Answers to Friday's news quiz

Here are the answers to Friday’s news quiz, which asked you to identify the name of a witness in a federal antitrust trial who said this about the proposed merger of publishing heavyweights Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster: “I came because I think that consolidation is bad for competition … It becomes tougher and tougher for writers to find money to live on.”

The first letters of each clued word spell out: STEPHEN KING, the prolific author whose 60 or so best-sellers include “Carrie” and “The Shining.”

SPRITE: Soft drink brand that shifted its plastic bottles from green to clear to increase the chance they’ll be recycled into new bottles.

THIRD: Suffolk County police precinct that deployed 70 new license plate readers to help solve crimes.

EMERGENCY: U.S. public health officials declared the spread of monkeypox to be this, a rare designation made only five times since 2001, including for the coronavirus pandemic.

PICKLEBALL: Huntington Town opened three new courts for playing this paddle-using sport, which is becoming rapidly more popular.

HEMPSTEAD: Nassau County school district where staff members found a bullet and shell casing next to a shattered window in an elementary school.

EIGHTEEN: Number of hours House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually spent in Taiwan on her visit to the island nation.

NICOTINE: The FDA ordered 88,000 products with a synthetic version of this addictive drug off the market.

KANSAS: Voters in this state rejected a constitutional amendment that would have removed abortion rights from the state’s constitution.

IDAHO: State sued by the Justice Department over its impending near-total ban on abortion.

NATO: The United States Senate voted, 95-1, in favor of granting membership in this organization to Sweden and Finland.

GOVERNOR: The FBI arrested Wanda Vazquez, who formerly held this top elective position in Puerto Rico, on charges that she accepted bribes from a campaign donor.

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie