Weekly News Quiz for Students

“It is not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” President Biden said in a speech outside Pittsburgh. “It is a once-in-a-generation investment in America.”

White House officials said the plan would accelerate the fight against climate change by hastening the shift to new, cleaner energy sources, and would help promote racial equality in the economy.

The provisions would improve wages, internet service, drinking water, and commute times, Biden said.

The costs would be offset by increased corporate tax revenues raised over 15 years, particularly from multinationals that earn and book profits overseas. The president cast those increases as a means to prod companies into investing and producing more in the United States. Many Republicans oppose the infrastructure plan, arguing that it’s too costly and that increasing taxes on businesses will make U.S. companies less competitive.

The announcement by the baseball commissioner, Rob Manfred, came after days of lobbying from civil rights groups and discussions with stakeholders like the Major League Baseball Players Association. The action is likely to put additional pressure on other organizations and corporations to consider pulling business out of Georgia, a move that both Republicans and Democrats in the state oppose despite fiercely disagreeing about the new voting law. Republicans say the law will help prevent voter fraud, while Democrats say it’s an attempt to make it harder for Democratic-leaning voters, particularly ones of color, to vote.

The league’s decision comes as other states are moving closer to passing new laws that would further restrict voting.

Manfred’s decision to move the All-Star Game goes far beyond what any other leading American institution has done so far to take a stand against new voting restrictions, and his strongly worded announcement was striking for a league with owners who span the political spectrum.

In the women's final, Stanford snapped a 29-year title drought, claiming the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball championship with a tight win April 4 over Arizona, 54-53.

The two Pac-12 Conference teams played against the backdrop of the public health crisis and questions about the stature of women’s basketball in an embattled college sports industry. But through it all, Stanford was considered one of the sport’s top teams and solidified that claim with its championship.

In the men's final, a victory for the previously unbeaten Gonzaga would have also put a bow on a season that was played through a pandemic. Baylor, though, had other ideas, laying waste to those plans with a wrecking ball defense and a hail of 3-pointers, ruining Gonzaga’s bid for a perfect season on the night of April 5 with an 86-70 victory to claim the program’s first championship.

It’s B. The other countries shown on the map: A is Nepal; C is Cambodia; and D is Malaysia.

Ten days after seizing power in Myanmar on February 1, the generals issued their first command to journalists: Stop using the words “coup,” “regime,” and “junta” to describe the military’s takeover of the government. Few reporters heeded the Orwellian directive, and the junta embraced a new goal—crushing all free expression.

Since then, the regime has arrested at least 56 journalists, outlawed online news outlets known for hard-edge reporting, and crippled communications by cutting off mobile data service. Three photojournalists have been shot and wounded while taking photographs of the anti-coup demonstrations.

Since the coup, protests have erupted almost daily—often with young people at the forefront—and a broad-based civil disobedience movement has brought the economy to a virtual halt. In response, soldiers and the police have killed at least 536 people.

Investigators are still trying to determine why the train crashed as it was traveling from near Taipei to the eastern coastal city of Taitung. But initial reports indicated that it had either collided with a construction vehicle that rolled down a slope onto the track or was hit by the falling truck just as it passed.

By the next morning, workers had rescued all survivors known to have been trapped in the wreckage and had brought in excavators to try to pull out several train cars deep inside the tunnel. Local news footage showed one worker using an electric circular saw to cut through a twisted carriage.

On March 31, after years of efforts to restrict the practice, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law a bill that will end the use of long-term solitary confinement in prisons and jails.

The new law, which will fundamentally change life behind bars in New York, is set to restrict prisons and jails from holding people in solitary confinement—nearly all-day isolation—for more than 15 consecutive days. It also bars the practice entirely for several groups, including minors and people with certain disabilities.

The mix-up has delayed future shipments of Johnson & Johnson doses in the United States while the Food and Drug Administration investigates what occurred. Johnson & Johnson has moved to strengthen its control over the work of Emergent BioSolutions, which runs the plant, to avoid additional quality lapses.

The mistake is a major embarrassment both for Johnson & Johnson, whose one-dose vaccine has been credited with speeding up the national immunization program, and for Emergent, its subcontractor, which has faced fierce criticism for its heavy lobbying for federal contracts, especially for the government’s emergency health stockpile.

The U.S. has three safe and approved vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Moderna. The error does not affect any Johnson & Johnson doses that are currently being delivered and used nationwide.

He had just finished grocery shopping, but a New Mexico man got much more than he bargained for when he returned to his car in the store’s parking lot: A swarm of 15,000 honey bees had taken over the back seat.

The man, whose name was not released, had left a window down in his Buick while he made a 10-minute stop at an Albertsons supermarket on March 28 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the authorities said.

It wasn’t until he had started to drive away that he noticed that something was amiss, according to the Las Cruces Fire Department.

Jesse Johnson, an off-duty firefighter and paramedic whose hobby is beekeeping, safely removed the swarm from the man’s car. It’s common in the spring for colonies of bees to split, with a swarm following a queen to another location, according to Johnson. He suggested that the bees, which collectively weighed about 3½ pounds, might have come from a parapet, a gutter system, or a home in a nearby neighborhood.