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

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

PROBLEM: Ovell Smith Krell has spent the better part of her 84 years wondering how her brother died at a Florida reform school in 1940, and where he may be buried. Today, she appears to be one step closer to finding out. Florida's attorney general filed a petition on Tuesday asking a state court to approve the exhumation of an unknown number of bodies believed to be buried at the now-defunct school in the Florida panhandle town of Marianna. "The deaths that occurred at Dozier School for Boys in Marianna are cloaked in mystery, and the surviving family members deserve a thorough examination of the site," stated Attorney General Pam Bondi, who filed the petition on behalf of Jackson County's medical examiner. "I am committed to doing everything within my power to support investigative efforts to help resolve unanswered questions and bring closure to the families who lost loved ones." Krell -- who believes her brother, Owen, was buried on the school's property -- says she's overjoyed at the news. "We know they're there and once they start digging, then maybe we can find remains and I hope one of them is my brother," she told CNN. "I want his remains brought up, and if I get my brother I would be ecstatic." Mystery surrounds graves at boys' reform school . It's unclear when the state court will rule on Bondi's petition, although a decision could come in the next couple of weeks. If the exhumations are approved, the bodies would be examined at the University of South Florida at the direction of Jackson County's medical examiner, Michael Hunter. Forensic investigators hope to start the process before the summer rainy season. Researchers plan to use DNA from surviving family members to help identify the remains and return them to their relatives. For years, stories and allegations of beatings, torture and murder have surrounded the century-old school. State authorities have said in the past that there were 31 burial sites at the school, and a 2009 state investigation found no wrongdoing in connection with those deaths. Investigators now say there's evidence that 98 boys died at the school, and some of them may be buried in the 50 graves that forensic investigators have recently found on school grounds. In the wake of those findings, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, asked the Department of Justice to investigate. Nelson called Bondi's petition for exhumations "a critical step forward to bring closure to the families." The mystery surrounding the graves first made headlines in 2008 when Florida's then-governor, Charlie Crist, ordered an investigation after a group of men, known as "the White House Boys," came forward with stories of how they were beaten with leather straps by school administrators inside a small, white building on school property. Robert Straley, who spent about 10 months at the school in the 1960s for allegedly stealing a car, said he was taken to the "white house" on his very first day. "I came out of there in shock, and when they hit you, you went down a foot into the bed, and so hard, I couldn't believe. I didn't know what they were hitting you with," Straley said. Former school administrator Troy Tidwell, a one-armed man who some former students accused of beating them, has said in a deposition that "spankings" took place at the school but denied anyone was ever beaten or killed. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's 2009 report said most of the 31 boys buried in the school's cemetery were killed in a 1914 fire at the facility, while others died in a 1918 flu outbreak. At the time, the law enforcement agency said it could not determine where another 50 boys -- who it said died at the school as a result of illnesses or accidents -- were buried, blaming poorly kept school records. FDLE closed the case due to the lack of evidence that anyone had died as a result of criminal conduct, and no charges were filed. Investigators say the records do not explain why the boys were buried on school property in the first place. The boys who attended the school were considered "young offenders" of state law and were placed in the school in order to be "separated from older more vicious associates," according to the 2009 report citing the Florida Children's Commission of 1953. Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice closed the school in 2011, blaming budget cuts. Ovell Krell said her family was told that her brother Owen ran away from the reform school, got pneumonia, and died underneath a house in town. "They said that the body was so decomposed, you wouldn't be able to identify him ... they took him straight out to the school and buried him," she told CNN. But Owen's classmate told the family a different story, Krell said. According to Krell, the boy said as he and Owen tried to escape, "my brother was running out across a field, an open field, and there was three men shooting at him, with rifles." "I believe to this day that they shot my brother that night, and I think they probably killed him and brought him back to the school and buried him," she said. Today, she simply wants to bring him home. She's 84 now, and says she's running out of time. "My mom never got a good night's sleep the rest of her life after Owen went missing," she said. "I'd make sure he's put with my mom and dad. It will probably be their first good night's sleep in over 70 years."

SOLUTION: Florida's attorney general has requested a court allow exhumations at a defunct school .
The court could make a decision in the next few weeks .
A forensic team has determined that 50 graves exist on school grounds .
A 2009 state investigation said 31 boys are buried there, and most died from a fire and flu .

PROBLEM: (CNN)  -- Be bold! Think big! Barack Obama wants to do just that. An $800 billion economic stimulus plan. Three million jobs. Health care reform. A restructured automobile industry. Obama's popularity with voters will win him influence with political opponents. Obama won the biggest Democratic majority for president in 44 years. His party made big gains in Congress. Democrats now have a majority of nearly 60 percent in both the House and Senate. President Obama's got a mandate. And a majority. What's to stop him? Just this: the U.S. system of government. It is set up to make it difficult to get things done. The Constitution was written 222 years ago by men who didn't trust government. They had just waged a revolution against a king. To the founders of the American republic, strong government meant despotism. So they set up a system with an elaborate separation of powers. The idea was to ensure weak government. The dirty little secret of American government is that it was designed not to work very well. As president after president has discovered, there are innumerable ways opponents can stop measures from getting passed, even if the president's party holds a majority in Congress. The Senate has its own rule that's not in the Constitution requiring a super-majority of 60 Senate votes to control the agenda. A minority of 41 senators can "filibuster'' a measure and prevent it from coming up for a vote. How many votes will Republicans have in the Senate? 41 or 42, depending on the outcome in Minnesota where ballots are still being counted. Presidents often have problems holding their own party together. That's because members of Congress are elected by local constituencies and they are expected to represent local interests. American politicians are independent political entrepreneurs. They are not foot-soldiers of a party. When Bill Clinton first became president, he had a solid Democratic majority in Congress. But he could not get his health care reform plan passed. After an intense advertising campaign by opponents, many Americans were worried that the Clintons were planning a government takeover of the health care system. The Clinton plan failed, and within two years, Democrats lost their majority in Congress. One-party control didn't work any better for George W. Bush. Bush had trouble getting what he wanted -- notably, immigration reform -- from a Republican Congress. Republicans lost their majority in Congress in 2006. But here's another dirty little secret of American government: it often does work. Very well in fact. Under the right conditions, barriers fall away and things get done, sometimes with amazing speed and efficiency. What are the right conditions? An overwhelming sense of public urgency. That sense of urgency certainly existed after 9/11, when Congress quickly passed the Patriot Act. Getting anything big done in American government requires a sense of crisis. That's why politicians in the U.S. are always declaring crises -- a drug crisis, an education crisis, an environmental crisis. Or they're trying to rally the country to fight a war on something -- a war on poverty, a war on crime. If the public urgency is not authentic, however, opponents won't have much trouble stopping things from happening. Obama certainly takes office at a time of crisis, just as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt did. Like them, he has the opportunity to transform American government. Members of Congress who try to block President Obama's program may find themselves in political trouble. Because there is yet another dirty little secret of American government: the United States is the most populist democracy in the world. Here, the people rule. When the people want something, they will get it, whether it's the death penalty or gun rights or lower taxes. Why doesn't the United States have a metric system or dollar coins like other countries? Because the people won't use them. Obama's popularity is soaring right now. When a president is popular, he has clout. Everyone wants to be on his side, even members of the opposition party. They're in business for themselves, and supporting a popular president is good for business. Standing in his way could drive them out of business. American government is not an efficient, well-oiled machine. It was never designed to be. It has to be lubricated by public pressure. If the people are shouting "Do something!'' -- as they are right now -- then something will happen. Even if it means a lot more spending and a lot more government. The people reserve one key right: they will let the government know, rather quickly, whether or not it's working.

SOLUTION:
Three secrets behind the way U.S. government works .
It was designed to ensure weak government .
In times of crisis usual barriers fall away .
If voters want something done, it will get done somehow .