Diane's heart felt leaden as she prepared to leave. Each face she looked at, she knew she was seeing for the last time. As if she were dying and they all were going to live on. Oh, why must I leave? Now, when all of you are about to put on the martyr's crown, how can you cast me out? I want to die with you. I do not want to go on, stumbling through this world alone. For years these people had been her only family. When she was a child, her faith was preached and practiced openly all over the south of France. The crusade was already twenty years old then, but the perfecti still taught crowds of people in the streets of great cities like Toulouse and Beziers, still won converts away from the Church of Rome. From the lords and ladies in their castles to the peasants on the mountainsides, over half the people were Cathars. Now this year, one thousand two hundred forty-four, might come to be remembered as the year Catharism in France disappeared. From now on there would be nothing but a remnant in hiding, having to sneak about. No, she didn't want to live that way. She longed to throw herself down and beg Bishop Bertran once again to let her stay. But duty pressed down upon her like a mail shirt. It was burdensome, but it protected her from error. She quietly made ready. Before long, Diane and Roland were standing on the northeast wall amid a group of perfecti. From a family that had taken refuge on Mont Segur had come a red and green costume for Diane, the tunic and hose of a well-to-do boy, an equerry. They had cut her hair short and tucked it under a cap topped with a long partridge feather. They had sewn the red cross back on Roland's black surcoat, and had made one for Diane's tunic from a gentlewoman's crimson scarf. A rope to form a sling was tied around her waist and another around her knees. Roland was similarly tied. What is true about Diane? Pick the correct answer from the following options: A. She lives with her parents B. She has 3 children C. She has no biological family. D. not enough information
C

"That's Glenn Miller," my father said. "But it can't be." He had the back of the hospital bed cranked upright, the lower lid of his left eye creeping up in a warning signal I'd learned to recognize as a child. My older sister Ann had settled deep in the recliner, and she glared at me too, blaming me for winding him up. The jam box sat on the rolling tray table and my father was working the remote as he talked, backing up my newly burned CD and letting it spin forward to play a few seconds of low fidelity trombone solo. "You know the tune, of course," he said. "'King Porter Stomp.'" Those childhood years of listening to him play Glenn Miller on the console phonograph were finally paying off. "He muffed the notes the same way on the Victor version." "So why can't it be Miller?" I asked. "He wouldn't have played with a rabble like that." The backup musicians teetered on the edge of chaos, playing with an abandon somewhere between Dixieland and bebop. "They sound drunk." My father had a major emotional investment in Miller. He and my mother had danced to the Miller band at Glen Island Casino on Long Island Sound in the summer of 1942, when they were both sixteen. That signature sound of clarinet and four saxes was forever tied up for him with first love and the early, idealistic months of the war. But there was a better reason why it couldn't have been Miller playing that solo. If the date on the original recording was correct, he was supposed to have died three days earlier. The date was in India ink on a piece of surgical tape, stuck to the top of a spool of recording wire. The handwritten numerals had the hooks and day-first order of Europe: 18/12/44. I'd won it on eBay the week before as part of a lot that included a wire recorder and a stack of 78s by French pop stars like Charles Trenent and Edith Piaf. What did the son buy off Ebay? Pick the correct answer from the following options: A. a clarinet B. Old records C. surgical tape D. not enough information
B

U.S. President Donald Trump filed his annual financial disclosure form this week with the Office of Government Ethics, the U.S. government's ethics watchdog. Under U.S. law, all top government officials are required to file annual financial disclosure documents with the agency. In Tuesday's 92-page filing, Trump acknowledged that he'd reimbursed his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, last year for more than $100,000 for unspecified expenses incurred in 2016. Trump's lawyers have previously said the president reimbursed Cohen for $130,000 that Cohen paid to an adult film star to keep her quiet about a sexual tryst she said she had with Trump 10 years earlier. Trump has denied having the tryst but recently confirmed reimbursing Cohen to stop "false and extortionist accusations" about it. The financial disclosure did not say why Trump had not listed the payment in his previous financial filing, but the ethics agency said the reimbursement constituted a loan that should have been reported. That has set off a firestorm of criticism and calls for an investigation into whether Trump violated federal law by omitting the payment from his 2017 disclosure. The controversy has overshadowed other details in Trump's financial disclosure, which is the only publicly available snapshot into the president's finances his debts, assets and income from dozens of companies and partnerships around the world. Here are six noteworthy takeaways from the report: Golf losses. Trump, an avid golfer who frequently visits his golf courses, sometimes in the company of world leaders, listed 17 golf companies in his disclosure form, with 13 reporting losses. Overall, golf-related revenue plunged to $210 million from nearly $300 million from the previous reporting period. However, the president's struggling golf courses in Turnberry, Scotland, and Doonbeg, Ireland, improved their earnings, with income at the Turnberry property growing to more than $20 million from $14 million. Trump plans to travel to Scotland during his visit to Britain this summer. How does Trump feel about his upcoming visit to Britain? Pick the correct answer from the following options: A. he is looking forward to it B. he would rather visit another place C. he has some concerns about the visit D. not enough information
D