Last week's challenge
Start with the phrase AMERICAN FLAG. Change one letter to a W and you can spell the names of two countries on different continents. What are they?
Answer: If you change the G to a W, you can spell FRANCE and MALAWI.
THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: FEMALE HEADS OF STATE
On-air questions: OK Mike, this week in 2010, during a leadership shakeup, Julia Gillard became the first —and to date, only — female prime minister of Australia. A member of the Australian Labor Party, Gillard served until 2013, and has the distinction of being both preceded and succeeded by Kevin Rudd. In honor of Gillard’s anniversary, today’s show is all about female heads of state. I’ll give you some facts about them, and you name the leader.
1. Born in Kiev in 1898 and died 2,000 miles to north 80 years later in a nation that came into being when she was 50; was head of state during the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
2. After studying at Harvard and Oxford, this alliterative world leader of a triple alliterative party served as the first woman to head a majority Muslim democracy, from 1988-1990 and from 1993 to 1996.
3. The daughter of her nation’s first prime minister, but with a last name associated with a different important figure in that nation’s development, she served as prime minister from 1966 through 1977 and again starting in 1980, and remains the nation’s only female head of state.
4. What nation has had, to date, two female presidents: Corazon Aquino from 1986 through 1992, and Gloria Arroyo from 2001 through 2010? (As a hint, Aquino succeeded Ferdinand Marcos).
5. Joined the Bundestag in December 1990 from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, left office 31 years later, in between served as leader of the opposition from 2002 to 2005 while Gerhard Schröder was in office.
Extra credit
1. Head of the Labour Party since 2017, she became her nation’s third female leader that year, and in 2018, became the second woman in history to give birth while in office as an elected head of state.
2. Focused for much of her 2016-2019 term on Brexit, she was Great Britain’ s second female prime minister and was a Conservative like its first
This week's challenge
Start with the phrase MADAM PRESIDENT. Add an S and rearrange the letters and you can spell a two-word phrase for why a president may be removed. What are the words?
ANSWERS
On-air questions
1. Golda Meir (Meir was the first and to date only head of the Israeli government; she also attended what is today the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee during World War I)
2. Benazir Bhutto (The 11th and 13th prime minister of Pakistan headed the Pakistan Peoples Party; she was assassinated a few months after returning from a decade of exile in December 2007)
3. Indira Gandhi (Gandhi was also assassinated)
4. The Philippines
5. Angela Merkel (Merkel, who has a doctorate in chemistry, was German Chancellor beginning in 2005 for 16 years)
Extra credit
1. Jacinda Arden (of New Zealand)
2. Theresa May (May served two terms as prime minister before resigning as head of the party in May 2019)