Trade Wars, Coffee Day, Clemency: Your September 30 News Quiz

Wednesday packed a little of everything into the news cycle: a trade fight with America's closest neighbor, a fight over who pays for presidential advertising, a historic execution, a drug recall worth checking your medicine cabinet for, and a full day of free coffee. The September 30 news quiz turns all of it into six questions. No searching mid-quiz. One point per correct answer, be honest about the misses, and the answer key with the full story behind each question waits at the bottom.

This September 30 news quiz works best as a group activity. Read each question out loud, let everyone commit to a letter, and then scroll to the answers together. The scoring guide at the end will tell you whether your group chat is actually informed or just loud.

The questions

Lock in your answers before scrolling. Every question in this September 30 news quiz comes from a real story published today, and the answer key below explains what actually happened.

One. The United States just put a ban into effect on nearly a billion dollars' worth of Canadian imports. Which goods are covered?

a) Alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles
b) Steel, aluminum and lumber
c) Cars and auto parts
d) Wheat, canola and soybeans

Two. The White House spent days defending a set of taxpayer-funded advertisements. What were they selling?

a) The president himself
b) Open enrollment for health insurance
c) Hurricane relief donations
d) The upcoming census

Three. Which Tennessee inmate is scheduled to become the first woman executed in the state in more than two hundred years?

a) Christa Pike
b) Ethel Rosenberg
c) Aileen Wuornos
d) Karla Faye Tucker

Four. Which blood pressure medication got hit with an expanded nationwide recall after its tablets failed to dissolve properly?

a) Chlortalidone
b) Lisinopril
c) Metoprolol
d) Amlodipine

Five. National Coffee Day landed this week, with chains handing out free and discounted coffee. Which day was it?

a) September 29
b) September 30
c) October 1
d) July 4

Six. Where are twenty-somethings ditching dating apps for professional matchmakers at record rates?

a) Japan
b) South Korea
c) Sweden
d) Brazil

The answers

Spoilers from here down. The September 30 news quiz answer key follows, with the story behind every letter.

One. a) Alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles. The ban went into effect Tuesday and covers nearly a billion dollars' worth of Canadian imports, a small slice of the eight hundred eighty billion dollars in two-way annual trade between the two countries, but another escalation in President Trump's second-term trade fight with a longtime ally. "The import ban certainly won't do anything to help the trade tensions between the United States and Canada," trade attorney Patrick Childress told the Associated Press, as carried in Wednesday's AP news roundup. The September 30 news quiz opens with the trade war.

Two. a) The president himself. The White House spent days defending taxpayer-funded advertisements glorifying President Trump, with public spending on the spots nearing a million and a half dollars. Communications director Steven Cheung called them public service announcements on X, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters, "It shouldn't be paid for with taxpayer dollars," according to the Associated Press, in the same AP roundup. Legal experts consulted by the AP said the ads appear to run afoul of federal laws against using appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda.

Three. a) Christa Pike. At eighteen, Pike and her then-boyfriend lured nineteen-year-old Colleen Slemmer away from the Knoxville Job Corps Center and killed her in nineteen ninety-five. Governor Bill Lee denied her clemency petition on Monday, and the Supreme Court declined to stop the execution on Tuesday, clearing the way for a lethal-injection execution Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. She would be the first such execution in more than two centuries, and the only woman currently on the state's death row, according to TYLA, citing the BBC. Her attorneys argued that severe childhood abuse and untreated mental illness should have spared her; the victim's mother, May Martinez, has said the sentence should be carried out.

Four. a) Chlortalidone. India-based Inventia Healthcare Limited expanded its recall of chlortalidone tablets after they failed dissolution specifications, meaning the pills may not release enough of the active ingredient to control blood pressure. The FDA classified it as a Class II recall, and the expanded lot covers thirteen thousand-plus bottles from batch RISA24002, distributed nationwide. This is the second recall in about three months for the same dissolution problem, so anyone who checked their bottle after the June recall may need to check again, TYLA reported, citing FDA enforcement records.

Five. a) September 29. National Coffee Day brought the usual stampede of deals. Dunkin' Rewards members could grab a free medium hot or iced coffee with any purchase through the app, Krispy Kreme handed out a free small or medium coffee with any purchase, and 7-Eleven sold large coffees for a dollar forty-nine to rewards members, according to iHeart's roundup of the day's offers. Ziggi's Coffee went further and stretched its deal into a full week, running through October 5. If you missed it, the September 30 news quiz is the consolation prize.

Six. a) Japan. Young adults are enrolling in marriage agencies at record rates, paying premium fees for counselors who promise a faster path to the altar than dating apps. The shift is a backlash against ghosting, catfishing and noncommittal matches, the New York Times reported, with shrinking social circles making old-fashioned introductions harder to come by. One recruit, a soft-spoken twenty-something named Taizen Yasuda, told the New York Times: "The process of endless matching, messaging and finally meeting on apps was exhausting." Matchmaking services screen for partners who share the explicit goal of marriage, according to the Times report, which matters in a country where childbearing remains closely tied to marriage and the birthrate keeps sliding.

Score yourself

Six out of six on this September 30 news quiz means you are the person your group chat relies on. Four or five right is a genuinely strong news habit. Two or three means the headlines blurred together, which is fair on a day this packed. Zero or one means the algorithm won this round, and tomorrow is another chance.

Want a rematch? Try the September 29 news quiz and the September 28 news quiz to complete the set, then send this September 30 news quiz to the friend who always claims to have read everything.