What in the World? Weekly Quiz - Nov 4-10, 2019

The Islamic State confirmed the death of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who was killed in a U.S. Special Operations raid in Syria last week and his heir apparent who died in a strike a day later. ISIS provided THIS apparent nom de guerre of the new leader, heretofore unknown to outside analysts, and referred to HIM as “emir of the believers” and “caliph.” The announcement also renewed threats to the West, “Do not be happy America, for the death of Sheikh al-Baghdadi, and do not forget the cups of death at his hands, may God accept him.”

Major state-owned mobile phone carriers in China rolled out their new data plans for THIS next generation technology which offers faster speeds and wider coverage but is at the same time the focus of a technology turf war between Beijing and Washington.

Details are sketchy but THIS country was set to start the process of disconnecting from the Internet on November 1^st. A long-planned scheme would give the country the ability to disconnect from the global Internet in event of a cyberwar, providing a networked web sanctioned by the government, with the side benefit of exercising more control of its citizens.

Last week the Indian government took THIS unprecedented move in the Jammu and Kashmir region, an area still fraught with tensions following the August 5 decision to strip Jammu and Kashmir of decades-old special autonomy. In the two months since, Jammu and Kashmir have experienced an influx of Indian troops into the Kashmir Valley, crackdowns on movement and public gatherings, and a suspension of communications.

In the aftermath of Hong Kong authorities using colonial-era emergency powers to ban face masks and face coverings, some pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong have adopted THIS DC Comics character as a “symbol of the resistance,” citing parallels between Hong Kong and the character’s home place.

In one of the deadliest assaults of the past decade, militants in eastern Mali killed at least 49 soldiers and one civilian in an attack on a military post. Mali’s northern and eastern regions have experienced significant insecurity in the years since the 2012 jihadist insurgency, one of many challenges facing THIS five nation-member regional partnership for coordinating development and security and battling Jihadist groups like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in the region.

Dresden, Germany, a city long-viewed as a bastion of the far-right and the birthplace of the anti-Islam Pegida movement, made news last week for THIS, a signal that many in the city view more must be done to tackle the issue.