QUES: Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States. Millions of men and women readied themselves for work. Some made their way to the Twin Towers, the signature structures of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. Others went to Arlington, Virginia, to the Pentagon. Across the Potomac River, the United States Congress was back in session. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, people began to line up for a White House tour. In Sarasota, Florida, President George W. Bush went for an early morning run. For those heading to an airport, weather conditions could not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey. Among the travelers were Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari, who arrived at the airport in Portland, Maine. Boston: American 11 and United 175. Atta and Omari boarded a 6:00 A.M. flight from Portland to Boston's Logan International Airport. When he checked in for his flight to Boston, Atta was selected by a computerized prescreening system known as CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System), created to identify passengers who should be subject to special security measures. Under security rules in place at the time, the only consequence of Atta's selection by CAPPS was that his checked bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that he had boarded the aircraft. This did not hinder Atta's plans. Atta and Omari arrived in Boston at 6:45. Seven minutes later, Atta apparently took a call from Marwan al Shehhi, a longtime colleague who was at another terminal at Logan Airport. They spoke for three minutes. It would be their final conversation.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: How long was the flight from Portland to Maine?

QUES: Life for the partners of Cates, Katalinic & Lund holds little of the glamour one might expect from a career in law. Instead of lunches at Lutce, they caucus at the Palace Diner in Queens. Wooing clients means passing out fliers on street corners, not securing box seats at Madison Square Garden. To make ends meet, one partner stacks pipe and cleans the yard at a plumbing warehouse. Another handles urine samples in a hospital lab. A sign of failure, of a feeble economy, perhaps? Hardly. They are heeding the call of a growing pool of law schools, which are for the first time pointing graduates in a new direction and teaching them how to get there. Forget the lure of large firms, the security of a government post. Here is how to grapple "in the service of justice," as many of the schools put it, instead. Convinced that corporate largess and government programs barely dent the nation's legal needs, the law schools are urging graduates to buck tradition, pass up big salaries and ignore mushrooming student debt to join tiny neighborhood practices or simply start their own, all with an eye toward charging no more than their clients can afford. This is not pro bono legal work; it is "low bono," a term the schools coined to define the atypical kind of law career they are training students for. While its practitioners do charge for their services, they are also dead set on turning no one away - or at least as few as possible. "When you go into this kind of social justice law, it's really brutal and you're almost guaranteed to struggle for a couple of years before there's a light at the end of the tunnel," said Fred Rooney, director of the Community Legal Resource Network at City University of New York School of Law, from which the lawyers of the newly formed Cates, Katalinic & Lund graduated last May. "But if our graduates don't do it, the millions of people who cannot access justice in this country will continue to soar." The movement, primly called the consortium, started four years ago by CUNY, Northeastern University, the University of Maryland and St. Mary's Law School in Texas. (St. Mary's later dropped out.) Since then, it has drawn seven additional law schools to its ranks: the University of Michigan, Rutgers and Syracuse Law Schools, New York Law School, University of New Mexico School of Law, Thomas M. Cooley Law School and Touro Law School. It has elicited at least initial interest from 19 more.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What kind of legal work do recent graduates of City University of New York School of Law tend to find, which pays very little?

QUES: (CNN) -- The U.S. space shuttle program retired in 2011, leaving American astronauts to hitchhike into orbit. But after three long years, NASA's successor is almost ready to make an entrance. Orion, the agency's newest manned spaceship, is being prepared for its first mission in December. In future missions, it will journey into deep space -- to Mars and beyond -- farther than humans have ever gone before. Orion comes loaded with superlatives. It boasts the largest heat shield ever built and a computer 400 times faster than the ones on the space shuttles. It will be launched into space on the most powerful rocket NASA has ever made. No astronauts will be aboard the December flight, which will test the spacecraft's systems for future manned missions. Final work on the spacecraft is under way at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Orion came one step closer to completion this month with the stacking of the crew module atop the service module. "Now that we're getting so close to launch, the spacecraft completion work is visible every day," Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer said in a statement. A 3,600-mile journey When complete, the Orion capsule will resemble a fencing foil, with a tall spire shooting up from a rounded base. At the top will sit a launch abort system, with downward-facing thrusters that would save the crew from a jarring crash in the event of a rocket malfunction. The bottom portion, the service module, will perform various functions such as in-space propulsion and cargo storage. Nestled between the two will be the crew module, capable of supporting human life from launch until recovery. Attached to the service module will be a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket. For the first time since the space shuttle's debut launch in 1981, the crew compartment will ride on the tip of the rocket rather than hanging onto its side, evoking the configuration of the famous Apollo or Gemini missions.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: The U.S. space shuttle program lasted for how many years?

QUES: It is not enough to describe some objects by their location. We may also need to know its direction. For example, a wind blows a storm over your school. Where is that storm coming from? Where is it going? How can we describe a direction? The most common way is by using a compass. A compass is a device with a floating needle (Figure 2.1). The needle is a small magnet. The needle aligns itself with the Earth's magnetic field. The compass needle always points to magnetic north. If you have a compass and you find north. You can then know any other direction. See the directions, such as east, south, west, etc., on a compass rose. The Earth has two poles. It has a magnetic north pole. It also has a geographic north pole. These two poles are close to each other but not the exact same place.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION:
What is the floating needle in a compass made of and which way does it point?