Q: (CNN) -- Iran won't be attending this week's international peace conference on Syria because it won't embrace the framework laid out in a previous conference, U.N. and Iranian officials said Monday.

The last-minute invitation to Iran, a leading Syrian ally, had threatened to derail the talks after the leading Syrian opposition group and the United States spoke out against it. Louay Safi, a spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition, called Iran's attendance "a deal-breaker."

Iran announced Monday afternoon that it would not accept "any preconditions" for joining the talks, slated to begin Wednesday in Switzerland. That includes acceptance of the communique issued at the first Geneva conference in 2012, said Mohammad Khazaee, Tehran's U.N. ambassador.

"If the participation of Iran is conditioned to accept Geneva I communique, Iran will not participate in Geneva II conference," Khazaee said in a written statement Monday afternoon. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had made a similar declaration on Iranian state TV earlier Monday.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who issued the invitation Sunday, believed he had Iran's assurance that it accepted the original Geneva declaration, his spokesman, Martin Nesirky, told reporters.

"The secretary-general is deeply disappointed by Iranian public statements today that are not at all consistent with that stated commitment," Nesirky said.The declaration "remains the internationally agreed framework for ending the crisis," he said -- and without Iran's acceptance, this week's conference "will proceed without Iran's participation," he added.

The goal of the talks is to set up a transitional government to help end the violence that has wracked the country.

Answer the following questions:
1. Who will not be in attendance to the meeting?
2. why?
3. says who?
4. when?
5. What was the topic of the meeting?
6. Was Iran invited?
7. when?
8. who was against it?
9. what is the end result they want to achieve?
10. What kind of government do they want to establish?
11. why?
12. What as is caused?
13. Who made an announcement Monday?
14. What did Iran announce?
A: 1. Iran
2. because it won't embrace the framework laid out in a previous conference
3. U.N. and Iranian officials
4. Monday
5. Syria
6. Yes
7. at the last-minute
8. the leading Syrian opposition group
9. peace
10. transitional
11. to help end the violence
12. unknown
13. U.N. and Iranian officials
14. that it would not accept "any preconditions" for joining the talks
Q: O'Fallon, Missouri (CNN) -- Nathan Halbach is 22, with a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. He knows that "horrible stuff" lies ahead.

His mother, Pat Bond, has been taking care of him full time. But when she needed help, she reached out to the Roman Catholic Church.

After all, his father is a priest.

Nathan was born in 1986, during a five-year affair between his mother and Father Henry Willenborg, the Franciscan priest who celebrated Nathan's baptism. In a story first reported in the New York Times, it was revealed that The Franciscan Order drew up an agreement acknowledging the boy's paternity and agreeing to pay child support in exchange for a pledge of confidentiality.

Now her son -- the youngest of four children -- may have just weeks to live. And when the Franciscans balked at paying for his care, she decided she was no longer bound by her pledge of confidentiality.

"I never asked for extraordinary amounts. I asked for the basic needs and care of my son," Bond told CNN's "AC 360." But she said the church told her, "No, we are not Nathan's biological father, we have no legal obligation to your son."

Willenborg, whose priestly vows require celibacy, has been suspended from his most recent assignment, in northern Wisconsin, as Catholic leaders investigate allegations that he was involved with another woman -- then in high school -- around the same time he was seeing Bond. Willenborg has acknowledged his relationship with Bond, but denies any inappropriate relationship with the other woman while she was a minor, according to his current bishop.

Answer the following questions:
1. Who is Nathan Halbach's mom?
2. Who has she asked to help her?
3. What does his father do?
4. When was he born?
5. How old does that make him?
6. Is he healthy?
7. What was he diagnosed with?
8. Who takes care of him?
9. Were his parents married when he was born?
10. How long was their affair?
11. Who pays the child support?
12. In exchange for what?
13. Why did she break that pledge?
14. How long does her son have to live?
15. Did she ask for a lot of money?
16. What did she ask for?
17. Was she the only one that his father was involved with?
A: 1. Pat Bond
2. the Roman Catholic Church.
3. He is a priest.
4. 1986
5. 22
6. No.
7. Brain cancer.
8. His mother.
9. No.
10. Five years.
11. The Franciscan Order.
12. A pledge of confidentiality.
13. The Franciscans balked at paying for his care.
14. Weeks.
15. No.
16. The basic needs and care of her son,
17. No.
Q: Semiotics (also called semiotic studies); is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign process (semiosis) and meaningful communication. It is not to be confused with the Saussurean tradition called semiology which is a subset of semiotics This includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.

The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. As different from linguistics, however, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems.

Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions; for example, the Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco proposed that every cultural phenomenon may be studied as communication. Some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science, however. They examine areas belonging also to the life sciencessuch as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world (see semiosis). In general, semiotic theories take "signs" or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics (including zoosemiotics).

The term derives from the Greek "semeiotikos", "observant of signs", (from "semeion", "a sign, a mark",) and it was first used in English prior to 1676 by Henry Stubbes (spelt "semeiotics") in a very precise sense to denote the branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs. John Locke used the term "sem(e)iotike" in book four, chapter 21 of "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1690). Here he explains how science may be divided into three parts:

Answer the following questions:
1. What is the other name of Semiotics?
2. What does it study?
3. Does it get mixed up with a tradition?
4. With what?
5. What tradition it belongs to?
6. Does it fall under some other category?
7. of what?
8. What does it explore?
9. Is it same as linguistics?
10. Do they have anything in common?
11. What?
12. How the term came about?
13. What does it mean?
14. In what language?
15. What is the root word?
16. What does it mean?
17. Who first used it in English?
18. How did he spell it?
19. Which year?
20. Who else used it around that time?
A:
1. semiotic studies
2. meaning-making
3. yes
4. semiology
5. Saussurean
6. yes
7. semiotics
8. study of signs and symbols
9. no
10. yes
11. non-linguistic sign systems
12. from semeiotikos
13. observant of signs
14. Greek
15. semeion
16. a sign, a mark
17. Henry Stubbes
18. semeiotics
19. prior to 1676
20. John Locke