Word: fruitless
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After two years of fruitless talks, the U.S. and North Korea have finally agreed on a statement of principles that outlines how North Korea might drop from the ranks of the world's nuclear-armed powers-but that leaves a great deal of difficult negotiating for the months ahead...
...many yardsticks (to pick just one: the amount of plutonium in Kim Jong Il's nuclear arsenal), the North Korean nuclear problem is decidedly more acute today than it was before the negotiating process began two years ago. Thus far, the fourth round of talks has been as fruitless as the previous three. After 13 days of meetings without substantive progress, negotiations were recessed until the week of Aug. 29. The participants?North Korea, the U.S., South Korea, Japan, China and Russia?have yet to reach even the most basic accord. Still, none of the governments committed to this exercise...
This might be a manageable task except that Camp Chunder Camp, departing from traditional values of community and responsibility, promotes order and good behavior among the campers through an incentive system based on soda. My efforts to impress upon the campers the importance of air rifle safety are rendered fruitless with their veins bathing their trigger fingers in pure Sunkist, digits which, in turn pump, out pounds of ordinance in the general direction of squirrels that stray near the range. Winslow’s quasi-senile and marginally coherent mutterings of, “Shoot to kill?...
During Reagan's term, both sides have shown a propensity for publicly unveiling sweeping new proposals on the eve of important talks, partly as propaganda. Gorbachev's latest gambit follows in this vein. It also follows in the thus far fruitless tradition of proclaiming the goal of total nuclear disarmament. But the goal is no less worthy than when Baruch spoke of the choice facing the world at the dawn of the atomic age 40 years...
...colleagues on the board. Corporation members, notoriously secretive but not clinically mute, ignored repeated e-mails and calls and to their offices, homes, and cell phones over the past three weeks. And a protracted effort to coordinate an interview with Houghton through the Harvard News Office ultimately proved fruitless...