QUES: On a day it celebrated 50 years of giving free legal advice, Southern Arizona Legal Aid announced it has received two grants totaling more than $7 million. One of the grants includes the creation of a Web site with legal advice for the poor. A three-year grant worth $6.6 million and a separate technology grant were announced at a press conference and dinner held Thursday at Evo. A. DeConcini Federal Courthouse, 405 W. Congress St. Deconcini was one of the organization's early board members. Thursday's celebration was the first public even held at the courthouse. About 100 members of the legal community attended, including state Attorney General Janet Napolitano and Arizona Supreme Court Justice Thomas Zlaket. Both grants come from the Legal Services., a private, nonprofit corporation established by Congress in 1974 to offer poor people equal access to the justice system. It's funded through congressional appropriation. The $6.6 million grant will pay for staffing operations. The Web site, which will be created with a $50,000 grant, is intended to offer legal advice to poor people across Arizona, said Paul Julian, chief executive officer of Southern Arizona Legal Aid. He said he wants every poor person in Arizona to have legal help. "This is another step in trying to realize that. We feel like we do a pretty good job of helping people who find us," Julian said. Julian said that though most people do not own computers, they can still access them at libraries, schools, and courthouses. He said the Web site will help bridge the "digital divide" that keeps the poor from using the Internet as a resource. Southern Arizona Legal Aid was founded in 1951 as the Legal Aid Society of the Pima County Bar Association. It offered free legal advice on civil matters including disputes in small claims court, divorce proceedings and obtaining Social Security benefits. Charles Ares, a member of the board of directors in the 1950s, said the office was kind of a charity operation.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What grants did Southern Arizona Legal Aid receive on the day it celebrated 50 years of giving free legal advice?

QUES: We do not know exactly how the hijackers gained access to the cockpit; FAA rules required that the doors remain closed and locked during flight. Ong speculated that they had "jammed their way" in. Perhaps the terrorists stabbed the flight attendants to get a cockpit key, to force one of them to open the cockpit door, or to lure the captain or first officer out of the cockpit. Or the flight attendants may just have been in their way. At the same time or shortly thereafter, Atta-the only terrorist on board trained to fly a jet-would have moved to the cockpit from his business-class seat, possibly accompanied by Omari. As this was happening, passenger Daniel Lewin, who was seated in the row just behind Atta and Omari, was stabbed by one of the hijackers-probably Satam al Suqami, who was seated directly behind Lewin. Lewin had served four years as an officer in the Israeli military. He may have made an attempt to stop the hijackers in front of him, not realizing that another was sitting behind him. The hijackers quickly gained control and sprayed Mace, pepper spray, or some other irritant in the first-class cabin, in order to force the passengers and flight attendants toward the rear of the plane. They claimed they had a bomb. About five minutes after the hijacking began, Betty Ong contacted the American Airlines Southeastern Reservations Office in Cary, North Carolina, via an AT&T airphone to report an emergency aboard the flight. This was the first of several occasions on 9/11 when flight attendants took action outside the scope of their training, which emphasized that in a hijacking, they were to communicate with the cockpit crew. The emergency call lasted approximately 25 minutes, as Ong calmly and professionally relayed information about events taking place aboard the airplane to authorities on the ground. At 8:19, Ong reported:"The cockpit is not answering, somebody's stabbed in business class-and I think there's Mace-that we can't breathe-I don't know, I think we're getting hijacked." She then told of the stabbings of the two flight attendants. At 8:21, one of the American employees receiving Ong's call in North Carolina, Nydia Gonzalez, alerted the American Airlines operations center in Fort Worth, Texas, reaching Craig Marquis, the manager on duty. Marquis soon realized this was an emergency and instructed the airline's dispatcher responsible for the flight to contact the cockpit. At 8:23, the dispatcher tried unsuccessfully to contact the aircraft.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: Who may have attempted to confront the highjackers and stop them?

QUES: Lash is associate dean at the University of Southern California Law School. Johnson is a justice on California's Second District Court of Appeal. Lash and Johnson are co-chairs of the California Commission on Access to Justice. The full report can be viewed at (www.calbar.org). In her year-long odyssey through the California justice system, Katherine, a 35-year-old single mother with three children, experienced failure at every turn. Leaving her abusive husband, she moved into the only apartment she could afford, and soon discovered a broken toilet and non- working oven, rats and roaches, and a fourthfloor landing with no railing. She began withholding rent pending repairs her landlord refused to make, but then her Medi-Cal benefits were cut off when she could not provide rent receipts. She lost health care for her children and herself, although she is a borderline diabetic in need of medication and her children were suffering from rat bites. Katherine tried to seek help through the courts. Representing herself at an administrative hearing, she lost her appeal to restore Medi-Cal benefits because she did not have proper documentation of the rent account. When she went to a courthouse to file a complaint against her landlord, she found the process so confusing that she gave up and went home. According to "The Path to Justice: A Five-Year Status Report on Access to Justice in California," prepared by the California Commission on Access to Justice, Katherine is just one of 4.6 million poor Californians whose basic civil legal needs -- often involving such critical needs as housing, health care, education, employment, safety and transportation -- are not being addressed. California has a critical dearth of legal services for the poor, and, as this report makes clear, it is imperative that the state join with the federal government and private funders to increase resources so that all Californians, regardless of income, have equal access to our justice system. Our justice system is predicated on the assumption that both parties will be represented by lawyers who act as gatekeepers and guides through a complex legal system that would otherwise be inaccessible to many of us. Unfortunately, the most vulnerable members of our society are the least able to afford legal services. California does have a strong network of legal aid organizations that try to help meet the needs of the poor, but there's just one legal aid lawyer available per 10,000 poor people. We may promise "justice for all," but for those who can't afford a lawyer, that promise is often a lie. In its new report, the Commission on Access to Justice notes some significant steps toward providing equal access to justice for all Californians.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION:
Why was Katherine seeking legal help?