Dec. 10 Friday News Quiz of the Week: Classics Revisited

Dictionary.com defines allyship as the role of a person who actively works to include a marginalized group in all areas of society, not as a group member but in solidarity. The online dictionary named allyship word of the year 2021.

Wasn’t there a different definition of the word?

The dictionary also keeps the more traditional definition of allyship as the relationship of persons, groups, or nations cooperating.

Austria swore in a new chancellor, Karl Nehammer, 49, formerly the country’s interior minister, on Dec. 6, 2021 – the third person in two months to take the position after the resignation of Sebastian Kurz in a corruption scandal. Kurz’s successor, Alexander Schallenberg, a former diplomat and foreign ministry spokesman, stepped down a day earlier, hours after young Kurz announced he was officially leaving politics.

Xiomara Castro is the president-elect of Honduras. She takes office on 27 January 2022. Castro will be Honduras’s first female president and the first president not to be a member of either the Liberal Party or the National Party since Honduran democracy was restored in 1982.

Who’s Honduras’s first First-Husband?

Manuel Zelaya, Xiomara Castro’s husband, was President of Honduras from 2006 to 2009 until exiled in the 2009 Honduran coup d’état. Castro was a leader of the movement resisting the coup.

The largest oil and gas companies, including Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP,  made a combined $174bn in profits in the first nine months of 2021, as gasoline prices climbed in the US, according to a new report provided exclusively to the Guardian. US Gasoline prices have hit a seven-year high due to the rising cost of oil, with Americans now paying about $3.40 per gallon for fuel compared with around $2.10 a year ago.

Sputnik V is Russia’s coronavirus vaccine. On Dec. 5, 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced hope for quick approval of the jab by the World Health Organization, saying the move is essential to expand its global supplies. A study published in the British medical journal The Lancet in Feb. 2021 showed that Sputnik V is 91% effective. Russia was the first country in the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine, launching Sputnik V in Aug. 2020, but still has Europe’s highest confirmed pandemic death toll.

Japan is the only G7 country (the world’s seven largest advanced economies) that does not fully recognize same-sex marriage.

Does Tokyo recognize same-sex marriage?

Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike on Dec. 7, 2021, said the Japanese capital will draw up a framework allowing same-sex partnerships early next year, making them legal in the fiscal year beginning April 2022. Under the system, same-sex partners can register their relationship and will be allowed to rent places to live together and gain hospital visitation rights.

In the 1996 US Presidential elections, Bill Clinton won against Republican icon Bob Dole. On Dec. 5, 2021, Dole passed away after being treated for stage 4 lung cancer.

The only Latin actress in the main cast of the original 1961 “West Side Story,” a story of love and rivalry involving a gang of white teens and a gang of Puerto Rican immigrants, was Rita Moreno. She won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Anita. An American of Russian descent, Natalie Wood starred as the young Puerto Rican immigrant Maria, whose forbidden romance with a white teen is at the movie’s heart.

How many Latinx actors are in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”?

Twenty cast members in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 “West Side Story” are Puerto Ricans or descendants of Puerto Ricans, including Rita Moreno, now 89, who plays the role of Valentina. “I wanted to ensure that the actors playing the Shark boys and girls were 100% Latinx and young,” Spielberg told Reuters. The film was nominated for Best Picture in the 2022 Oscars and earned Spielberg his overall 11th nomination for a Best Director Academy Award.

Ann Dowd, known as the intimidating Aunt Lydia in “A Handmaid’s Tale,” portrayed housekeeper turned housemother for boarding students Edna Garrett, the shared character of “The Facts of Life” and “Diff’rent Strokes,” on ABC’s “Live in Front of a Studio Audience” special, Dec. 7, 2021. The special is now available on HULU.

What happened to the original Mrs. Garrett?

Mrs. G was played by actress Charlotte Rae, who died from bone cancer at her home in Los Angeles, California, on Aug. 5, 2018. She was 92 years old.

The title character from “I Love Lucy” is Lucy Ricardo, famously portrayed by Lucille Ball.

Who portrays Lucille Ball in 2021’s “Being the Ricardos”?

Nicole Kidman portrays legendary comic Lucille Ball in Aaron Sorkin’s 2021 movie, “Being the Ricardos.” The film depicts one week of “I Love Lucy” ‘s production. Ball is accused of being a Communist by the media. There are reports that her husband Desi Arnaz is being unfaithful to her, and she discovers she’s pregnant. “Being the Ricardos” hit US theaters on Dec. 10 before streaming on Amazon on Dec. 21. The film earned Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman’s best actor nominations in the 2022 Oscars. Watch the trailer.

William Shatner’s space voyage aboard Jef Bozes’s Blue Origin’s New Shepherd has become an Amazon Prime documentary, premiering on Dec. 15, 2021. Bezos owns Amazon.

HBO Max named its 2022 Harry Potter reunion “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts.” The special aired on Jan. 1, 2022, 20 years after the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone — the first film of J.K. Rowling’s franchise. Watch the trailer.

Jennifer Lawrence told reporters at the Dec. 5, 2021, “Don’t Look Up” premiere in New York that one of her biggest struggles while filming the Netflix film was losing a tooth early in the filming and having to film most of the movie toothless. On Feb. 2022, the film received nominations for Best Picture and Best Screenplay for the 94th Academy Awards.

According to multiple reports, Zendaya is 5’10 or a half-inch higher than Tom Holland, who stands at 5’8. During an appearance on BBC One’s The Graham Norton Show on Dec. 3, 2021, the dating stars told a story about how their height difference created some issues while filming stunts for “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Watch the hilarious interview.