NewsTracker Answers for week of July 22, 2019

Q: A court ruled last week that the Netherlands was just 10 percent to blame for the deaths of 350 of the more than 7,000 men and boys massacred more than 30 years ago in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Where is the Balkan country of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Circle the area on this map

Q: In the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Dutch United Nations peacekeepers turned over 350 Muslim men to Bosnian Serb forces who later committed the massacre. Balkan countries long have been wracked by religious and ethnic fighting. The geographic area of the Balkans got its name from ...

A. Mountain range

B. Peninsula

C. Steppe

D. All of the above

A. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch through Bulgaria. In 1808, a German geographer used the mountain range to name the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkans generally refers to the present-day nations of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia.

Q: The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic, Mediterranean, Marmara and Black seas to the west, south and east. It is in which part of Europe?

A. Northwest

B. Northeast

C. Southeast

D. Southwest

C. The peninsula in southeastern Europe borders southwestern Asia. Besides the Balkan nations, the peninsula includes small parts of Italy to the west and Turkey to the east. The region was settled over centuries by waves of various ethnic groups, including many coming from Asia.

Q: Balkan nations were once part of which empire?

A. Austro-Hungarian

B. Byzantine

C. Ottoman

D. All of the above

D. The different empires that competed for the Balkans brought Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Islam to various parts of the region. Religious and language differences have divided the people of the Balkans and led to vicious wars and slaughters.

Q: Fighting among Orthodox Serbs, Croatian Roman Catholics, Bosnian Muslims and other groups erupted in the 1990s after the break-up of which nation?

A. Austria-Hungary

B. Czechoslovakia

C. Soviet Union

D. Yugoslavia

D. After a period of political and economic crisis in the 1980s, the constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia split apart, but unresolved issues caused bitter inter-ethnic wars in the 1990s. The nations that made up Yugoslavia are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia.