TASK DEFINITION: Based on the information present in the given passage, you need to write a correct answer to the given question. A correct answer is one that correctly and completely answers the question. Do not write answers that address the question partially or incorrectly. The correct answer must be contained in the given paragraph.
PROBLEM: Paragraph- Sent 1: After the August missile strikes, diplomatic options to press the Taliban seemed no more promising than military options.
Sent 2: The United States had issued a formal warning to the Taliban, and also to Sudan, that they would be held directly responsible for any attacks on Americans, wherever they occurred, carried out by the Bin Laden network as long as they continued to provide sanctuary to it.
Sent 3: For a brief moment, it had seemed as if the August strikes might have shocked the Taliban into thinking of giving up Bin Laden.
Sent 4: On August 22, the reclusive Mullah Omar told a working-level State Department official that the strikes were counterproductive but added that he would be open to a dialogue with the United States on Bin Laden's presence in Afghanistan.
Sent 5: Meeting in Islamabad with William Milam, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Taliban delegates said it was against their culture to expel someone seeking sanctuary but asked what would happen to Bin Laden should he be sent to Saudi Arabia.
Sent 6: Yet in September 1998, when the Saudi emissary, Prince Turki, asked Mullah Omar whether he would keep his earlier promise to expel Bin Laden, the Taliban leader said no.
Sent 7: Both sides shouted at each other, with Mullah Omar denouncing the Saudi government.
Sent 8: Riyadh then suspended its diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime.
Sent 9: (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates were the only countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.) Crown Prince Abdullah told President Clinton and Vice President Gore about this when he visited Washington in late September.
Sent 10: His account confirmed reports that the U.S. government had received independently.
Sent 11: Other efforts with the Saudi government centered on improving intelligence sharing and permitting U.S. agents to interrogate prisoners in Saudi custody.
Sent 12: The history of such cooperation in 1997 and 1998 had been strained.
Sent 13: Several officials told us, in particular, that the United States could not get direct access to an important al Qaeda financial official, Madani al Tayyib, who had been detained by the Saudi government in 1997.67Though U.S. officials repeatedly raised the issue, the Saudis provided limited information.
Sent 14: In his September 1998 meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah, Vice President Gore, while thanking the Saudi government for their responsiveness, renewed the request for direct U.S. access to Tayyib.
Sent 15: The United States never obtained this access.
Sent 16: An NSC staff-led working group on terrorist finances asked the CIA in November 1998 to push again for access to Tayyib and to see "if it is possible to elaborate further on the ties between Usama bin Ladin and prominent individuals in Saudi Arabia, including especially the Bin Laden family."Sent 17: One result was two NSC-led interagency trips to Persian Gulf states in 1999 and 2000.
Sent 18: During these trips the NSC, Treasury, and intelligence representatives spoke with Saudi officials, and later interviewed members of the Bin Laden family, about Usama's inheritance.
Question: Who was the US trying to contact during strained Saudi Relations in 1997, when they were denied the opportunity to question detainees?.

SOLUTION: Madani al Tayyib.

PROBLEM: Paragraph- Sent 1: The family across the street has a cat.
Sent 2: He is a cute black kitty named Dillon.
Sent 3: The cat is about two years old, and the family has had him for about a year.
Sent 4: He is an indoor cat who is not allowed to go outside.
Sent 5: The children like to play with Dillon because he still acts like a kitten.
Sent 6: Dillon jumps around, and chases flies, beetles and spiders.
Sent 7: When he plays with the children, he sometimes uses his paws to attack them, but he doesn't try to hurt them with his claws.
Sent 8: Dillon is a great cat but he has one problem: he likes to eat bread.
Sent 9: The family only feeds him cat food, never human food like steak or potatoes.
Sent 10: But the cat likes the smell of bread so much that he tries to find it everywhere he can.
Sent 11: Dillon jumps up on the kitchen table when a sandwich is there, and tries to carry it away.
Sent 12: He finds loaves of bread from the store on the floor and claws through the wrappers.
Sent 13: The cat climbs into the bread cupboard looking for hot dog and hamburger buns.
Sent 14: The family tries to make Dillon stop getting into the bread by spraying him with water when he goes after bread.
Sent 15: They yell at him when he walks on the table.
Sent 16: But Dillon does not listen.
Sent 17: The kitty keeps trying to find bread to eat.
Sent 18: The family thinks that the man who took care of Dillon when he was a very young kitten must have been a baker or cook, and that's why Dillon likes the smell and taste of bread so much!.
Question: How old is Dillon?.

SOLUTION: Almost 2.

PROBLEM: Paragraph- Sent 1: The Reconquest: The aim of the Crusades in Spain was the eviction of the Muslims.
Sent 2: After the recovery of Jerusalem in 1099, it took four hundred years of sieges and battles, treaties, betrayals, and yet more battles, before Christian kings and warlords succeeded in subduing the Moors.
Sent 3: On 10 September 1229, a Catalan army led by King Jaume I of Aragon and Catalunya took the Mallorcan shore near the present-day resort of Santa Ponca.
Sent 4: The defenders retreated inside the walls of Palma, but on the last day of 1229 the city fell, and pockets of resistance throughout the island were also defeated.
Sent 5: Jaume I proved to be an enlightened ruler who profited from the talents of the Moorsconverted by force to Christianityas well as of the island's large Jewish and Genoese trading communities.
Sent 6: Mallorca prospered.
Sent 7: The Moors on Menorca speedily agreed to pay an annual tribute to Aragon and were left in peace.
Sent 8: The island's tranquility lasted until 1287, when Alfonso III of Aragon, smarting over a series of humiliations at the hands of his nobles, found a pretext for invasion.
Sent 9: The Moors were defeated and expelled or killed.
Sent 10: In contrast to Mallorca, Menorca's economy was devastated for decades.
Sent 11: Jaume I died after reigning in Aragon for six decades, but he made the cardinal error of dividing between his sons the lands he had fought for so long to unite.
Sent 12: At first this resulted in an Independent Kingdom of Mallorca, under Jaume II, followed by Sanc and Jaume III.
Sent 13: But family rivalry triggered the overthrow of Jaume III by his cousin Pedro IV, who then seized the Balearics for Aragon.
Sent 14: Attempting a comeback, Jaume was killed in battle near Llucmajor in 1349.
Sent 15: A newly unified Christian Spain under the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, completed the Reconquest, defeating the only Moorish enclave left on the Iberian peninsula, Granada, in 1492.
Sent 16: However, the centralized kingdom failed to incorporate the Balearics politically or economically.
Question: What caused a tranquility on the island of Menorca that lasted until 1287?.

SOLUTION:
Pay an annual tribute.