Problem: 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.

Question: "Where did Mohamed Atta reside while in Germany?"

Answer: "Berlin"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes
Answer: no

Problem: (CNN) -- As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the U.N. General Assembly in New York last month, the spotlight was once again on Iran. And true to form, the Iranian president made his fair share of provocative statements for the Western media. But while Ahmadinejad's mercurial rants captured our media's attention, back in Iran a coordinated strategy against the women's movement continued. On the eve of Ahmadinejad's arrival to New York, Shiva Nazar Ahari, a prominent young female defender of human rights, received a heavy sentence of six years in prison on charges including the vague crime of "waging war against God" -- a convenient catch-all offense for anyone who criticizes the regime and its human rights record. There's no denying it -- Iran's women have had a bad year. Nazar Ahari joins a steadily increasing number of other women's rights activists who are in prison for no greater crime than their attempt to fight for the rights of the women. Hengameh Shahidi, Alieh Eghdam Doust, Bahareh Hedayat and Mahdiyeh Golrou have all been sent to Tehran's notorious Evin Prison on trumped-up charges related to their activism. And while Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, arguably the most internationally recognized Iranian women's rights activist, remains unable to safely return to her country, the government is targeting those affiliated with her for arrest and imprisonment, including her lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and her former aide Jinous Sobhani. Since the 2009 disputed elections and associated government crackdown on the overall reform movement, the government has increasingly targeted women activists. The reasons behind this go well beyond the misogynist nature of Iran's religious leadership. Rather, it is more part of a deliberate and calculated strategy of the Iranian authorities to strike at the heart of the regime's greatest vulnerability -- internal legitimacy with its own people. See more CNN.com opinion articles Iran's government recognizes and fears the broader power of the women activists who have been on the front line of reform in Iran for more than a decade. One can roughly draw an analogy between the women's movement in Iran to movements of religious groups in Burma or Tibet, or the labor "solidarity" movements in the former Eastern bloc and associated labor-Roman Catholic solidarity in Poland -- all advocating initially for the freedoms of a specific group but which provoked government fears for their transformative power to promote broader human rights progress. While the outside world occasionally reacts to the most egregious manifestations of Iran's repression of women -- such as the international condemnation associated with Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian widow sentenced to stoning on charges of alleged adultery -- these events are often portrayed simply as a consequence of the regime's archaic viewpoint about gender.

Question: "How does the Iranian President speak to the Western media?"

Answer: "Nicely"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes
Answer: no

Problem: In the popular mind, the history of Hong Kong, long the entryway to China for Westerners, begins in 1841 with the British occupation of the territory. However, it would be wrong to dismiss the long history of the region itself. Archaeologists today are working to uncover Hong Kong's past, which stretches back thousands of years. You can get a glimpse into that past at Lei Cheng Uk Museum's 1,600-year-old burial vault on the mainland just north of Kowloon. In 1992, when construction of the airport on Chek Lap Kok was begun, a 2,000-year-old village, Pak Mong, was discovered, complete with artifacts that indicated a sophisticated rural society. An even older Stone Age site was discovered on Lamma Island in 1996. While Hong Kong remained a relative backwater in early days, nearby Guangzhou (Canton) was developing into a great trading city with connections in India and the Middle East. By a.d. 900, the Hong Kong islands had become a lair for pirates preying on the shipping in the Pearl River Delta and causing a major headache for burgeoning Guangzhou; small bands of pirates were still operating into the early years of the 20th century. In the meantime, the mainland area was being settled by incomers, the "Five Great Clans": Tang, Hau, Pang, Liu, and Man. First to arrive was the Tang clan, which established a number of walled villages in the New Territories that still exist today. You can visit Kat Hing Wai and Lo Wai, villages with their walls still intact. Adjacent to Lo Wai is the Tang Chung Ling Ancestral Hall, built in the 16th century, which is still the center of clan activities. The first Europeans to arrive in the Pearl River Delta were the Portuguese, who settled in Macau in 1557 and for several centuries had a monopoly on trade between Asia, Europe, and South America. As Macau developed into the greatest port in the East, it also became a base for Jesuit missionaries; it was later a haven for persecuted Japanese Christians. While Christianity was not a great success in China, it made local headway, evidenced today by the numerous Catholic churches in Macau's historic center. Intermarriage with the local Chinese created a community of Macanese, whose culture can still be seen in Macau's architecture and cuisine.

Question: "The mainland clan's walled cities can be viewed at what two intact sites?"

Answer: "Kat Hing Wai"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes
Answer:
yes