Weekly News Quiz for Students

Seeking to comfort Americans bound together by a year of suffering but also by “hope and the possibilities,” Biden made a case to the nation that it could soon put the worst of the pandemic behind it and promised that all adults would be eligible for the vaccine by May 1.

During a 24-minute speech from the East Room, Biden laced his somber script with references to Hemingway and personal ruminations on loss as he reflected on a “collective suffering, a collective sacrifice, a year filled with the loss of life, and the loss of living, for all of us.”

Speaking on the anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring a pandemic and the moment at which the virus began tightening its grip, the president offered a turning point of sorts after one of the darkest years in recent history, one that would lead to more than half a million deaths in the country, the loss of millions of jobs, and disruptions to nearly every aspect of society and politics.

With passage of a stimulus bill meant to jumpstart the economy, the pace of vaccinations increasing, and death rates down, Biden said Americans were on track to return to a semblance of normal life by July 4 as long as they took the chance to get vaccinated and did not prematurely abandon mask wearing, social distancing, and other measures to contain the virus.

Federal health officials on March 8 told millions of Americans now vaccinated against the coronavirus that they could again embrace a few long-denied freedoms, like gathering in small groups at home without masks or social distancing, offering a hopeful glimpse at the next phase of the pandemic.

The recommendations, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, arrived almost exactly a year after the virus began wreaking havoc in the U.S. and Americans were warned against gatherings for fear of spreading the new pathogen.

Now the agency has good news for long-separated families and individuals struggling with pandemic isolation: Vaccinated grandparents can once again visit adult children and grandchildren under certain circumstances, even if they remain unvaccinated. Vaccinated adults may begin to plan mask-free dinners with vaccinated friends.

The new recommendations are intended to nudge Americans onto a more cautious path with clear boundaries for safe behavior, while acknowledging that most of the country remains vulnerable and many scientific questions remain unanswered.

More than 1,360 of the children have been detained beyond the 72 hours permitted by law before a child must be transferred to a shelter, according to one of the documents, dated March 8. The figures highlight the growing pressure on President Biden to address the increased number of people trying to cross the border in the belief that he will be more welcoming to them than former President Donald Trump was.

The children are being held in facilities, managed by the Customs and Border Protection agency, that were built for adults. The border agency has been the subject of widespread criticism for the horrific conditions in its federal detention facilities, in which children are exposed to disease, hunger, and overcrowding.

The growing number of unaccompanied children is just one element of an escalating problem at the border. Border agents encountered a migrant at the border about 78,000 times in January—more than double the rate at the same time a year ago and higher than in any January in a decade.

Women won all the night’s major awards. Megan Thee Stallion, the Houston rapper who described her young ambition to become “the rap Beyoncé,” took best new artist, and her song “Savage”—which featured Beyoncé as a guest—won for best rap performance and for best rap song.

Billie Eilish, the 19-year-old who swept the awards last year, took record of the year for “Everything I Wanted,” and told Megan Thee Stallion: “You deserve this.”

Taylor Swift won album of the year for “Folklore,” which she made entirely in quarantine. It was her third time winning that coveted prize. (She lost each of the five other awards she was nominated for this year.)

Beyoncé won four awards, bringing her lifetime total to 28 Grammys—more than any other woman, and equaling the total for the super-producer Quincy Jones.

The payment to settle the family’s lawsuit was among the largest of its kind, and it came as the officer, Derek Chauvin, was set to go on trial this month for charges including second-degree murder. As the settlement was announced by city officials and lawyers for Floyd’s family, Chauvin sat in a courtroom less than a mile away, where jurors were being selected for his trial.

Mayor Jacob Frey called the agreement a milestone for Minneapolis’s future. Ben Crump, the civil rights lawyer who is among those representing Floyd’s family, said it could set an example for other communities.

Billed by the auction house as “a unique work in the history of digital art,” “Everydays — The First 5000 Days” is a collage of all the images that Beeple has been posting online each day since 2007. The artist, who has collaborated with Louis Vuitton and pop stars like Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, uses software to create a visual commentary on 21st century life.

Beeple’s collaged JPG was made, or “minted,” in February as a “nonfungible token,” or NFT. A secure network of computer systems that records the sale on a digital ledger, known as a blockchain, gives buyers proof of authenticity and ownership. “Everydays” was the first purely digital NFT sold by Christie’s.

Leading public health agencies, including the World Health Organization, say that millions of people have received the vaccine without experiencing blood clotting issues, and they caution that experts have not found a causative link between the vaccine and the conditions. The company has also defended the vaccine as safe, amid the flurry of suspensions.

The safety scare is a setback for AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which has already struggled with a perception that it is a less desirable shot because it had a lower overall efficacy rate in clinical trials than some others. There is, however, extensive data showing that the vaccine is safe and effective, and especially good at preventing severe illness and death. In many places across the world, it is the only shot available. (The U.S. has three safe and approved vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.)

Public health experts expect medical conditions to turn up by chance in some people after they get any vaccine. In the vast majority of cases such illnesses have nothing to do with the shots.

Unilever, a company based in London that owns Dove, Axe, Sunsilk, and Vaseline, among other personal-care brands, also said it would not digitally alter the body shape, size, or skin color of models in its advertising as part of its Positive Beauty initiative, according to a news release. And the company promised to increase the number of ads featuring underrepresented people, without specifying which groups.

An aim of these steps and others, Unilever said, was to better “challenge narrow beauty ideals.”

The advertising changes came after the company commissioned a 10,000-person study across nine countries, including Brazil, China, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. The study found that 56 percent of participants thought that the beauty industry could make people feel excluded and that as many as seven in 10 people agreed that the word “normal” on products and in advertising had negative effects.