NewsTracker Answers for week of Nov. 04, 2013

Q: Rescue workers in Niger say they have found the bodies of 92 people who died of thirst after their vehicles broke down as they tried to cross the Sahara Desert to find work in North Africa and Europe. Where is Niger on this map?

Circle the area on this map


Q: Of the dead, 52 were children and 33 were women. The bodies were found near Niger's northwestern border with its larger neighbor . . .

A. Algeria

B. Egypt

C. Libya

D. Nigeria


A. Niger is bordered by Algeria to the northwest, Libya to the northeast, Chad to the east, Nigeria and Benin to the south, and Burkino Faso and Mali to the east. One rescue worker speculated that many of victims were children from madrassas (Islamic schools) being taken to Algeria to work.


Q: A UN official said bout 80,000 migrants cross the Sahara desert through Niger. The Sahara is the world's third largest desert. What is the biggest?

A. Antarctica

B. Gobi

C. Kalahari

D. Patagonian


A. While the Sahara stretches across Africa covering an area almost as large as the United States, it is about 2 million square miles smaller than Antarctica, the world's driest continent. The second largest desert is the Arctic.


Q: The desperate African migrants make the hazardous desert journey to find work. Where else have hundreds of economic migrants perished in the desert?

A. Antarctica

B. Britain

C. France

D. United States


D. In the past 10 years, some 2,000 migrants coming from Mexico — men, women, children and the elderly — have died crossing the desert in the southwestern United States.


Q: What is expected to dramatically increase migration over the next 50 years?

A. Population growth

B. Food shortages

C. Climate change

D. All of the above


D. The world's population is expected to soar by 2 billion people by 2050, while rising temperatures cuts into crop production in many of the world's poorest regions. Scientists have concluded that climate change could reduce global food production by as much as 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century, compared with what it would be without climate change.