Weekly News Quiz for Students

While the agency has completed other missions to Mars, the $2.7 billion robotic explorer, named Perseverance, carries scientific tools that will bring advanced capabilities to the search for life beyond Earth. The rover, about the size of a car, can use its sophisticated cameras, lasers that can analyze the chemical makeup of Martian rocks, and ground-penetrating radar to identify the chemical signatures of fossilized microbial life that may have thrived on Mars when it was a planet full of flowing water.

NASA’s earlier missions showed that in the distant past some places were warm, wet, and habitable. Now it is time to learn whether there were ever any microscopic inhabitants there.

Perseverance is the third visitor to Mars in February. Earlier in the month, the United Arab Emirates sent a robotic probe, named Hope, to orbit the red planet in order to study its atmosphere and weather—the first interplanetary mission undertaken by an Arab country. Two days later, China’s Tianwen-1 began its orbit of Mars. By accomplishing this feat, China completed its first successful journey to another planet in our solar system.

The acquittal brought his dramatic and historic second impeachment trial to a close. 

Under the watch of National Guard troops still patrolling the Capitol after the January riot there, the Senate rejected the charge of “incitement of insurrection,” by falling short of the two-thirds majority (67 votes) needed to convict the former president. Trump had been accused of inciting the attack on the Capitol on January 6 in an effort to overturn the results of the November election. The vote was 57-43 in favor of conviction. 

Seven Republicans broke with their party and joined all 48 Democrats and the two Independents who caucus with Democrats in voting to convict Trump. That’s the largest number of senators who have ever voted to convict a president from their own political party. 

A coast-to-coast winter storm swept from Oregon and Washington to the Southeast on Feb.14, part of a frigid weather pattern that created record low temperatures in Minnesota, a 100-vehicle traffic pileup in Texas, and dangerous conditions across much of the country because of heavy snowfall, perilous ice, and alarmingly low temperatures.

On Feb. 20, nearly half Texas’ population—about 13 million people—remained under boil-water advisories after freezing temperatures overwhelmed systems providing clean water. The administration of more than 400,000 first doses and 330,000 second doses of the coronavirus vaccines was delayed in Texas.

No other country has counted so many deaths in the pandemic. More Americans have perished from Covid-19 than on the battlefields of World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined.

The milestone comes at a hopeful moment: New virus cases are down sharply, deaths are slowing, and vaccines are steadily being administered.

But there is concern about emerging variants of the virus, and it may be months before the pandemic is contained.

Osaka, the pride of Japan who spent much of her childhood in Florida, would appear to have a leg up on the rest of her competition. She is 4 for 4 in Grand Slam finals, a feat achieved in the Open era only by Monica Seles on her way to nine total championships and Roger Federer on his way to 20.

“That’s very amazing company,” said Osaka, who, earlier in the tournament, held her childhood idol, the 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, to seven games, the same number mustered by Brady.

The Mavericks did not announce the new policy, but Cuban was allowed to enact it because the N.B.A. has permitted teams “to run their pregame operations as they see fit” because of “the unique circumstances this season,” due to the pandemic, according to a league spokesman.

The Mavericks, at Cuban’s insistence, seized on that latitude to break from a longstanding tradition in American sports and remove the anthem from their pregame program. The change went largely unnoticed until an article by The Athletic called attention to it after the team’s first game with fans in attendance. Dallas gave 1,500 free tickets to frontline workers who had received at least the first of two required shots of the Covid-19 vaccine.

As of Feb. 10, the N.B.A. is again requiring teams to play the national anthem before games.

Elizabeth Ann's successful cloning is the culmination of a yearslong collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Revive & Restore, the for-profit company ViaGen Pets & Equine, San Diego Zoo Global, and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Cloned siblings are on the way, and potential (cloned) mates are already being lined up. If successful, the project could bring needed genetic diversity to the endangered species. And it marks another promising advance in the wider effort to use cloning to retrieve an ever-growing number of species from the brink of extinction.