Polansky from his house in Southern Serbia. "And so they opened a few Internally Displaced People camps, but they didn't know how to work with the gypsies, so they needed an expert to actually move into the camps to live with them and advise them. That's what they brought me to Kosovo to do."

Polansky was immediately unimpressed by the conditions at the camp he moved into an old French army barracks called Osterode.

See the rest of The VICE guide to the Balkans at VICE.com

"There were about 1,800 tents put up by the 23rd Pioneer Regiment of the British Army. They were put on toxic wasteland. The land itself was lower than the road coming into the camp and so when it rained there was water in all the tents. The only food they were given was flour and beans. They needed water to cook with but there was no water for cooking, no water for cleaning, and when I complained to the UN they said, 'Well, these are gypsies, they know how to look after themselves.' It was a constant fight just to get them to deliver water. We were not guaranteed any security. The Albanians were attacking the camp. We had children die because UN police refused to take them to hospital"

Despite Polansky's efforts, conditions at the Osterode camp continued to deteriorate. The British regiment in charge of protecting the camp was withdrawn and children began to show symptoms of health effects from the campsite's proximity to dumping grounds for industrial waste.

"In 1999, some Danish soldiers on patrol in Mitroviza had shown symptoms of lead poisoning," Polansky told us. "So their blood was taken, and it came back they had extremely high levels of lead poisoning. So in the summer of 2000, a UN medical team took blood tests all over Mitrovica. They found the highest lead levels were in the gypsy camps because they had been built on the tailings stands of the mines and the pollution from the smelter drifted right over their camp. Their blood samples were sent to a lab in Belgium and it was found that the children in these camps had the highest lead levels in medical literature."

Eventually Polansky got fed up with the UN

Question: What person found hundrens of tents on the wastelands

Question: What did Paul Polanski investigate

Question: What did he find on the wasteland

Question: What person said there was high levels of lead

Question: What American investigated the treatment

Question: High levels of what were found in the camps

Question: Where di Polansky find the tents?

Answer: Paul Polansky,

Answer: Internally Displaced People camps,

Answer: 1,800 tents

Answer: Polansky

Answer: Paul Polansky,

Answer: lead poisoning.

Answer: toxic wasteland.


Editor's note: The staff at CNN.com has recently been intrigued by the journalism of VICE, an independent media company and Web site based in Brooklyn, New York. VBS.TV is Vice's broadband television network. The reports, which are produced solely by VICE, reflect a very transparent approach to journalism, where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process. We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers. Viewer discretion advised.

Brooklyn, New York (VBS.TV) -- Recently, VBS headed to Naples, the capital of the Campania region in southern Italy, to shoot two documentaries about the Camorra, the most powerful but least understood of the Italian crime cartels.

One piece was about the peculiar world of the Camorra's homegrown Neapolitan pop stars, known as Neomelodics. The other, excerpted here, focused on the environmental emergency brought on by the Camorra's manipulation of garbage disposal in the region. Each proved to be a strange and infuriating experience.

The daytime hours were spent visiting housing blocks where every family had reported at least one case of cancer because of illegal toxic waste dumps behind their homes. Our evenings, however, were spent at town square celebrations sponsored by the Camorra two blocks away and attended by the same families we had met earlier that day. The Camorra, it was suddenly clear, was dumping toxic waste in people's backyards and then hosting Neomelodic pop concerts in their front yards.

See the rest of Toxic: Napoli at VBS.TV

Today, the Camorra's Naples is Italy on steroids, and it's the result of a marriage of convenience between two powerful Italian forces. Neapolitans we met were, on the one hand, fed up with the garbage situation. On the other, very few had any interest in pointing fingers at the Camorra.

The Gerlando family is a prime example. On one of the last days of our shoot, we spent an afternoon with sheep farmers Patrizia and Mario Gerlando at their home in the Campanian countryside.

The Gerlandos were forced to leave their home in the town of Acerra (a suburb of Naples) because all of their sheep were mutating and dying due to the high levels of dioxin in the pastures where they grazed. Despite Acerra being the most well-documented case of the Camorra's involvement in Campania's environmental crisis, after the cameras were packed away, Mario and Patrizia told us that the Camorra had nothing to do with anything and that it would take someone like Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to come fix the situation.

Question: What are the consequences of years of pollution?

Question: Who documenting powerful Italian crime cartel "strange, infuriating"

Question: What has resulted in environmental crisis?

Question: What are the consequences of pollution

Question: Who documented crime cartel

Question: What does the cartel control

Question: What does VBS find "strange, infuriating"?

Answer: sheep were mutating and dying

Answer: CNN.com

Answer: Camorra's manipulation of garbage disposal

Answer: all of their sheep were mutating and dying due to the high levels of dioxin in the pastures where they grazed.

Answer: VBS

Answer: garbage disposal

Answer: environmental emergency brought on by the Camorra's manipulation of garbage disposal in the region.

Summary:
Crew of three gets firsthand look at poverty, substance abuse in war-ravaged Liberia .
Women at local brothel tell of beatings by U.N. soldiers, child prostitution .
An ex-warlord who claims to have killed babies, cannibalized victims guides crew .


Editor's note: The staff at CNN.com has recently been intrigued by the journalism of VICE, an independent media company and Web site based in Brooklyn, New York. VBS.TV is Vice's broadband television network. The reports, which are produced solely by VICE, reflect a very transparent approach to journalism, where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process. We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers. Viewer discretion advised.

London, England (VBS.TV) -- In previous episodes of The Vice Guide to Travel, we road-tripped through North Korea, shopped for dirty bombs in Bulgaria, and hunted mutant wild boars in Chernobyl. Little did we know that all of our harrowing journeys would leave us only semi-prepared for a recent trip to war-ravaged, godforsaken Liberia.

Since 1989, a series of brutal civil wars -- primarily fought by drug-addicted, prepubescent orphans -- has rendered Liberia one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Everyone has heard the stories of abject poverty, ubiquitous substance abuse and wanton violence taking place there, but we don't really believe anything that we don't see for ourselves. So, stomachs firmly knotted, off we went.

We arrived in Liberia with a small crew of three and quickly rendezvoused with a local journalist who would be our fixer and guide. Our first shooting location was the West Point slum, home to 80,000 people living in conditions that redefine squalor. Miles of rotting garbage surround the slum, which has no sewage system. Pretty much everyone -- even the local government officials -- defecates and urinates in the open. Drugs, prostitution and armed robbery are the main industries. We got to know some of the residents of West Point, who told us their stories as they smoked heroin and cocaine and begged us for money.

Next we visited a local brothel. The women who lived there talked with us about the U.N. soldiers who have sex with the child prostitutes and beat the older women, and then leave without paying.

Watch episode 2 from the Vice Guide to Liberia on VBS.TV

But perhaps the most revelatory portions of our trip to Liberia came from meeting the major warlords of the nation's civil wars. There's a tradition in Liberian militias of taking on extravagant noms de guerre. Hence, our subjects were named General Bin Laden, General Rambo and General Butt Naked. The latter, in particular, was one of the most notorious Liberian warlords. He claims to have personally killed 20,000 people including babies, and to have sometimes cannibalized his victims.

Today, General Butt Naked goes by his birth name, which is Joshua. During our time together, he told us that Liberia will surely implode into civil war again when the U.N. leaves next year. But in the meantime, Joshua wants to redeem himself. He offered us a glimpse of the Liberia that he wants to forge, and we found ourselves growing to like him. He took us to his church, where he rehabilitates child soldiers. We watched as he preached his way through Monrovia on a Sunday.

Is there a chance that his mission will succeed, and further civil war can be averted in this desperate country? That's one of the many questions that we came away with upon our safe return from Liberia. Watch our documentary about our time there and see what you think.

Question:
How many in the crew?
Where were the women?
What country are they touring?
What did the ex-warlord claim?

Answer: three

Answer: a local brothel.

Answer: Liberia.

Answer: to have personally killed 20,000 people including babies, and to have sometimes cannibalized his victims.


Editor's note: The staff at CNN.com has recently been intrigued by the journalism of VICE, an independent media company and Web site based in Brooklyn, New York. VBS.TV is the broadband television network of VICE. The reports, which are produced solely by VICE, reflect a transparent approach to journalism, where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process. We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers.

Brooklyn, New York (VBS.TV) -- In this installment of the Vice Guide to Film, VBS co-founder Shane Smith travels to Russia to meet the pioneers of one of the most peculiar experimental film movements in history: Parallel Cinema.

The genre marries Soviet avant-garde agitprop filmmaking (black and white, silent, odd angles, extreme closeups, rapid fire editing of good Soviets at work) with something called "Necro-realism," a movement spearheaded by filmmaker Yvegny Yufit and consisting of very weird gay male zombie flicks that feature fat bald men having sex and eating each other's brains. It was meant to be a comment on the impending fall of the Soviet system and the decadence of the apparatchiks in charge. It grew to become much more.

While Russia is known for its experimental works of the 1920s -- auteurs like Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein spring to mind -- this freedom of expression ended when Stalin took power. For 60 years, Russian film was dominated by the drab, state-approved imagery of Socialist realism. This genre was defined by stark scenes of the proletariat soldiering and toiling diligently over the land. Making movies outside this milieu meant that the film-lovers, artists, actors and rock musicians who collaborated to create it were risking life and limb at the hands of the KGB. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, the threat of its primary intelligence agency diminished and Russian filmmakers began to unleash six decades of pent-up creative energy. The films that emerged were an insane mish-mash of booze, violence, surrealism and insanity. Parallel Cinema was born.

Watch the rest of Russian Parallel Cinema at VBS.TV

For this episode, Shane journeys to Moscow and St. Petersburg to meet several of the surviving founders of Parallel Cinema and Necro-realism, many of whom are today extremely successful commercial producers and directors. In fact, a few of them now run some of the country's key networks and continue to make films. Shane manages to uncover this fascinating underground art community and finds that to this day the Parallel Cinema movement thrives. The devoted still have weekly Parallel screenings and events, and even put out a monthly film publication. Still, as he immerses himself in this unique film tradition, it becomes clear that, given Russian's present volatility, it may not exist much longer.

Question: what happened to Soviet Union?

Question: Who is the VBS journalist?

Question: Who are the pioneers of the film movement?

Question: Who did the VBS journalist meet with?

Answer: collapsed,

Answer: Shane Smith

Answer: Parallel Cinema.

Answer: the pioneers of one of the most peculiar experimental film movements in history: Parallel Cinema.


Editor's note: The staff at CNN.com has recently been intrigued by the journalism of VICE, an independent media company and website based in Brooklyn, New York. VBS.TV is VICE's broadband television network. The reports, which are produced solely by VICE, reflect a very transparent approach to journalism, where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process. We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers.

Brooklyn, New York (VBS.TV) -- In 2008, the world cast its eyes on Beijing, the sprawling Chinese metropolis that was set to play host to the Summer Olympics.

At VBS.TV, we caught wind of another story that soon had our full attention. As Chinese officials were taking unprecedented and often controversial measures to sanitize the notoriously foul Beijing air, much of the rest of the country was still covered in a thick blanket of noxious smog.

According to a World Bank survey at the time, 16 of the world's 20 most-polluted cities were in China.

At the top of that list is the city of Linfen, a coal-mining and manufacturing hub in the heart of Shanxi Province. Within weeks, we assembled a film crew and went off to the landlocked province in northern China to find out more.

After touching down in Beijing and making a quick visit to the Olympic countdown clock, we set out to visit the single most polluted place on Earth, hoping to place the dubious ranking into a human context.

Despite the Chinese government's promise of a marathon-friendly city, the Beijing air at the time was still plenty oppressive. But nothing could have prepared us for the dystopian scenario we encountered during our week in Linfen and the surrounding area.

See the rest of Toxic Linfen at VBS.TV

Before the trip, I had researched thousands of images of the pollution that plagues Linfen and Shanxi province, but to see it in person is, quite simply, devastating.

The sun sets before it is supposed to, disappearing into a curtain of smog above the true horizon. Residents scavenge the roadside for coal that falls from the seemingly endless cavalcade of coal trucks, gathering it with bare hands. Schoolchildren play against the nonstop backdrop of billowing exhaust. Many of the elderly have trouble speaking between gasps of widespread emphysema.

Residents of Linfen are aware of the growing threat the polluted air and water pose, and some of them have left the city. Most, however, have no choice but to stay.

The infamy of a No. 1 ranking in the news media eventually motivated China to focus more attention on cleaning up Linfen, but unfortunately, the scene of overwhelming pollution is still rampant in many parts of the country.

As easy as it is to criticize China's bold industrial development, our visit was also a clear reminder of the same pattern of manufacturing and consumption that has occurred elsewhere since the dawn of the Industrial Age.

In China, it just happens to be on a much grander scale and on the back of a globalized economy that has rendered China into an assembly line for the world. The most compelling research I came across to this end are recently published studies showing particulate matter from China's factories and mines reaching across the Pacific Ocean to North America's West Coast.

China obviously has some cleaning up to do, and more importantly, some major strategizing to achieve a sustainable economy.

Our futures are inextricably linked. Back in New York City, the coal mines of Shanxi Province feel worlds away, but as oil now gushes ceaselessly into our own backyard, we should pay even more attention to Linfen if we don't want it to be a glimpse into our own future.

Question: What hovers over Linfen?

Question: What does Linfen produce and consume in large amounts?

Question: What is the air quality like?

Answer: pollution

Answer: coal-mining

Answer: foul

Summary:
The city of Linfen has a permanent toxic smog hovering over the city .
Air quality there is the equivalent of smoking three packs of cigarettes a day .
Linfen produces and consumes large amount of coal .


Editor's note: The staff at CNN.com has recently been intrigued by the journalism of VICE, an independent media company and website based in Brooklyn, New York. VBS.TV is Vice's broadband television network. The reports, which are produced solely by VICE, reflect a transparent approach to journalism, where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process. We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers.

Brooklyn, New York (VBS.TV) -- Whenever someone at our office bitches about being overworked, our stock response is "Beats digging ditches."

While the express intention of the statement is usually not-so-supportive, we think it's a healthy reminder that at the end of the day, we are all basically professional e-mailers and should be thankful for such.

The wildland firefighters who work for Grayback Forestry in Medford, Oregon, have no such motivational adages because their job is actually digging ditches. Around active forest fires. On the sides of mountains. You can't even bitch at these guys for having cushy government pensions to fall back on when they get older, because they're all private-sector contractors. Which means if they aren't out fighting forest fires or doing preventative forestry on unburned woods (basically extreme landscaping), they are losing money. They are the hardest working men in the tree business.

Southern Oregon in the summer is a tinderbox. Last year the state recorded some 560 wild fires, the majority of which occurred in the seemingly endless sea of trees running across its bottom from the Cascades to the Pacific Coast. Humidity is next to nonexistent, which is extremely pleasant, but means that even an errant spark from a chainsaw or the proverbial cigarette butt out the car window can set the entire region ablaze.

Flying into the Rogue Valley, there is evidence of past wild fires is everywhere: From the miles-long scar of the 2002 "Biscuit" fire stretching past the horizon, to the smaller pockets of charred trees crowding the edge of towns to the blue Wilderness-Firefighter-ribbon bumper stickers flying past on the I-5 to the elaborate wildfire and firefighter shrines at a local bar.

See more of Oregon Fire Lines at VBS.TV

There are very few places firemen aren't revered as local heroes, but the wilderness firefighters of Oregon go past people simply risking their lives to help others into a crazy superhero realm where their work regularly prevents entire settlements from being destroyed. They're literally the guardians of their communities. Incidentally, their work is also very beneficial for the forest.

We spent a few days following a crew of Grayback forest-firefighters walk up the sides of what most people would consider a cliff, to chop down underbrush in preparation for a controlled burn. This is what they like to call "project work" -- the light stuff they do between fires. The work is the hardest and least rewarding work we have ever tried to do. Unless you consider 12-hour-plus shifts of backbreaking labor, virtually zero outside recognition, and occasional accusations of being shills for the timber industry rewards. Which we do not.

This piece was originally produced in August 2010

Question: What type of work are the firefighters doing?

Question: What hour shifts do they do?

Question: Which group followed firefighters?

Question: What is the VBS following?

Question: What does the VBS call it?

Question: What type of burn was this?

Question: How long are the shifts?

Question: What does the 12 hr shift involved?

Answer: digging ditches.

Answer: 12-hour-plus

Answer: VBS.TV

Answer: a crew of Grayback forest-firefighters

Answer: "Beats digging ditches."

Answer: controlled

Answer: 12-hour-plus

Answer: backbreaking labor, virtually zero outside recognition, and occasional accusations of being shills for the timber industry


Editor's note: This article contains profanity that some may find offensive. This is part one of a three part series showing different aspects of life inside Colombia's drug gangs. A gang member sniffs in a cloud of cocaine dust as he cuts the drug with other substances. MEDELLIN, Colombia (CNN) -- A young man with tattoos covering one arm rolls hundreds of marijuana joints in the half-light of a shack, perched on a hillside in a Medellin slum. A 9mm pistol and a .38 revolver lie on his work bench. An old battery-powered radio blares out the salsa music classic, "Todo Tiene Su Final" or "Everything Comes To An End." "I'm getting calluses on my tongue rolling all these spliffs," he laughs, telling me has enough marijuana for about 1,000 joints. He and his comrades plan to sell them for about 50 cents apiece. A few doors away, two other gang members have raided their mother's kitchen for soup plates, drinking glasses and a blender. They've just taken delivery of a kilogram (2.2 pound) brick of pure cocaine. Their job now is to cut it and package it in gram bags to peddle on street corners they control.  Watch as cocaine is cut » A female gang member shows up with two more bags, one containing powdered caffeine and the other lidocaine, a dental anesthetic used to dilute the pure cocaine. They mix business with pleasure. Every now and again one of the gang members pulls off the top of the blender and breathes in a cloud of pulverized cocaine. One of them coughs and keels over in the kitchen. Seconds later, he's back on his feet snorting cocaine off a spoon. "Breathing that cocaine cloud mellows me out so I need a line to take me back up," he says. Standing in the background, snorting lines of pure cocaine off a pocketknife is the gang leader, a man in his mid-20s. His cohorts call him "Chief." He tells me they'll sell the heavily cut cocaine for $1.50 a gram. Higher purity powder goes for about $4 a gram. That's much cheaper than the $50 or $60 a heavily cut gram costs on most U.S. and European streets, according to estimates from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. I agree to conceal Chief's true identity to protect him from the police and rival gangs. As we chat, he dismantles a small caliber pistol.  Watch the gangs in action » "Around here the only law is the rules of the street," he explains. "The rules don't change; they always will be the rules, here or anywhere else." A trusted source, who made the introduction for me, tells me Chief is a "total animal living on borrowed time," who has earned so many enemies he cannot risk stepping outside the few hundred square yards of his home turf. "I'm only human, of course I get afraid," he says. "Afraid my life will end suddenly before I can do anything to get out of this war." Since the time when undisputed cocaine king Pablo Escobar held sway here, the "northeastern commune" district has forged a fearsome reputation as a recruiting ground for drug cartel hit men and violent gang wars. Medellin is once again in the grip of a vicious drug war. In January to September this year, city authorities say the murder rate has more than doubled with almost 2,000 killings. Officials at the Medellin public prosecutor's offices say the vast majority of victims were shot, likely victims of rival drug gangs and cocaine capos.  Watch marijuana joints being rolled by the hundreds » That makes Medellin as dangerous as Ciudad Juarez, the frontier town dubbed Mexico's most dangerous city as a result of the ongoing cartel war there. Authorities in Juarez say killings are up from last year and are hitting record highs. Colombian authorities estimate there are around 130 street gangs -- known as "combos" -- in Medellin, totaling some 6,000 members

Question:
How many killings have there been?
where drug war raging
Where did these killings happen
What did they sell
What does the gang sell?
Where is the drug war?

Answer: 2,000

Answer: Medellin

Answer: Medellin

Answer: cocaine.

Answer: cocaine.

Answer: Medellin

Summary:
Drug war raging in Medellin, Colombia, has seen almost 2,000 killings this year .
Gang leader says violence sparked by power vacuum as old bosses arrested .
His gang sells cocaine and marijuana and he rules through violence .
But he refuses to say which cartel boss is bankrolling his gang .


Editor's note: This is an excerpt from "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers, a nonfiction account of a Syrian-American immigrant and his extraordinary experience during Hurricane Katrina. Eggers is the author of five other books, including "What Is the What," a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco. Dave Eggers writes that Abdulrahman Zeitoun dreamed of fishing on the Syrian coast as Katrina approached. (CNN) -- FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 2005 On moonless nights the men and boys of Jableh, a dusty fishing town on the coast of Syria, would gather their lanterns and set out in their quietest boats. Five or six small craft, two or three fishermen in each. A mile out, they would arrange the boats in a circle on the black sea, drop their nets, and, holding their lanterns over the water, they would approximate the moon. The fish, sardines, would begin gathering soon after, a slow mass of silver rising from below. The fish were attracted to plankton, and the plankton were attracted to the light. They would begin to circle, a chain linked loosely, and over the next hour their numbers would grow. The black gaps between silver links would close until the fishermen could see, below, a solid mass of silver spinning. Abdulrahman Zeitoun was only thirteen when he began fishing for sardines this way, a method called lampara, borrowed from the Italians. He had waited years to join the men and teenagers on the night boats, and he'd spent those years asking questions. Why only on moonless nights? Because, his brother Ahmad said, on moon-filled nights the plankton would be visible everywhere, spread out all over the sea, and the sardines could see and eat the glowing organisms with ease. But without a moon the men could make their own, and could bring the sardines to the surface in stunning concentrations. You have to see it, Ahmad told his little brother. You've never seen anything like this. And when Abdulrahman first witnessed the sardines circling in the black he could not believe the sight, the beauty of the undulating silver orb below the white and gold lantern light. He said nothing, and the other fishermen were careful to be quiet, too, paddling without motors, lest they scare away the catch. They would whisper over the sea, telling jokes and talking about women and girls as they watched the fish rise and spin beneath them. A few hours later, once the sardines were ready, tens of thousands of them glistening in the refracted light, the fishermen would cinch the net and haul them in. They would motor back to the shore and bring the sardines to the fish broker in the market before dawn. He would pay the men and boys, and would then sell the fish all over western Syria -- Lattakia, Baniyas, Damascus. The fishermen would split the money, with Abdulrahman and Ahmad bringing their share home. Their father had passed away the year before and their mother was of fragile health and mind, so all funds they earned fishing went toward the welfare of the house they shared with ten siblings. Abdulrahman and Ahmad didn't care much about the money, though. They would have done it for free. Thirty-four years later and thousands of miles west, Abdulrahman Zeitoun was in bed on a Friday morning, slowly leaving the moonless Jableh night, a tattered memory of it caught in a morning dream. He was in his home in New Orleans and beside him he could hear his wife Kathy breathing, her exhalations not unlike the shushing of water against the hull of a wooden boat. Otherwise the house was silent. He knew it was near six o'clock, and the peace would not last. The morning light usually woke the kids once it reached their second-story windows. One of the four would open his or her eyes, and from there the movements were brisk, the house quickly growing loud. With one child awake, it was impossible to keep the other

Question: What approached the Gulf Coast?

Question: Where was Katrina approaching?

Question: who is dave eggers

Question: What state did Zeitounm emigrate to?

Question: Where did Abdulrahman Zeitoun grow up?

Question: Who emigrated to America and settled in New Orleans?

Question: Who grew up in Syria?

Question: Who grew up in Syrian fishing town?

Question: Where did Zeitoun settle?

Answer: Katrina

Answer: Syrian coast

Answer: is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco.

Answer: New Orleans

Answer: Jableh, a dusty fishing town on the coast of Syria,

Answer: Abdulrahman Zeitoun

Answer: Abdulrahman Zeitoun

Answer: Abdulrahman Zeitoun

Answer: New Orleans

Summary:
Dave Eggers: Abdulrahman Zeitoun grew up in a Syrian fishing town .
He says Zeitoun emigrated to America and settled in New Orleans .
Zeitoun and his family thought little of Katrina as it approached the Gulf Coast .


Editor's note: This is an excerpt from Jane Velez-Mitchell's new book "iWant" published by HCI Books. Velez-Mitchell anchors "Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell" on HLN nightly at 7 p.m. ET. Jane Velez-Mitchell writes about her journey from addiction and overconsumption to a simpler, honest life. This is the story of my ch . . . ch . . . changes, which took me from insanity to clarity, from egocentricity to altruism, from alcoholism to activism. These changes have marked an evolution in what I want from this life. I am what I want. What I seek to consume, possess, and achieve is a mirror that reflects my lusts and cravings, values and priorities, and moral boundaries or lack thereof. I am happy to say that what I want today is much less toxic and self-centered than what I used to want. It's taken decades of self-examination to peel back the layers and figure out what really makes me happy. And while I'm still searching for my ultimate bliss, I know for sure it's not what I once thought it was. It's not alcohol, cigarettes, money, food, sugar, or status symbols: I've consumed all of those in massive quantities, and they've just made me miserable. Now, I want what can't be tasted, smoked, worn, seen, or counted. It's the opposite of material. As sappy as it might sound, what I want is spiritual.  Watch Jane talk about her new book » The shift from material to spiritual is a particular challenge in our culture. We have allowed ourselves to be defined by our consumption, instead of by our ability to move beyond it. To keep consumers consuming, the corporate culture has brainwashed us into thinking we can change ourselves by changing what we buy, which pills we pop, what type of booze we swill, what gated community we join, what kind of golf clubs we swing, and what kind of cancer sticks we dangle between our lips. We've been told that certain consumer choices say a lot about us, that they reveal our character. If we've stepped up to a more prestigious brand, we've changed for the better. Nonsense! We cannot consume our way into personal growth. Yet, millions of us have bought into this cynical concept of faux identity. If you keep buying the "latest and the greatest" but feel like you're stuck in the same place, you're just changing labels, and that's not changing. That's rearranging. Real change occurs on the emotional, psychological, and spiritual levels, not in a shopping mall, a car dealership, online, at the drugstore, at the liquor store, or at the fast-food joint. For too long, we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by forces whose sole purpose is PROFIT and POWER. We have given advertisers leave to claim that inanimate objects have spiritual qualities. One ad, in perhaps the world's most prestigious newspaper, urges us to buy an expensive diamond by insisting that such a purchase will feed the soul, lift the spirit, and increase our resolve to achieve whatever we wish. Really? How exactly does a diamond feed the soul? It's absurd! This is false advertising. Today, as a culture, we are awash in false advertising. As a society, we've lent legitimacy to these patent lies by literally buying into them. As a result of this unnecessary, self-indulgent consumption, we've gone a long way toward destroying our natural environment with our waste. Perhaps most important, by obsessing about material things, we've cheated ourselves out of the most fundamental aspect of the human experience: real experiences that result in real growth. Unlike diamonds, meaningful experiences can actually feed the soul, resulting in self-development and self-knowledge. Authentic change has allowed me to gradually learn why I'm here experiencing this existence as well as what I am destined to contribute during my lifetime. For me,

Question: On what levels does change occur?

Question: Who is the author named in the piece?

Question: What did Velez-Mitchell write?

Question: How long has she self-examined?

Question: WHat is the name of the author writing about addiction?

Question: What did Velez-Mitchell say about where change occurs?

Answer: spiritual

Answer: Jane Velez-Mitchell

Answer: "iWant"

Answer: decades

Answer: Jane Velez-Mitchell

Answer: spiritual levels,

Summary:
Jane Velez-Mitchell writes of her journey from addiction to a simpler, honest life .
She says it's taken decades of self-examination to find out what makes her happy .
Velez-Mitchell: "Change occurs on the emotional, psychological, and spiritual levels"


Editor's note: This is the first in a series of planned collaborations between CNN and the online investigative journalism organization, ProPublica.org. Silver State Bank grew impressively under CEO Tod Little. He says he was forced out for favoring slow growth. LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) -- Sitting back in his leather chair, working as a consultant for a small Las Vegas bank, Tod Little is sure of one thing: Practically anyone, he says, could have made money as a banker in the go-go days of real estate in Nevada. Go-go days that lasted until the fall of 2008. "It didn't take a rocket scientist to run a bank in this town for the past 10 years," Little told CNN. CNN's Special Investigations Unit and the online investigative journalism organization ProPublica.org got a brief look inside the collapse of a regional bank. What the two organizations learned was both old and new: bankers giving themselves large salaries and generous bonuses, at the same time they are lending millions of dollars on what, according to one lawsuit, were essentially parcels of bare dirt with little potential of big income. Silver State Bank had been in business in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson for 10 years when Little, the bank's founder and CEO left. The bank had grown impressively under his guidance, but Little said his managers wanted more and he was forced out. "They wanted bigger salaries, bigger lifestyle, fancier offices. Whatever. However you want to view that," Little told CNN. One of those managers was new bank president Corey Johnson, who declined to answer any questions. Three other managers declined comment to CNN, as well. Silver State and others loaned money on the promise of Las Vegas' commercial real estate boom with the belief that undeveloped land would be turned into shopping centers, hotels and offices. Records show that land and houses were being "flipped" or resold over and over at huge profits. Bill Martin, a Las Vegas banker who once worked as a regulator for the Comptroller of the Currency in Washington, said what was happening to Silver State was clear. "They were over-advancing on construction, you know, more liberal advances on construction," Martin said. "It all worked last year [and] the year before and the year before. So they just kept doing it." Banking regulators issued repeated so-called "mild" warnings to banks concerned they were amassing large amounts of commercial development loans and lowering lending standards. But Martin says those warnings -- delivered by Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation personnel often on a quarterly or semi-annual basis in their field visits to Silver State -- were ignored. One Silver State loan that turned out to be especially poor was to a Las Vegas developer who had been a longtime customer of the bank. According to bank records, a developer named Thomas Jurbala, received almost $100 million from Silver State during a 10-year period. In 2008, Jurbala came calling again and the bank approved a $24 million loan for a piece of ground in North Las Vegas far from the Last Vegas strip, supposedly valued at $48 million. It was a so-called "interest reserve loan" in which the bank not only loaned the principle amount but the interest, as well. Then, according to bank records, it booked the interest as revenue. Regulators say those sorts of deals are not uncommon in construction loans. But this particular piece of land was undeveloped with only a permit to build a casino there one day. It is near the Las Vegas Speedway and in court papers the developer said he hoped a casino could be built. However, the entire project was scrapped before a spade was ever turned, and the land sits empty surrounded by a fence. The project was scrapped because Silver State went under. Doug French, the man who made that loan, reluctantly agreed to sit down with CNN for a taped interview. He is now vice president at a Libertarian think tank in Auburn, Alabama. French told CNN that at "the time" he

Question:
what ignored Silver state?
what company did he work for
what say Bank CEO?
What did Silver State ignore?
Who was forced out?
what banks failed

Answer: warnings

Answer: Silver State Bank

Answer: he was forced out for favoring slow growth.

Answer: warnings to banks concerned they were amassing large amounts of commercial development loans and lowering lending standards.

Answer: Tod Little.

Answer: Silver State

Summary:
Bank CEO says he was forced out for favoring slow growth, not being powerhouse .
Former regulator: Silver State ignored repeated warnings from banking regulators .
Silver State one of 27 that failed in 2008; many bankers believe 2009 will be worse .


Editor's note: This is the first story in an ongoing series of reports CNN is doing about economic survival in this time of financial crisis. Sean, Brooke and Courtney with their parents, Donna and Robert LeBlanc, in a 2008 Christmas photo. (CNN) -- Donna LeBlanc gave her husband, a former restaurant manager, the stark ultimatum: become a pizza delivery man or their family "wouldn't make it." The Lafayette, Louisiana, family of six was struggling with $45,000 of mounting medical debt from Donna LeBlanc's unexpected case of pneumonia and tonsillitis a year earlier. The family savings account had dwindled to $100. "It's embarrassing for my husband to take a job he is overqualified for, and I know he feels ashamed at times," says Donna LeBlanc, a 35-year-old mother with four children. "But this is what we have to do and we're going to make the best out of it." She watched her husband, Rob LeBlanc, 35, load Domino's pizza boxes into their family car and deliver orders until near dawn for $10 an hour. The family first told their story of falling on hard times on iReport.com. Share your economic survivor story with CNN. Until last summer, Rob LeBlanc had worked as a manager at a truck stop restaurant, making $55,000 a year. He lost that job to the falling economy. Rob LeBlanc says he noticed business at the truck stop getting sluggish a year ago. Then the spike in gas prices last summer exacerbated the restaurant's dire circumstances. Many penny-pinching truck drivers avoided his restaurant altogether, he says. Rob LeBlanc filed for unemployment compensation immediately after he lost his job. More than 4.6 million Americans were collecting unemployment benefits as of early January, according to the Labor Department. In Lafayette, a quiet city of about 114,000 tucked away in southern Louisiana, many of the jobs center around servicing the oil and gas industry, but Rob LeBlanc was unwilling to work offshore and away from his family. When he applied for other jobs, he was told he was either under-qualified or had too much experience. After several weeks of searching, he took the only job he could get -- a Domino's pizza delivery man, a job that would cover the family's expenses. "I had to swallow my pride and take whatever I could get," Rob LeBlanc says. "I kept telling myself one of these days something better will come along." He spent nearly five months delivering pizzas at Domino's. He admits he fell into depression during that time. But the family received good news Friday, when a private security company hired Rob LeBlanc to be a security officer. He says the company offers many opportunities to move up to a managerial position. "My first thought was to tell my wife right away," he says. "I could hear the relief in her voice." Taking a job as a pizza man wasn't the only sacrifice he's made for his family -- he's also selling his beloved 2003 Kawasaki motorcycle. Donna LeBlanc earns a few hundred dollars a week exterminating mosquitoes for a bug control company. Before her husband lost his job, she had talked of going back to school to pursue a biology degree at Louisiana State University. The LeBlanc family lives lean in their five-bedroom, three-bathroom house with its $440 a month mortgage. The couple is teaching their children about budgeting and bargaining while relying on coupons and sales. They no longer eat out and no longer have cable TV. For entertainment, they attend free movies at a church. Donna LeBlanc takes pride that they have no credit card debt. Their children Brooke, 9, Christopher, 14, and Courtney, 13, no longer receive allowances. Soon after her father's job loss, Courtney started cleaning houses and baby-sitting and earned enough money to buy a dress for her first school dance -- off the clearance rack. The LeBlancs' oldest child, Sean, 16, who attends high school,

Question: What pizza restaurant did he work for?

Question: What did LeBlanc earn at the job he lost?

Question: What kind of job did he take?

Question: What caused Rob LeBlanc to lose his job?

Question: Who lost his $55,000 manager job?

Answer: Domino's

Answer: $55,000

Answer: a pizza delivery man

Answer: the falling economy.

Answer: Rob LeBlanc

Summary:
Rob LeBlanc lost his $55,000 manager job because of the troubled economy .
To keep family out of debt, he took a $10 per hour pizza delivery job .
The couple and their four children learned to budget and save .
Mom: The experience has "bought the family closer together"


Editor's note: This story is based on interrogation reports that form part of the prosecution case in the forthcoming trial of six Belgian citizens charged with participation in a terrorist group. Versions of those documents were obtained by CNN from the defense attorney of one of those suspects. The statement by Bryant Vinas was compiled from an interview he gave Belgian prosecutors in March 2009 in New York and was confirmed by U.S. prosecutors as authentic. The statement by Walid Othmani was given to French investigators and was authenticated by Belgian prosecutors. Al Qaeda recruits say they received training in how to handle rockets, explosives and bombs. (CNN) -- The interrogations of two accused Westerners who say they trained and fought with al Qaeda in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region provide an inside view of the terror group's organizational structures. Arguably, they shed more light on the state of al Qaeda than any material previously released into the public domain. The documents reveal training programs and the protective measures the terrorist organization has taken against increasingly effective U.S. missile strikes. Bryant Vinas -- a U.S. citizen who says he traveled to Pakistan in September 2007 to fight against Americans in Afghanistan -- stated that between March and July 2008 he attended three al Qaeda training courses, which focused on weapons, explosives, and rocket-based or -propelled weaponry. During these classes, attended by 10-20 recruits, Vinas was taught how to handle a large variety of weapons and explosives, some of them of military grade sophistication, according to his account. Read how al Qaeda is now operating Vinas stated he became familiar with seeing, smelling and touching different explosives such as TNT, as well as plastic explosives such as RDX, Semtex, C3 and C4 -- the explosive U.S. authorities have stated was used in al Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Vinas also learned how to make vests for suicide bombers. Vinas stated he was also instructed how to prepare and place fuses, how to test batteries, how to use voltmeters and how to build circuitry for a bomb. Read how Vinas met with al Qaeda leaders According to his account, al Qaeda also offered a wide variety of other courses including electronics, sniper, and poisons training. Instruction in the actual construction of bombs, he stated, was offered to al Qaeda recruits who had become more advanced in their training. Vinas' training during this period was very similar to the training described by members of a French-Belgian group who also spent time in the tribal areas of Pakistan in 2008. Walid Othmani, a French recruit, stated the group were given explosives training and taught how to fire rocket launchers and RPGs. Othmani provided French interrogators with an account of his time in Pakistan after being arrested on his return to Europe. Three other members of his group are now in Belgian custody awaiting trial for "participation in a terrorist group." Belgian prosecutors told CNN Othmani has been charged in France with participation in a criminal conspiracy with the aim of preparing a terrorist act. A Belgian legal document detailing his interrogation report was obtained by CNN. Like Vinas, Othmani said the group had been required to sign forms before their training. Othmani stated his group was required to pledge absolute obedience to their handlers and indicate whether they wanted to become suicide bombers. Othmani provided interesting new details about the training facilities being used by al Qaeda in the tribal areas. His group trained in a small mountain shack, a far cry from the large camps al Qaeda had run in Taliban-era Afghanistan, when it had been able to operate with little danger of being targeted by military strikes. Othmani's account made clear that al Qaeda has had to decentralize its operations in Pakistan in response to the growing effectiveness of U.S. Predator strikes. However the wide number of training courses described by both Vinas and Othmani suggest that al Qaeda has been able to adapt well to the new security environment. By operating a larger number of smaller facilities, al Qaeda would also appear to have increased its resilience to attack. Read how al Qaeda is looking for Western targets While the classrooms are safer from drone attacks

Question: Where did the group train?

Question: Some sessions could be geared for what?

Question: What does the recruit tell of?

Question: What did Al Qaeda recruit tell?

Question: who recruit tells of weapons and explosives training courses?

Question: What did Al Qaeda offer?

Answer: trained in a small mountain shack,

Answer: how to handle rockets, explosives and bombs.

Answer: say they received training in how to handle rockets, explosives and bombs.

Answer: they received training in how to handle rockets, explosives and bombs.

Answer: Al Qaeda

Answer: training in how to handle rockets, explosives and bombs.

Summary:
Al Qaeda recruit tells of weapons and explosives training courses .
Group trained in a small mountain shack -- a far cry from large Afghan camps .
Al Qaeda also offered electronics, sniper, and poisons training courses .
Some sessions could be geared for killing in Europe and United States .


Editor's note: This story is part of an ongoing series of profiles CNN is doing about economic survival in this time of financial crisis. Married couple Lindsay  De Vore and Eliot Kohan on their delayed honeymoon to Orlando, Florida. (CNN) -- At age 23 and fresh out of college, Eliot Kohan was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. He was told he had four months to live. He survived. But the disease left him and his wife, Lindsay De Vore, who live in St. Paul, Minnesota, saddled with thousands of dollars of medical bills on top of their student loans and daily expenses. But their struggles taught them an important lesson in saving money. "When you have medical issues, it's easy to spiral into some sort of depression," the 26-year-old a technology analyst for a private contracting company in St. Paul said. "My goal was to keep moving forward. I wanted to create some stability for our us." All of that hard work saving for the past few years has paid off. The couple is elated to be closing next month on their first home in St. Paul, thanks to the troubled economy. De Vore and Kohan first told their story on CNN's iReport.com. Share your economic survivor story with CNN. The timing couldn't have been better for the couple to purchase a modest three-bedroom, one-story stucco house. De Vore and Kohan locked into a historically low mortgage rate of 4.9 percent this month. The couple selected a foreclosed home, slashing nearly $20,000 off the final price. "We wouldn't have been able to buy this house if the economy weren't the way it is," said De Vore, 25, who works in the financial aid office at a private college in St. Paul. "We were in the perfect position." There were more than 300,000 foreclosure filings reported nationwide in December, marking a 17 percent increase from the previous month and a 41 percent increase from December 2007, according to RealtyTrac, a foreclosure listing service. Meanwhile, unemployment continues to climb to rates unseen in decades. Yet the rocky economy is having a positive effect on some Americans, who are finding it the ideal time to buy a home. Similar to many married couples, Kohan and De Vore envisioned owning a house perhaps two or three years down the road, they say. Soon the couple says they noticed interest rates and home prices dipping so low that they found themselves nabbing a home as soon as they could afford the down payment. But the couple's ability to afford their first home is a story about fiscal responsibility, patience and determination. De Vore and Kohan, who met in their freshman year at St. Paul's Hamline University in 2002, moved into a two-bedroom apartment during their last year of college. For the past five years, they have remained in the same collegiate apartment, furnished with Craigslist finds and family hand-me-downs. "Money was a reason we've stayed here so long," Kohan said last week, bundled up with his wife because their apartment's heater broke. "But at a certain point, we felt like we were growing out of it in more ways than just physically. We wanted a change of pace." The couple says they've always been tight with money, keeping credit card usage limited to emergencies and being picky about what they spend their money on. But they became more "money-conscious" in June 2006, when Kohan was diagnosed with leukemia. He needed a costly stem cell transplant, and the couple did not have enough money. The sickness was evident in his frail face and bruised body. Luckily, when he went on leave from his job, his employers offered to hold his position until he recovered. Back in his hometown of Fergus Falls, a small city in western Minnesota, Kohan's family and friends threw a benefit, raising $12,000 toward the costly medical bills. He soon recovered, but the experience forced him to refocus his goals in

Question:
what did they benefit from?
Who offered the mortgage?
what city is the first home in?
what cancer did eliot kohan have?

Answer: raising $12,000 toward the costly medical bills.

Answer: De Vore and Kohan

Answer: St. Paul,

Answer: leukemia.

Summary:
The couple will close on their first home next month in St. Paul, Minnesota .
They benefited from low mortgage rates and prices on foreclosed homes .
Eliot Kohan's leukemia diagnosis helped him realize they had to start saving early .
"We worked hard. We didn't cut corners," Lindsay De Vore says .


Editor's note: Tom Wilkerson is chief executive officer of the United States Naval Institute, a nonprofit professional association which describes itself as an independent forum for examining issues related to the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard. He spent 31 years in the military, rising to major general of Marines and, in his last assignment, serving as commander, Marine Forces Reserve.

Retired Major General Tom Wilkerson says the U.S. should attack the pirates at their bases.

(CNN) -- It is well past time to take a serious look at piracy off the coast of Africa.

Initially, the U.S. ignored the threat, and when public outcry about our seeming indifference became louder, we formed a combined task force of international navies in the Gulf of Aden under command of a U.S. Navy rear admiral to "deter, disrupt and thwart" the pirates.

Today, it is clear that initiative has failed. In fact, this bit of muscle-flexing did so little to intimidate pirates operating out of Somalia that they have actually increased the number of attacks in the last month.

Significant among those attacks, pirates on Wednesday boarded and temporarily held a U.S.-flagged vessel, the container ship Maersk Alabama. The U.S. crew and its captain retook the vessel, but at the price of the captain becoming a hostage to the four pirates in one of the Maersk Alabama's lifeboats. Several hours later a U.S. warship, the Aegis destroyer USS Bainbridge, arrived on scene and, as I write, the standoff with the pirates continues.

What an embarrassing and frustrating event! A bunch of maritime thugs brazenly seized a vessel flying the flag of the nation with the most powerful navy the world has ever known. The fault does not lie with the ships and sailors of Combined Task Force-151. They have been given the proverbial mission impossible -- stop pirate attacks in an area four times the size of Texas with only three U.S. Navy ships and a total of 12 to 15 allied/friendly warships. Not gonna happen!

But embarrassment aside, there is real potential for loss of life and for continued attacks on vessels plying these waters. The issue is simple but difficult -- how do we eliminate the pirate threat?

Strangely, we seem unable to learn from our own history. In 1804 President Thomas Jefferson said "Enough" to paying 20 percent of the U.S. national budget as tribute to Barbary pirates. His response was clear and successful -- build a strong naval task force, equip it with a sizeable contingent of Marines, and send it to attack and defeat the pirates in their lair. The sailors and Marines sent on that mission did just that -- and in the process wrote a stirring page in our nation's early history.

The problem today is that we have refused to take the Jefferson model. We've confined our anti-piracy efforts to the open seas and left the pirates' home bases on land as a sanctuary. Thus, the pirates continue to operate with relative freedom and stealth. We and our allies only respond, never seizing the initiative.

The Jefferson model is a better answer: Take on the pirates where they are, rather than guessing where they will be. In short, attack them at their home bases.

There they are vulnerable. There is where they plan and prepare for raids on vessels. There is where they arrange ransom for held ships and crew members. From these bases, pirates are free to conduct raids without fear of reprisal, let alone interference from organized justice. They are free to venture out to prey upon one of the 33,000 ships that pass near their coast each year, knowing that they can return to the absolute security of their land bases and enjoy their spoils.

It is time to change strategy and take the fight to the pirates, as our military predecessors did with great success more than 200 years ago.

In the 21st century, anti-piracy measures should ideally be the responsibility of local and regional law enforcement. Unfortunately, the non-functioning government of Somalia is unable to bring police or military forces to bear against criminal piracy launched from its own territory.

The predicament has done

Question: what does a pirate do/

Question: where does one find pirates?

Question: who said to follow example set 200 years ago by Thomas Jefferson?

Question: whose strategy has failed to deter piracy?

Question: who represent threat to crews and cargo?

Question: Which president set a good example for piracy 200 years ago?

Answer: on Wednesday boarded and temporarily held a U.S.-flagged vessel,

Answer: off the coast of Africa.

Answer: Retired Major General Tom Wilkerson

Answer: task force of international navies

Answer: pirates.

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

Summary:
Tom Wilkerson: Pirates based in Somalia represent threat to crews and cargo .
He says U.S. strategy so far has failed to deter piracy .
Wilkerson: We should follow example set 200 years ago by Thomas Jefferson .
He says the U.S. needs to attack the pirates at their bases .