SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Thursday pushed back against a North Korean state media report that U.S. President Donald Trump agreed during this week’s Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un to gradually lift sanctions against Pyongyang, saying Trump had been very clear about the sequence of steps in the process. The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Trump offered to lift sanctions against it as relations improve, indicating a phased-in approach where concessions would be provided at various stages of the denuclearization process. Speaking at a news conference in Seoul alongside South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono, the U.S. secretary of state said the Trump administration would not repeat the mistakes made by past presidents that rewarded Pyongyang for denuclearization promises. “When we refer to the mistakes of the past. They were providing economic and financial aid relief before the complete denuclearization had taken place. That is not going to happen. President Trump made that clear,” Pompeo said. President Trump described his meeting with Kim as a resounding success and in a tweet said, “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” But the U.S.-North Korea joint declaration was vague on details, providing no clear definition on what constitutes denuclearization, set no timeline for the dismantlement process, and said nothing about outside verification requirements. Pompeo, however, pointed out that in the Singapore statement both countries reaffirmed the inter-Korean Panmunjom declaration from April, in which both South and North Korea agreed to uphold all past agreements that did specify detailed nuclear prohibitions and verification requirements. The secretary of state and his counterparts in Seoul and Tokyo said they are united in support of the U.S.-North Korea agreement, and in agreement on the goal of complete, irreversible, verifiable dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program. After the summit,... According to the above context, answer the following question. After the meeting, how would Kim describe the meeting with Trump?

Answer: A partial success


I already gave this example in another post but I think it was a really interesting situation with an interesting outcome so I’m going to repeat it. When I was 21 years old I produced a play. It was actually my second. The first was really successful. With the second I bit off a lot more than I could chew and I got too big for my britches and I ended up with a sprawling money eating disaster that caused me to have to move to a poor part of town and to go to court with my publicist and to be in debt for a couple of years. I could have absolutely let this ruin me and discourage me. And I realized this was a very delicate situation for my creativity and my sense of hope for the future. So I said to myself one day, “let me take a walk to the park and have this situation out with myself once and for all.” Two blocks from my house was this wonderful neo classical park with beautiful stairs leading from level to level. I walked up and down the stairs and basically said to myself “this was a failure. I am having a failure experience. But I have a choice of how I look at this. And the big Takeaway for me with this experience is that I have talent and there is a big creative future for me. And I have hope. I have to slow down. I have to make sure I don’t get ahead of myself. I definitely have to clean up this mess and be patient for however long it takes . But bottom line the big take away from this experience is that I have talent and I have a future and I have Hope.” It was one of the most amazing moments I’ve ever had with myself. There are about 100 other experiences in my life where I wish I had had a conversation like this. This one was a treasure. According to the above context, answer the following question. Why did the second play fail?

Answer: He bit off more than he could chew.


If you visited the Getty Center in July or early August, you may have encountered a group of high school students wearing white lab coats with “Teen Lab” splattered across the back. You might have spotted them testing kinetic sculptures made from recycled materials, sketching in front of artworks in the galleries, or taking Polaroid self-portraits inspired by David Hockney’s photocollages. Online, you may have seen the playful social media stories they created to share their experiments with artistic and scientific processes. The teens were participants in the Getty Teen Lab, a four-week paid internship for high school students. Supported by a generous grant from the Vera R. Campbell Foundation, Teen Lab was the first of several teen-focused initiatives that the J. Paul Getty Museum is launching in 2017 and 2018. The Getty’s Education Department developed Teen Lab in response to several seemingly disconnected questions that many art museums are grappling with today: How can we engage diverse youth in meaningful ways? How can museums help meet the rising demand for K-12 curriculum that integrates Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM)? Can art museums themselves be sites for STEAM learning? To address these questions, we looked at other teen programs and discovered that the most successful models are those that give teens agency and a voice in the museum.(1) For example, many museums have teen councils that program events for their peers or offer opportunities for students to collaborate on projects with artists.(2) The Getty wanted to build on these models by empowering teens to be active creators of educational content. In keeping with this goal, we designed the program using the project-based learning approach, which develops skills and knowledge by inviting students to explore solutions to authentic, real-world problems. According to the above context, answer the following question. What was the Getty Teen Lab favorite activity during their internship?

Answer: not enough information


The rate of incarceration in the U.S. is the world’s highest, leading to what many lawmakers and policy analysts say is a nationwide imprisonment epidemic. But the beginning of the end of that epidemic started Tuesday, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, told VOA. A bipartisan prison reform bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a 360-59 vote “strikes an opening blow against the overcriminalization of the nation,” Jeffries, one of the bill's co-sponsors, said. U.S. President Donald Trump said “the strong bipartisan vote paces the way for action by the Senate.” Last week, Trump endorsed the bill at a White House summit on prison reform, saying, “Our whole nation benefits if former inmates are able to reenter society as productive, law-abiding citizens.” If the bill reaches the president's desk for a signature, it would provide $50 million in funding for five years to provide job training, education and substance abuse treatment for prisoners as well as a number of quality-of-life measures aimed at reducing chronically high rates of recidivism among former inmates. But the contentious issue of criminal justice reform has split Democrats and Republicans within their own parties, possibly jeopardizing the bill’s chances of passage as it heads to the U.S. Senate. In a letter to colleagues last week, Democratic Senators Kamala Harris, Dick Durbin and Cory Booker joined two House Democratic colleagues, Representatives John Lewis and Sheila Jackson Lee, in saying the bill could not be implemented effectively and could possibly lead to prison privatization. Jeffries told VOA many of the arguments against the First Step Act “were anchored in falsehoods.” He added the legislation passed today “is a first step towards eradicating the cancer of mass incarceration” a move also welcomed by many House Republicans. “Rather than allowing the cycle of crime to continue, this legislation takes a practical, intelligent approach to rehabilitation,” House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican... According to the above context, answer the following question. Who believes the legislation passing is the first step towards eradicating the cancer of mass incarceration?

Answer: