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Here is this week’s Extemp Central news quiz.  Good luck!

To accesquiz-01s a list of all our old quizzes, click here.

1. According to the IMF, Brazil’s economy will shrink by how much in 2016?

[toggle title_open=”Close Me” title_closed=”Open Me” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]3.5%.  The IMF once predicted 1%, but the IMF revised figures are due to the nation’s ongoing fiscal and monetary problems.  Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is increasingly unpopular as she cannot make the Brazilian Congress implement austerity to avoid a public debt default.[/toggle]

2. Which three Middle Eastern nations did Chinese President Xi Jinping visit last week?

[toggle title_open=”Close Me” title_closed=”Open Me” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran.  Jinping’s visit to Iran made him the first foreign leader to do so since the lifting of international sanctions against the nation as a result of its nuclear program.  Jinping is the most widely traveled Chinese leader since the Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War and assumed power in 1949.[/toggle]

3. This African nation suffered an attack by jihadist terrorists linked to al-Qaeda two weeks ago.

[toggle title_open=”Close Me” title_closed=”Open Me” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]Burkina Faso.  Twenty-eight people of eighteen nationalities were killed in the attacks on a cafe in Ouagadougou.[/toggle]

4. What is “the 1992 consensus.”

[toggle title_open=”Close Me” title_closed=”Open Me” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]This refers to a deal brokered between China and Taiwan where both sides agreed that they were part of “one China.”  While to some the agreement seems to mean that Taiwan should one day reunite with China, others argue that this should only occur once China becomes democratic.  The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won major gains two weeks ago in Taiwan’s presidential and parliamentary elections and some believe that the party’s pro-independence position could strain relations with China.  New President Tsai Ing-wen has yet to reject the consensus idea, although she has not publicly endorsed it.[/toggle]

5. When will Iran hold its parliamentary elections?

[toggle title_open=”Close Me” title_closed=”Open Me” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]February 26.  The elections will pit Iranian reformists, who will back President Hassan Rohani, against more conservative activists such as those that once supported former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Rohani is hoping to use the nuclear deal with Western powers to rally support behind his foreign policy position of greater global engagement.  The unfreezing of up to $100 billion in Iranian assets abroad may strengthen Rohani’s case.[/toggle]

6. Who is Charles Ramsey?

[toggle title_open=”Close Me” title_closed=”Open Me” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]Ramsey is the former Philadelphia police commissioner who was recently hired by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to assist the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in its use of force policies, community policing, and interactions with the mentally ill.  Ramsey once worked for the CPD, but was not chosen to be the city’s police superintendent in 1992 and 1998.[/toggle]

7. What was the name of the winter storm that recently buried New York City and Washington, D.C. in less than two feet of snow?

[toggle title_open=”Close Me” title_closed=”Open Me” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]Jonas.  The storm not only buried residents in New York City and Washington, D.C., but also brought record snow falls to areas of Kentucky and dropped forty-two inches of snow in parts of West Virginia.  Other areas of the South and the Ohio Valley were affected.[/toggle]

8. Why is Egypt putting eight museum workers on trial?

[toggle title_open=”Close Me” title_closed=”Open Me” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]Egyptian prosecutors have charged the museum workers for “gross negligence” for botching a repair job of King Tutankhamen’s burial mask.  The workers allegedly did such a poor job they left scratches on the 3,300-year-old mask.  In 2014, an accident by workers knocked the beard off the mask, which had to reattached with beeswax.[/toggle]

9. What was the primary goal of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry when visiting Laos on Sunday?

[toggle title_open=”Close Me” title_closed=”Open Me” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]Kerry is leading the way of a President Obama initiative to have the U.S. help Laos clear out Vietnam War-era bombs.  President Obama intends to visit Laos in the fall.  The United States and Laos have been estranged for decades, which dates back to the 1960s when U.S. forces dropped more than two million tons of bombs on the country.  Experts estimate that 30% of those bombs did not detonate and roughly fifty Laotians are killed each year by those bombs.[/toggle]

10. This noted conservative publication issued feature article against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump last week.

[toggle title_open=”Close Me” title_closed=”Open Me” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]National Review.  The publication, founded by conservative intellectual William Buckley, Jr. in 1955, argued that Trump was a “political opportunist” and that he “would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP.”  They also warned that he would undo the work of generations of American conservatives.[/toggle]