The letterhead on correspondence still bears the Bexar County Legal Aid name, even though the organization is no longer. Texas Rural Legal Aid - known for its fearless and sometimes controversial advocacy of the poorest of the poor - last week took over four other corporations serving the legal needs of the indigent in Southwest Texas, including the one in Bexar County. The new 68-county legal aid organization has yet to be named and stretches from El Paso to Corpus Christi, Harlingen to Austin. The leader for the super-sized law firm has big plans. "I'm more interested in looking at what we as advocates can do to address the serious problems of poverty than the number of cases we close," said David Hall, the TRLA executive director. In the Rio Grande Valley, Hall's attorneys set up separate groups to assist small-business owners and residents with low-interest loans and legal representation. They also operate a legal arm that assists migrant workers from Texas to Kentucky. Now, Hall said, he wants to make services to the poor more efficient by working with law students who will handle less complicated legal matters, allowing licensed attorneys to take more "high impact" cases to court. "What we need to do is handle cases as efficiently as we can, leveraging the amount of time of the lawyer that goes in there and maximizing the number of people that they can help at one time," Hall said. His plan is to place the 110 attorneys on staff in teams working on specialized legal issues. He wants to expand the law clinic it already has with St. Mary's University Law School to involve students at the University of Texas Law School. The law students at St. Mary's interview potential clients, assist them with filling out legal documents and answer the telephones for the legal hotline, freeing up TRLA lawyers to handle the complicated cases, Hall said. By the end of September, Hall said all the attorneys working with the poor in the 68county area will be placed on the same computer network so they can pass cases to the best available attorneys. Last year, board members on the former Legal Aid of Central Texas and Bexar County Legal Aid resisted the merger, saying that the mergers were done illegally and without the input of board members. They also argued that Hall's litigious style hampered their ability to garner funds from Congress. TRLA generated controversy in 1996, when its attorneys challenged the rights of 800 military personnel to vote in Val Verde County elections by absentee ballot after a former Ku Klux Klan member won a county commissioner post. Brendan Gill, the former executive director of the Bexar County group, said he has since come to see the merger as a positive move for South Texas. "I always knew there were good points to merging, just as I knew that there were bad points," Gill said. 

Question: "What is the first name of the director whose attorneys set up separate groups to assist small-business owners and residents with low-interest loans in the Rio Grande Valley?"

Response: "Gill"
OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

A: no


While this process moved along, diplomacy continued its rounds. Direct pressure on the Taliban had proved unsuccessful. As one NSC staff note put it, "Under the Taliban, Afghanistan is not so much a state sponsor of terrorism as it is a state sponsored by terrorists." In early 2000, the United States began a high-level effort to persuade Pakistan to use its influence over the Taliban. In January 2000, Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth and the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Michael Sheehan, met with General Musharraf in Islamabad, dangling before him the possibility of a presidential visit in March as a reward for Pakistani cooperation. Such a visit was coveted by Musharraf, partly as a sign of his government's legitimacy. He told the two envoys that he would meet with Mullah Omar and press him on  Bin Laden. They left, however, reporting to Washington that Pakistan was unlikely in fact to do anything," given what it sees as the benefits of Taliban control of Afghanistan." President Clinton was scheduled to travel to India. The State Department felt that he should not visit India without also visiting Pakistan. The Secret Service and the CIA, however, warned in the strongest terms that visiting Pakistan would risk the President's life. Counterterrorism officials also argued that Pakistan had not done enough to merit a presidential visit. But President Clinton insisted on including Pakistan in the itinerary for his trip to South Asia. His one-day stopover on March 25, 2000, was the first time a U.S. president had been there since 1969. At his meeting with Musharraf and others, President Clinton concentrated on tensions between Pakistan and India and the dangers of nuclear proliferation, but also discussed  Bin Laden. President Clinton told us that when he pulled Musharraf aside for a brief, one-on-one meeting, he pleaded with the general for help regarding  Bin Laden." I offered him the moon when I went to see him, in terms of better relations with the United States, if he'd help us get  Bin Laden and deal with another issue or two." The U.S. effort continued. 

Question: "Who did The State Department feel should visit both India and Pakistan?"

Response: "God and the president"
OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

A: no


Honours and legacy In 1929, Soviet writer Leonid Grossman published a novel The d'Archiac Papers, telling the story of Pushkin's death from the perspective of a French diplomat, being a participant and a witness of the fatal duel. The book describes him as a liberal and a victim of the Tsarist regime. In Poland the book was published under the title Death of the Poet. In 1937, the town of Tsarskoye Selo was renamed Pushkin in his honour. There are several museums in Russia dedicated to Pushkin, including two in Moscow, one in Saint Petersburg, and a large complex in Mikhaylovskoye. Pushkin's death was portrayed in the 2006 biographical film Pushkin: The Last Duel. The film was directed by Natalya Bondarchuk. Pushkin was portrayed onscreen by Sergei Bezrukov. The Pushkin Trust was established in 1987 by the Duchess of Abercorn to commemorate the creative legacy and spirit of her ancestor and to release the creativity and imagination of the children of Ireland by providing them with opportunities to communicate their thoughts, feelings and experiences. A minor planet, 2208 Pushkin, discovered in 1977 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh, is named after him. A crater on Mercury is also named in his honour. MS Alexandr Pushkin, second ship of the Russian Ivan Franko class (also referred to as "poet" or "writer" class). Station of Tashkent metro was named in his honour. The Pushkin Hills and Pushkin Lake were named in his honour in Ben Nevis Township, Cochrane District, in Ontario, Canada. UN Russian Language Day, established by the United Nations in 2010 and celebrated each year on 6 June, was scheduled to coincide with Pushkin's birthday. 

Question: "What are two countries other than Russia in which Pushkin has been honored in some way?"

Response: "Poland"
OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

A:
yes