NewsTracker Answers for week of May 20, 2024

Q: Slovakia charged a 71-year-old “lone wolf” gunman in last week’s attempted assassination of the nation’s prime minister who was hospitalized with multiple gunshot wounds. Where is the small Central European nation of Slovakia? (It’s south of Poland, west of Ukraine, north of Hungary, and east of Austria and the Czech Republic.)

Circle the area on this map


Q: Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot after a government meeting in the former coal mining town of Handlova which is surrounded by what mountain range that runs through Slovakia?

A. Alps

B. Balkans

C. Carpathians

D. Dolomites


C. The Carpathian Mountains extend about 930 miles through Central Europe and dominate the geography of Slovakia where the range’s highest peak is located.


Q: The suspect in Fico’s shooting was taken from Handlova to a courthouse in a small town outside Slovakia’s capital of …

A. Belgrade

B. Bratislava

C. Bucharest

D. Budapest


B. Bratislava is the capital and largest city in Slovakia. The suspect’s neighbors and acquaintances described him as a former coal mine worker, one-time stone mason and lifelong malcontent. One said, “he was against everything.” Another said he “became extremely anti-Russian” after the invasion of Ukraine.


Q: Since taking power last year, Fico stopped arms shipments to Ukraine, called for friendly relations with Russia and attacked liberal Western values as corrupting his nation’s morals. His positions echo the longtime leader of which of Slovakia’s neighbors?

A. Austria

B. Czechia

C. Hungary

D. Poland


C. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has held power since 2010 in what he has described as both an "illiberal democracy" and "Christian liberty.” He repeatedly clashed with European Union colleagues on migration and the war in Ukraine. They, in turn, described his regime as a "hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.”


Q: Slovakia was once part of the Kingdom of Hungary and then the Kingdom of Poland. It became part of the nation of Czechoslovakia when which empire fell?

A. Austro-Hungarian

B. German

C. Ottoman

D. Russian


A. What is now the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic became Czechoslovakia with the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I in 1918. That war also resulted in the end of the German, Ottoman and Russian empires. Slovakia and Czechia agreed to become separate nations in 1993.