In this task, you are given news articles and you need to generate a highlight, i.e., a short summary, with a maximum length of 10 lines.
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Question: Editor's note: Bishop T.D. Jakes is founder and senior pastor of The Potter's House of Dallas, Texas, a multiracial, nondenominational church with more than 50 outreach ministries. Bishop T.D. Jakes says the church must sound the alarm to wake America from its slumber. (CNN) -- The blood-washed church for which Jesus died is not relegated to one group or another, nor is it held hostage by politics or ethnicity. It is a breathing, living testament to God's love and grace. It serves its community where it is located and is aware of the needs and nuances of that community. However, its relevance and vision must go beyond its community and reach the world for which Christ died. Today as the church moves from its introspective posture to a broader role in politics, business, media and impacting societal ills, it has the dubious and daunting task of doing so without losing its core function. Like all such organizations that cease to be intrinsically focused, it runs the risk of being totally misunderstood and misaligned. I have listened and watched the events of the last few days with great disappointment as the church and the so-called African-American church, in particular, has been painted rather negatively with a broad, wide-ranging brush. I personally wish the distinctions of the church by ethnicity would one day become an antiquated idea. But this will require more people moving from a segregated worship experience. Until then, the church is becoming increasingly bruised by those who seek to move it from its core principles and make it an instrument of division rather than a catalyst for unity! To say the current picture in the media of the institution that I have loved all of my life is less than flattering would be an understatement. And because I know that many Americans unfortunately do not venture outside of the comfort of their own groups for worship, the only understanding some will have of who we are is based largely on sound bites and media portrayals. I want to set the record straight! I am afraid that once again our churches will be victimized by stereotypical ideas and opinions that are based in whole or in part by the extreme and not the norm. The church I have read about in the media -- a church filled with divisiveness, a lack of tolerance for other ethnic groups, a church not focused on helping the downtrodden and less fortunate, a church filled with hostility -- does not remotely resemble the churches that I grew up around and have loved for more than 50 years. Most, if not all, predominantly African-American church doors are open to all, not just to blacks, but to anyone who is seeking a spiritual home, guidance, support, direction, faith and a feeding of the soul in the purest sense. Many of us have worked with other organizations, different cultures and denominations believing that there is more to unite us than there is to divide us. The African-American church I know is filled with programs designed to address the many ills that inflict our society: HIV/AIDS, homelessness, reducing the rate of recidivism, assisting with employment and job training, economic development and financial management classes, home buying seminars, food banks to feed the hungry, schools to educate and an active plan to guide our youth. Those outreaches have been colorblind, passionate depictions of Christ's love for all humanity! The predominantly African-American church may be founded by an African American, it may be led on Sunday by an African American, but as you look through the crowd of these beacons of hope and faith, you will see an increasing audience that is much more reflective of our world than many would have you to believe. White, black, Hispanic, Asian -- nationalities from all across the world come together -- some to visit our churches, to enjoy our music and ministers and still others are gradually starting to join our churches. Gradually race fades into the fabric of faith and becomes less central to the overarching core of human needs in general. Is it a perfect union? Of course not. Is there work to do? Absolutely! But the core message is not one that enrages, but one that encourages people to change and grow, and any other depiction is distorted and inaccurate. The Potter's House, though largely African-American, is composed of 20 different nationalities and growing in diversity. It is designed much the same way Sen. BarackObama has built his campaign: on a strong commitment to reconciliation, the admonition for unity and strong desire for the continuation of diversity instead of exclusion. While I have not endorsed any candidate, who can ignore the hunger of Americans for change? No matter who your political choice may be, it is hard to remain ambivalent to the tone that Obama sounded, igniting a national response from people of all walks of life, crowding into stadiums openly weeping -- like they were in church -- at the very idea of a nation that reflects the best of our ideals; not the divisive ranting and bickering that may drive up ratings but threaten the cannibalization of our dreams and the demolition of our hopes. As a child, I grew up in a neighborhood back in West Virginia where blacks and whites helped each other in times of need and despair. Now that I am in Dallas, Texas, I have seen our city struggle to its feet in times of dire desperation. I was there when the buses came in to the Reunion Arena in Dallas loaded with mostly people of color who were hungry, weak and tired, and needing human dignity. They were unloaded -- covered with the stench of the atrocities of the superdome in New Orleans. I saw blacks, whites and Hispanics driving up with bags of clothes and food and crying together, trying to accommodate whomever they could, wherever they could. This is the America I want my grandson to grow up in. I am wondering who will get the message that our nation's citizens are by and large looking for a voice that will unite us, clothe our naked, feed the poor and help our diminishing middle class before we self-destruct like many great empires of the past. Who cares what color they are, what banner they fly, what gender they are, or how they pronounce their names? This is a defining moment in our history, and we are about to destroy greatness with petty self- aggrandizing egotism! I implore you to not take the words of a few and depict the thoughts, hearts and motives of many. At the end of the day, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proved with his nonviolent approach that hate-filled words will not liberate anyone. To be sure, there is still work to do to defeat racism and to attain justice in our country for all. We continue to need someone who will hold us accountable to our best practices and not our worst. But there is no liberation without love, no prosperity without philanthropy and no hope if the church becomes immersed in the quagmire of pettiness. As an American I plead with you that we are running out of time. It is critical that we dislodge ourselves from political distractions. We must return to the task of looking for the right man or woman who can answer the bloodcurdling cry of a nation that is in search of a leader with a courageous effective plan for the war in Iraq, and the medical, moral, economic and security issues that are being ignored by these distractions. If we do not, we will have done a terrible disservice to our coming generations. The Bible said that while good men slept, evil ones came and planted tare, a noxious weed, among the wheat! The tare of a hate-filled church image is a tactical distraction planted to divert our attention from choosing our next president. Let's get back to listening for leadership strategies from our best and brightest before there is no country left to lead. My hope is that the church remains a vibrant part of our process, sounding the alarm that warns: America, please wake up out of our sleep! E-mail to a friend .

Answer: Bishop T.D. Jakes says African-American churches have been portrayed negatively .
Hate-filled church image is distraction from task of choosing president, he says .
Minister: Sen. Barack Obama's campaign built on a strong commitment to unity .
Jakes says the church and faith is colorblind .


Question: (CNN)Everybody on the planet knows that Gene Roddenberry created Mr. Spock, the laconic, imperturbable extra-terrestrial First Officer for the Starship Enterprise. But Mr. Spock doesn't belong to Roddenberry, even though he is the grand exalted progenitor of everything that was, is, and forever will be "Star Trek." Mr. Spock belongs to Leonard Nimoy, who died Friday at age 83. And though he doesn't take Spock with him, he and Spock remain inseparable. Zachary Quinto, who plays Spock in the re-booted feature film incarnation of "Trek," is excellent in the role. (Nimoy himself said so.) Quinto must know that however much he brings to the role, he will only be its custodian. Spock is Nimoy. Nimoy is Spock. It is, as Spock himself would intone, only logical. Nimoy often insisted otherwise, especially as the show went from canceled outcast to global phenomenon. He even wrote a book with the title, "I Am Not Spock" (1977) that was bought by millions of readers who didn't buy the title for a nanosecond. By 1995, he cried "uncle" by publishing a followup autobiography, "I Am Spock." In the years before and since, he carried his character's legacy with the grace and class he exhibited in other areas of his life. And the life of Leonard Nimoy, irrespective of Spock, was a rich and varied feast. Those two "Spock" books weren't the only things he'd published. A couple of books of poetry are also credited to him as were a collection of photographs celebrating what he termed "the feminine aspect of God." Which reminds me. Nimoy had a hand, so to speak, in creating one of Spock's most indelible traits: The "live-long-and-prosper" split-finger salute that Nimoy had borrowed from an approximation of the Hebrew letter shin, the first letter in the word Shaddai, one of the Hebrew names for God. Roddenberry didn't think of that. Nimoy did. And in doing so made an implausible character as much a part of our waking dreams as members of our own family. He also directed movies, two of which were part of the "Trek" franchise: 1984's "The Search for Spock" and 1986's "The Voyage Home." I got to meet him when the latter film opened. It was at a press conference that was part of the promotional junket in Los Angeles and Nimoy was very un-Spock-like in his jocular, freewheeling enthusiasm for the movie (which was, in fact, one of the very best, certainly the warmest, of the big-screen "Trek" iterations.) He could not stop smiling, not even when one of the reporters asked him about a scene in the film that catches Spock in an impromptu grin. (It vanished once the movie opened in theaters.) He looked like a man who knew he was going to soon have a lot more money than he'd had a week, or a day before -- though anyone with a brain knew he wasn't going to squander any of it on trivial things. He was Nimoy and he was Spock. And they were serious men with serious thoughts. Still, it was always nice to know Nimoy could smile, even if Spock couldn't.

Answer: Gene Seymour: Gene Roddenberry may have created "Star Trek," but Leonard Nimoy and character of Spock are inseparable .
He says Nimoy had many other artistic endeavors, photography, directing, poetry, but he was, in the end, Spock .


Question: WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said Sunday she won't vote for any more money to support the four-year-old war in Iraq without a plan to start bringing U.S. troops home. Presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton greets people before speaking in Washington on September 17. "I've reached the conclusion that the best way to support our troops is begin bringing them home," the New York senator and former first lady told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." "I don't believe we should continue to vote for funding that has an open-ended commitment, that has no pressure on the Iraqi government to make the tough political decisions they have to make, or which really gives any urgency to the Bush administration's diplomatic efforts." Clinton's declaration comes as the Senate debates the Defense Department's 2008 spending authorization bill. It follows her vote against a $120 billion war-spending bill in May, when Congress dropped a call for the withdrawal of American combat troops by March 2008 after President Bush vetoed a bill containing that provision. "The president has no intention of changing his policy in Iraq," she said. "He's now talking about leaving it to his successor." Meanwhile, the Senate's Republican minority routinely filibusters Democratic proposals to wind down the war, which is costing the Treasury about $10 billion a month and has claimed the lives of nearly 3,800 American troops. May's spending bill made continued U.S. support contingent on a set of benchmarks for Iraq's government. But the Iraqis met only 11 of the 18 benchmarks, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. "Even those who are implementing this policy of the president's cannot tell us it will make America more safe, nor that it will lead to the kind of political decision-making that we have to expect from the Iraqis themselves," Clinton said. Nearly two-thirds of the American public now opposes the war, according to a CNN-Opinion Research poll conducted in early September. Clinton said, if elected president, she would end the conflict "as quickly and responsibly as I can," but said some U.S. forces would likely remain as trainers, to protect Americans and to battle Islamic militants loyal to al Qaeda. The two-term senator, who leads her Democratic presidential rivals by a double-digit margin in national polls, made the rounds of all five Washington talk shows Sunday. Last week, Clinton supported two amendments that would have forced the Pentagon to begin a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. But she said Sunday that even if Democrats muster enough Republican support to break a filibuster -- something they have been unable to do -- Democrats would still be unlikely to get the two-thirds vote needed to override a presidential veto. "The answer for this is, let's elect more Democrats in 2008," she said. "That will help solve the problem." E-mail to a friend .

Answer:
Clinton on CNN: Best way to support troops is to begin bringing them home .
Polls suggest Clinton is the leading presidential candidate among Democrats .
She says administration policy doesn't put enough pressure on Iraqi leaders .
If elected, Clinton says, she would end the war as "responsibly" as she can .


