The U.S. has long had the unenviable distinction of holding the world's largest prison population, in part because of tough-on-crime policies enacted in the 1990s. But sentencing reforms passed in recent years appear to have made a dent, leading to declines in the population over the past eight years. A criminal justice reform organization reported Friday that in 2017, the U.S. prison population dropped below 1.5 million for the first time in more than a decade. The decline, according to the Washington-based Vera Institute for Justice, was driven by a sharp decrease in the number of inmates in federal prisons and decreases in several states with large prison populations. Total U.S. prison population dropped to 1,486,000 last year, a decline of nearly 16,000. The number of federal prisoners fell to 183,000, and the number of inmates in state prisons declined to 1.3 million, according to the report. (The overall figure does not include the more than 600,000 defendants held in local, state and federal jails.) The decline extended an eight-year downward trend in U.S. prison population that has been driven by federal and state sentencing reforms enacted over the past decade. But the Vera institute cautioned that it was unclear whether the trend would continue. "Whether criminal justice reform can continue to fuel this sustained decline in the prison population remains to be seen," said Jacob Kang-Brown, senior research associate at Vera. "We must continue to do the hard work, as advocates and agents of change, to ensure that all our communities feel the relief of decarceration." The report came as President Donald Trump called on Congress to pass legislation to help former inmates reintegrate into society and avoid going back to prison, as many do. "We want former inmates to find a path to success so they can support their families and support their communities," Trump said at a White House summit on prison reform attended by two state governors and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, who is spearheading... After the end of this story, the number of inmates probably: - continued to decline - increased sharply in several states with large prison populations - increased sharply in federal prisons - not enough information
continued to decline

Rain, the young man is thinking. Of course it would be raining. Not a heavy, cleansing rain that leaves the streets steaming and the neatly sculptured yards lush and fragrant. This is a gray drizzling rain. A rain that makes him think of places like England and Scotland as they appear in those disturbing late night films on cable, the ones in black and white that weren't particularly memorable when they were made and are even less so now. Still, it rains and the air is cool. All he has to shelter him is a think nylon jacket. The jacket is soaked. It feels both chilly and coarse against his skin. His hair hangs in flat and sodden wings, falling into his eyes. It's long in the back, almost to his shoulders, and he thinks that the cars that pass him on the street, the occupants of those cars, might look at him and see only that he is wet and not that he is dirty as well. Can they tell that his hair has been unwashed for days? That his clothes are the same ones he's worn for more than a week? It doesn't matter. He's invisible to them as soon as they pass, taking any assumptions they might make with them. They might just mistake him for one of those hoity-toity college kids, one of those clean limbed and beaming have's who has happened to find himself caught out without his umbrella. He makes a desultory attempt to straighten his shoulders, to lift his eyes from the buckled sidewalk. To look like he might have a purpose or a destination. It doesn't help. He has become the day. He has internalized the environment. He did that years ago, in fact. That's all I can do. Not his words, of course, but he understands them. He is intimately acquainted with his limitations. What is his jacket made out of? - Nylon - Leather - not enough information - Denim
Nylon

Q: Christopher Warm had a sedentary job. On his keyboard he typed various letters and numbers, which would become computer programs. In his company he was known as Office Desk, because when he was working he always sat behind his well-used piece of conference table standing in a hard to notice corner in the software specialists' room. Christopher wasn't a wide person, and so his piece of conference table didn't have to be too big either, which also practically solved office space problems in the 0-1 Computer firm. It was Warm's secret that the majority of his time outside of the company, he also spent behind a desk. On his keyboard he typed various letters and numbers, which would become computer programs for the 0-1 Computer Associates company. While the Man Called Office Desk (MCOD, or simply Cod in an alternative version) was writing an intuitive program for the management of empty office desk space in software companies, a thing that nobody had ever expected to happen happened. Warm became fused with the chair. The staff at 0-1 Computer were disappointed, they had expected Cod to fuse with a desk. It would have been much more entertaining to watch, you could have laughed at him a little, and the nickname, given to him by the programmers' boss would have gotten a whole new meaning. And right now, there wasn't even much to talk about during cigarette breaks. Warm did not hide the fact he would have preferred to fuse with a mouse, or a mouse pad. Right now, all he could do was to pretend he totally ignored the fact he was physically stuck to a chair. And he was doing just fine until it was time to go to his second shift at 1-0 Computer Associates, where he had been working on a program for the management of empty space in staff lockers in telecommunications companies. What happened after Christopher fused? - not enough information - He pretended to ignore it - He joked about it - He started working on a new program
A: He pretended to ignore it

When she's in the mood to push my buttons, my significant other, the delightful and charming Ms. D, frequently alludes to the questionable timeline concerning my birth date. She derives much mirth from the fact that I was born something less than nine or ten months after my parents wed and hints that this indicates a certain amount of premarital hanky-panky. Standing on my dignity ('cause it's higher than the coffee table), my reply is that I have it on good authority that I owe my early entry into the world to Tabusintac Hill. Said hill was once considered to be an abomination of the first water. The Tabusintac, like all hills, had an up and a down. In this case, the up and down were distinguished from each other by a sharp curve at the bottom. The main North/South New Brunswick highway slavishly followed the hill's contours. If you were heading north, the road led you into a ravine and you were faced with a steep uphill incline that, in winter presented a challenge to at least half the vehicles trying to climb it. In true snow country fashion, steep, icy hills were conquered by getting a running start, building up a lot of speed and praying that Mr. Newton's rules concerning inertia would work in your favour. Headed south, the problem became keeping your car under control so that you didn't go shooting into the trees when the road curved to the left. My parents were taking a trip to the Miramachi in December of '56 and were driving a Pontiac borrowed from one of my father's friends. My mother was pregnant with a bundle of bad attitude and misery that would turn out to be me. I assume that my father was driving with that mix of panache and insouciance that my mother tended to describe as reckless behaviour. In any case, as he rounded the corner at the top of the hill, the road was apparently free of snow and ice and there was no reason to slowdown. Until the moose stepped out onto the road just ahead of them. who questioned my birth date? - not enough information - My father - Ms. D - My mother
Ms. D