Jack thought himself a basketball fan. He watched quite a lot of American NBA basketball games. Not only did he watch them, he spent much of his free time playing on the court too. Then came the final year of his middle school. All of his regular teammates stopped showing up on the court because they were simply too busy preparing for the high school entrance exam to play. He was, of course, under much stress himself, like everyone else. A good exam result meant a good high school; a mediocre score meant a mediocre school. _ . However, he loved basketball so much that he still found time to play, this time with a group of guys who were said to have skipped classes before. Some of his teachers started worrying about him. They asked his mother to go to school to let her know that Jack was hanging out with problem kids. When his mother returned home that day, she wanted to talk to Jack. Knowing the purpose of her visit to the school, Jack thought his mother would punish him for befriending those bad guys. To his surprise, his mother was not angry with him at all. She wanted to hear her son's side of the story. So Jack told his mother about what he knew of Simon and Peter. Simon's parents were badly ill; Peter's father had lost his job. They both seemed to Jack to be normal kids. Jack's mother thought for a moment, then went on to say that she was OK with her son playing with them and that she and her son should think of ways to help these kids. Soon Jack's mum introduced some part-time jobs to Simon and Peter, which they accepted. She believed in her son and cared about those who were less lucky. Jack's basketball friends and he have left for different places, but they still keep in touch. He knows Peter is now a manager of a local bank. Simon is currently a freshman at a university. Sadly, it is impossible to get together to play basketball again, but whenever they get on the phone, they talk about it all the time. What are the answers to this following set of questions: 1. What sport was Jack a fan of?
2. What grade was he in?
3. What happened to the kids he played ball with?
4. Why did they stop?
5. Doing what?
6. How come he wasn't too busy studying as well?
7. Did he find new friends to play ball with?
8. Why was the teacher worried about these kids?
9. What did the teacher do about it?
10. Did his mom feel the same way about his new friends as the teachers?
11. How did she feel about them?
12. How did Jack feel about these kids?
13. Did Jack keep in touch with them when they grew up?
14. Do they still play basketball together?
15. What do they do instead?
16. What did Jack's mom want him to do for the kids?
17. Did she come up with any ways to help?
18. Why did she do for them?
19. Do either of them have jobs now?
20. Which one?
Answer: 1. basketball
2. final year of middle school
3. they stopped showing up
4. they were too busy
5. prepearing for the high school entrance exam
6. yes
7. yes
8. they skipped classes
9. They asked his mother to come to school
10. no
11. she cared about them
12. they were normal kids
13. yes
14. no
15. talk on the phone
16. think ofways to help them
17. yes
18. found them part-time jobs
19. yes
20. peter

Problem: Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. Developed in conjunction with the Universal Coded Character Set (UCS) standard and published as The Unicode Standard, the latest version of Unicode contains a repertoire of more than 120,000 characters covering 129 modern and historic scripts, as well as multiple symbol sets. The standard consists of a set of code charts for visual reference, an encoding method and set of standard character encodings, a set of reference data files, and a number of related items, such as character properties, rules for normalization, decomposition, collation, rendering, and bidirectional display order (for the correct display of text containing both right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, and left-to-right scripts). As of June 2015[update], the most recent version is Unicode 8.0. The standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium.

Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings. The most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same code values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit (two 8-bit bytes) for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard. UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units (4 8 bits) to handle each of the additional characters.
1. What is unicode?
2. How many characters does it contain?
3. What are the most commonly used encodings?
4. How many bytes does UTF-8 use for any ASCII character?
5. What is the most recent version of unicode?
6. Who maintains the standard?
7. Is USC-2 obsolete?
8. How many bit code does UCS-2 use?
9. What does the Unicode standard contain code charts for?
10. anything else?
11. Is there incodeing for left-to-right scripts?
12. When was the most recent update of Unicode?
Answer: 1. computing industry standard
2. more than 120,000
3. UTF-8, UTF-16
4. one
5. Unicode 8.0
6. Unicode Consortium
7. Yes
8. 16-bit
9. visual reference
10. an encoding method
11. Yes
12. June 2015

question: Homosexual couples in New York are being married for the first time after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law permitting same-sex marriage in the state last month. But such marriages, though now legal in New York, remain controversial . So many couples wanted to be married on Sunday, the first day of legal homosexual marriage in New York City, that local officials announced a lottery to determine qualification. New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, herself openly gay, witnessed the first two ceremonies of same-sex marriage. She says the same-sex marriage law supports equality. "A law that says every family is as good as every other family; that every family is based on love, and is exactly the way God wants it to be," she said. Margie Phelps announced same-sex marriage as a crime against God. She and other Christians from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas came halfway across the country to say marriage is defined by Holy Bible. "The pattern is one man and one woman for life to have children who you raise in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," she said. David Schwartz, a traditional Jew, believes every human being has free choice and the power to rule over their desires. He considers homosexual desire to be wrong. "There's one God in heaven and earth, and he has ordered for all mankind that they should limit their affections to relationships between a man and a woman in the context of marriage," he said. Douglas Robinson and his partner of 25 years, Michael Elsasser, were in the first group to be married in Manhattan. Robinson says the United States allows religious views to coexist with(...) what he believes is a civil right of same-sex marriage. "You can have different opinions. This is a tent, some people call it a mixture of various different cultures and opinions and the like, so God bless America, and we are proud to be Americans," he said. Margie Phelps believes God will punish New York City for permitting what she believes to be moral decay. Meanwhile, Nevin Cohen and Daniel Hernandez showed off their marriage certificate. But they said they will not be going on a honeymoon. They say they need to be at work in New York on Monday.
1. What is the topic?
2. What state is it about?
3. Who allowed it?
4. What day did it begin?
5. Were there many persons trying to be wed?
6. How did they handle the situation?
7. Did everyone agree with the legislation?
8. Are there religious reasons for opposing it?
9. Which religious organization traveled across the US?
10. What does the legislation promote for its supporters?
****
answer:
1. homosexual marriage
2. New York
3. Governor Andrew Cuomo
4. Sunday
5. Yes
6. a lottery to determine qualification
7. No
8. Yes
9. Westboro Baptist Church
10. equality.