prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What is the sticking point in the political showdown over the budget?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 1: CNN com - Transcripts
Tensions Boil Over possible government shutdown; New trouble targeting Gadhafi; Libyan Rebels in Panicked Retreat; Should U S  Recognize the Rebels?; Meeting With Gadhafi; Washington, D C  to Feel Burden of Shutdown; Religious Leaders Fast to Protests Cuts for Poor
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Don, thanks very much 
Happening now, the top U S  general in charge of the military mission in Libya now expressing doubts that the opposition has the manpower to topple Moammar Gadhafi, as deadly new air strikes force rebel fighters into another retreat  This hour, I'll speak with a former Republican Congressman who's in Tripoli right now trying to get Gadhafi to step down 
Also, growing outrage across the United States, amidst new signs tomorrow's potential government shutdown may -- repeat may be unavoidable  Why one lawmaker is telling Congress -- and I'm quoting right now -- "go straight to hell "
And possible presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, on a mission to tell President Obama, "you're fired " We're fact checking his controversial investigation into the president's birth 
Up first, the political showdown over the budget, as tensions reach a boiling point about 31 hours until impending government shutdown  Just hours from now, President Obama will meet with Republican House speaker, John Boehner, and the Democratic Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, for further negotiations  Those talks scheduled to begin 7:00 p m  Eastern 
Hundreds of thousands of people across the country will be impacted by the shutdown  And we'll be bringing you examples throughout the next two hours 
One place it would be felt heavily is right here in Congress' backyard, the city of Washington  Washington, DC -- its spending is tied to the federal budget  And this major metropolitan area could lose millions of dollars while a number of critical services, like trash collection, for example, would be suspended for at least a week 
Today, an enraged Eleanor Holmes, the delegate representing Washington, DC, lit into Congress over the stalemate 
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON (D), D C  DELEGATE: It's one thing to beat up on the District of Columbia  It's another thing drop a bomb on the city  And that's what this Congressional -- C R  does  It takes the route of authoritarian governments and dictatorships by dictating to a local government how it may spend its local funds  And it may force the District of Columbia government to shut down, although our government had a balanced budget 
BLITZER: And get this -- the members of Congress charged with reaching a deal, they'll still be receiving a paycheck if there's a shutdown, despite the hundreds of thousands of government employees who won't be receiving any paychecks  The current Congressional salary, by the way, $174,000 a year 
Our CNN senior Congressional correspondent, Dana Bash, is up on Capitol Hill with the latest developments -- Dana, specifically, where are the sticking points right now?
DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT:
Well, look, Wolf, this is effectively a bill to fund the government  And the sticking points certainly are about how much spending to cut  That's what this whole issue has been about 
However -- however, one of the main issues, I am told, that were just -- that was discussed at the White House meeting this afternoon with the president, the House speaker and the Senate majority leader, was over not necessarily spending measures, but over lightning rod issues like regulating greenhouse gases and abortion 
BASH (voice-over): One of the biggest disagreements is not over government spending, but policy 
REP  JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Some 40 or 50 policy restrictions that were attached to -- to our bill 
BASH: So-called policy riders Republicans call essential and Democrats call nonstarters  The most divisive is over abortion  A GOP plan to cut all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion procedures in addition other women's health services 
SEN  HARRY REID (D-NV), MAJORITY LEADER: This is a budget  This is to keep our country running  This is not a woman's health bill 
BASH: Planned Parenthood staged a rally outside the Capitol to protest 
CECILE RICHARDS, CEO, PLANNED PARENTHOOD: They don't want to allow Planned Parenthood to serve the three million women that we see every single year  Ninety-seven percent of the services Planned Parenthood provides are preventive care 
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I certainly don't think that taxpayers should subsidize abortions  It's -- if a woman chooses to have an abortion, it's legal to do that in this country  But I don't think taxpayers should be put in a position to have to pay for those abortions 
BASH: Another major sticking point -- how much spending to cut  A Democratic source tells CNN they have finally tentative agreement on slashing $34 5 billion from the rest of this year's budget  But a Republican source says there's no deal 
BOEHNER: There is no agreement on the number  There are no agreement on the policy issues that are contained with it 
BASH: Then there's the critical issue of what programs and agencies to cut  Democrats say they're trying to find spending cuts with the least impact on those who need it most  So they're pushing for things like temporary one year cuts in programs  Some examples, cuts in wetlands protection and Pell grants for summer school and graduate students 
Republicans call that smoke and mirrors 
BOEHNER: And our goal is to make real spending cuts 
BASH: Some examples of what Republicans want to cut -- money for food inspectors, Head Start education programs and funding for housing 
BASH: This afternoon, House Republicans did pass a bill to keep the government running for one week past tomorrow's midnight deadline  It has $12 billion in cuts  It would fund the Defense Department for the rest of the year  But Democrats, including the president of the United States, call it a distraction and they say that they really want to keep the focus on what they're negotiating, which is a bill that would keep the government open -- keep the government functioning and funded for the rest of the year 
BLITZER: And the president's playing hardball  He's saying he'll veto that legislation --
BASH: He was, yes 
BLITZER: -- if it were to pass the Senate and come to his desk  I hear, Dana, that some employees already are getting furloughing notices 
BASH: It's true  This is just preventive  But all across the Capitol here today, people in offices and -- and -- well, really, everywhere -- were told whether or not, if, in fact, it does come to a government shutdown, if they're going to be here or not  And this is an example  We obtained one of the furlough notices  And I'll just read you a line  This -- imagine if this came across your desk  It says: "Because your services are not needed for the orderly suspension of operations and you're not engaged in one of the accepted functions, you're being placed on furlough effective Saturday, April 9, 2011 "
Now, again, of course, this is just protective  The government is still open  But interesting that they're already getting ready for a government shutdown and telling people who will come to work and not 
One more note  Even people who are here, who are called essential, they're not going to get paid, either 
BLITZER: All right, Dana 
Don't go too far away 
We'll be in close touch 
The impact of the potential government shutdown is even being felt on the front lines of combat in Afghanistan  And Iraq  The Defense secretary, Robert Gates, is in Iraq right now  And he's telling U S  troops they will feel a pinch 
ROBERT GATES, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I hope they didn't have you standing out here in the sun too long
If -- if the government shutdown starts on the 8th and goes for a week, you'd get a half a check  If it goes from the 15th to the 30th, you wouldn't get a paycheck on the 30th but you would be back paid for all of it  So that's -- that's the deal 
BLITZER: Not great deal 
Gates also told the troops this would likely be his last trip to the country as Defense secretary and he wanted to say thank you 
He's expected to retire later this year 
Now to the deadly stalemate in Libya  New signs the military operation in the region is facing some tough new challenges 
Our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr is here 
She's watching the story 
She's got more 
What are you learning? BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, there was very dramatic, very hard-nosed testimony today on Capitol Hill from the top U S  commander responsible for the U S  involvement in Libya, saying that Gadhafi forces are becoming increasingly difficult to target, as they are using civilian vehicles, mixing in with local populations, moving next to mosques, schools, hospitals -- all the same tactics we saw for years in Iraq 
And now, all of this today leading to a very dramatic exchange between General Carter Ham and one of the most vocal administration critics, Senator John McCain 
SEN  JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Hearing your testimony, General Ham, is almost an Orwellian experience for me  The fact is that if we had imposed the no-fly zone three weeks, four weeks ago, Gadhafi would not be in power today 
The fact is that the situation on the ground is basically a stalemate 
Would you say that the situation on the ground is a stalemate or an emerging stalemate?
GEN  CARTER HAM, COMMANDER, U S  AFRICA COMMAND: Senator, I -- I would agree with that if present on the ground 
MCCAIN: So the goal -- our policy objective of the removal of Gadhafi is further from being achieved than it was three or four weeks ago 
HAM: Senator, I -- I don't know that I would agree with that  What I -- because that, again, was not a military mission  The military mission of protecting, I think, was not wholly achieved, but achieved in large part 
STARR: General Ham also acknowledging another problem -- a key U S  aircraft, the AC-130, that flies low and slow to target on the ground, is facing what he called "a significant threat" from surface to air missiles, which he said remain effective and operational in some cases 
And, Wolf, get this  General Ham says there were about 20,000 of those surface to air missiles when the campaign started and they are concerned that an awful lot of them are still out there -- Wolf 
BLITZER: Barbara, thanks very much for that report 
Panicked rebels are once again on the retreat from Gadhafi's forces  Just today, at least three people were killed, another 10 injured, in new air strikes  And there are mounting questions about whether NATO could be responsible for the attack 
Our senior international correspondent, Ben Wedeman, is joining us now from Benghazi 
Ben's watching all of this closely 
You just heard General Ham, who is the commander of the U S  military's Africa Command  He was in charge of the mission before handing over complete control to NATO  You just heard him say there could be a stalemate out there 
What's the sense on the ground?
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the sense was a few days ago that it was, indeed, a stalemate -- sort of a seesaw battle that went back and forth between Ajdabiya and Brega 
But what we saw today was that that seesaw was tipped over  And it was a general retreat by the opposition forces from somewhere near Brega to almost the other side of Ajdabiya  This, after this air strike, which almost everybody on the ground believes to be NATO leaving not three, but four people dead  And many others are still unaccounted for 
That set off this general retreat whereby we saw all their heavy -- all of the opposition forces' heavy equipment -- multiple rocket launchers, tens and tens of these pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns streaming through Ajdabiya to the other side, the far side of the city  Some of them going all the way back to Benghazi, according to the head of the rebel forces in the eastern part of the country, Abdul Fatah Younis  He says that the Gadhafi forces were approaching Ajdabiya from three different directions 
I would not call that a stalemate -- Wolf 
BLITZER: Ben, you got a close-up look at some of the casualties today out on the front lines 
WEDEMAN: It's very bad, very bad  I mean it wasn't just fighters  It was also medics who had gone to the scene of this reported air strike, which then got hit again  So one of them was a doctor, one of them was a medic  And we were in the hospital  And there was real anger at NATO, anger at the fact that when they needed those air strikes on the Gadhafi forces, they weren't getting them  And now, for the second time in a week, there's been another strike  Now, of course, we must stress that NATO says that they -- because they don't have enough boots on the ground, they can neither confirm nor deny this was a NATO strike  But certainly, speaking to eyewitnesses in the hospital, it certainly sounded like an air strike  And there are no other planes in the skies of Libya other than NATO planes -- Wolf 
BLITZER: Ben Wedeman in Benghazi for us 
The U S  says Moammar Gadhafi is no longer the legitimate leader of Libya 
So why not recognize the rebels?
Why one U S  official says it raises serious concerns 
And a former U S  Congressman in Libya armed with a message for the Libyan dictator 
Will he get to meet with him face-to-face?
My interview with Curt Weldon, that Republican former Congressman -- that's coming up, as well 
BLITZER: Let's get right to Jack 
He's got some nuclear concerns on his mind with The Cafferty File -- Jack 
JACK CAFFERTY, THE CAFFERTY FILE: Well, they had another little temblor in Japan -- a 7 1 magnitude earthquake hit Northeastern Japan today, the strongest aftershock since that massive 9 0 quake and tsunami that followed devastated that nation four weeks ago  And this one today was in roughly the same area 
One of the big concerns, of course, is possible further damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant  The Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO, which operates the plant -- or what's left of it -- said there were no serious incidents as a result of today's aftershock 
So they say  Radioactivity from that plant has poisoned the surrounding land, air and ocean  Millions of people have been exposed  Millions more could be, as radioactivity has been picked up in food and drinking water and detected in faraway places, like California 
This week, workers plugged a crack in the plant that had been gushing contaminated water into the ocean for weeks  As a result, TEPCO says now radiation levels in the ocean waters off the coast there have dropped dramatically 
Yesterday, the head of the United Nations' scientific committee on the effects of atomic radiation said the Fukushima accident is not expected to have any serious impact on the health of the Japanese people  He said, quote: "We have seen traces of iodine in the air all over the world, but they are much, much, much lower than traces we have seen at similar distances following Chernobyl," unquote 
Well, not everybody is convinced  In South Korea, more than 130 primary schools and kindergartens ordered closed today outside of Seoul  People there were worried that windy, rainy weather could be carrying radioactive material from Japan 
North Korea aired warnings on television for its people to stay indoors during that rain storm and to take a full shower if they were caught outside in the storm 
Even here in the United States, some chefs are now using sensors to test levels of radiation in the fish they plan to serve in restaurants 
Here's the question -- do you think you're being told the truth about the nuclear accident in Japan?
If your -- if your trout is he glowing, Wolf --
BLITZER: Yes?
CAFFERTY: -- you might want to send it back and get a ham sandwich 
BLITZER: You want it well done, but not necessarily that well done 
CAFFERTY: No 
BLITZER: All right, Jack 
Not a laughing matter 
BLITZER: Serious stuff 
CAFFERTY: Right 
BLITZER: See you in a few moments 
New questions this hour about the capabilities of the rebels in Libya and whether they have the power to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi 
Should the United States -- should the United States have a hand in helping arm the rebels?
Let's bring in our foreign affairs correspondent, Jill Dougherty, with this part of the story 
What are you hearing over at the State Department -- Jill  JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Wolf, other countries have done it, other countries like France and Italy have done it -- recognizing the opposition  And supporters say now, with the rebels in retreat, the U S  shouldn't wait 
But what would it really change anything?
DOUGHERTY (voice-over): The U S  says Moammar Gadhafi is no longer the legitimate leader of Libya 
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is full of praise for them 
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: These were not soldiers  These were not trained military forces  They were doctors and lawyers and university professors and economists and, you know, young men who were students  And they are being attacked by mercenaries, by ruthless forces that Gadhafi is utilizing to show no mercy against his people  And they are courageous  They are moving as fast as they can to try to form themselves into a military operation 
DOUGHERTY: Clinton has met with the rebel leaders personally, but the administration still is cautious  The president authorized the CIA to send in agents to learn about the rebels and assess their needs  Clinton's special representative, the State Department's Christopher Stevens, seen here in 2008 in Tripoli, is on the ground in Benghazi, scoping them out 
MARK TONER, U S  STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: We sent somebody in to get that kind of on the ground assessment of the -- of -- of their identity, of their leadership structure, to talk with them firsthand and to see what direction we think they're moving in  We've seen some positive signals 
DOUGHERTY: Recognizing the rebels, a senior official tells CNN, raises serious issues  It would acknowledge that Libya is now a divided country 
And could the U S  be sure the group represents the whole opposition movement?
It's a bit early, this official says  Maybe they turn out not to be the right folks 
But Secretary Clinton knows the timing is urgent 
CLINTON: What NATO is doing is buying time, buying space 
DOUGHERTY: So far, the U S  is providing what's called non- lethal humanitarian aid  The administration hasn't yet decided to arm them or provide financial assistance 
DOUGHERTY: But a senior U S  official tells CNN there's a lot the United States could be doing right now without going so far as to recognize the rebels, pointing out that the U S  funds political groups and other organizations around the world  But this official says you want to be careful about who they are 
So, so far, caution seems to be winning out over urgency -- Wolf 
Jill is at the State Department 
The House speaker, John Boehner, may be doing double duty if the government shuts down this weekend  You're going to find out why he could be cleaning up a lot of trash in his own backyard 
And a former U S  Congressman now on a mission to meet with Moammar Gadhafi in Tripoli in person  Curt Weldon, he's here  He'll join us in THE SITUATION ROOM from Tripoli  You're going to find out who he says would be a good replacement for the embattled Libyan leader 
BLITZER: Military leaders have a message for Congress about "don't ask/don't tell "
Well, military leaders say preparations for repealing "don't ask/don't tell" are going better than they expected  They testified before a House committee today about getting rid of the policy that bars openly gay service members  They caution, though, that it will take time and training to implement the repeal  And it must still be certified by President Obama, the Defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
Well, your Smartphone just got a little smarter  The FCC is requiring that wireless carriers provide access to the mobile Internet anywhere it's available, even when it's offered by a competing provider  And that could be a huge -- make a huge difference to smaller carriers, who told the FCC they just can't compete otherwise against industry heavyweights like Verizon and AT&T 
New York City school chancellor, Cathie Black, is stepping down after only three months on the job  Mayor Michael Bloomberg says her short stint just didn't work out as either of them had expected or hoped  Her approval rating has plunged to 17 percent 
Black chaired "First" magazine before overseeing the nation's largest school system  Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott will replace her 
And a war of words is erupting between an emerging Republican star, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and his state's largest teachers' union  In a network TV interview, Christie called the union leaders, quote, "political thugs " He blames them for teacher lay-offs that he says could have been avoided if they had not opposed salary freezes  The New Jersey Education Association is firing back, accusing Christie of name-calling -- Wolf 
BLITZER: Sticks and stones will break many bones 
SYLVESTER: Sticks and stones may break my bones --
SYLVESTER: But words never hurt me 
A former U S  Congressman is in Tripoli, Libya right now  His goal -- to talk to Moammar Gadhafi  His message -- we'll talk about that  My interview with Curt Weldon coming up next 
Plus, we showed it to you earlier -- a member of Congress telling colleagues to, quote, "go to hell "
Now she's is joining us live here in THE SITUATION ROOM to explain 
HOLMES NORTON: -- of Columbia  It's another thing to drop a bomb on a city  And that's what this --
BLITZER: Former Congressman Curt Weldon is in a -- Weldon is on a mission to Libya right now to try to meet with the embattled leader, Moammar Gadhafi  But that may be easier said than done 
Joining us now from Tripoli, former Republican Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania  Congressman, thanks very much for coming in 
And joining us now from Tripoli, former Republican Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania 
CURT WELDON, FORMER U S  CONGRESSMAN: My pleasure, Wolf 
BLITZER: Let's talk about your meeting with Moammar Gadhafi  I take it it has not yet happened 
Do you expect to meet with the Libyan leader? WELDON: Absolutely  The invitation that was sent to me was from his chief of staff, Bashir Salah, who I've met on all three of my official visits here in 2004 and 2005  And the letter specifically says we want you to come over and meet with the leader and our senior leadership 
And I said it's worth me coming over to support the administration and to try to let the leader know face to face that this is facing -- it's very grave timing in the situation and they have to have some movement fairly quickly or they're not going to be happy with the -- with the alternatives 
BLITZER: What's taking so long?
Why haven't you been able to meet with Gadhafi yet?
WELDON: Well, it -- that's not unusual  I mean all three of the delegation trips that I led here in 2003 and 2004 -- or, actually, 2004 and 2005 -- they always make you wait until 30 minutes before the meeting and then you go  And some of those meetings were at 10:00 at night, some were at 5:00 in the afternoon 
As you know from the excellent reporting being done by your folks here, there's a lot of security concerns, and they are very concerned where Gadhafi is at any given moment  That's one of the issues, but we have been making ourselves available 
We have been doing a lot of back-channel meetings with friends and associates that I have here, and we have met with the chief of staff and one of the sons, and today with the prime minister, a very lengthy meeting for two hours  So, we're going to give them until tomorrow  We're not going to stay beyond that  And we have given them some suggestions, and we expect a response by midday tomorrow  And if we don't, we will done exit conversation with your people and let you know our feelings 
BLITZER: What's the major headline that you got out of these meetings with other leaders? I take it you met with Saif Al-Islam Gadhafi, one of the sons of Moammar Gadhafi  What are they saying to you?
WELDON: Well, we actually didn't meet with Saif  I have met with Saif probably 10 times over the past seven years, both in America and here in Libya  I have not yet met with Saif  I have offered, if he is available 
I have met with Saadi  And the general thrust is obviously that they want peace and they want to find a way out of this  But as I have explained to them, there's certain things that have to be done according to our president and our secretary of state, who I'm here to support 
We don't have a different agenda  There's no compromise on our part  Our only mission here is to talk face to face with them and say this is reality and this is a grave situation, and you need to do certain things that we suggest that we think will get our administration to respond to your actions  And again, we're not doing any negotiating 
They know me, they have seen my efforts  I have not taken anything from their country in the way of financial benefits, and I'm here only because I want to avoid war  I don't want to see American soldiers killed, and I don't want to see more innocence Libyans killed 
BLITZER: You wrote an op-ed in "The New York Times" this week saying that once you meet face to face with Moammar Gadhafi, you will tell him to step down  Is that still your intention?
WELDON: Absolutely, Wolf  I wrote the op-ed before the trip was planned  And I wrote it, Wolf, because back in 2004, when I led the first delegation of Americans to sit down with him in the tent in Tripoli, he said to me, "Congressman, why did it take 30 years for someone from your country to come and sit with me and tell me to my face that you believe that I'm a criminal and a terrorist  And then if you didn't believe me, bomb me?"
And I said, "Leader, I can't explain that " So I said now it's time for someone to sit in a tent face to face with Colonel Gadhafi and let him know how grave this situation is 
And I'm willing to do that  And I think I'm probably the best person because I have met with him three times, and because I sat in that tent in 2004 and listened to him tell me that  So, in effect, that's why I'm here 
BLITZER: You wrote also in "The New York Times" this -- you wrote, "Colonel Gadhafi's son, Saif, a powerful businessman, a politician, could play a constructive role as a member of the committee to devise a new government structure or constitution "
You know, a lot of people, including the opposition, the rebels, as they're called, they think Saif Al-Islam Gadhafi is just as much a killer or thug as his father is, and they say they have no interest in dealing with him either 
What do you say to that criticism?
WELDON: Well, what I said, I'm not endorsing anything anyone for any office here  What I am hoping for is what the president wants, which is a free and fair election to take place, hopefully sooner rather than later 
But having been involved with Libya for seven years, I was a witness to the work that Saif did in the Lockerbie case, the La Bella nightclub bombing  I personally witnessed through the Gadhafi Foundation the work that Saif did to free up the Bulgarian nurses who were sentenced to death twice, along with a Palestinian doctor 
I have seen the work that Saif and Dr  Salani (ph) at the foundation have done in dealing with chemical weapons destruction and with the elimination of landmines and humanitarian efforts worldwide  I have been out to (INAUDIBLE), the chemical weapons plant, and I have actually seen visibly how they have removed the chemical weapons production materials  He was behind all of that 
Believe me, Wolf, I'm not happy with some of the statements and the actions that he's made over the past month, and he knows I'm not happy  But I think in a fair election, up until now, he should be given the opportunity to seek office where he can run against other candidates, perhaps, for the presidency  And so I would at this time think that he should be allowed that opportunity 
That's not to say I condone anything that he said or his actions  He will have to be accountable for those on his own 
BLITZER: Because you make him sound like he's a decent guy when so many people think he is a killer, a murderer, especially given the statements that he recently made, that if he goes into Benghazi, if he finds these rebels, he will go and kill them all  You make it sound like he's a decent guy 
WELDON: Well, I -- you know, I haven't been with him on a continual basis  I have met with him a number of times, both in the U S  and here, under some very stressful situations, especially when it came to resolving the Lockerbie case and the La Bella nightclub  And despite what Sarkozy said about resolving the issues of the Bulgarian nurses when they were sentenced to death twice, it was Saif who played a very critical role against some very powerful forces in this country that wanted to kill those people 
You know, I don't know of any incidences where I, first hand, have seen evidence of him committing human rights violations, and if he did, he has to be held accountable like everyone else  And I have said that publicly and I will say that privately 
So my judgment is just based upon my experience with him, the fact that he is a knowledgeable person, he understands the need to interact and interface with the West  I think he could be a viable candidate  But ultimately, my opinion is hopefully going to be the opinion of the Libyan people 
BLITZER: Because you probably have seen all of the articles, the reports over the past month, month and a half, of mass murder, of killings, not only by Saif Al-Islam, but some of his brothers that have gone on, the atrocities that have been so widely reported  I hear what you're saying about his role over the recent years when the Bush administration, and later the Obama administration, was trying to improve relations with Libya, but over the past several weeks, based on all of the international reporting we have seen, it's been a brutal record that he has accomplished 
WELDON: Well, again, I don't have firsthand evidence of that  I just got here two days ago  And I fully support an international tribunal to look at human rights violations on everyone in this country  That's necessary  And if they find evidence that he has been involved in that, then he should suffer the consequences of his actions 
(END VIDEOTAPE) BLITZER: In our next hour, part two of the interview with former congressman Curt Weldon  There have been some questions raised about his motive  Is he in all of this for the money? You're going to find out his answer to that and more  Stand by 
Also, Washington, D C 's congressional delegate is telling colleagues -- and I'm quoting her now -- "Go to hell " She is joining us live in THE SITUATION ROOM to tell us why 
Plus, no budget deal, no food -- the extreme tens of thousands of people are going to as a government shutdown looms 
BLITZER: Let's get back to the outrage boiling over on Capitol Hill, only hours before a potential government shutdown 
Joining us now, the Democratic delegate representing the city of Washington, D C , Eleanor Holmes Norton 
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON (D), D C  DELEGATE: Of course, Wolf 
BLITZER: I think it's fair to say that Washington, D C , a city of a population of about 600,000 people, the only major metropolitan -- the only major city in the United States that's going to foal the direct impact of a federal government shutdown so dramatically, so powerfully, because it is a federal district 
Give me an example of what's going to happen if there's a government shutdown 
NORTON: Absolutely, although your viewers will be shocked by what they are about to hear 
They know a little bit about taxation without representation -- we pay our taxes, then we have full representation in the House and the Senate  But I bet they didn't know that our local budget, without a dime of federal money in it -- and we support ourselves almost entirely -- has to be sent to the masters in the Congress to sign off on it before we can spend our own local money 
Well, listen to this, Wolf  We passed our budget in -- last spring  The appropriators signed off on it last summer 
So, why are we in a federal budget fight over their money when it is our money I am talking about? I have put forward amendments that said the district can spend its own local funds 
BLITZER: What's going to happen in the District of Columbia Saturday, Sunday, Monday, if there is a government shutdown? Give me an example or two 
NORTON: I will give you some dramatic ones  How about the shutdown of the D C  government itself? Because since the final gavel hasn't fallen on all the federal appropriations, then the district government has now prepared to shut down on Saturday morning just because the federal government is shutting down 
We are at the height of the tourist season, the Cherry Blossom Festival  That has been severely curtailed because of the federal shutdown  That's going to -- three million people come here just in one month for the cherry blossoms  Our mayor has had to put out a list of agencies that will be open and a list of agencies that won't be open 
BLITZER: Trash collection -- will there be any trash collection in the District of Columbia?
NORTON: No trash collection, and some residents have started up a Facebook page that says if they close down the District of Columbia, we're carrying our trash to Speaker Boehner's House 
BLITZER: You don't support that do you?
NORTON: I do not 
NORTON: And let me just say right here, I do not  But let me tell you, I am only expressing a little of the rage that the taxpaying residents of the District of Columbia are feeling 
BLITZER: But let me ask you this, Congresswoman, because the Democrats were in control, they had a large majority in the House all of last year; in the Senate, a significant majority  They failed to pass a budget  Don't the Democrats deserve a lot of the blame for this current impasse?
NORTON: Absolutely not, because the Democrats would never have held our budget up here 
LISA BLOOM, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Why didn't they pass the budget?
NORTON: Well, that doesn't have anything to do with us  This is our local money 
All it would take is -- the Democrats in the Senate are ready to agree  The president is ready to sign an amendment --
BLITZER: But they could have done this any time last year 
NORTON: Wait a minute, Wolf  Wait a minute -- an amendment that said while we're fighting it out on the federal budget, we will let the district spend its own local funds 
So that's all I'm asking  I'm not in this fight, so don't ask me why the Democrats didn't pass the Democratic budget 
I passed -- we passed our budget  Our budget is balanced  The only issue before the Senate and the House is, can we spend our local money? It doesn't have anything to do with their budget 
They can go on from now until Timbuktu  Let us spend our money and don't close down our city because the federal government can't get its act together 
BLITZER: I'm with you there  This is an outrage, the fact that there is -- if there is going to be shutdown  I'm still hoping there won't be a shutdown, but it's --
NORTON: I think there may not be 
BLITZER: -- ridiculous when you think about it, when you think about how close they are  It would be a horrible, horrible tragedy, because 800,000 people directly are going to start losing their paychecks  And the District of Columbia, which is, as you point out correctly, taxation without representation, is going to suffer a great deal more than any other city in the United States 
Good luck, Congresswoman  Thanks very much 
NORTON: Thank you, Wolf 
BLITZER: I feel your pain 
Concerns within military families over a government shutdown  Also, why they are downright scared they won't be able to put food on the table 
And tens of thousands of people on a hunger strike, including some members of Congress  We'll explain why 
CAFFERTY: The question this hour is: Do you believe you're being told the truth about the nuclear accident in January?
Fred writes, "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth "
"Just how should a government balance our right to know the truth with the perceived need to not create a panic and thus a larger problem? Can you really evacuate a million people? To where? Yes, without the truth, how can anyone try to act reasonably?"
"In the end, we do have a right to know the truth  Honesty is the best policy "
Paul in Ohio writes, "Jack, I believe they're telling what they think they know with certainty  It is most certain that they don't know everything "
Jeremy in California, "So I'm confused  Is the current California radiation level 'harmless to human health,' 'not immediately harmful to human health,' not permanently harmful to people outside the region,' or no more than an apples-to-oranges transcontinental flight?"
Craig writes, "Perspective  In Japan, they have had yet another earthquake and have lived in fear and chaos for over a month  And yet, their government hasn't shut down  Nuclear disaster, natural disaster, absolute destruction hasn't kept their elected officials from doing their duty to the people 
"Yet, in America, we get Harry Reid, John Boehner and a White House who are more concerned with the 2012 election campaign  It's times like these when we see just how far off the mark we really are "
Louis writes, "No  Just too many things going wrong  They say that the seafood will be safe  I ask this: Do fish migrate or do they set up housekeeping in one spot and then stay there? And if so, why don't I catch fish in the same place every day?"
And Jim in Colorado, "The nuclear industry telling the truth? The unicorn, garden gnome and I were talking this over just the other day, and we all agreed it could happen  Why not?"
If you want to read more about the unicorn and the garden gnome, go to CNN com/CaffertyFile 
BLITZER: We will, for sure, Jack  Thank you  See you in a few moments 
Several sticking points in the ongoing budget negotiations, but will the government shutdown come down to money or social issues?
Plus, Donald Trump, he's making allegations about President Obama's birthplace  Does Donald Trump have any grounds for any of that? We're digging deeper for answers 
BLITZER: The growing outrage over the budget crisis isn't just about Congress' failure to reach a deal, it's also about some of the cuts that are being proposed 
Lets bring in our own Lisa Sylvester once again  She has the details -- Lisa 
Well, as congressional leaders hammer away on a budget compromise, a group of religious leaders have been fasting and praying to raise awareness of cuts in the budget that they say will harm the poor 
JIM WALLIS, PRESIDENT, SOJOURNERS: Orange juice never tasted so good 
SYLVESTER (voice-over): It's been 10 days since Jim Wallis last had solid food  The president of Sojourners, a Christian group that advocates for the underprivileged, is leading the charge among faith groups on a hunger fast to protest proposed cuts in the federal budget for the poor 
WALLIS: We're saying a budget is a moral document  And whether at your kitchen table, as a family, or a church or a nation, you make choices  What's important, what's not?
SYLVESTER: Wallis said in the last 10 days, more than 30,000 people around the country have joined in the fast in their own way  He says they have become a bit like God's lobbyists for the poor, putting a theological and moral spin on the cuts  Wallis said he is all for deficit reduction but --
WALLIS: I don't think doing this at the expense of the poorest people is a good choice, or hurting those who are already hurting the most is moral or even is smart 
SYLVESTER: Fiscal conservatives have suggested cuts in food stamps, foreign aid, and preschool programs for low-income families, that private groups can and should provide for the needy  But David Beckman of Bread for the World, who used to work at the World Bank, says the private sector can't fill the gap 
DAVID BECKMAN, PRESIDENT, BREAD FOR THE WORLD: All the private charitable feeding in the country amounts to about six percent of the food that poor people get from the national programs  So if you slash food stamps, as the House Republicans are proposing to do, there is no way that churches and charities and charitable people can make up for that 
SYLVESTER: Tony Hall was a member of Congress for years  As part of the fast, he is urging his former colleagues to reconsider cuts 
TONY HALL, ALLIANCE TO END HUNGER: When you make decisions about people's lives, be careful  You don't cut the poorest of the poor, because they didn't get you here  They didn't cause this mess 
SYLVESTER: On Wednesday, members of Congress began signing up for the fast 
REP  BARBARA LEE (D), CALIFORNIA: Several members of Congress today will be joining you in this fast 
SYLVESTER: Now, Sheila Jackson Lee, Keith Ellison and Jim McGovern are among 28 congressional Democrats who have signed on so far to join the hunger fast, and they will be doing a relay, with each taking one day to fast and then passing on the fast to their colleagues 
Wallis and Hall, they're doing it a little differently  They're fasting all the way through Easter Sunday  But they say for them, this fight for the poor is larger than just the specific budget battle -- Wolf 
BLITZER: These are committed, committed people to try to help 
We're going back to Libya in just a few moments  Rebel forces, furious with NATO right now, the R-rated message they are sending through our own Ben Wedeman 
Context 2: Margaret Way (b  Brisbane d  Cleveland, Queensland, Australia ) was an Australian writer of romance novels and women's fiction  A prolific author, Way wrote more than 120 novels since 1970, many through Mills & Boon, a romance imprint of British publisher Harlequin UK Ltd , owned by Harlequin Enterprises 

Biography
Before her marriage, she was a well-known pianist, teacher, vocal coach and accompanist  She began writing when her son, Laurence Way, was born, a friend took a pile of Mills & Boon books to her, she read all and decided that she also could write these types of novels  She began to write and promote her country with her stories set in Australia  She sold her first novels in 1970  Margaret Way lives with her family in her native Brisbane  Beginning in 2013, Margaret began to self-publish, releasing her first "e-book" mid-July 

Margaret died on the 10th of August 2022 in Cleveland, Queensland 

Bibliography

Single Novels
King Country (1970)
Blaze of Silk (1970)
The Time of the Jacaranda (1970)
Bauhinia Junction (1971)
Man from Bahl Bahla (1971)
Summer Magic (1971)
Return to Belle Amber (1971)
Ring of Jade (1972)
Copper Moon (1972)
Rainbow Bird (1972)
Man Like Daintree (1972)
Noonfire (1972)
Storm Over Mandargi (1973)
Wind River (1973)
Love Theme (1974)
McCabe's Kingdom (1974)
Sweet Sundown (1974)
Reeds of Honey (1975)
Storm Flower (1975)
Lesson in Loving (1975)
Flight into Yesterday (1976)
Red Cliffs of Malpara (1976)
Man on Half-moon (1976)
Swan's Reach (1976)
Mutiny in Paradise (1977)
One Way Ticket (1977)
Portrait of Jaime (1977)
Black Ingo (1977)
Awakening Flame (1978)
Wild Swan (1978)
Ring of Fire (1978)
Wake the Sleeping Tiger (1978)
Valley of the Moon (1979)
White Magnolia (1979)
Winds of Heaven (1979)
Blue Lotus (1979)
Butterfly and the Baron (1979)
Golden Puma (1980)
Temple of Fire (1980)
Lord of the High Valley (1980)
Flamingo Park (1980)
North of Capricorn (1981)
Season for Change (1981)
Shadow Dance (1981)
McIvor Affair (1981)
Home to Morning Star (1981)
Broken Rhapsody (1982)
The Silver Veil (1982)
Spellbound (1982)
Hunter's Moon (1982)
Girl at Cobalt Creek (1983)
No Alternative (1983)
House of Memories (1983)
Almost a Stranger (1984)
A place called Rambulara (1984)
Fallen Idol (1984)
Hunt the Sun (1985)
Eagle's Ridge (1985)
The Tiger's Cage (1986)
Innocent in Eden (1986)
Diamond Valley (1986)
Morning Glory (1988)
Devil Moon (1988)
Mowana Magic (1988)
Hungry Heart (1988)
Rise of an Eagle (1988)
One Fateful Summer (1993)
The Carradine Brand (1994)
Holding on to Alex (1997)
The Australian Heiress (1997)
Claiming His Child (1999)
The Cattleman's Bride (2000)
The Cattle Baron (2001)
The Husbands of the Outback (2001)
Secrets of the Outback (2002)
With This Ring (2003)
Innocent Mistress (2004)
Cattle Rancher, Convenient Wife (2007)
Outback Marriages (2007)
Promoted: Nanny to Wife (2007)
Cattle Rancher, Secret Son (2007)
Genni's Dilemma (2008)
Bride At Briar Ridge (2009)
Outback Heiress, Surprise Proposal (2009)
Cattle Baron, Nanny Needed (2009)

Legends of the Outback Series
Mail Order Marriage (1999)
The Bridesmaid's Wedding (2000)
The English Bride (2000)
A Wife at Kimbara (2000)

Koomera Crossing Series
Sarah's Baby (2003)
Runaway Wife (2003)
Outback Bridegroom (2003)
Outback Surrender (2003)
Home to Eden (2004)

McIvor Sisters Series
The Outback Engagement (2005)
Marriage at Murraree (2005)

Men Of The Outback Series
The Cattleman (2006)
The Cattle Baron's Bride (2006)
Her Outback Protector (2006)
The Horseman (2006)

Outback Marriages Series
Outback Man Seeks Wife (2007)
Cattle Rancher, Convenient Wife (2007)

Barons of the Outback Series Multi-Author
Wedding At Wangaree Valley (2008)
Bride At Briar's Ridge (2008)

Family Ties Multi-Author
Once Burned (1995)

Hitched! Multi-Author
A Faulkner Possession (1996)

Simply the Best Multi-Author
Georgia and the Tycoon (1997)

The Big Event Multi-Author
Beresford's Bride (1998)

Guardian Angels Multi-Author
Gabriel's Mission (1998)

Australians Series Multi-Author
7  Her Outback Man (1998)
17  Master of Maramba (2001)
19  Outback Fire (2001)
22  Mistaken Mistress (2002)
24  Outback Angel (2002)
33  The Australian Tycoon's Proposal (2004)
35  His Heiress Wife (2004)

Marrying the Boss Series Multi-Author
Boardroom Proposal (1999)

Contract Brides Series Multi-Author
Strategy for Marriage (2002)

Everlasting Love Series Multi-Author
Hidden Legacy (2008)

Diamond Brides Series Multi-Author
The Australian's Society Bride (2008)

Collections
Summer Magic / Ring of Jade / Noonfire (1981)
Wife at Kimbara / Bridesmaid's Wedding (2005)

Omnibus in Collaboration
Pretty Witch / Without Any Amazement / Storm Over Mandargi (1977) (with Lucy Gillen and Margaret Malcolm)
Dear Caliban / Heart of the Eagle / Swans' Reach (1978) (with Jane Donnelly and Elizabeth Graham)
The Bonds of Matrimony / Dragon Island / Reeds of Honey (1979) (with Elizabeth Hunter and Henrietta Reid)
The Man Outside / Castles in Spain / McCabe's Kingdom (1979) (with Jane Donnelly and Rebecca Stratton)
Winds From The Sea / Island of Darkness / Wind River (1979) (with Margaret Pargeter and Rebecca Stratton)
Moorland Magic / Tree of Idleness / Sweet Sundown (1980) (with Elizabeth Ashton and Elizabeth Hunter)
The Shifting Sands / Portrait of Jaime / Touched by Fire (1982) (with Jane Donnelly and Kay Thorpe)
Head of Chancery / Wild Heart / One-Way Ticket (1986) (with Betty Beaty and Doris Smith)
Heart of the Scorpion / The Winds of Heaven / Sweet Compulsion (1987) (with Janice Gray and Victoria Woolf)
One Brief Sweet Hour / Once More With Feeling / Blue Lotus (1990) (with Jane Arbor and Natalie Sparks)
Marry Me Cowboy (1995) (with Janet Dailey, Susan Fox and Anne McAllister)
Husbands on Horseback (1996) (with Diana Palmer)
Wedlocked (1999) (with Day Leclaire and Anne McAllister)
Mistletoe Magic (1999) (with Betty Neels and Rebecca Winters)
The Australians (2000) (with Helen Bianchin and Miranda Lee)
Weddings Down Under (2001) (with Helen Bianchin and Jessica Hart)
Outback Husbands (2002) (with Marion Lennox)
The Mother's Day Collection (2002) (with Helen Dickson and Kate Hoffmann)
Australian Nights (2003) (with Miranda Lee)
Outback Weddings (2003) (with Barbara Hannay)
Australian Playboys (2003) (with Helen Bianchin and Marion Lennox)
Australian Tycoons (2004) (with Emma Darcy and Marion Lennox)
A Mother's Day Gift (2004) (with Anne Ashley and Lucy Monroe)
White Wedding (2004) (with Judy Christenberry and Jessica Steele)
A Christmas Engagement (2004) (with Sara Craven and Jessica Matthews)
A Very Special Mother's Day (2005) (with Anne Herries)
All I Want for Christmas    (2005) (with Betty Neels and Jessica Steele)
The Mills and Boon Collection (2006) (with Caroline Anderson and Penny Jordan)
Outback Desire (2006) (with Emma Darcy and Carol Marinelli)
To Mum, with Love (2006) (with Rebecca Winters)
Australian Heroes (2007) (with Marion Lennox and Fiona McArthur)
Tall, Dark and Sexy (2008) (with Caroline Anderson and Helen Bianchin)
The Boss's Proposal (2008) (with Jessica Steele and Patricia Thayer)
Island Heat / Outback Man Seeks Wife / Prince's Forbidden Virgin / One Night Before Marriage / Their Lost-and-found Family / Single Dad's Marriage Wish (2008) (with Robyn Donald, Marion Lennox, Carol Marinelli, Sarah Mayberry and Anne Oliver)
Australian Billionaires (2009) (with Jennie Adams and Amy Andrews)
Cattle Baron : Nanny Needed / Bachelor Dad on Her Doorstep (2009) (with Michelle Douglas)

External links
Margaret Way at Harlequin Enterprises Ltd

Australian romantic fiction writers
Australian women novelists
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Women romantic fiction writers
Context 3: Paper Info

Title: Two-stage Pipeline for Multilingual Dialect Detection
Publish Date: Unkown
Author List: Ankit Vaidya (from Pune Institute of Computer Technology), Aditya Kane (from Pune Institute of Computer Technology)

Figure

Figure 1: Class distribution of dialects
Figure 2: System diagram for dialect classification The LID classifies the input into one of 3 languages The sample is then further classified into dialects by language specific models 
Figure 3: Confusion matrix of 9-way classification Note that rows are normalized according to the number of samples is that class 
Our complete results for Track-1 using the two-stage dialect detection pipeline Model-* denotes the language of the models used for the experiments 
Performance on Track-1 validation dataset of individual models used in the two-stage pipeline "Lg" stands for language of the model used 
Comparative results of two-way classification using the finetuned (F T ) predictions and predictions adapted from three-way classification models 

abstract

Dialect Identification is a crucial task for localizing various Large Language Models  This paper outlines our approach to the VarDial 2023 DSL-TL shared task  Here we have to identify three or two dialects from three languages each which results in a 9-way classification for Track-1 and 6-way classification for Track-2 respectively 
Our proposed approach consists of a two-stage system and outperforms other participants' systems and previous works in this domain  We achieve a score of 58 54% for Track-1 and 85 61% for Track-2  Our codebase is available publicly 1  

Introduction

Language has been the primary mode of communication for humans since the pre-historic ages  Studies have explored the evolution of language and outlined mathematical models that govern the intricacies of natural language   Inevitably, as humans established civilization in various parts of the world, this language was modified by, and for the group of people occupied by that particular geographical region 
This gave rise to multiple national dialects of the same language  The VarDial workshop (colocated with EACL 2023) explores various dialects and variations of the same language  We participated in the Discriminating Between Similar Languages -True Labels (DSL-TL) shared task  In this task, the participants were provided with data from three languages, with each language having three varieties 
This shared task consisted of two tracks -Track-1 featuring nine-way classification and Track-2 featuring six-way classification  The second track included two particular national dialects of each language (eg  American English and British English), and the first track had one general  We ranked 1 st in both of the tracks 
Moreover, we beat the next best submission by a margin of 4 5% in the first task and 5 6% in the second task We were the only team to surpass the organizer baseline scores  We present our winning solution in this paper  We used an end-to-end deep learning pipeline which consisted of a language identification model and three language-specific models, one for each language 
We converged upon the best combination by doing an elaborate analysis of various models available  Furthermore, in this work we also analyze the performance of the pipeline as a whole and also provide an ablation study  Lastly, we provide some future directions in this area of research 

Related Work

The present literature encompasses various aspects of dialect identification  We study this from three perspectives: large language models, language identification and dialect classification problems 

Large Language Models

The success of transformers and BERT based models was inevitable since the initial boom of the transformer  2017) model  In recent years, many other architectures like RoBERTa and ELECTRA have further pushed the state-of-the-art in this domain  Moreover, autoregressive models like GPT and GPT-2 have also shown their prowess 
Multilingual versions of RoBERTA, namely XLM-RoBERTa are also available  Lastly, language specific models like Spanish BERT (la Rosa y Eduardo G  Ponferrada y Manu Romero y Paulo Villegas y Pablo González de Prado Salas y María Grandury, 2022) and Portuguese BERT are available as well  Our winning solution makes use of these large language models trained on specific languages 

Language Identification Models

Many multilingual language identification models have been developed in order to classify the language of the input sentence beforehand  Even though the initial works used n-gram models and generative mixture models or even conditional random fields and other classical machine learning methods like naive bayes , modern methods have shifted to the use of deep learning for language identification  
Recent works have mainly focused on deep learning based language identification, where handling codemixed data is a big challenge in the domain  For our experiments, we use a version of XLM-RoBERTa finetuned on a language identification dataset 2   This model has near-perfect test accuracy of 99 6% 

Dialect Classification

Dialect classification has been previously solved using statistical methods like Gaussian Mixture Models and Frame Selection Decoding or Support Vector Machines (SVM)   It has been explored relatively sparsely, mostly in the case for local languages   Deep learning approaches have been explored in previous editions of the VarDial workshop shared tasks and otherwise  
Dialect classification was also explored previously as a part of other shared tasks   We want to stress that given the multilingual nature of the dataset, using the present methods directly was not an option  In our work, although we take inspiration from the previous works, we propose a novel system that surpasses the performance of the previous systems by a large margin 

Data

The dataset  We observed that the class PT-BR had the most number of samples (2,724) and the class EN had the least number of samples (349), and thus the imbalance ratio was almost 1:8  We have illustrated the data distribution in Figure   We tried to mitigate this imbalance using over-sampling and weighted sampling methods 
However, the improved data sampling method did not affect the performance 

System Description

This was a problem of multi-class classification having 9 classes for Track-1 and 6 classes for Track-2  The samples were belonging to 3 languages having 3 varieties each, so the classification pipeline was made in 2 stages  The Language Identification (LID) model which is the first stage classifies the sentence into 3 languages: English (EN), Spanish (ES) and Portuguese (PT) 
The LID is a pretrained XLM-RoBERTa that is fine-tuned for the task of language identification  It is able to classify the input sentence into 20 languages  We classify and separate the samples according to their language  The samples corresponding to the specific languages are then fed into the language specific models for dialect identification 
For dialect identification we have used models like BERT and RoBERTa with a linear layer connected to the pooler output of the models  Then fine-tuning is done on the models for dialect identification   using the samples corresponding to the specific languages  For the task of dialect identification we experimented with several pretrained models like XLM-RoBERTa, BERT, ELECTRA, GPT-2 and RoBERTa 
All models were fine-tuned for 20 epochs with a learning rate of 1e-6 and weight decay 1e-6 with a batch size of 8  The best performing model checkpoint was chosen according to the epoch-wise validation macro-F1 score  5 Experiments and Results

Experiments using Large Language Models

For the task of Dialect Identification we have tried various language specific models like XLM-RoBERTa, BERT, ELECTRA, RoBERTa and GPT- 2  The base variant of all these models were used and all the models were used through the Hugging-Face library  The pooler output of these models was passed through a linear layer and the models were fine-tuned 
First, we experimented with different models for Track-1  All the models were trained for 20 epochs with learning rate 1e-6, weight decay 1e-6 and a batch size of 8  We used XLM-RoBERTa as the baseline for all 3 languages  The best performing models for the English language were RoBERTa and BERT whereas GPT-2 was the worst performing 
Similarly the language specific versions of RoBERTa and BERT performed well for the Spanish and Portuguese respectively  Overall the worst performing model was GPT-2 across all 3 languages  The validation F1 scores are present in Table   The two best-performing models for every language were chosen for Track-2 
The same procedure as specified above was used and the F1 scores are present in Table   The train and validation F1 scores for 2-class classification are higher for all models as compared to the F1 score of the same models for 3-class classification  This was mainly due to the poor representation and accuracy of classification of the third class 
We observed symptoms of overfitting in all models after 12-15 epochs and the best validation F1 score was obtained in the range of 4-8 epochs 

LID experiments

The pipeline for dialect identification is divided into two parts as the sentences in the dataset belong to different languages  The stages are described in Section 4  The XLM-RoBERTa we have used for language classification has a test accuracy of 99 6% meaning it correctly classifies all input sentences and hence, can be considered as a perfect classifier 
For the final pipeline we experimented using the two best performing models for each language in Track-1 and Track-2  For both the tracks we experimented with all 8 (2 3 ) possible combinations of models and calculated the validation F1 score for the combined validation dataset which had sentences belonging to all languages 
The validation scores for Track-1 and Track-2 are shown in Table and Table respectively  For both the tracks, the three pipelines with the best validation F1 scores were chosen for submission 

Using 3-way classifier as a 2-way classifier

In Track-1, participants are expected to train a classifier which classifies amongst 9 classes, and in Track-2, participants are expected to train a classifier which classifies amongst 6 classes  These 6 classes are a proper subset of the 9 classes from Track-1  Thus, an intuitive baseline for Track-2 is to use the model finetuned for Track-1, whilst considering only the relevant classes for the latter task 
The classes EN , ES and P T , i e  the classes without any national dialect associated with them are not included in Track-2 as compared to Track-1  Thus, we calculate the predictions for the Track-2 validation dataset using the models for Track-1 and exclude the metrics for Track-1 specific classes to get the metrics for this "adapted" 2-way classification 
We show the results of this experiment in Table and observe that, as expected, the adapted 2-way classification performs worse compared to the explicitly finetuned variant 

Results for Track-1 and Track-2

We now present our experiments and their performance for both tracks  Our experiments for Track-1 are described in Table and our experiments for Track-2 are described in Table   The participants were allowed three submissions for evaluation on the test set, so we submitted predictions using the three systems which performed the best on the validation set 
As mentioned in Section 5 2, we performed 2 3 , i e  a total of 8 experiments using the two best models for each language  We observed that RoBERTa base on English, Spanish BERT base on Spanish and Portuguese BERT base performed the best on the testing set for Track-1  The same combination, with RoBERTa base for English, worked best for Track-2 
All of our submissions were the top submissions for each track, which surpassed the next best competitors by a margin of 4 5% and 5 6% for Track-1 and Track-2 respectively 

Ablation of best submissions

We hereby make some observations of our submissions and other experiments  To assist this, we plot the confusion matrices of our best submissions for Track-1 and Track-2 in Figures respectively  Note that these confusion matrices have their rows (i e  true labels axes) normalized according to the number of samples in the class 
Here are observations from our experiments: 1  BERT-based models outperform other models across all languages: We observe that BERT-based models outperform ELECTRA-based and GPT-2-based models, as shown in Table   We speculate this is because of the inherent architecture of BERT, which combines semantic learning with knowledge retention 
This combination of traits is particularly useful for this task  2  Common labels perform the worst across all languages: We observe that the common labels EN , ES and P T perform the worst, both in the individual as well as the two-stage setup  We hypothesize this is because of the absence of dialect specific words, or words that are specific to the geographical origin of the national dialect (for example, "Yankees" for EN-US and "Oxford" for EN-GB) 
3  English models work better than models of other languages: It can be noted from Figures 4 and 3 that the English models have the best performance across all classes  This can be attributed to two reasons: absence of national dialect specific words and lesser pretraining data in the case of Portuguese 
4  British English is most correctly classified class: We can observe that the Spanish or Portuguese models make equal number of mistakes in the case of either national dialect, in the case of Track-2 (see Figure )  However, in the case of English, the label EN − GB is correctly classified for more than 95% of the cases 
We speculate this is because British English involves slightly distinctive grammar and semantics, which help the model separate it from other classes  5  The proposed 2-step method is scalable for multiple language dialect classification: We can strongly assert that the novel 2-step deep learning method for multilingual dialect classification is a scalable method for the task due to two specific reasons: firstly, the multilingual models (like XLM-RoBERTa) might not have the vocabulary as well as the learning capabilities to learn the minute differences between individual dialects 
Secondly, this system can be quickly expanded for a new language by simply adding a language specific dialect classifier, provided the language identification model supports that particular language 

Conclusion

In this paper we propose a two-stage classification pipeline for dialect identification for multilingual corpora  We conduct thorough ablations on this setup and provide valuable insights  We foresee multiple future directions for this work  The first is to expand this work to many languages and dialects 
Secondly, it is a worthwhile research direction to distill this multi-model setup into a single model with multiple prediction heads  The obvious limitation of this system is the excessive memory consumption due to the usage of language specific models  For low resource languages this system is difficult to train and scale 
We hope that these problems will be addressed by researchers in future works 



ground_truth: The sticking point in the political showdown over the budget is how much spending to cut.

prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: When did Margaret Way start self-publishing her books as e-books?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 4: Ann's Mega Dub: 12/19/10 - 12/26/10
Got o have a penis to be an expert
Thursday on NPR's Fresh Air, Terry Gross wanted to talk film and music  Since women don't know a thing about either and aren't interested in either, Terry had to find men who were 'experts 'This is C I 's " Iraq snapshot Friday, December 24, 2010  Chaos and violence continue, Nouri's incomplete Cabinet continues to receive criticism, a father offers an 'excuse' for killing his own daughter, and more Marci Stone (US Headlines Examiner) reports, "Friday afternoon, Santa is currently in Baghdad, Iraq and on his next stop is Moscow, Russia, according to the 2010 NORAD Santa Tracker  The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking Santa as he makes his annual journey throughout the world " Gerald Skoning (Palm Beach Post) quotes Santa saying, "We send our special wishes for peace and goodwill to all  That includes the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea " Please note that this is Santa's seventh trip to Iraq since the start of the Iraq War and, as usual, his journey was known in advance  No waiting until he hit the ground to announce he was going to Iraq -- the way George The Bully Boy Bush had to and the way US President Barack Obama still has to  In the lead up to Santa's yearly visit, many 'authorities' in Iraq began insisting that Christmas couldn't be celebrated publicly, that even Santa was banned  Gabriel Gatehouse (BBC News) quotes Shemmi Hanna stating, "I wasn't hurt but I wish that I had been killed  I wish I had become a martyr for this church, but God kept me alive for my daughters " Shemmi Hanna was in Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad when it was assaulted October 31st and she lost her husband, her son, her daughter-in-law and her infant grandson in the attack  The October 31st attack marks the latest wave of violence targeting Iraqi Christians  The violence has led many to flee to northern Iraq (KRG) or to other countries  Zvi Bar'el (Haaretz) notes, "This week the Iraqi legislature discussed the Christians' situation and passed a resolution in principle to help families who fled  However, the parliament does not know where the Christians are, how many are still in Iraq, in their homes, and how many have found asylum in Iraqi Kurdistan " John Leland (New York Times) reports:The congregants on Friday night were fewer than 100, in a sanctuary built for four or five times as many  But they were determined  This year, even more than in the past, Iraqi's dwindling Christian minority had reasons to stay home for Christmas  "Yes, we are threatened, but we will not stop praying," the Rev  Meyassr al-Qaspotros told the Christmas Eve crowd at the Sacred Church of Jesus, a Chaldean Catholic church  "We do not want to leave the country because we will leave an empty space " Raheem Salman (Los Angeles Times) reports, "Rimon Metti's family will go to Christian services on Christmas Day, but his relatives will be praying for their own survival and wondering whether this is their last holiday season in Baghdad  If they had any grounds for optimism about the future of their faith in Iraq, it vanished this year amid repeated attacks on fellow believers " Shahsank Bengali (McClatchy Newspapers) adds, "Nearly two months after a shocking assault by Islamist militants, Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church will commemorate Christmas quietly, with daytime mass and prayers for the dead, under security fit more for a prison than a house of worship  It is the same at Christian churches across Baghdad and northern Iraq, where what's left of one of the world's oldest Christian communities prepares to mark perhaps the most somber Christmas since the start of the Iraq war "Meanwhile Taylor Luck (Jordan Times) reports on Iraqi refugees in Jordan:Although the calendar will say December 25, for Theresa, Saturday will not be Christmas  There will be no cinnamon klecha cooling on the dining room table, no outdoor ceramic nativity scene, no readings of hymns with relatives  The 63-year-old Iraqi woman has even refused to put up Christmas lights in the crowded two-room Amman hotel apartment she has called home since fleeing Baghdad last month "There is no holiday spirit  All we have is fear," she said This holiday will instead mark another year without news from her 46-year-old son, who was kidnapped outside Baghdad in late 2006 From Turkey, Sebnem Arsu (New York Times -- link has text and video) notes the increase in Iraq refugees to the country since October 31st and quotes Father Emlek stating, "I've never seen as many people coming here as I have in the last few weeks  They also go to Lebanon, Jordan and Syria but it seems that Turkey is the most popular despite the fact that they do not speak the language " Jeff Karoub (AP) reports on the small number of Iraqi refugees who have made it to the US and how some of them "struggle with insomnia, depression and anxiety "One group in Iraq who can openly celebrate Christmas are US service members who elect to  Barbara Surk (AP) reports that tomorrow Chief Warrant Officer Archie Morgan will celebrate his fourth Christmas in Iraq and Captain Diana Crane is celebrating her second Christmas in Iraq: "Crane was among several dozen troops attending a Christmas Eve mass in a chapel in Camp Victory, an American military base just outside Baghdad " Marc Hansen (Des Moines Reigster) speaks with six service members from Iowa who are stationed in Iraq  Sgt 1st Class Dennis Crosser tells Hansen, "I certainly understand from reading the paper what's going on in Afghanistan and the attention definitely needs to be on the troops there  But everyone serving here in Operation New Dawn appreciates a little bit of attention as we finish this up "Today Jiang Yu, China's Foreign Minister, issued the following statement, "We welcome and congratulate Iraq on forming a new government  We hope that the Iraqi Government unite all its people, stabilize the security situation, accelerate economic reconstruction and make new progress in building its country " James Cogan (WSWS) reports:US State Department official Philip Crowley declared on Wednesday that Washington had not "dictated the terms of the government"  In reality, constant American pressure was applied to Maliki, Allawi, Kurdish leaders and other prominent Iraqi politicians throughout the entire nine-month process to form a cabinet  The US intervention included numerous personal phone calls and visits to Baghdad by both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden The key objective of the Obama administration has been to ensure that the next Iraqi government will "request" a long-term military partnership with the US when the current Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) expires at the end of 2011  The SOFA is the legal basis upon which some 50,000 American troops remain in Iraq, operating from large strategic air bases such as Balad and Tallil and Al Asad  US imperialism spent billions of dollars establishing these advanced bases as part of its wider strategic plans and has no intention of abandoning them Cogan's only the second person to include the SOFA in his report  Some are impressed with the 'feat' of taking nearly ten months to form a government, stringing the country along for ten months while no decisions could go through  The editorial board of the Washington Post, for example, was full of praise yesterday  Today they're joined by Iran's Ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Danaiifar  The Tehran Times reports that Danaiifar was full of praise today hailing the "positive and final step which ended the 10-month political limbo in Iraq " However, Danaiifar was less pie-in-the-sky than the Post editorial board because he can foresee future problems as evidenced by his statement, "We may witness the emergence of some problems after one and half of a year -- for example, some ministers may be impeached " Of course, there are already many clouds on the horizon, even if Iranian diplomats and Post editorial boards can't suss them out  For example, Ben Bendig (Epoch Times) noted the objection of Iraq's female politicians to Nouri al-Maliki's decision to nominate only one woman (so far) to his Cabinet: "Some 50 female lawmakers went to the country's top leadership, the United Nations and the Arab League to voice their concern and desire for increased representation " BNO notes that protest and also that a group of Iraqi MPs are alleging that Iraqiya bought seats in the Cabinet via money exchanged in Jordan  UPI adds, "Maliki, a Shiite who has a long history of working with Tehran, has named himself acting minister of defense, interior and national security, three most powerful and sensitive posts in the government he is stitching together  Although Maliki appears to be bending over backward to accommodate rivals among Iraq's Shiite majority as well as minority Sunnis and Kurds in his administration in a spirit of reconciliation, he is unlikely to relinquish those ministries that dominate the security sector " DPA reports, "Sheikh Abdel-Mahdi al-Karbalaei, a confident of influential Shiite spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said that the new cabinet is 'below the standards' Iraqi citizens had hoped for and suggested it could prove to be weaker than the previous government " Ranj Alaaldin (Guardian) also spots clouds on the horizon:Lasting peace and stability depends on resolving outstanding disputes with the Kurds on oil, revenue-sharing, security and the disputed territories (Kirkuk in particular)  The Kurds, rather than exploiting their kingmaker position to take a stronger proportion of ministries in Baghdad (they are taking just one major portfolio – the foreign ministry), are instead banking on guarantees from Maliki to implement their list of 19 demands that includes resolving the above disputes in their favour They may have been naive, though  With their historical and federalist partners, the Islamic supreme council of Iraq in decline, the Kurds may be isolated in the new government – a government dominated by the nationalistic and centrist characteristics of the INM, the Sadrists and indeed State of Law Maliki may, therefore, turn out to be unable to grant concessions even if he wanted to and could use Osama Nujayfi, the new ultra-nationalist speaker of parliament and Kurdish foe, to absorb the Kurdish criticism and insulate himself from any attacks AP reports that Iraqi police sought out a 19-year-old woman because of rumors that she was working with al Qaida in Mesopotamia only to be greeted with the news that her father allegedly killed her and the father showed the police where he buried the woman       last month  The story begs for more than it offers  The most obvious observation is: what does it say that a woman's allegedly killed by her father and no one says a word for over a month? After that, it should probably be noted that there are many men in Iraq killing women who, no doubt, would love to also be able to pin the blame on al Qaida  In other violence, Reuters notes a house bombing in Haswa which claimed the life of Mohammed al-Karrafi, "his wife, two sons and a nephew" -- as well as injuring four more people, and a Samarra roadside bombing which claimed the lives of 2 police officers  DPA notes it was two homes bombed in Haswa and that the Samarra roadside bombing also injured four Iraqi soldiers  Jomana Karadsheh (CNN) reports, "Another policeman was wounded in Baghdad Friday night when a roadside bomb detonated by a police patrol, an Interior Ministry official told CNN "And we'll close with this from Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan's latest Al Jazeera column:The recent repeal of the US military policy of "Don't ask, don't tell" is far from being the human rights advancement some are touting it to be  I find it intellectually dishonest, in fact, illogical on any level to associate human rights with any military, let alone one that is currently dehumanising two populations as well as numerous other victims of it's clandestine "security" policies Placing this major contention aside, the enactment of the bill might be an institutional step forward in the fight for "equality"; however institutions rarely reflect reality Do we really think that the US congress vote to repeal the act and Obama signing the bill is going to stop the current systemic harassment of gays in the military?While I am a staunch advocate for equality of marriage and same-sex partnership, I cannot - as a peace activist - rejoice in the fact that now homosexuals can openly serve next to heterosexuals in one of the least socially responsible organisations that currently exists on earth: The US military It is an organisation tainted with a history of intolerance towards anyone who isn't a Caucasian male from the Mid-West  Even then I'm sure plenty fitting that description have faced the terror and torment enshrined into an institution that transforms the pride and enthusiasm of youth into a narrow zeal for dominating power relations And we'll close with this from Francis A  Boyle's "2011: Prospects for Humanity?" (Global Research):Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U S -instigated Spanish-American War in 1898  Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions  Additionally, McKinley's military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America's economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the "open door" policy  But over the next four decades America's aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the "Pacific" would ineluctably pave the way for Japan's attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec  7, 194l, and thus America's precipitation into the ongoing Second World War  Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr  administration and now the Democratic Obama administration are threatening to set off World War III  By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr  administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled "humanitarian intervention " Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of two-thirds of the world's hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas  The Bush Jr / Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation  In this regard, the Bush Jr



ground_truth: Margaret Way started self-publishing her books as e-books in 2013.

prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What is the score achieved by the authors for Track-2?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 4:  administration announced the establishment of the U S  Pentagon's Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species  This current bout of U S  imperialism is what Hans Morgenthau denominated "unlimited imperialism" in his seminal work Politics Among Nations (4th ed  1968, at 52-53): The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler  They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world  This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination--a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror's lust for power  It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind…  On 10 November 1979 I visited with Hans Morgenthau at his home in Manhattan  It proved to be our last conversation before he died on 19 July 1980  Given his weakened physical but not mental condition and his serious heart problem, at the end of our necessarily abbreviated one-hour meeting I purposefully asked him what he thought about the future of international relations  iraqbbc newsgabriel gatehousethe new york timesjohn lelandhaaretzzvi bar'elthe jordan timestaylor luckthe associated pressjeff karoubthe los angeles timesraheem salmancnnjomana karadsheh
Terry thinks she's a man
Yesterday on NPR's Fresh Air the hour went to a male TV critic  It's always a man with Terry  Always  And somebody tell her that a snotty, snooty TV critic really doesn't make for good programming This is C I 's "Iraq snapshot:" Thursday, December 23, 2010  Chaos and violence continue, Iraqi women make clear their displeasure over the Cabinet make up, Daniel Ellsberg and Veterans for Peace get some recognition, and more  Last Thursday a protest held outside the White House  One of the organizers was Veterans for Peace and Pentagon Papers whistle blower Daniel Ellsberg participated and spoke  Juana Bordas (Washington Post) advocates for both of them to be named persons of the year: Veterans for Peace and Daniel Ellsberg should be this year's person of the year because of their courage and bravery to stand up for all of us who believe that "war is not the answer " Moreover in a time of economic recession, the war machine is bankrupting our country  As John Amidon, a Marine Corps veteran from Albany asked at the White House protest, "How is the war economy working for you?"While unemployment rates hover near 10 percent, there is no doubt that the U S  economy and quality of life is faltering  Worldwide we are 14th in education, 37th in the World Health Organization's ranking on medical systems, and 23rd in the U N  Environmental Sustainability Index on being most livable and greenest benefits  There is one place we take the undeniable world lead  The US military spending accounts for a whopping 46 5 percent of world military spending--the next ten countries combined come in at only 20 7 percent  Linda Pershing (Truthout) reports, "Responding to a call from the leaders of Stop These Wars(1) - a new coalition of Veterans for Peace and other activists - participants came together in a large-scale performance of civil resistance  A group of veterans under the leadership of Veterans for Peace members Tarak Kauff, Will Covert and Elaine Brower, mother of a Marine who has served three tours of duty in Iraq, sponsored the event with the explicit purpose of putting their bodies on the line  Many participants were Vietnam War veterans; others ranged from Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans in their 20s and 30s to World War II vets in their 80s and older  They were predominately white; men outnumbered women by at least three to one  After a short rally in Lafayette Park, they formed a single-file procession, walking across Pennsylvania Avenue to the solemn beat of a drum  As they reached the police barricade (erected to prevent them from chaining themselves to the gate, a plan they announced on their web site), the activists stood shoulder to shoulder, their bodies forming a human link across the 'picture postcard' tableau in front of the White House " Maria Chutchian (Arlington Advocate) quotes, participant Nate Goldshlag (Vietnam veteran) stating, ""There was a silent, single file march around Lafayette Park to a drum beat  Then we went in front of the White House,  There were barricades set up in front of white house fence  So when we got there, we jumped over barricades and were able to get right next to the White House fence " Participant Linda LeTendre (Daily Gazette) reports: At the end of the rally, before the silent, solemn procession to the White House fence, in honor of those killed in Iraq and Afghan wars of lies and deceptions, the VFP played taps and folded an American flag that had been left behind at a recent funeral for the veteran of one of those wars  Two attendees in full dress uniform held and folded the flag  I had the image of all of the people who stood along the roads and bridges when the bodies of the two local men, Benjamin Osborn and David Miller, were returned to the Capital District  I thought if all of those people were here now or spoke out against war these two fine young men might still be with us I was blessed enough to be held in custody with one of those in uniform; a wonderful young man who had to move from his hometown in Georgia because no one understood why as a veteran he was against these wars  Even his family did not understand  (He remains in my prayers )Our plan was to attach ourselves to the White House fence until President Obama came out and talked to us or until we were arrested and dragged away  I don't have to tell you how it ended Mr  Ellsberg was one of 139 people arrested at that action  We've noted the protest in pretty much every snapshot since last Thursday  If something else comes out that's worth noting on the protest, we'll include it  We will not include people who don't have their facts and it's really sad when they link to, for example, Guardian articles and the links don't even back them up  It's real sad, for example, when they're trashing Hillary (big strong men that they are) and ripping her apart and yet Barack? "Obama's inaccurate statements"??? What the hell is that? You're inferring he lied, say so  Don't be such a little chicken s**t  It's especially embarrasing when you're grandstanding on 'truth ' Especially when you're the little s**t that clogged up the public e-mail account here in the summer of 2008 whining that you were holding Barack to a standard, then admitting that you weren't, then whining that if you did people would be mean to you  Oh, that's sooooooo sad  Someone might say something bad about you  The horror  You must suffer more than all the people in Iraq and Afghanistan combined  While the action took place in DC, actions also took place in other cities  We've already noted NYC's action this week, Doug Kaufmann (Party for Socialism & Liberation) reports on the Los Angeles action: Despite heavy rain, over 100 people gathered in Los Angeles on the corner of Hollywood and Highland to demand an end to the U S  wars on Afghanistan and Iraq  People came from as far as Riverside to protest, braving what Southern California media outlets have dubbed the "storm of the decade " The demonstration, initiated and led by the ANSWER Coalition, broke the routine of holiday shopping and garnered support from activists and even passers by, who joined in chanting "Money for jobs and education -- not for war and occupation!" and "Occupation is a crime -- Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine!" Protesters held banners reading, "U S /NATO Out of Afghanistan!" and "Yes to jobs, housing and education -- no to war, racism and occupation!"Speakers at the demonstration included representatives of Korean Americans for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, KmB Pro-People Youth, Veterans for Peace, Party for Socialism and Liberation and National Lawyers Guild  Tuesday, Nouri al-Maliki managed to put away the political stalemate thanks to a lot of Scotch -- tape to hold the deal together and booze to keep your eyes so crossed you don't question how someone can claim to have formed a Cabinet when they've left over ten positions to be filled at a later date  One group speaking out is women  Bushra Juhi and Qassmi Abdul-Zahra (AP) report, "Iraq's female lawmakers are furious that only one member of the country's new Cabinet is a woman and are demanding better representation in a government that otherwise has been praised by the international community for bringing together the country's religious sects and political parties " As noted Tuesday, though represenation in Parliament is addressed in Iraq's Constitution, there is nothing to address women serving in the Cabinet  Aseel Kami (Reuters) notes one of the most damning aspects of Nouri's chosen men -- a man is heaing the Ministry of Women's Affairs  Iraqiya's spokesperson Maysoon Damluji states, "There are really good women who could do wel       they cannot be neglected and marginalized " Al-Amal's Hanaa Edwar states, "They call it a national (power) sharing government  So where is the sharing? Do they want to take us back to the era of the harem? Do they want to take us back to the dark ages, when women were used only for pleasure " Deborah Amos (NPR's All Things Considered) reports that a struggle is going on between secular impulses and fundamentalist ones  Gallery owner Qasim Sabti states, "We know it's fighting between the religious foolish man and the civilization man  We know we are fighting like Gandhi, and this is a new language in Iraqi life  We have no guns  We do not believe in this kind of fighting " Deborah Amos is the author of Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East  Meanwhile Nizar Latif (The National) reports that distrust is a common reaction to the new government in Baghdad and quotes high school teacher Hussein Abed Mohammad stating, "Promises were made that trustworthy, competent people would be ministers this time around, but it looks as if everything has just been divided out according to sectarian itnerests  No attention has been paid to forming a functioning government, it is just a political settlement of vested interests  I'm sure al Maliki will have the same problems in his next four years as he had in the last four years " Days away from the ten months mark, Nouri managed to finally end the stalemate  Some try to make sense of it and that must have been some office party that the editorial board of the Washington Post is still coming down from judging by "A good year in Iraq " First up, meet the new Iraqi Body Count -- an organization that provides cover for the war and allows supporters of the illegal war to point to it and insist/slur "Things aren't so bad!" Sure enough, the editorial board of the Post does just that noting the laughable "civilian deaths" count at iCasualities  As we noted -- long, long before we walked away from that crap ass website, they're not doing a civilian count 



ground_truth: 85.61%.