Ripped from the Headlines: June 2024: This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for June 8–June 14, 2024

A 100-year-old World War II veteran married his 96-year-old fiancée on June 8 after celebrating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Centenarian Harold Terens was 20 years old when he first visited Normandy, two weeks after Allied forces stormed the beaches there. He returned there this week to marry Jeanne Swerlin amid the historic celebration in France. Centenarian is from centenary, "a period of 100 years," and its Latin root centum, "hundred."

After deliberating for three hours, a federal jury convicted Hunter Biden on three felony gun charges. He was found guilty of lying on a background check form when he purchased a gun, a crime that he committed before his father was elected president. He could face up to 25 years in prison and a fine of as much as $750,000. Convict has a Latin root that means "to conquer."

More than 50 people, including three U.S. citizens, are on trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo for allegedly attempting a coup. The charges are connected to a May 19 armed attack on the home of a government official and President Felix Tshisekedi’s offices. The army has described the attack as "an attempt to destabilize the country's institutions." Coup is short for the French term coup d'État, "blow of state."

On June 9, more than 30,000 fans converged on a temporary stadium in East Meadow, New York to watch India and Pakistan face off at the ICC Men's T20 World Cup. The cricket match was the most highly anticipated contest of the tournament, pitting the sport's two biggest rivals against each other. After a slow start, India won by six runs. The name cricket refers to the game's bats and wickets, from a root that means "stick."

Despite the importance of dried plant collections for understanding the way climate change has affected plant life, Duke University plans to close the country's largest herbarium. Scientists say archives of preserved flowers, along with data about when and where they bloomed, help to show how the world is changing. Botanists, for example, have learned from herbariums that flowers now bloom an average of 12 days earlier than they did 150 years ago.

With the tick-borne illness babesiosis on the rise, researchers are testing a drug that may speed recovery. People can get the disease, which causes flu-like symptoms, after being bitten by the tiny parasites. It's often confused by doctors for Lyme disease, which is also spread by ticks when they feed on human blood. Scientists hope that treatment with tafenoquine, a malaria drug, will be effective. The Greek root of parasite means "person who eats at the table of another."

French President Emmanuel Macron called a snap parliamentary election after his centrist Renaissance party earned fewer than half the votes of the country's right-wing National Rally party. Macron's decision to dissolve the French parliament and hold a vote came after several hard-right candidates prevailed in the European Parliament election over the weekend. While the EU government is still majority center-left and center-right, the election has centrists there worried.

A developer plans to build what will be the tallest U.S. skyscraper in Oklahoma City. At 1,907 feet, the building will tower above the city, rising twice as high as the building that's currently the state's tallest, and nearly 800 feet higher than New York's One World Trade Center. Construction of the Legends Tower will begin this fall. Skyscraper was used to mean birds, tall men, and flags on a ship's mast before it came to be defined as "tall building."

Police in Los Angeles say that a ring of thieves stole at least 2,800 Lego sets. Officers followed a woman after they saw her stealing Lego from two different Target stores, which she then delivered to a house in Long Beach, California. A search of the house revealed thousands of unopened Lego sets with values ranging from $20 to more than $1,000. The thieves were found to be selling the pilfered toys online.

A New Orleans teenager who has struggled with homelessness and lived in a youth shelter for the past two years was named valedictorian of his high school. Elijah Hogan earned the highest GPA of his graduating class, 3.96, despite the difficult housing challenges he faced. In Hogan's graduation speech, he told his fellow graduates, "Take pride in how far you have come, and have faith in how far you can go." Valedictorian is from a Latin root meaning "bid farewell."

A two-year old was feeding giraffes at a Glen Rose, Texas wildlife center when one of them grabbed her instead of the food she was holding. The long-necked African animal briefly lifted the child by her pink shirt before dropping her back into her family's pickup truck, where her relieved mother caught her. A Fossil Rim Wildlife Center spokesperson said the park would work to prevent such incidents with wild animals, in part by banning people riding in open truck beds.

New yen notes being introduced this summer in Japan won’t be compatible with millions of vending machines that many shops rely on. The country prints new paper money every two decades in order to deter counterfeiters. Ramen shops, bathhouses, and cafeterias are among the businesses whose vending machines won't accept the new bills. The Japanese yen is from the Chinese yuan, "round object, circle, or dollar."