Here is this week’s Extemp Central news quiz. Good luck!
1. What was the name of the hurricane that made landfall on August 29?
Spoiler
Hurricane Ida. It was the second-most intense hurricane to ever hit Louisiana, trailing 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Its wind reached a maximum of 150 miles per hour.
2. What category storm was the hurricane that was the answer to #1?
Spoiler
Category 4. Ida made landfall at Port Fourchon, Louisiana and had significant impacts, including the destruction of New Orleans’ power grid. Oil production in the Gulf was also knocked out, even though that is not supposed to cause price hikes.
3. Which terror group struck U.S. service members at the Kabul airport last week?
Spoiler
ISIS-K, an affiliate of the ISIS terror group that has caused problems in Iraq and Syria for the last six years. ISIS-K’s attack killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans. In response, President Biden launched a drone strike on two ISIS-K targets in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.
4. Poland is facing an asylum seeker surge on its border with which country?
Spoiler
Belarus. Poland’s border guard argues that there have been hundreds of irregular crossings this month as aslyum seekers from Iraq and Afgahnistan are crossing Belarus to get into the country. Some say that Belarus is allowing the increased crossings as revenge for Poland giving asylum to Belarusian athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya at the Tokyo Olympics.
5. Who are the leaders of Germany’s Social Democrats?
Spoiler
Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans. The party, which goes by SPD for short, is seeing its support rise in the polls ahead of Germany’s elections next month. One of the latest polls had it getting 24% support versus 21% for the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) alliance of outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel. With these numbers, the SPD would have to form a coalition in order to govern, likely aligning with the Green Party and the Free Democrats as part of a “traffic light coalition.”
6. China recently limited kids to playing video games to this amount of time per week.
Spoiler
Three hours. A new regulatory rule limits the amount of time people under eighteen can play video games to one hour per day between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. China argues that the regulation is needed to safeguard children’s physical and mental health. This is not the first time that China has regulated video gaming as they banned gaming consoles from the country from 2000-2014.
7. An oil spill from this nation could create an ecological disaster in the Mediterranean.
Spoiler
Syria. The spill came from Syria’s largest refinery and could reach Cyprus today. Syria announced that a tank filled with 15,000 tons of fuel had been leaking since August 23 before authorities could bring it under control. The oil spill covers 309 square miles, an area the size of New York City.
8. Who is the U.S. Secretary of State?
Spoiler
Antony Blinken. Prior to serving under President Biden, Blinken served as Deputy Secretary of State from 2015-2017 to President Barack Obama. He worked under President Biden before as his national security advisor when Biden was vice-president. His wife, Evan Ryan, serves as the White House Cabinet Secretary. Blinken has been thrust into the spotlight over the end of America’s mission in Afghanistan.
9. What is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration doing with schools who are ignoring his order to not have mask mandates?
Spoiler
Withholding funding from school districts. Even though a judge ruled last week that DeSantis could not prevent schools from imposing their own mask mandates, the Florida Department of Education withheld monthly school board salaries for Alachua and Broward county school districts.
10. The Supreme Court has been asked to block this state’s restrictive abortion law, which is to take effect today.
Spoiler
Texas. Petitioners to the Supreme Court argue the law overturns existing precedent set by Roe v. Wade (1973) that granted constitutional protection to a woman’s right to have an abortion. The law would ban abortions in Texas after a fetal heartbeat is detected, meaning that abortions could not happen after six weeks of pregnancy. It also allows private citizens to sue medical providers or anyone that helps women get an abortion after that time period.