TASK DEFINITION: Given a document and an entity the task is to select the author's sentiment towards the entity. Sentiments can be Positive, Neutral and Negative. Select Positive if the article expresses a positive view towards the given entity or praises its quality or skills. Select Neutral if the document expresses no clear view towards the entity or has equal amounts of positive and negative statements or expressing some fact/quote by someone else. Select Negative if the article expresses a negative view towards like harsh remarks, criticizing entities action/decision etc. Note that URLs in the text have been replaced with [Link].
PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Jennifer Egan Jennifer ? In 2011   Jennifer Egan  won the Pulitzer Prize for  her  novel  A Visit From The Goon Squad. Years before that book came out   Egan  had begun researching the 1930s and '40s in New York City.  Her  new novel  Manhattan Beach  is the result of that research. It follows a father  his daughter and a gangster whose lives intersect in New York around World War II.
The daughter  Anna  becomes the first woman to work as a deep-sea diver at the Brooklyn Navy Yard  which presented a particular kind of challenge for  Egan : In reality  there were no women divers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
In 2011  the novelist  Jennifer Egan  won the Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Visit From The Goon Squad." Years before it came out   Egan  began researching New York City in the 1930s and '40s. And that research wound up in her new novel  "Manhattan Beach." The book is about a father  his daughter and a gangster whose lives intersect in New York City around World War II.
"Manhattan Beach" was just long-listed for the National Book Award.  Egan  sat down to talk about it with my co-host Ari Shapiro.
 JENNIFER EGAN : She was extremely helpful to me in understanding the difficulty of being a female diver. I mean diving is a very physical undertaking  and so she was very articulate about the challenges of doing that as a woman and especially the prejudice that she encountered. Men did not want her there  and they made that very clear. There were certain exceptions. But she ultimately had a sad feeling about her diving career in that she felt that she would have liked to continue with it but that it was uncomfortable because she was a woman.
 EGAN : What I found was that every single time I tried to leap out of the present into the future  which was a technique I used a lot in a "Visit From The Goon Squad" - every time I did it in this book  it was worse than bad. It was actually annoying.
 EGAN : So I had to recognize that I was telling a story that could not live in a tricky structural form. It really required a total immersion in continuity.
SHAPIRO: It's kind of a relief to hear that  even Jennifer Egan  writes things that are terrible sometimes.
 EGAN : I would go so far as to say that I mostly write terrible things. I mean my first drafts are so appalling. I think there's no way I can possibly get there. With this book more than any other  I thought very seriously about abandoning it.
SHAPIRO:  Jennifer Egan 's new novel is called "Manhattan Beach." Thank you so much for talking with us about it.

SOLUTION: Positive

PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Elena Kagan ? A top Senate Republican complained Wednesday that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan hasn't been revealing during her confirmation hearings despite her previous statements that judicial nominees should be more open.
 In 1995  Kagan authored an article in the University of Chicago Law Review in which she described the Senate confirmation process as "a vapid and hollow charade."
 Back then  Kagan lamented that senators "do not insist that any nominee reveal what kind of justice she would make  by disclosing her views on important legal issues."
 Another leading Republican  Sen. Jeff Sessions  R-Ala.  the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee  contended that Kagan had given incomplete testimony about her actions as the dean of Harvard Law School when she limited the activities of military recruiters there.
 Kagan told the committee that she had imposed the restrictions because the military's "Don't Ask  Don't Tell" policy amounted to discrimination against homosexuals  a violation of Harvard University's institutional policy that bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
 On Wednesday  Kagan's final day of testimony before the Senate panel  Sessions told Kagan her comments about the episode "didn't  frankly  set forth what you did."
 Sessions continued with his questioning and did not give Kagan time to respond to that specific charge.
 Kagan is expected to win the approval of the committee of 12 Democrats and seven Republicans.

SOLUTION: Positive

PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Scott Pruitt ? The inspector general for the Environmental Protection Agency continues to dig into  EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt 's use of taxpayer money for travel.
According to an EPA memo cited by The Hill  the EPA's IG expanded the scope of its original investigation to include all of  Pruitt 's travel through 2017. The memo cites "additional Congressional requests."
The IG is looking at three main factors related to  Pruitt 's travel: "The frequency  cost and extent of the Administrator's travel â¦ Whether applicable EPA travel policies and procedures were followed for  Administrator Pruitt 's travel  as well as other EPA staff and security personnel traveling with or in advance of Administrator Pruitt â¦ [and] Whether EPA policies and procedures are sufficiently designed to prevent fraud  waste and abuse regarding the Administrator's travel."
According to the Washington Examiner  Sen. Tom Carper  D-Del.  requested that the EPA's IG look at  Pruitt 's four-day trip to Morocco last month that cost $40 000. The trip was intended to promote the use of natural gas.
The Washington Post reported in October that the EPA's IG was investigating  Pruitt 's travel habits in the first half of the year  which included non-commercial and military flights that cost more than $58 000.

SOLUTION:
Neutral