Put away your drachmas and plane tickets to Tehran, and take our latest Week to Week news quiz to see how much you know about the week's big events.
Here are some random but real hints: Trying to keep a Sunni-Shia balance; trying to keep a congressional balance; trying to balance the books; and trying to balance economic growth. Answers are below the quiz.
1. What did Germany's lawmakers vote overwhelmingly to support?
a. A bid for the 2022 Olympics, to be played in Stuttgart
b. The Iran nuclear deal, which Germany helped negotiate
c. The Greek bailout deal
d. Expanded sanctions against Russian oligarchs
2. Why is Defense Secretary Ash Carter traveling to Saudi Arabia?
a. To discuss Israeli security guarantees
b. To discuss the Iran nuclear agreement
c. To lobby for Halliburton security contracts
d. To plan a third front on the war on ISIS
3. President Obama said he would veto any congressional bill that does what?
a. Blocks the Iran nuclear agreement
b. Raises defense spending
c. Cuts off immigration
d. Cuts off funding for food stamps
4. According to NASA, what happened at 7:49 a.m. ET on Tuesday, July 14?
a. Earth lost one second of time due to the slowing of its rotation
b. A NASA spacecraft traveled past Pluto
c. America's space program turned 100 years old
d. Microscopic life was confirmed on Mars
5. What triggered angry protests in Bangladesh this week?
a. A threat from neighboring Pakistan to annex Rakhine State
b. A proposed law that would legalize abortion
c. Viral video showing corruption by the leaders of the national legislature
d. The lynching of a 13-year-old boy accused of theft
6. Who will New York City pay $5.9 million?
a. Electric utility Con Edison, which sued for unpaid bills for energy use by city departments
b. Donald Trump, who sued over a failed real estate development he says the city had encouraged him to fund
c. The family of Eric Garner, an African-American man who died after a scuffle with white police officers
d. Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who claimed he had been denied full benefits during his last two terms in office
7. Why did Germany sentence 94-year-old Oskar Gröning to four years in prison?
a. He had funneled $4 million of state funds to extreme right-wing groups over the past decade
b. He was the "accountant of Auschwitz" charged with complicity in the murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews
c. He sold a trove of art looted by the Nazis in World War II
d. He accepted $2.4 million from the Russian government to fund pro-Russian right-wing parties in Germany
8. Where did a mass shooting result in four deaths on Thursday?
a. Two military facilities in Tennessee
b. The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
c. An army base in Georgia
d. A gun show in Louisville, Kentucky
9. Who visited a prison and said "there but for the grace of God" he himself might have been a prisoner?
a. Pope Francis
b. Scott Walker
c. President Obama
d. Amy Schumer
10. What did Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen say should be done in "a prudent and gradual manner"?
a. Greece exiting the eurozone
b. Removing Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill
c. Replacing the Federal Reserve with a crowd-sourced input mechanism for setting rates and determining monetary policy
d. Raising interest rates
BONUS. Why has Australian Jodi Magi been arrested, jailed, fined, and deported from the United Arab Emirates?
a. For "cybercrimes" after posting on Facebook a photo of a car parked across two disabled spots
b. Insulting the royal family after she tweeted "the emir has no clothes"
c. Engaging in witchcraft after she gave Harry Potter books to three schoolchildren she was tutoring in English
d. Refusing to purchase a separate seat for her dog while traveling on Abu Dhabi Air
ANSWERS
1) c.
2) b.
3) a.
4) b.
5) d.
6) c.
7) b.
8) a.
9) c.
10) d.
BONUS) a.
Want the live news quiz experience? Join us Monday, July 27 in downtown San Francisco for our next live (and lively) Week to Week political roundtable with a news quiz and a social hour at The Commonwealth Club of California. Panelists include Daniel Borenstein, Josh Richman, and Debra J. Saunders.
Explanations of the hints: Trying to keep a Sunni-Shia balance: Carter will attempt to allay the concerns of the Sunni Saudi leaders about the new deal with the Shia Iranian leaders; trying to keep a congressional balance: Congress can weigh in on the Iran deal, but the president is intent on not letting Congress kill it; trying to balance the books: the man was convicted for his role as a bookkeeper in the Holocaust; and trying to balance economic growth: Yellen is trying to signal the Fed's intent to match interest rate growth with economic strength.