Questions

1. Taiwanese native ShaoLan Hsueh, who now lives in Britain, has developed _____________________ which allows non-Chinese readers to learn written Chinese characters.
a) Chinese for Dummies
b) It's Greek to me.
c) Chineasy
d) Chinese is Fun!

2. Ms. Hsueh explained that a scholar of Chinese will master 20,000 characters, but if a person can learn just the top ________ characters, it is enough to be able to read about forty percent of popular Chinese literature, as well as reading road signs, restaurant menus and grasping the gist of newspaper articles and websites.
a) 20
b) 200
c) 2,000
d) 20,000

3. More than 50 journalists have been murdered or have disappeared in Mexico in the past 7 years. ______________________ are murdering journalists because they have publicized those organizations' illegal activities.
a) illegal immigrants
b) senior citizens
c) U.S. agents working on the Fast and Furious operation
d) drug cartels

4. What are newly elected Mexican President Pena and President Obama doing to end the violence in Mexico?
a) President Pena and President Obama have agreed to work together to crush the cartels
b) President Pena and President Obama have said they are taking a hands off approach and relying on the Mexican people to police their own cities and end the scourge of violence
c) both a and b
d) neither a nor b

5. In the coming weeks, billions of cicadas will emerge out of the earth after _________ underground and overrun the East Coast in states from North Carolina to Connecticut.
a) 17 years
b) 117 years
c) 117 days
d) 17 months

6. What is unusual about the Brood II cicadas which will soon emerge is that ordinary cicadas come out every year around the world but Brood II:
a) come out only every 117 years around the world
b) only emerge one time and will never be seen again
c) are seen only in the eastern half of the U.S. and nowhere else in the world
d) emerge in a different country of the world every year

7. This week's House Committee hearing on the terrorist attacks in Benghazi determined that all but which one of the following occurred?
a) the Obama administration didn’t provide enough security to U.S. diplomats in Libya before the attacks
b) the Obama administration engaged in what Representative Darrell Issa, the committee’s chairman, has called a cover-up afterward to hide the role of terrorists linked to al-Qaeda
c) President Obama was nowhere to be found during the 10 hours the attacks were taking place
d) the Obama administration failed to respond militarily during the attacks

8. Gregory Hicks, the second-ranking U.S. diplomat in Libya at the time of the attack, told congressional investigators that if ______________, it might have saved American lives:
a) the U.S. had pulled all of our diplomats out of Benghazi
b) the U.S. military had bombed Benghazi to smithereens
c) President Obama had personally called the Libyan president
d) the U.S. had quickly sent a military aircraft over Benghazi

9. VE Day marks the end of WWII in:
a) Europe
b) only Germany
c) only France
d) only Russia

10. To commemorate VE Day in France, the government held ceremonies in Paris which included all but:
a) President Francois Hollande and visiting Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski rekindled the flame at the tomb of the unknown soldier under the Arc de Triomphe
b) President Hollande laid a wreath at the foot of General de Gaulle's statue
c) President Hollande, under the escort of the Republican Guard, greeted audiences along The Champs-Elysees
d) acknowledging the fact that the Russian military had won the war for the Allies