Weekly News Quiz for Students

The move, one of the most ambitious in the auto industry, is a piece of a broader plan by the company to become carbon neutral by 2040.

The announcement is likely to put pressure on automakers around the world to make similar commitments. It could also embolden President Biden and other elected officials to push for even more aggressive policies to fight climate change. Leaders could point to G.M.’s decision as evidence that even big businesses have decided that it is time for the world to begin to transition away from fossil fuels that have powered the global economy for more than a century.

Officials from the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, confirmed the detentions on the morning of Feb. 1. Hours later, with politicians and activists alike racing to find out who had been detained, a military television network announced a one-year state of emergency with ultimate authority transferred to the army chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

State television broadcast a statement from the military later on Feb. 1 that said extreme steps were necessary because of what it labeled voter fraud in elections in November. The military said that it would oversee free and fair multiparty elections after the end of the state of emergency.

Myanmar had been celebrated as a rare case in which generals willingly handed over some power to civilians, honoring 2015 election results that ushered into office the National League for Democracy.

The stalwarts of that party had spent years in jail for their political opposition to the military. Aung San Suu Kyi, the political party’s most well known figure, spent 15 years under house arrest and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent resistance. 

The civilian leader has also been sharply criticized for failing to speak out against the military for its role in the attacks against the Rohingya, a minority Muslim group that have long been persecuted by the majority Buddhist population. In a report, the United Nations have called the campaign against the Rohingya a genocide, and many in the international community had expected Aung San Suu Kyi to come swiftly to the defense of the Rohingya ethnic group.

On Jan. 27, an online army of small investors on Reddit banded together to send video-game retailer GameStop’s stock price soaring, with its share up to 135 percent, on a mission to challenge the dominance of Wall Street investors. 

The day after, Robinhood, the stock-trading app that has popularized the notion of commission-free trading, clamped down.

Almost immediately, GameStop’s shares plunged, falling 75 percent in 90 minutes.

The limits on trading by Robinhood and other online brokerages, which were put in place as fears of market instability grew more widespread, set off a furious outcry among small investors. They claimed that the very apps that had democratized trading—Robinhood in particular—were now doing the bidding of Wall Street.

Small groups of investors protested outside the New York Stock Exchange and at the Menlo Park, California, headquarters of Robinhood. At least one aggrieved trader filed a lawsuit. Politicians on both the left and right weighed in. Before long, a trading strategy involving an obscure stock had morphed into a symbol of class warfare—pitting young upstarts against established Wall Street investors.

Schools named for well-known figures, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, are set to be renamed.

After the unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, which led to the killing of a protester by a white supremacist, the board moved in 2018 to establish a commission to evaluate renaming schools to “condemn any symbols of white supremacy and racism,” Gabriela López, the board president, said.

The commission had decided that schools named after figures who fit the following criteria would be renamed: “engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings; or who oppressed women, inhibiting societal progress; or whose actions led to genocide; or who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The school board’s decision was criticized for being rushed, with little to no input from historians. And many, including the city’s mayor, said renaming the schools was an inappropriate move amid the coronavirus pandemic and the uncertainty over when students will be able to return to classrooms.

The Kremlin mounted Russia’s most fearsome nationwide police operation in recent memory on Sunday, seeking to overwhelm a protest movement backing the jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny that swept across the country for a second weekend in a row.

By late evening on Jan. 31 in Moscow, more than 5,000 people had been detained in at least 85 cities across Russia, an activist group reported, though many were later released. Previously unseen numbers of riot police officers in black helmets, camouflage, and body armor essentially locked down the center of the metropolis of 13 million people, stopping passers-by miles from the protest to check their documents and ask what they were doing outside.

More than 4,000 people were detained, but allies of Navalny called the Jan. 31 demonstrations a success.

But the show of force also made it clear that President Vladimir Putin has no plans to back down. Shortly after the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, condemned “the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement accusing the United States of backing the protests as part of a “strategy to contain Russia.”

A nor’easter is a broad term used for storms that move along the Eastern Seaboard with winds that are typically from the northeast and that blow over coastal areas, according to the National Weather Service.

A powerful nor’easter pummeled much of the Northeastern United States on Feb. 1, canceling flights, causing outdoor subway closures, and disrupting travel for millions of people along the I-95 corridor.

In New York City, a forecast of up to two feet of snow made the snowstorm one of the biggest in the city’s history.

Meanwhile, a wall of snow moved over the coastal areas of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut with snow falling at a rate of up to two and a half inches an hour.

Workers from the California Department of Transportation had been assessing the section of the road near Rat Creek, about 20 miles by highway from Big Sur, on Jan. 28 when they discovered the debris on the road, the department said.

The department entered into an emergency contract that evening with a construction company to repair the road, but on Jan. 29, workers discovered that both lanes had fallen into the ocean below.

No one was injured. The stretch of highway that collapsed had been closed since Jan. 26 after heavy rains threatened to set off mudslides and rockslides.

The collapse formed a huge V-shaped scar leading down to the ocean, with a flattened pile of trees and mud from the deluge clinging to the hillside above.