Weekly News Quiz for Students

On April 28, Biden laid out a plan to rewrite the American social compact by vastly expanding family leave, child care, health care, preschool, and college education for millions of people to be financed with increased taxes on the wealthiest earners.

Invoking the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Biden unveiled a $1.8 trillion social spending plan to accompany previous proposals to build roads and bridges, expand other social programs, and combat climate change, representing a fundamental reorientation of the role of government not seen since the days of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s and Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s and ’40s.

“We have to prove democracy still works, that our government still works, and we can deliver for our people,” Mr. Biden said in his first nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress.

The surge is largely being driven by the uncontrolled outbreak in India, where new cases have risen sharply for the past month and show no signs of abating. A seven-day rolling average of new daily cases in the nation exceeded 357,000 on April 29, a more than fivefold increase since April 1.

Other countries and regions are also seeing worrisome trends. Uruguay, currently experiencing the world’s highest cases per capita, is adding almost 3,000 cases per day—a staggering number in a country of just 3.5 million people. Indeed, much of South America is faring poorly: Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, and Colombia all rank among the top 20 nations in the world for Covid-19 deaths per capita as of April 29.

Over the past decade, the United States population grew at the second-slowest rate since the government started counting in 1790, the Census Bureau reported on April 26, a remarkable slackening that was driven by a slowdown in immigration and a declining birthrate.

The data will be used to reapportion seats in Congress and, in turn, the Electoral College, based on new state population counts. The census count is critical for billions of dollars in federal funding as well as state and local planning for schools, housing, hospitals, and more.

One Saturday morning in 2005, when Zoë Roth was 4 years old, her family went to look at a house on fire in their neighborhood in Mebane, North Carolina. Firefighters had intentionally set the blaze as a controlled fire, so it was a relaxed affair: Neighbors gathered and firefighters allowed children to take turns holding the hose.

Roth remembers watching the flames engulf the house when her father, an amateur photographer, asked her to smile. With her hair askew and a knowing look in her eyes, Roth flashed a devilish smirk as the fire roared behind her. “Disaster Girl” was born.

In the years since Dave Roth, Zoë’s father, entered it in a photo contest in 2007 and won, the image has been edited into various disasters from history, with Roth grinning impishly as a meteor wipes out the dinosaurs or the Titanic sinks in the distance. Now, after more than a decade of having her image endlessly repurposed as a vital part of meme canon, Roth has sold the original copy of her meme as a nonfungible token, or NFT—an original digital artwork stamped with a unique bit of digital code that marks its authenticity—for nearly half a million dollars.

The deadly encounter helped fuel nationwide racial justice demonstrations last year, and the charges are the most significant hate crimes prosecution so far by the Biden administration, which has made civil rights protections a major priority.

The suspects—Travis McMichael, 35; his father, Gregory McMichael, 65; and William Bryan, 51, all of whom are White—were each charged with one count of interference with Arbery’s right to use a public street because of his race. They were also charged with one count of attempted kidnapping.

Travis and Gregory McMichael were also charged with one count each of using, carrying, and brandishing a firearm. Travis McMichael is accused of shooting Arbery.

The three men also face state charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal attempt to commit a felony. No date has been set for a trial.

The mask guidance is modest and carefully written: Americans who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus no longer need to wear a mask outdoors while walking, running, hiking, or biking alone, or when in small gatherings, including with members of their own households. Masks are still necessary in crowded outdoor venues like sports stadiums, the C.D.C. said.

Hester Ford was believed to have been born on August 15, 1905 or 1904, on a farm in Lancaster County, South Carolina, where she grew up tilling fields and picking cotton. Theodore Roosevelt was president at the time.

Ford celebrated her final birthday last year during the coronavirus pandemic with a socially distanced drive-by parade of friends and family members, who honked and waved from the street.

“She was a pillar and stalwart to our family and provided much-needed love, support and understanding to us all,” her great-granddaughter Tanisha Patterson-Powe said in a statement.

With the inclusion of a single dissenting opinion, this means that, according to the review site, there are now 63 films with at least 40 reviews that are more universally admired by critics than “Citizen Kane.” The site’s 100% Club includes some predictable classics (“Modern Times,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “The Maltese Falcon”) and some less predictable recent films (the first two “Toy Story” movies).

One member of the club? “Paddington 2,” the children’s film about a bear who, according to the review site, “spreads joy and marmalade wherever he goes.” Its co-writer and director, Paul King, told The Hollywood Reporter that while he was pleased the film was on the list, he would not take the fact that it has edged out “Citizen Kane” too seriously.