Summer 2023 Global News Quiz: Who broke the world record for most nationalities in a single Yoga lesson?

In case you missed it, the Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on Apr. 15, 1912. It collided with an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The Titan submerged on a dive to the Titanic wreckage site on Jun. 18, 2023, for $250,000 per ticket. The sub was lost 900 miles east of Cape Cod in water 13,000 feet deep. The US and Canadian Coast Guards launched a search and rescue operation to locate the submarine but found only debris. Five people were aboard the Titan: an operator and four passengers. One of them was Hamish Harding, a British billionaire and adventure traveler.

Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in New York County on Mar. 30, 2023, on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. The charges stem from a hush-money payment his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, paid to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump was arrested on Apr. 4, 2023, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and flown to New York City by federal marshals. He pleaded not guilty and was released without posting bail. His next court date is Dec. 4. The judge, Juan M. Merchan, warned Trump’s defense to refrain from statements that incite civil unrest. This relates to Trump’s recent social media posts that threatened “death and destruction” if he was charged and used racist language and images against the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. Trump is a candidate for the US presidency in 2024.

What about Nixon, Johnson, and Clinton?

Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon after he resigned in 1974. The Senate acquitted Andrew Johnson of impeachment in 1868 and Clinton in 1998. However, Clinton was barred from practicing law in Arkansas and before the Supreme Court. Neither of them was ever arrested.

According to a recording first obtained by CNN, Former President Donald Trump showed a document titled “Plan of Attack” to a publisher and writer working on a memoir by his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in 2021. Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Department, drew up the document. It contained options for attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities. The tape contradicted Trump’s recent statement that he was referring to news clippings when he mentioned the document in an interview with Fox News. Trump was indicted for mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them on June 13, 2023.

According to a Reuters special report published on June 27, 2023, Donald Trump is the only living US president whose ancestors didn’t enslave people. His family history is mostly European, with his paternal grandparents immigrating from Germany and his mother from Scotland. Joe Biden had just one direct ancestor, five generations distant, who owned one slave. Barack Obama also had one direct ancestor, six generations removed, who owned two enslaved people. George Bush’s direct ancestor was six generations removed and enslaved 25.

Some trivia facts:

• Thomas Jefferson owned over 600 enslaved people during his lifetime, the most of any US president. He was the first president to bring enslaved people to the White House (which was built largely by enslaved Black workers).
• Ulysses S. Grant was the last president to own a slave. He freed the formerly enslaved person, William Jones, in 1859.
• Woodrow Wilson was the last president born into a slave household.

Nova Kakhovka Dam is a strategically vital dam in southern Ukraine. It is situated on the Dnieper River and holds back an enormous body of water that supplies water to the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014. It also provides cooling water for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is now under Russian control. On June 6, 2023, Ukraine accused Russian forces of blowing up the dam in Nova Kakhovka. Moscow denied the attack and said Kyiv intentionally sabotaged the dam. The dam’s collapse caused water to cascade over the damaged structure, flooding homes and forcing thousands to evacuate.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner private military company, led an armed rebellion against the Russian military on June 24, 2023. He claimed that his forces came within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of Moscow before he agreed to halt his advance and return to his bases. He made this decision after talks with Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, who brokered a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin “to avoid bloodshed.” The rebellion was seen as the biggest threat to Putin’s rule in decades.

Turkey’s presidential election saw an unprecedented runoff on May 28, 2023. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the man who’s been at the helm for two decades and counting, won 52.1% of the votes. His victory means continuing his populist politics. Erdogan’s rule has been marked by a painful cost-of-living crisis, limited freedom of speech, and recent earthquakes.

Silvio Berlusconi was Italy’s longest-serving postwar prime minister, serving three non-consecutive terms: 1994-1995, 2001-2006, and 2008-2011. He was known for his lavish lifestyle, controversial policies, and numerous legal troubles. In 2013, he was found guilty of tax fraud in a case involving his media empire. He was sentenced to four years in prison, later reduced to community service. He was also barred from holding public office for six years. He died on June 12, 2023, at 86, two months after being diagnosed with leukemia.

On June 21, 2023, as part of the International Day of Yoga celebrations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi led a yoga session at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The session broke the Guinness World Record for the participation of people of 135 different nationalities. This beat the previous record of 114 nationalities set in Qatar in March 2022. PM Modi performed various yoga poses on the UN lawn with hundreds of people and delivered a speech on yoga’s benefits. He also met with various leaders and dignitaries during his three-day visit to the US, which started a day earlier.

India’s railway system is ranked #1 in the world in terms of passengers carried, with a record of 721.6 billion person miles per year. This means India’s railways transport more people over greater distances than any other country. The second busiest is China, with 423.3 billion person miles per year. On June 2, 2023, two passenger trains and a goods train collided in Odisha state in India, killing over 300 people and injuring about 1,000 more, making it one of the most tragic train collisions in India’s history. The most severe one was in 1981 when 800 people died.

The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Italy, scheduled for May 21, 2023, was canceled due to sudden floods, its management announced on May 17. It was the first Grand Prix canceled since the 2020 Australian Grand Prix, which was called off due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The floods had disastrous effects on the Emilia Romagna region. Interestingly, another major racing event, the Coca-Cola 600 race, scheduled for Sunday, May 28, 2023, at Charlotte Motor Speedway, was postponed to Monday, May 29, 2023, due to persistent and heavy rain. This was the first time inclement weather forced the Coca-Cola 600 to run on Memorial Day afternoon since 2009.

Russia’s Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) after criticizing the Putin regime and praising US military assistance to Ukraine during a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on May 30, 2023. Graham responded defiantly by challenging Russia to submit to the International Criminal Court, where Putin faces a warrant for forced transfers of children from Ukraine. He also said he would wear the arrest warrant as a badge of honor.

Kim Yo Jong is a high-ranking official of the Workers’ Party of North Korea and a member of the State Affairs Commission of the isolated nation. Oh, and she’s Kim Jung Un’s sister. She manages her brother’s image and promotes his diplomatic outreach. On June 2, 2023, she slammed the UN Security Council for denouncing a failed North Korean satellite launch earlier that week. She also promised to put a military spy satellite into orbit soon. The Malligyong-1 satellite rocket crashed into the sea on May 31. The launch was widely criticized by South Korea, Japan, the US, and the UN as violating Security Council resolutions banning North Korea from using ballistic missile technology.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis filed paperwork to run for president on May 24, 2023. He announced his decision on Twitter, just ahead of a scheduled Twitter Spaces conversation with Twitter chief Elon Musk. The event faced more than 20 minutes of technical problems and attracted only about 300,000 concurrent listeners and 3.4 million total listeners – far below expectations.

Prince Albert Edward was Queen Victoria’s eldest son, who became King Edward VII in 1901. One of the illegal Baccarat card games he attended came to trial in 1891, and the prince was called as a witness. This was the first time the heir to the throne was compelled to appear in court since 1411. In Prince Harry’s June 2023 court testimony, 130 years later, he accused the Mirror Newspaper Group of intercepting his voicemail messages and using other unlawful means to obtain personal information about him and his family. He claimed he wanted to take a stand against the news media he viewed as having “blood on their hands” for their role in his mother, Princess Diana’s death in 1997. The trial is expected to last several weeks.

Tucker Carlson launched his brand-new show on Twitter on June 6, 2023. Carlson’s Twitter show, aptly named “Tucker on Twitter,” premiered with a 10-minute episode, receiving millions of views. In the first episode, Carlson suggested that the destruction of a major dam in Ukraine was self-inflicted, as usual, without providing any proof.

How did Fox News react?

Fox News has claimed that Tucker Carlson’s new Twitter show violates his contract with the network. Carlson’s Fox News contract lasts until 2025. He was the top-rated talk show host on US cable television at Fox News.

Ted Kaczynski was an American domestic terrorist who killed three people and injured 23 others with mail bombs from 1978 to 1995. He was motivated by a radical anti-technology ideology and wanted to stop industrial society from destroying nature and human freedom. He mainly targeted professors, scientists, and executives in engineering, computer science, psychology, and genetics. Before his identity was revealed, the FBI gave him the case name UNABOM, for University and Airline Bomber. The media adopted this name and called him the Unabomber. He was finally captured in 1996 after his brother David recognized his writing style in a manifesto published in The New York Times and The Washington Post. He pleaded guilty in 1998 and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. He died by suicide in prison on June 10, 2023, at 81.

Novak Djokovic is the only male tennis player to achieve this feat. He won his third French Open title on June 11, 2023. He also holds the record for most Grand Slam singles titles won by a male player with 23. Djokovic is also the only male player to win all nine Masters tournaments and has done so twice. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest tennis players ever. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have both won each of the four Grand Slam tournaments at least once, but not three times.

The Denver Nuggets play their home games at Ball Arena, 5,280 feet (1,609 meters) above sea level. This makes it the highest-altitude arena in the NBA and the highest venue for any major professional sports team in North America. The Miami Heat, who faced the Nuggets in the 2023 NBA finals, had to deal with thin air and low oxygen levels. The Nuggets won all three home games in the series, including the decisive Game 5 on June 12, 2023. They beat the Heat 94-89 to clinch their first-ever NBA title. Nuggets center Nikola Jokić was named the NBA Finals MVP after averaging 30.2 points, 14.0 rebounds, and 7.2 assists in the series.

Lionel Messi, one of the greatest soccer players of all time, announced on June 7, 2023, that he had joined Inter Miami. This is a club owned by another soccer legend, David Beckham. Messi played for Paris Saint-Germain for two years after leaving Barcelona, his long-time club, in 2021. He won the World Cup with Argentina in 2022. Messi had other offers from Europe and Saudi Arabia, but he chose Miami for its lifestyle and brand opportunities.

The Church of England clergy made a formal pay claim for the first time in their nearly 500-year history on June 19, 2023. They demanded a 9.5% increase in their allowance from April 2024. The trade union Unite, representing over 2,000 clergy and lay officers in the Church of England, said that many clergy had to turn to charitable aid because they could not make ends meet on their current stipend, which was £26,790 ($34,300) in 2023. The union also pointed out that the Church of England had billions in the bank and could fully afford this modest increase. The Church of England said it would consider the pay claim in its annual recommendations.

The traditional “Korean age” system considers the time spent in the womb as one year and adds another year every January 1, regardless of the actual birthday. This means some Koreans can be two years older than their international age. However, this system changed starting June 28, 2023, when South Korea adopted the international age system for all official documents. This means more than 51 million people have become younger overnight.

Tradition says Julius Caesar died in Largo Argentina Square, where the remains of four ancient temples are located. He was attacked by senators who feared his growing power. Among them was his friend Brutus, to whom he allegedly uttered the famous words “Et tu, Brute?” (And you, Brutus?) as he plunged his dagger into Caesar’s chest. The site was first discovered and excavated in the 1920s but was only accessible behind barriers until Jun. 20, 2023. On this date, a newly constructed walkway, funded by the Italian fashion house Bulgari, opened to the public.