Week to Week News Quiz for 4/8/16

Week to Week News Quiz for 4/8/16
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Find out if Bernie Sanders thinks you're qualified to opine on the week's events by taking our latest Week to Week News Quiz.

Here are some random but real hints: The indie rock bands can write ballads about him; it was an Oscars reunion; turns out that he is a role model; and something for opponents to relish. Answers are below the quiz.

1. Though Pope Francis' new encyclical does not change church doctrine, it offers new guidance to Catholic clergy for giving pastoral care. What is the name of the encyclical?
a. "The Joy of Love"
b. "The Hand of God"
c. "Experiment in Terra"
d. "Greetings from Earth"

2. What skills is Donald Trump seeking in a new round of campaign hires?
a. Ability to not grab conservative female reporters
b. Experience in foreign policy
c. Skills for winning a contested convention
d. Patience, understanding, and wisdom

3. What country's prime minister resigned amid fallout from the Panama Papers revealing offshore financial dealings?
a. Greenland
b. East Timor
c. Iraq
d. Iceland

4. Who appeared with Vice President Joe Biden at a Las Vegas rally against sexual assault?
a. Donald Trump
b. Lady Gaga
c. Tom Cruise
d. Elizabeth Warren

5. About what did Senator Lindsey Graham change his mind?
a. He now says Donald Trump "is the most qualified man to be president of these United States"
b. He will meet with President Obama's Supreme Court nominee
c. He calls the Citizens United decision "the worst thing to hit this country since reality TV"
d. He is reentering the presidential race

6. Who said this week that the NBA should move its 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte, North Carolina, to protest that state's passage of a law that could be used to discriminate against LGBT people?
a. Former NBA star Charles Barkley
b. Former NBA star Michael Jordan
c. President Barack Obama
d. Russian President Vladimir Putin

7. What did a new USA Today report reveal about the VA?
a. It is facing a budget shortfall of $4 billion this year that will grow to $20.1 billion by 2020
b. Veteran "wait times" at VA hospitals in at least seven states had been manipulated to make it look like they were meeting goals
c. Deaths at VA hospitals have reached a 25-year high
d. The VA cannot hire enough qualified doctors because it is forbidden to pay its doctors and nurses a living wage

8. What 60-second video from Japan has gone viral, viewed more than 1 million times on YouTube?
a. A secretly recorded video of the prime minister ranting about the Panama Papers
b. A robot-filmed tour of the destroyed Fukushima nuclear reactor
c. A food company's entire staff making a group apology for raising the price of the frozen snack they manufacture
d. The birthday party for the Japanese emperor's dachshund

9. Country singer Merle Haggard died this week at the age of 79. According to NPR, which one of the following is not true?
a. When Johnny Cash performed "Folsom Prison Blues" at San Quentin in 1958, Haggard was in the audience -- as an inmate
b. Complaining that he was "incorrigible," his mother dropped him off at a juvenile detention center when he was 11 years old
c. About his time living in San Francisco, he said "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had."
d. In 1972, California Governor Ronald Reagan pardoned him for his past crimes

10. Discussing his efforts to diversify the federal courts, who did President Obama say he could have but didn't nominate?
a. Hillary Clinton
b. A "black lesbian from Skokie"
c. Someone chosen randomly out of "the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory"
d. Himself

BONUS. Why were police called to the annual shareholders meeting of carmaker Daimler AG in Berlin on Wednesday?
a. Anti-capitalist protestors attacked the company's CEO and CFO during a presentation
b. Someone had called in a terrorism threat
c. American environmentalists chained themselves to the doors of the meeting hall because they mistakenly thought it was a VW shareholder meeting
d. Two shareholders got into a fight about the hoarding of sausages from the buffet at the meeting

ANSWERS
1. a.
2. c.
3. d.
4. b.
5. b.
6. a.
7. b.
8. c.
9. c (that was actually said by Janis Joplin).
10. b.
BONUS. d.

Want the live news quiz experience? Join us Monday, April 18 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.

Explanations of the hints: The indie rock bands can write ballads about him: Iceland is famed for its live local band scene; it was an Oscars reunion: Biden also introduced Lady Gaga at the Academy Awards ceremony; turns out that he is a role model: Barkley once made a commercial in which he claimed not to be a role model; and something for opponents to relish: one of the investors was accused of pocketing extra sausages, but if he also took relish, that could get messy.

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