Friday, Feb. 4 News Quiz of the Week: Rihanna, Spotify

Rihanna, 33, delivered her son in May 2022 with rapper A$AP Rocky. The couple was photographed in New York City in late Jan. 2022, where Rihanna showed off her baby bump. A$AP Rocky was charged with two felonies on Aug. 15, 2022, in two counts of assault, for pulling a semiautomatic firearm on a former friend and firing twice in Hollywood in Nov. 2021. The victim sustained a minor injury. In 2019 the rapper was detained for nearly a month in Sweden following a street brawl. He was found guilty of assault.

The Feb. 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics were the first to use almost 100% artificial snow, deploying more than 100 snow generators and 300 snow cannons to cover the ski slopes.

Tom Brady retired from the NFL on Feb. 1, 2022, after winning seven Super Bowls and setting numerous passing records in a phenomenal 22-year career. On Mar. 13, just 40 days later, Brady announced he would return to the Buccaneers for the 2022 season.

Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removed their music from Spotify on Jan. 26, 2022, to protest the platform’s support of Joe Rogan, the streaming service’s star podcaster. Rogan has been widely criticized as misinformation about the coronavirus.

How did Spotify react?

The chief executive of Spotify responded on Jan. 31, 2022, in an open letter, saying that Spotify would add a “content advisory” notice to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about the coronavirus, directing listeners to a “Covid-19 hub” with facts and information.

Is Rogan promoting misinformation?

Rogan has drawn complaints about his interviews with vaccine skeptics such as Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious-disease expert, that included, according to experts, “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines.” Rogan responded to the criticism saying that his goal was to “create interesting conversations” and that he would do his best in the future to “balance things out.” Rogan signed an exclusive podcast deal with Spotify in 2020 that has been reported to be worth $100 million. His podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” is the service’s most popular show.

Spanish tennis star 35-year-old Rafael Nadal became on Jan. 30, 2022, the first tennis player with 21 career Grand Slam men’s singles titles, one more than his rivals Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. Nadal won the Australian Open final against World No. 2 Daniil Medvedev. Djokovic tied in on July 10, 2022, when he won the 2022 Wimbledon title against Australian Nick Kyrgios.

On Jan. 31, 2022, Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of “The View,” commented during a discussion about a Tennessee school board’s banning of the Pulitzer winning Holocaust graphic novel “Maus” that the Holocaust was “not about race … it’s about man’s inhumanity to other men.” As a result, she was suspended for two weeks starting Feb.2, 2022. Goldberg expressed remorse over her remarks, saying she realized that they were misinformed and that she had misspoken.

Was the Holocaust about race?

The Nazi ideology was based mainly on a misconception of racism as a science, and specifically Eugenics, as a means to improve the genetic quality of what they called “The Aryan race.” This misconception led to the systematic extermination of what the Nazis saw as “degenerate” sub-humans, such as Roma and Jews (and homosexuals and others). Today both the Roma people and the Jewish nation are not considered a biological race. In fact, in recent years, human geneticists have mostly abandoned the term “race” in favor of  “ethnicity,” “ancestry,” and location-based terms.

Is Whoopi Goldberg Jewish?

Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson to a Manhattan Baptist clergyman and attended a local Catholic school. She adopted the name Whoopi Goldberg as her stage name, stating that “Goldberg is my name—it’s part of my family, part of my heritage, just like being black,” and that “I know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don’t go to temple, but I do remember the holidays.” On her Jan. 31 “The Late Show” appearance, Goldberg explained that, as a Black person, she thinks of racism as being based on skin color but that she realized not everyone sees it that way. On Feb. 1’s The View, she said she had learned from the experience. “It is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race,” she said. “I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people, as they know, and y’all know because I’ve always done that.“

Yemen’s Houthis are A clan-based militia government that emerged from the city of Saada in north Yemen in the 1990s.

What do the Houthis want?

Known for their trademark slogan, “God is great, death to the US, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam,” Houthi fighters launched missile and drone attacks into the United Arab Emirates on Jan. 31, 2022. The Houthis aim to persuade the UAE to stop backing militias loyal to Yemen’s official government. The blocked attack occurred when Israel’s president, Isaac “Boujie” Herzog, visited the UAE.

On Jan. 31, 2022, researchers unveiled the world’s most extensive forest database, comprising more than 44 million individual trees at more than 100,000 sites in 90 countries – helping them calculate that Earth has roughly 73,300 tree species. South America, home to the Amazon rainforest and Andean forests, is populated with 43% of the planet’s tree species. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Orcas, known as killer whales, are, in fact, members of the same family as dolphins (the toothed whales family of oceanic dolphins). The Blue, the Gray, and the Fin whales belong to the family Balaenidae, AKA the right whales.

Can orcas make a meal out of an adult blue whale?

In a paper published Jan. 21, 2022, in the journal Marine Mammal Science, scientists confirm for the first time through firsthand observation the first three records of groups of killer whales killing and eating blue whales near Southwestern Australia. While Blue whales are commonly between 70 and 80 feet and weigh up to 150 tons, Orcas can reach lengths of 30 feet and weigh up to four tons.

WKRP in Cincinnati was an American sitcom revolving around the fictional radio station in Cincinnati, Ohio. The show premiered in 1978 on CBS and aired for four seasons and 90 episodes, ending in 1982. Howard Hesseman, who played the radio disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati, and the actor-turned-history teacher Charlie Moore on Head of the Class, has died on Jan. 29, 2022, in Los Angeles due to complications from colon surgery. He was 81.

Kristen Bell plays Anna, the star of Netflix’s dark satirical parody “The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window,” released on Jan. 28, 2022. It’s the same name her character has on Disney’s Frozen and very close to her actual middle name – Anne. The eight-episode series made it to No 1 on Netflix’ ‘s Top 10 ranking almost immediately.

Singer Mika was born in Beirut to an American-born Lebanese mother and an Israeli-born American father (!). Fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Italian, in recent years, the “Grace Kelly” singer has served as judge/mentor on both the French version of The Voice and the Italian version of X-Factor.

Is Mika hosting the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest?

Mika joins his X-Factor Italy colleague Alessandro Cattelan and Italian Grammy winner Laura Pausini in hosting the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest. The global telecast is on May 10, May 12, and May 14, 2022, with the host city being Italy’s Turin.

Called “Abstract Performance,” and based on Picasso’s “The Three Dancers,” The Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood painted himself on stage with the rest of the band, Charlie Watts, Keith Richards, and a nude Mick Jagger. On Feb 1, 2022, Wood unveiled the massive painting in the Shepherd’s Bush area of west London.

Launched in Oct. 2021, Wordle is a viral wordplay game that allows players six guesses to determine a five-letter word that changes every day. The daily puzzle was quickly attracting millions of players. The New York Times announced, on Jan. 31, 2022, it has acquired Wordle for an undisclosed seven-figure sum.

The Year of the Tiger started on Feb. 1, 2022. The Lunar New Year is the Chinese New Year, also celebrated in other Asian countries, including Vietnam and South Korea.