NewsTracker Answers for week of July 22, 2013

Q: At least 23 children, aged four to 12, died after eating pesticide-tainted meals at a school in India. Where is India on this map?

Circle the area on this map

Q: The free meals were served as part of India's midday meal program which feeds 120 million schoolchildren. With more than 1.2 billion people, India is the world's second most populous nation. Which nation ranks third in population?

A. Russia

B. Brazil

C. China

D. United States

D. The United States is the third most populous nation with about 316 million people. China is about the same geographic size as the United States but has a population of more than 1.3 billion.

Q: The insecticide that tainted the meals is called Organophosphorous. It kills 200,000 people around the world every year and is very common in Indian farming. What share of India's workers are engaged in agriculture?

A. More than 90%

B. Just over half

C. Nearly a third

D. Less than 20%

B. While India's service economy has grown rapidly in areas like technology and business services, agriculture still employs 53 percent of India's nearly 500 million workers. In the United States where less than 3 percent of workers are engaged in agriculture, the use of Organophosphorous declined by 55 percent between 1997 and 2007. But, the nation still spread 73 million pounds of the pesticide in 2001.

Q: India's midday meal program is designed to encourage school attendance and fight the nation's high rate of childhood malnutrition. But, the world's highest rate of death from malnutrition is in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere . . .

A. Angola

B. Guatemala

C. Haiti

D. Mexico

C. According to 2011 statistics from the World Health Organization, there were 53.3 deaths from malnutrition for every 100,000 people in Haiti. Angola in Africa had the second highest death rate followed by Guatemala in Central America. With a malnutrition death rate of 5.9 for every 100,000 people, India ranked 98th out of 192 countries.

Q: The deaths of the schoolchildren occurred in the Bihar state on India's northern border with the Himalayan nation of . . .

A. Nepal

B. Sri Lanka

C. Maldives

D. Seychelles

A. Nepal has eight of the world's ten tallest mountains, including the highest spot on Earth -- Mt. Everest. Sri Lanka, Maldives and Seychelles are all island nations in the Indian Ocean.