NewsTracker Answers for week of Mar. 06, 2017

Q: Sweden is to reintroduce its military draft next year amid growing worries about security and difficulties filling the ranks with volunteers. Where is Sweden?

Circle the area on this map

Q: In announcing plans to resume compulsory military service that ended in 2010, Swedish officials cited aggressive actions by which nation?

A. Finland

B. Germany

C. Russia

D. United States

C. "We have a Russian annexation of Crimea, we have the aggression in Ukraine, we have more exercise activities in our neighborhood. So we have decided to build a stronger national defense," Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist said.

Q: Russian warplanes carrying out a mock bombing run on Sweden in 2013 that caught air defense napping. Swedish officials are also wary of Russian activities in which sea that borders both nations?

A. Baltic

B. Bering

C. Bismarck

D. Black

A. The Baltic Sea is part of the Atlantic Ocean and is bordered by Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Denmark. Russian jets buzzed a U.S. Navy ship in the Baltic in 2016.

Q: In 2014, Sweden celebrated 200 years of . . .

A. Democracy

B. Independence

C. Monarchy

D. Peace

D. Sweden is a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy which has maintained its neutrality and not fought a war since 1814. It has been an independent and unified nation since the Middle Ages.

Q: During the 17th century the Swedish Empire was a great European power. But it lost power with the rise of the Russian Empire which built a new capital on territory it captured from the Swedes. What is the name of that city on the Baltic?

A. Moscow

B. Saint Petersburg

C. Stockholm

D. Tallin

B. Russian Tsar Peter the Great captured a Swedish fortress at the site in 1703 and used thousands of conscripted Russian peasants and Swedish prisoners of war to build the new city of Saint Petersburg. He moved the Russian government from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712 and it remained capital of the empire until 1918.