On a day it celebrated 50 years of giving free legal advice, Southern Arizona Legal Aid announced it has received two grants totaling more than $7 million. One of the grants includes the creation of a Web site with legal advice for the poor. A three-year grant worth $6.6 million and a separate technology grant were announced at a press conference and dinner held Thursday at Evo. A. DeConcini Federal Courthouse, 405 W. Congress St. Deconcini was one of the organization's early board members. Thursday's celebration was the first public even held at the courthouse. About 100 members of the legal community attended, including state Attorney General Janet Napolitano and Arizona Supreme Court Justice Thomas Zlaket. Both grants come from the Legal Services., a private, nonprofit corporation established by Congress in 1974 to offer poor people equal access to the justice system. It's funded through congressional appropriation. The $6.6 million grant will pay for staffing operations. The Web site, which will be created with a $50,000 grant, is intended to offer legal advice to poor people across Arizona, said Paul Julian, chief executive officer of Southern Arizona Legal Aid. He said he wants every poor person in Arizona to have legal help. "This is another step in trying to realize that. We feel like we do a pretty good job of helping people who find us," Julian said. Julian said that though most people do not own computers, they can still access them at libraries, schools, and courthouses. He said the Web site will help bridge the "digital divide" that keeps the poor from using the Internet as a resource. Southern Arizona Legal Aid was founded in 1951 as the Legal Aid Society of the Pima County Bar Association. It offered free legal advice on civil matters including disputes in small claims court, divorce proceedings and obtaining Social Security benefits. Charles Ares, a member of the board of directors in the 1950s, said the office was kind of a charity operation.

Question: "How are the grants administered?"

Response: "Legal Services provides the money through allocations in Congress"

A: yes

(CNN) -- Guatemala's government has declared a state of siege and sent hundreds of troops to a northern province where officials say a Mexican drug gang is overtaking towns and threatening residents. President Alvaro Colom announced the 30-day emergency rule in Alta Verapaz on Sunday. The rule allows the military to order anyone suspected of conspiring against the government to be arrested and imprisoned without a warrant, the state-run AGN news agency said. "Starting today, combined forces will retake the streets of Alta Verapaz," a government statement released Sunday morning said. Government data shows cells of the drug gang known as Los Zetas are in the area to protect drug trafficking paths between Honduras and Mexico, "intimidating the population with their heavy weapons and threatening farmers to give up their land for criminal activities," AGN reported. The state of siege also allows the government to place greater restrictions on public gatherings, travel visas and gun licenses, among other things, according to AGN. "The population should be calm. What we are doing is not intended to persecute honest, working people," Interior Minister Carlos Menocal told reporters. Menocal said operations in the coming days would aim to boost regional security, regain control of territory, identify criminal gangs and capture their members. In an interview with CNN en Espanol last month, Menocal said his country needed more help from the United States to combat cartels, which were increasingly carving out new drug transport paths. "In the end, the large majority of drugs travel through Central America, and the assignment of resources or the financial support of the United States government is not the same as Colombia and Mexico receive," he said. Menocal said clashes between authorities and Los Zetas had notably increased.

Question: "Guatemalan officials believe the United States should allocate more resources to combat their growing drug cartel problem, instead of only focusing on which two countries?"

Response: "Columbia and Mexico"

A: yes

On Monday, departing Gov. Roy Barnes will spend his first day as a private citizen by starting his new job as a full-time, pro-bono (unpaid) lawyer at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. The decision by Barnes, the most improbable casualty of Election Day 2002, to go to work for legal aid was almost as unexpected as his November defeat. As a legal services attorney, Barnes will help women escape domestic violence, Mauricio Vivero is vice president seniors fight predatory lending scams and parents obtain child support for their kids. of Legal In doing so, he will take his place on the front line of the U.S. legal community's Services Corporation, the uphill and underpublicized struggle to achieve equal access to justice for millions of Washington-Americans too poor to afford legal representation. based nonprofit corporation chartered by The inaccessibility of the U.S. civil justice system is hardly a new development, but it Congress in took Barnes' decision to put the national media spotlight on our country's ongoing 1974 to promote equal access to access-to-justice crisis. civil justice. The 2000 U.S. census reports that more than 43 million Americans qualify for free federally funded legal assistance, yet fewer than 20 percent of eligible clients (annual income: $11,075 or less) are able to obtain legal help when they need it, according to the American Bar Association. In Georgia, there is just one legal aid lawyer for every 10,500 eligible poor people. Barnes understood this problem long before he became governor. While in private practice, he handled many pro-bono cases and was a frequent volunteer in the Cobb County office of the federally funded Atlanta Legal Aid Society. Most memorably, he secured a $115 million judgment in 1993 against Fleet Finance for victimizing 18,000 homeowners -- many of them senior citizens -- with its widespread predatory lending mortgage practices. His long-standing commitment to the underserved is certainly admirable, but it should not be viewed as a rare and laudable act of civic virtue. To be admitted to practice law, every attorney must take a professional oath to promote justice -- and every state's ethical rules include language indicating lawyers' responsibility to be guardians of fair play for those living in poverty. In Georgia, many law firms, corporations and private attorneys are working pro bono to serve the neediest clients. Yet only 23 percent of the state's 23,598 active lawyers reported meeting the Georgia State Bar's goal of 50 hours of pro-bono service in 2002. The need for volunteers is most severe outside the five-county Atlanta metropolitan area, where 70 percent of the state's poor people are served by only 24 percent of the state's lawyers. National pro-bono participation is even worse. Only 23 percent of the roughly 1 million attorneys in America volunteer even one hour of pro-bono service annually, according to the ABA.

Question: "What problem did Barnes understand before becoming governor?"

Response: "Congress"

A:
no