NewsTracker Answers for week of Oct. 29, 2012

Q: China blocked its citizens from seeing the New York Times website because the newspaper reported the family of China's prime minister had amassed a fortune worth at least $2.7 billion. Where is China on this map?

Circle the area on this map

Q: The newspaper's investigation found that many relatives of Wen Jiabao become extraordinarily wealthy during his leadership. A growing gap between the rich and poor in China makes reports about its leaders' wealth a sensitive topic. Which of these nations has the least inequality?

A. Australia

B. Costa Rica

C. Sweden

D. United States

C. According the CIA World Factbook, Sweden has the most equal distribution of wealth of all the nations. While the unequal distribution of wealth has grown sharply as China's economy boomed over the last two decades, in the United States the gap between the very rich and the rest of Americans has grown significantly since a period of much greater equality in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Q: China's extensive web filtering system blocks tens of thousands of sites using URL filtering and keyword censoring. What has this system been called?

A. Chinese Web Maze

B. Great Firewall of China

C. Beijing Puzzle Box

D. Bamboo Curtain

B. The name is a takeoff on the ancient Great Wall of China which was built across the country's northern border to keep out invaders. But, it failed to stop the Mongol invasions led by Ghengis Kahn and his descendants. The Great Firewall is an attempt to block the invasion and "spread of information that contains content subverting state power."

Q: Reporters Without Borders, an international group that monitors freedom of the press and speech, has declared China an "enemy of the Internet" for its censorship and arrests of Internet users. Which of these nations is NOT on the organization's list of Internet bad guys?

A. Estonia

B. Belarus

C. Turkmenistan

D. Uzbekistan

A. Estonia is the only former part of the Soviet Union that gets Reporters Without Borders' top rating for freedom of the press and speech.

Q: In addition to aggressively controlling what its citizens can read or say on the Internet, China's government has been accused of using hackers to sabotage or spy on U.S. targets. What other nation has been suspected of engaging in cyberwarfare?

A. Russia

B. Israel

C. United States

D. All of the above

D. Russia has been accused of hacker attacks on Estonia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. And, there have been reports that Russian and China infiltrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system. The United States and Israel were suspected of creating the Stuxnet computer worm to attack and destroy the centrifuges Iran was using to enrich uranium.