Question:
Read the text and answer the questions.
Washington (CNN) -- A late evening meeting between President Barack Obama and the leaders of the House and Senate failed to reach agreement Wednesday on a spending plan to avert a government shutdown, but all the participants said progress was made and talks would continue.

If there is no deal by midnight Friday, when the current spending authorization measure expires, parts of the government will close down.

Obama called the 90-minute talks with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, "constructive" and he said they narrowed and clarified the outstanding issues.

"I remain confident that if we're serious about getting something done, we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown," Obama said in brief remarks to reporters. "But it's going to require a sufficient sense of urgency from all parties involved" to prevent a shutdown that "could have real effects on everyday Americans."

Both Reid and Boehner told reporters in their own brief comments that the meeting made progress in narrowing their differences, and that their staffs would work through the night to try to reach further consensus.

"I have confidence we can get this done," said Reid, who criticized Boehner and Republicans earlier in the day for intransigence. "We're not there yet."

Boehner, standing next to Reid, said "we do have some honest differences," and he emphasized there was no agreement on either a specific figure for spending cuts for the rest of the current fiscal year or on policy issues that the Republicans want included in the measure, such as specifically prohibiting funding for abortions.
1. When is the deadline?
2. What will be out of time then?

Numbered answers:
1. by midnight Friday,
2. when the current spending authorization measure expires

Question:
Read the text and answer the questions.
When I was at University I studied very hard. But a lot of my friends did very little work. Some did just enough to pass exams. Others didn't do quite enough. Fred Baines was one of them. He spent more time playing than working in the library.

Once at the end of the term, we had to take an important test in chemistry. The test had a hundred questions. Beside each question we had to write "True" or "False". While I was studying in my room the night before the test, Fred was watching TV. Fred usually worried a lot the night before a test. But on that night he looked perfectly calm. Thenhe told me of his plan. "It's very simple. There are a hundred questions and I have to get fifty correct to pass the test. I'll just toss the coin to decide the answers. That way, I'm sure I'll get half the questions right."

The next day, Fred came happily into the exam room. As he sat tossing a coin for half an hour he marked down his answers. Then he left, half an hour before the rest of us.

The next day, he saw the chemistry professor in the corridor. "Oh, good," he said to the teacher, "Have you got the result of the test?" The teacher reached into his pocket and took out a coin. He threw it into the air, caught it in his hand and looked at it.

"I'm terribly sorry, Fred," he said, "You failed!"
1. Did Fred do enough work?
2. Where was he supposed to work?
3. What did he do instead?
4. What was Fred doing the night before the test?
5. Did Fred plan to guess his way through the test?
6. By flipping what?
7. How many questions did he have to get right to pass?
8. What fraction of the total number of test questions was this?
9. Who did Fred see in the hallway?
10. True or False: Fred passed his test.
11. How did the professor determine this?
12. Where did he get the coin from?
13. True or False: The test was multiple-choice.
14. Was Fred confident in the testing room?
15. How long did it take him to finish his test.
16. What was the narrator doing the night before the test?
17. True or False: It was a beginning-of-term test.
18. What is Fred's surname?
19. Was the narrator a dedicated student?
20. How many of his friends worked hard like he did?

Numbered answers:
1. no
2. in the library
3. played
4. watching TV
5. yes
6. a coin
7. fifty
8. half
9. the professor
10. False
11. flipped a coin
12. his pocket
13. false
14. yes
15. half an hour before the rest
16. studying
17. False
18. Baines
19. yes
20. very few

Question:
Read the text and answer the questions.
Moscow (CNN)More than 1 million historic documents have been destroyed in a fire at one of Russia's largest public libraries, according to the Russian state news agency Tass.

The Russian emergency situations ministry says 147 firefighters struggled for 25 hours over the weekend to put out the blaze in the main library of the Institute for Research Information on Social Sciences in Moscow.

The fire, which ripped through the library Friday evening, destroyed 2,000 square meters (about 2,400 square yards) of the building and caused part of the roof to collapse, according to an official statement. The Russian emergency situations ministry said the fire was particularly hard to put out because of the high temperatures, narrow passageways and the risk of the building falling down.

Moscow's emergency ministry said the temperature inside the rubble of the library remains high and that there is still a threat that the building could collapse.

Vladimir Fortov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the fire, which destroyed 15% of all the documents in the library, reminded him of the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine.

"It's a major loss for science. This is the largest collection of its kind in the world, probably equivalent to the Library of Congress," Fortov told the agency. "It contains material that you can't find anywhere else and all the social science institutions use this library. What has happened here is reminiscent of Chernobyl."

The institute's director, Yuri Pivovarov, told Tass that he fears the building cannot be restored.
1. Did the firefighters struggle?
2. How many were there?
3. How long did they work on putting it out?
4. Who is Vladimir Fortov?
5. Why was it so hard to extinguish?
6. What other major disaster is this event being compared to?
7. When did that happen?
8. Can the building be fixed?
9. How big was the library?
10. Where was chernobyl located?
Numbered answers:
1. yes
2. 147
3. 25 hours
4. president of the Russian Academy of Sciences
5. high temperatures, narrow passageways and the risk of the building falling down
6. Chernobyl
7. 1986
8. no
9. 140000
10. Ukraine