“What in the World? Weekly Quiz” | Aug 30-Sep 5, 2021

A global affairs awareness service provided by the
Tennessee World Affairs Council

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Thanks to quiz master Patrick Ryan and @TNWAC News Editor Campbell Lahman for this week’s quiz.

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LAST WEEK’S QUIZ WINNERS

Marcus Murphy, Sewanee, TN
Peter Sharadin, Blandon, PA
Joseph Mendenhall, Bedford, TX
Basil G. Smith, Jacksonville, FL
Lee Gray, Atlanta, GA
David Hillinck, Huntsville, AL
Steve Lawrence, Morristown, TN
Patricia Miletich, Nashville, TN
Bernie Drake, Peoria, Il
Henry Wykoff, Nashville, TN

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Be a member to be eligible for the quiz prize.

August 2021 – Quiz Prize

2034: A Novel of the Next World War

Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Starvidis, USN

From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034—and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration.

On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea when her ship detects an unflagged trawler in clear distress, smoke billowing from its bridge. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris “Wedge” Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt’s destroyer will lie at the bottom of the sea, sunk by the Chinese Navy. Iran and China have clearly coordinated their moves, which involve the use of powerful new forms of cyber weaponry that render US ships and planes defenseless. In a single day, America’s faith in its military’s strategic pre-eminence is in tatters. A new, terrifying era is at hand.

So begins a disturbingly plausible work of speculative fiction, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral who has spent much of his career strategically outmaneuvering America’s most tenacious adversaries. Written with a powerful blend of geopolitical sophistication and human empathy, 2034 takes us inside the minds of a global cast of characters–Americans, Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Indians–as a series of arrogant miscalculations on all sides leads the world into an intensifying international storm. In the end, China and the United States will have paid a staggering cost, one that forever alters the global balance of power.

Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground combined with the authors’ years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings: 2034 is all too close at hand, and this cautionary tale presents the reader a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid.

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1. Amid violent clashes at Kabul airport, President Biden is considering extending THIS deadline for withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan but a Taliban spokesman said, “They should finish the evacuation.. .. as they have promised.” (#WACquiz)

A. August 25
B. August 31
C. September 3
D. September 30

Correct Response: B. August 31
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/23/world/taliban-afghanistan-biden-news

2. “The threat is real. It is acute. It is persistent. And it is something that we are focused on with every tool in our arsenal,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said regarding THIS group in Afghanistan. (#WACquiz)

A. Al Qaeda
B. Islamic State
C. Hezbollah
D. IRGC

Correct Response: B. Islamic State
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/22/us/politics/isis-kabul-airport.html

3. Algiers is reviewing its relations with THIS western border neighbor, labeling it a “hostile” actor, accused of “backing” a separatist group in a northern Algeria region. (#WACquiz)

A. Libya
B. Niger
C. Tunisia
D. Morocco

Correct Response: D. Morocco
https://www.bbc.com/news/world/middle_east

4. A 7.2-magnitude earthquake rocked THIS Caribbean island nation and resulted in the deaths of more than 2,200 people, 12,000 injured, and hundreds more still missing. The country is located atop the Caribbean Plate, which makes it vulnerable to devastating earthquakes like one in 2010, whose epicenter near the capital Port-au-Prince resulted in over 120,000 fatalities. (WACA WWNU)

A. Guadeloupe
B. Jamaica
C. Dominican Republic
D. Haiti

Correct Response: D. Haiti
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/heres-what-makes-earthquakes-so-devastating-in-haiti
(WACA Weekly World News Update)

5. American military evacuations of citizens and eligible Afghans out of Kabul will be bolstered by THIS Pentagon action. (#WACquiz)

A. Activation of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet giving it power to order 18 jetliners from six carriers into service to ferry evacuees removed from Kabul by military aircraft.
B. Declaration of NATO Article 5 provisions under the Washington Treaty to bring Allied partners into the airlift fleet.
C. Contracting short-haul American carriers to ferry evacuees from Kabul to nearby Central Asian capitals for transfer to long-haul carriers to Europe and North America.
D. Organizing a rail corridor from Kabul to Dushanbe, Tajikistan to transfer people by train.

Correct Response: A. Activation of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet giving it power to order 18 jetliners from six carriers into service to ferry evacuees removed from Kabul by military aircraft.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/22/biden-administration-activates-civil-reserve-air-fleet.html

6. USAID Administrator Samantha Power said food aid to the Tigray region of THIS civil-war torn country was “woefully insufficient.” USAID accused Addis Ababa of “obstructing” shipments aimed at forestalling a famine. (#WACquiz)

A. Djibouti
B. Eritrea
C. South Sudan
D. Ethiopia

Correct Response: D. Ethiopia
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-58279442

7. Japan increased its territory when THIS occurred. (#WACquiz)

A. Agreement with Moscow to repatriate the southernmost Kuril Island, Etorofu, seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.
B. The right to sovereignty over the Senkaku Island chain, claimed by China, was decided by an International Tribunal at the Hague in favor of Japan.
C. A submarine volcano eruption has produced a new island near Iwo Jima.
D. Signing a dual citizenship treaty with South Korea governing two disputed islands in the Tsushima Strait.

Correct Response: C. A submarine volcano eruption has produced a new island near Iwo Jima.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/08/17/national/new-island-submarine-volcano

8. A snap election in Canada has been called by THIS Prime Minister who seeks to gain a majority in the House of Commons for his Liberal Party, and a mandate for actions to combat the pandemic and aid an economic recovery. (#WACquiz)

A. Erin O’Toole
B. Justin Trudeau
C. Boris Johnson
D. Alexander Mackenzie

Correct Response: B. Justin Trudeau
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/world/americas/canada-trudeau-election-covid.html
(WACA Weekly World News Update)

9. In WHICH Southeast Asian country did Muhyiddin Yassin recently resign from his position as prime minister? The country’s King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah is expected to be selecting Yassin’s replacement from among the nation’s parliament members, including some from Yassin’s own Perikatan Nasional (PN). (WACA WWNU)

A. Singapore
B. Philippines
C. Malaysia
D. Vietnam

Correct Response: C. Malaysia
Source: https://thediplomat.com/2021/08/malaysias-muhyiddin-finally-steps-down-as-prime-minister/
(WACA Weekly World News Update)

10. THIS Asian country formally passed a three-child policy into law to increase birth rates. The new policy comes after the country’s decades-long, infamous one-child policy was replaced with a two-child limit in 2016 which was unsuccessful in lifting birth rates. (#WACquiz)

A. China
B. Russia
C. India
D. Thailand

Correct Response: A. China
Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58277473
(#WACquiz)

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