QUES: Although Bin Laden, Atef, and KSM initially contemplated using established al Qaeda members to execute the planes operation, the late 1999 arrival in Kandahar of four aspiring jihadists from Germany suddenly presented a more attractive alternative. The Hamburg group shared the anti-U.S. fervor of the other candidates for the operation, but added the enormous advantages of fluency in English and familiarity with life in the West, based on years that each member of the group had spent living in Germany. Not surprisingly, Mohamed Atta, Ramzi Binalshibh, Marwan al Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah would all become key players in the 9/11 conspiracy. Mohamed Atta was born on September 1, 1968, in Kafr el Sheikh, Egypt, to a middle-class family headed by his father, an attorney. After graduating from Cairo University with a degree in architectural engineering in 1990, Atta worked as an urban planner in Cairo for a couple of years. In the fall of 1991, he asked a German family he had met in Cairo to help him continue his education in Germany. They suggested he come to Hamburg and invited him to live with them there, at least initially. After completing a course in German, Atta traveled to Germany for the first time in July 1992. He resided briefly in Stuttgart and then, in the fall of 1992, moved to Hamburg to live with his host family. After enrolling at the University of Hamburg, he promptly transferred into the city engineering and planning course at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, where he would remain registered as a student until the fall of 1999. He appears to have applied himself fairly seriously to his studies (at least in comparison to his jihadist friends) and actually received his degree shortly before traveling to Afghanistan. In school, Atta came across as very intelligent and reasonably pleasant, with an excellent command of the German language. When Atta arrived in Germany, he appeared religious, but not fanatically so. This would change, especially as his tendency to assert leadership became increasingly pronounced. According to Binalshibh, as early as 1995 Atta sought to organize a Muslim student association in Hamburg. In the fall of 1997, he joined a working group at the Quds mosque in Hamburg, a group designed to bridge the gap between Muslims and Christians. Atta proved a poor bridge, however, because of his abrasive and increasingly dogmatic personality. But among those who shared his beliefs, Atta stood out as a decisionmaker.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: Where was Mohamed Atta born and what university did he attend to get and architect degree?

QUES: The center of an atom is held together by powerful forces. This gives them a huge amount of stored energy. This type of energy is called nuclear energy. This energy can be released and used to do work. This happens in nuclear power plants where they split apart the nucleus of an atom. This splitting apart is called nuclear fission. Another type of nuclear energy happens in the Sun. Here the atoms nuclei are not split apart. Instead, the nuclei of the atoms are fused, or joined together. This process is called nuclear fusion. Some of the suns energy travels to Earth. This energy from nuclear fusion warms the planet and provides the energy for photosynthesis.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What can be done with the stored energy that holds the center of atoms together?

QUES: To make certain the U.S. was aware of the danger, in July 1939, a few months before the beginning of World War II in Europe, Szilard and Wigner visited Einstein to explain the possibility of atomic bombs, which Einstein, a pacifist, said he had never considered. He was asked to lend his support by writing a letter, with Szilard, to President Roosevelt, recommending the U.S. pay attention and engage in its own nuclear weapons research. A secret German facility, apparently the largest of the Third Reich, covering 75 acres in an underground complex, was being re-excavated in Austria in December 2014 and may have been planned for use in nuclear research and development. The letter is believed to be "arguably the key stimulus for the U.S. adoption of serious investigations into nuclear weapons on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II". In addition to the letter, Einstein used his connections with the Belgian Royal Family and the Belgian queen mother to get access with a personal envoy to the White House's Oval Office. President Roosevelt could not take the risk of allowing Hitler to possess atomic bombs first. As a result of Einstein's letter and his meetings with Roosevelt, the U.S. entered the "race" to develop the bomb, drawing on its "immense material, financial, and scientific resources" to initiate the Manhattan Project. It became the only country to successfully develop an atomic bomb during World War II. For Einstein, "war was a disease ... [and] he called for resistance to war." By signing the letter to Roosevelt he went against his pacifist principles. In 1954, a year before his death, Einstein said to his old friend, Linus Pauling, "I made one great mistake in my life--when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification--the danger that the Germans would make them ..."
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What was arguably the key stimulus for the U.S. adoption of serious investigations into nuclear weapons on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II?

QUES: Little is known of the earliest Stone Age inhabitants of Europe's southwestern extremity. The ancient Greeks called them the Cynetes (or Cunetes). Whatever their origins, their culture evolved under the pressure and influence of foreign forces. Among the many invading armies that settled here and contributed to nascent Portuguese culture were Phoenicians, who settled in the area around 1,000 b.c., followed by the Celts, Iberians, Greeks, and Carthaginians. But it was the Romans, who arrived late in the third century b.c., who most greatly influenced all of Iberia. They built towns, industries, roads, and bridges, developed agriculture, and bequeathed the Latin language, of which Portuguese is a direct descendant. The Romans named the southwestern province of the peninsula Lusitania, oddly enough for one of the Celtiberian tribes they defeated, and by the third century a.d. had introduced Christianity. By the beginning of the fourth century the Algarve had a bishop in place, based in Faro. But Rome had already fallen into decay, and soon hordes of northern tribesmen took over the empire. The Algarve fell to the Visigoths in the mid-fifth century. Under Moorish Rule In a.d. 711, the Moors brought powerful armies from North Africa and launched a devastating attack on the Iberian peninsula, conquering much of what would become Spain and Portugal. They imposed Islam and left an indelible influence on the countryside and the population of the Algarve. The Moorish legacy can still be seen in the form of wells and waterwheels, squat white houses, the dark complexions of the people, and in the very name given the regiontaken from Al-Gharb, which means "country of the west" (when the Moors conquered the territory, it was the most westerly in the known world). The Moors governed their Iberian kingdoms from across the border in Seville, but the Algarve had its own regional capital and huge, invulnerable fortress. The capital was Chelb (or Xelb), and it was bigger and better defended than Lisbon. Today the town, known as Silves, is a provincial outpost whose only besiegers are busloads of tourists who climb the narrow streets up to the old Moorish ramparts.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION:
What was the capital of Algarve, and what was it also called?