NewsTracker Answers for week of Nov. 10, 2014

Q: Uruguay's Jose Mujica, once dubbed "the poorest president in the world,” says an Arab sheik has offered him $1 million for the 1987 Volkswagen Beetle he drives. Where is Uruguay?

Circle the area on this map

Q: Mujica, who lives on a ramshackle farm and gives 90 percent of his pay to charity, said he would gladly sell his car and give the money to aid homeless people. Uruguay is a . . .

A. Low income country

B. High income country

B. Uruguay is regarded as a high income country (top group) by the United Nations. In the last decade, the nation's poverty level has dropped from about 40 percent to less than 13 percent.

Q: Mujica lives very modestly on the outskirts of Uruguay's capital city . . .

A. Asuncion

B. Buenos Aires

C. Montevideo

D. Santiago

C. More than half of Uruguay's 3.3 million people in the Montevideo metropolitan area on the nation's southern coast. It is the southernmost capital city in the Americas.

Q: A former leftist rebel who spent 13 years in jail, Mujica ends his one term in March as president of South America's second smallest nation. What is the smallest nation in South America?

A. Colombia

B. Belize

C. Venezuela

D. Suriname

D. At just under 64,000 square miles, Suriname is the smallest sovereign nation in South America. Uruguay is 68,000 square miles, or almost the size of Missouri. Tiny Belize is in Central America.

Q: Mujica supports capitalism but says a share of resources should be set aside for society's weakest. He says is greatest achievement is that his nation's wealth is more evenly distributed now than at any point in the last 30 years. How does Uruguay's income equality compare with the United States?

A. About the same

B. Much better

C. Much worse

A. Uruguay ranks right behind the United States in family income equality, according to the CIA World Factbook.