Extemp Central News Quiz for the Week of April 28-May 4, 2025

Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party, and Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP). As of a count done yesterday morning, the Liberals were on pace to have won 168 seats, which would allow them to form a minority government (they need 172 for a majority). Conservatives were leading for 144 seats, while the Bloc Quebecois led for 23 seats, the NDP for seven, and the Green Party one. The election saw the Liberal Party enhance its share of the national vote by close to 11% while Conservatives rose by 7.6%. This came at the expense of other parties, especially the NDP, who lost 12% of the national vote relative to the last national election. Canada’s Liberals staged a big comeback as polls months ago had them down by as much as 20 points. U.S. tariffs, along with the resignation of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau aided in the Liberal victory.

J.B. Pritzker. A venture capitalist, Pritzker won the Illinois governorship in 2019 and is in the midst of a second term. He can run for another term in 2026. On Sunday night he gave a speech in New Hampshire urging Democrats to more actively resist the Trump administration through mass protests. Democrats have not nominated a governor for president since Bill Clinton in 1992.

Spain and Portugal (parts of France were affected but not the whole country). Both nations experienced blackouts that lasted almost a full day. The cause has yet to be determined but both governments have ruled out a cyber attack. While some critics have attacked a reliance on renewable energy, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has discounted that because the failure was reportedly not due to a supply of power.

University and technical education. Nandi-Ndaitwah, the first female president in Namibia’s history, said tuition fees would be phased out, although she said that there would not be extra funding to the institutions. This has led critics to say that the plan is not feasible. And one of those critics is the student organization known as the Affirmative Repositioning Student Command (ARSC).

George Santos. The New York Republican, who was expelled from the House of Representatives in 2023, was sentenced to seven years in prison, ordered to pay $374,000 in restitution, and forfeit more than $200,000 due to a conviction on charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Prosecutors proved that Santos unlawfully authorized credit card charges from elderly individuals to go into his campaign and then used campaign donations for himself. Santos has appealed to President Trump to pardon him.

Reform UK. It calls for a stricter immigration policy, slashing public spending, reducing foreign aid, and reforming the National Health Service (NHS). It aims to replace the Conservative Party as the premier right-wing force in Britain and could achieve that in the 2029 British general election.

Japan and South Korea. The proposed $44 billion project would aid Alaska’s export of natural gas to other nations without having to go through the Panama Canal. Taiwan’s state energy company CPC Corp has already signed a non-binding agreement to buy LNG and invest.

The Muslim Brotherhood. The Jordanian government accused the Egyptian-founded, Islamist group of planning rocket and drone attacks. The BBC reported that it was not clear if this also meant that the group’s political group, the Islamic Action Front, would be affected. The IAF controls 31 of the Jordanian parliament’s 138 seats.

The companies were fined a combined $599 million (€700m). Apple was fined for not offering an alternative, cheaper app marketplace to users and app developers other than its Apple Store while Meta was fined for charging people who opted not to let it collect their data on Facebook and Meta. Both companies have complained, arguing that the fines are an unfair targeting of American companies.

Kashmir is India’s only Muslim-majority state. Originally given the choice of whether to join India or Pakistan after the British partition of India in 1947, Kashmir’s maharaja chose India to fend off various attacks from Pakistan. However, there has been unrest for decades due to sectarian tensions, unemployment, and accusations of human rights violations by Indian troops. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since 1947 over Kashmir and the border between their forces in Kashmir, called the Line of Control, is one of the most fortified in the world. The issue has received a lot of attention over the past week due to India accusing Pakistan of aiding in a recent militant attack on tourists in Kashmir that killed 26 people.