What in the World?
Test yourself on the week of Oct. 8: OPEC+ slashes production, China’s leaders convene, and Alaska’s fat bears become mired in scandal.
From missile tests to arguments about oil, the world has faced another wild week. See what you can remember with FP’s international news quiz!
Have feedback? Email whatintheworld@foreignpolicy.com to let me know your thoughts.
From missile tests to arguments about oil, the world has faced another wild week. See what you can remember with FP’s international news quiz!
1. Last weekend, Ukraine launched a devastating strike against which Russian target?
The bridge links Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula. In retaliation, Russia launched missile strikes across Ukraine, including against civilian targets in Kyiv, the capital, FP’s Jack Detsch reports.
2. Iranian hackers took control of a state broadcast channel on Oct. 8 to support ongoing anti-government protests. Which is not something the hacker organization aired?
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s efforts to enforce conservative Islamic values have only furthered calls for modernization, Kourosh Ziabari writes.
3. On Monday, North Korea announced that its recent ballistic missile tests near Japan and South Korea were designed to show Pyongyang’s devastating nuclear abilities.
How many missiles has North Korea launched in the last 20 days?
No country has been able to get Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons. FP’s Howard W. French argued in June that the West must end North Korea’s isolation.
4. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has urged world leaders to deploy a “rapid action force” to which country to help combat gang violence?
Foreign military interventions in Haiti have a fraught history, FP’s Catherine Osborn writes in this week’s Latin America Brief.
5. The Biden administration announced its intention to reevaluate U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia on Tuesday after members of the oil cartel OPEC+ decided to slash oil production. By how many barrels will the group cut daily output?
The United States must stop treating Saudi Arabia as an ally, Aaron David Miller writes, since Riyadh doesn’t consider Washington’s needs in its decision-making.
6. Officials in Uganda are struggling to stamp out which resurgent disease, which has killed at least 39 people since September?
The Ebola outbreak is the country’s worst in two decades. Although such health threats are inevitable, governments can take action to stop them from becoming realities, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Helen Clark argued in August.
7. This Sunday, China opens its 20th Party Congress, which will likely see President Xi Jinping secure an unprecedented third five-year term. Just days before the event, what did some Chinese citizens do in a rare show of protest against the leader?
Stay up to date with FP’s in-depth analysis of the Party Congress.
8. After a year of political deadlock under President Barham Salih, Iraq’s parliament has chosen whom to be the country’s next president?
Iranian influence in Baghdad and Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s revolutionary efforts recently pulled Iraq toward the brink of civil war, Ahmed Twaij argued last month.
9. A roughly 1,400-pound bear named 747 won this year’s Fat Bear Week contest, run by Katmai National Park in Alaska. But the competition was not without controversy. Which scandal almost ruined it?
“Like bears stuff their face with fish, our ballot box, too, has been stuffed,” the park tweeted.
10. After proposing a much-ridiculed peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war, billionaire Elon Musk is trying his hand at a new industry: perfume. What is the name of his personalized fragrance?
“With a name like mine, getting into the fragrance business was inevitable,” Musk tweeted. “[W]hy did I even fight it for so long!?”
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Alexandra Sharp is a deputy copy editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @AlexandraSSharp
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