Over the centuries, the living here has always been easy enough to attract a steady stream of immigrants. Bountiful food sources might have made Malaysia an inviting place for the contemporaries of Java Manin 230,000 b.c. But thus far, the country's earliest traces of homo sapiens, found in the Niah Caves of northern Sarawak, are fragments of a skull dating to 40,000 b.c. On the peninsula, the oldest human-related relics (10,000 b.c. ) are Stone Age tools of the Negritos. These small, dark Melanesians are related in type to Australian aborigines and are confined today to the forests of the northern highlands. By 2,000 b.c. , these timid, gentle nomads hunting with bow and arrow were driven back from the coasts by waves of sturdy immigrants arriving in outrigger canoes equipped with sails. Mongolians from South China and Polynesian and Malay peoples from the Philippines and the Indonesian islands settled along the rivers of the peninsula and northern Borneo. They practiced a slash-and-burn agriculture of yams and millet, a technique that exhausted the soil and imposed a semi-nomadic existence from one jungle clearing to another. Families lived in wooden longhouses like those still to be seen today among the Iban peoples of Sarawak. Another unit was added on to the communal dwelling each time a marriage created a new family. Other tough migrants from the South Seas settled along the coastssailors, fishermen, traders (for the most part pirates)known euphemistically as orang laut (sea people).

Question: "What would be added to the wooden longhouses of the Iban people, when they were married?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "A log"

Response: no

Jenny was a 13 year old girl with blond hair and blue eyes. She had gotten out of her last day of school and was free for the summer. Two of her friends were going to the nearby beach to do some swimming and enjoy the sun. Jenny went with them and when they got there the beach was very full and there were people everywhere. They changed into their bathing suits and went to the water. The water was very cold. They chose not swim and walked to the sand. Then they laid down on some towels and enjoyed the sun. After several hours Jenny and her friends fell asleep. They woke up and the sun was beginning to set. When Jenny sat up she found that it was painful to touch her skin. When she looked down she saw that she had a very bad sunburn. Her friends were also very badly sunburned so they went home. Jenny's mother gave her a cream to put on the sunburn. Afterwards she felt a lot better and went to sleep.

Question: "Why did they decide not to swim?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "People everywhere"

Response: no

Lash is associate dean at the University of Southern California Law School. Johnson is a justice on California's Second District Court of Appeal. Lash and Johnson are co-chairs of the California Commission on Access to Justice. The full report can be viewed at (www.calbar.org). In her year-long odyssey through the California justice system, Katherine, a 35-year-old single mother with three children, experienced failure at every turn. Leaving her abusive husband, she moved into the only apartment she could afford, and soon discovered a broken toilet and non- working oven, rats and roaches, and a fourthfloor landing with no railing. She began withholding rent pending repairs her landlord refused to make, but then her Medi-Cal benefits were cut off when she could not provide rent receipts. She lost health care for her children and herself, although she is a borderline diabetic in need of medication and her children were suffering from rat bites. Katherine tried to seek help through the courts. Representing herself at an administrative hearing, she lost her appeal to restore Medi-Cal benefits because she did not have proper documentation of the rent account. When she went to a courthouse to file a complaint against her landlord, she found the process so confusing that she gave up and went home. According to "The Path to Justice: A Five-Year Status Report on Access to Justice in California," prepared by the California Commission on Access to Justice, Katherine is just one of 4.6 million poor Californians whose basic civil legal needs -- often involving such critical needs as housing, health care, education, employment, safety and transportation -- are not being addressed. California has a critical dearth of legal services for the poor, and, as this report makes clear, it is imperative that the state join with the federal government and private funders to increase resources so that all Californians, regardless of income, have equal access to our justice system. Our justice system is predicated on the assumption that both parties will be represented by lawyers who act as gatekeepers and guides through a complex legal system that would otherwise be inaccessible to many of us. Unfortunately, the most vulnerable members of our society are the least able to afford legal services. California does have a strong network of legal aid organizations that try to help meet the needs of the poor, but there's just one legal aid lawyer available per 10,000 poor people. We may promise "justice for all," but for those who can't afford a lawyer, that promise is often a lie. In its new report, the Commission on Access to Justice notes some significant steps toward providing equal access to justice for all Californians.

Question: "Why was Katherine unsuccessful in representing herself?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "The legal system was too confusing"

Response: yes

Hamilton argued that the natural faculties of blacks were as good as those of free whites, and he warned that the British would arm the slaves if the patriots did not. In his 21st-century biography, Chernow cites this incident as evidence that Hamilton and Laurens saw the Revolution and the struggle against slavery as inseparable. Hamilton attacked his political opponents as demanding freedom for themselves and refusing to allow it to blacks. In January 1785, Hamilton attended the second meeting of the New York Manumission Society (NYMS). John Jay was president and Hamilton was the first secretary and later became president. Chernow notes how the membership soon included many of Hamilton's friends and associates. Hamilton was a member of the committee of the society that petitioned the legislature to end the slave trade, and that succeeded in passing legislation banning the export of slaves from New York. In the same period, Hamilton felt bound by the rule of law of the time and his law practice facilitated the return of a fugitive slave to Henry Laurens of South Carolina. He opposed the compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention by which the federal government could not abolish the slave trade for 20 years, and was disappointed when he lost that argument. Hamilton never supported forced emigration for freed slaves. Horton has argued from this that he would be comfortable with a multiracial society, and that this distinguished him from his contemporaries. In international affairs, he supported Toussaint L'Ouverture's black government in Haiti after the revolt that overthrew French control, as he had supported aid to the slaveowners in 1791--both measures hurt France. Scant evidence has been interpreted by a few to indicate Hamilton may have owned household slaves, as did many wealthy New Yorkers (the evidence for this is indirect; McDonald interprets it as referring to paid employees).

Question: "Hamilton was the first president of what New York, abolitionist organization?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "New York Manumission Society"

Response:
yes