In her storage room-turned-office, Jennifer Baum works under an expanding leak that is causing the ceiling to turn brown and crumble. Mold grows in the buckets positioned to catch the water. She shrugs it off. Outside her office she has taped up a clear plastic suit, and a sign that reads, "All employees must don protective gear before coming in." Such is life in limbo. Nearly a year after Sept. 11, the Legal Aid Society-the lawyers for New York's poor and homeless-remains, well, homeless. The nonprofit has been barred from returning to its 90 Church St. headquarters, across from the World Trade Center site, because of environmental concerns. Legal Aid has uncomfortable company. More than 11,500 New Yorkers continue to work out of temporary space, according to analysis by Manhattan-based real estate brokerage TenantWise.com Inc. and Crain's New York Business. That's 8% of the 137,000 workers who lost their offices or access to them when the Twin Towers collapsed. Legal Aid's 450 displaced attorneys and staffers have spent the past 12 months spread among previously unused spaces-some unused for good reason-in the nonprofit's other offices. It could be another year and a half before they return to their old desks. They have contended with difficult working conditions as demand for Legal Aid's services is on the rise because of Sept. 11 and the deteriorating economy. The civil division is spread among a few boroughs. Their papers and documents, some 20,000 boxes worth, are stuck in a storage facility in Linden, N.J. "I am counting the days till we can have all the parts back in one place," says Steven Banks, Legal Aid's associate attorney in chief. In the memories of the exiled workers, the old office has achieved mythical proportions. They say the wood paneling and rugs had the ability to cool emotions and lift spirits. The Legal Aid office on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, where 65 displaced workers have cobbled together space amid the faded and scratched walls, looks more like a bargain basement.

Question: "Which organization has been barred from returning to its 90 Church St. headquarters, across from the World Trade Center site, because of environmental concerns?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "The Legal Aid Society"

Response: yes

You may wonder if there are other examples of static discharge. The answer is yes. Lightning is a form of static discharge. It is much more dramatic than what happens between you and the door knocker, but it is the same principle. You can see how it occurs in the following diagram and animation. You have no doubt seen lightning in a rainstorm. What does lighting have to do with static electricity? As it turns out, everything! During a rainstorm, clouds develop regions of different charges. This happens due to the movement of air molecules, water drops, and ice particles. The negative charges are concentrated at the base of the clouds. The positive charges are concentrated at the top. The negative charges repel electrons on the ground below. The ground then becomes positively charged. Over time the differences increase. Eventually the electrons are discharged. This is what we see as lightning. You can watch an awesome slow-motion lightning strike below.

Question: "What happens to electrons to make them turn into lightning?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "Slow-motion"

Response: no

(CNN) -- Horror-meister, Stephen King calls George Pelecanos "perhaps the greatest living American crime writer." His stories are set in Pelecanos' hometown of Washington, D.C., but this is not the side of the U.S. capitol that you see portrayed on TV with white marble monuments, lawyers and lobbyists. Pelecanos is more interested in working families struggling to get by, the racial tensions in its ethnic neighborhoods and the low-lifes on the edges. His crime-writing peers call Pelecanos the "undisputed poet" of Washington's gritty side. The best-selling and award-winning author is out this week with his 17th and latest novel, "The Cut." It's the first in a new series featuring Iraq war veteran and private investigator Spero Lucas. When he's not working for a Washington defense attorney, Lucas recovers stolen property for a 40% cut. Now, a high-profile crime boss hires Lucas to find out who's been stealing from him, and it could turn out to be Lucas' biggest payday or an untimely end. While Pelecanos made his bones in the noir tradition, there's a definite "Western" feel to "The Cut." The new novel takes place in a morally gray and often violent world. It's peppered with pitch-perfect dialogue and captures the sights, sounds and taste of Washington in rich detail. In short, Pelecanos reads like the real deal. Pelecanos knows a thing or two about capturing the authenticity of urban America with an ethnically and socially diverse cast. In addition to his success as a novelist, Pelecanos is a producer and writer for HBO's New Orleans-set, "Treme." He was previously a producer and Emmy-nominated writer on the hit series "The Wire" and the miniseries "The Pacific." Read an excerpt from "The Cut" CNN recently spoke to Pelecanos about his new novel. The following is an edited transcript. CNN: Tell me more about your new character, Spero Lucas.

Question: "In what type of world does "The Cut" take place?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "undisputed"

Response: no

IBM opened a sprawling and sophisticated semiconductor factory here on Wednesday that cost more than $2.5 billion to build and equip, the largest single capital investment the company has ever made. The factory, which opens as the computer chip business is in a slump, is a costly and risky move for IBM. But it is also an expression of confidence by the company that it can remain a technology leader in the highly competitive global semiconductor industry, and a commitment that the best place to execute that strategy is in upstate New York. IBM is an exception among computer makers in that it still invests heavily in research to advance the design, manufacture and materials used in semiconductor chips. It is spending more than $500 million a year on semiconductor research and development. The factory will produce a wide range of specialized semiconductors used in everything from the largest mainframe computers to cell phones and video-game consoles. The new plant is part of IBM's push to gain a strong lead in chip-making beyond the personal computer business, where Intel and East Asian chip producers hold the advantage. "The core of our strategy is to lead in technology and attack the high-performance segments of the market," said John Kelly, senior vice president in charge of IBM's technology group. An advantage to having the semiconductor fabricating factory here, Kelly explained, was that it was very close to its research laboratories in nearby Westchester County, N.Y. To stay ahead in advanced chip technology, he said, moving innovations out of the labs and into the factory as fast as possible is crucial. "What we call the lab-to-fab time should be as close to zero as possible," Kelly said. "If our strategy were anything but to be on the leading edge, we'd have put the plant in Asia." The new factory, which will begin normal production early next year, will employ about 1,000 people.

Question: "On what type of research is IBM currently spending more than $500 million dollars a year?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "Technology"

Response:
no