Six Headlines, Six Answers: October 3 News Quiz

Your feed lied to you this week, at least a little. A Hollywood studio got a new name, the FTC started sniffing around the biggest AI labs, California told bosses they cannot let software fire people, and the federal government went dark on the most important economic data of the month. This news quiz covers all of it in six questions, with the answers right below each one so there is no waiting around.

The format is simple. Read the question, pick your answer, then check the bolded line below it. If you follow the news quiz circuit here, you know the drill: six questions, quick explanations, no filler. Ready? Starting with the story Hollywood would not stop talking about.

The six questions

Fair warning: this news quiz leans toward policy and money rather than pop culture, so if your week was all streaming premieres, you are starting at a disadvantage.

1. Hollywood's mega-merger finally has a name. What will the combined company be called?

Answer: Skydance. David Ellison revealed Friday that the merged Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery company will take the Skydance name, and the stock ticker changes from PSKY to SKYD starting Tuesday, TheWrap reported. The roughly one-hundred-ten-billion-dollar deal is expected to close October 6, putting Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible, CNN, and HBO Max under one roof. We covered the merger's road to this point in our earlier piece on the Paramount Skydance deal.

2. A federal regulator just opened investigations into OpenAI, Anthropic, and the research group METR over dangers AI may pose to consumers. Which agency is it?

Answer: The Federal Trade Commission. A senior FTC official told the New York Post that staff are drafting civil investigative demands, the legal orders that can force executives to testify, and AI Policy Daily reported the story. Chairman Andrew Ferguson opened the inquiry weeks ago. "We're not telling them to stop. We're not telling them to do anything. We are in the investigative phase," the official told the Post, according to the same report.

3. This week California became the first state to do what about AI at work?

Answer: Ban employers from using AI to decide who gets fired. Governor Gavin Newsom signed laws stopping employers from relying on AI for firing decisions and from using workers' biometric data to infer their emotional state, AI Policy Daily reported, citing The Guardian and CNBC. The signings came on his final day to act on bills before he terms out in January.

4. Why won't the October jobs report be released this month?

Answer: The federal government shut down on October 1. The White House said the October jobs and inflation reports are unlikely to be released at all because the shutdown made it impossible to gather the necessary data, according to a Dow Jones markets digest. Without the household survey, economists and the Federal Reserve head into December's rate decision flying blind.

5. Minnesota finalized 2027 health insurance rates on Thursday. What was the average increase?

Answer: Seventeen point four percent. The state Department of Commerce finalized the rates for individual and small-group plans at an average increase of seventeen point four percent, KROC reported, affecting roughly two hundred thousand people in the individual market. Without the state's Premium Security Plan reinsurance program, the department said the average would have approached nearly fifty-eight percent. We broke down what the hike means for young buyers earlier this week.

6. A Dow Jones headline warned that tens of thousands of white-collar jobs are disappearing as AI starts to bite. Which two companies did it name?

Answer: Amazon and Target. Layoffs at companies ranging from Amazon to Target are sending young and experienced workers alike into an unwelcoming job market, the Dow Jones digest said, even as stock indexes keep touching record highs on AI deals. This one is easy to mix up with last month's layoff headlines, so if you missed it on this news quiz, you are in good company.

Score yourself

Five or six right: extremely online, in a good way. Three or four: you saw most of it, but the FTC probe or the jobs-report blackout probably slipped past you. Fewer than three: your algorithm had other plans this week. The Minnesota premium story will still be waiting when open enrollment comes around.

That is the October 3 news quiz. Next week the headlines reset, the ticker changes to SKYD, and California bosses have to fire people the old-fashioned way. See you then.