NewsTracker Answers for week of Sep. 02, 2019

Q: Indonesia’s president said last week that the country’s capital will move from overcrowded, sinking and polluted Jakarta to a sparsely populated site on Borneo island, known for rain forests and orangutans. Where is the southeast Asian island nation of Indonesia?

Circle the area on this map

Q: Jakarta is the fastest sinking city in the world, and with more than 30 million people in its metropolitan area, it is the second most populous city in the world. Where does New York City, the largest U.S. metropolitan area, rank?

A. First

B. Fourth

C. Eighth

D. Eighteenth

C. With more than 22 million people, the New York metropolitan are is the eighth most populous in the world and the largest outside of Asia. With more than 40 million people the Tokyo-Yokohama area is the most populous in the world. As Jakarta sucks out ground water for its growing population, it is sinking about 10 inches a year and almost half the city is now below sea level.

Q: Jakarta is on the island of Java, the most populous island in the world. Overall, Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world. What is the fifth most populous nation?

A. Brazil

B. China

C. India

D. United States

A. Brazil ranks fifth with 210 million people, compared with the 268 million people on Indonesia’s more than 17,000 islands. China has the largest population with nearly 1.4 billion people, followed by India with more than 1.3 billion and the United States with more than 329 million people.

Q: The area of Borneo selected to build the new capital city has minimal risk of disasters such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, forest fires, volcanic eruptions or landslides in the seismically active nation that sits on the edge of which of the earth’s tectonic plates?

A. Australian

B. Eurasian

C. Pacific

D. All of the above

D. Indonesia’s location on the edges of the three plates makes it the site of 150 active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. Past volcanic eruptions have caused global climate changes and famines, including one prehistoric eruption believed to have killed most of humanity.

Q: Like Washington, D.C., Indonesia’s new city will be specifically designed to be the nation’s capital. What other nation has planned and built a city just to serve as its capital?

A. Australia

B. Brazil

C. Myanmar

D. All of the above

D. In addition to the planned capitals of Canberra, Australia, Brasilia, Brazil, and Naypyidaw, Myanmar, Nigeria built Abuja and Pakistan built Islamabad to serve as their capital cities. It could take up to a decade to build Indonesia’s new capital city.