In this task, a passage will be given and the goal is to identify an event from the passage. An event is defined as a single word representing something that happened, is happening, or may happen. An event can be factual or hypothetical, positive or negative, certain or uncertain. While most events are based on verbs, an event can also be based on a noun (ex. storm, snow, rainfall) or a copula verb (is, was, been, etc.). The event must not be a pronoun or an adjective. For noun events with multiple words, use the last word in the phrase as event.

Passage: The western military alliance invited the three central and eastern European countries to join the 16-nation bloc in July 1997 at the Madrid summit. The three countries have finished all necessary formalities for accession after the Hungarian parliament ratified the accession treaty on Tuesday.
invited

Passage: "Silence cannot fool all the people all the time," the foreign minister criticized the United States for not taking part in the vote by citing Abraham Lincoln's words, one of America's most famous presidents. The economic embargo on Cuba prevents it from receiving financial aid from the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank, which respectively offer loans of 4.4 billion dollars and 4.5 billion dollars each year.
criticized

Passage: Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Tuesday said more than 1,000 people have been killed in fighting between his troops backing Somali government forces against Somalia's Islamist movement. "We got reports of more than 3,000 wounded in a Mogadishu hospital.
said