1. A researcher combing through municipal archives in the British town of Sandwich discovered a parchment of what document?
2. What reason did the government of Nigeria give for delaying the country’s presidential election by six weeks?
3. An Oscar belonging to whom reportedly was stolen recently in Paris?
4. What is significant about the relationship between Earth’s innermost core and the layer that envelops it, according to geologists at Nanjing University and the University of Illinois?
5. An Italian court sentenced Francesco Schettino to 16 years in jail for a January 2012 disaster involving what cruise ship?
6. Why do the developers of Google’s robotic dog kick the puppy?
7. Leaders of which four countries negotiated a cease-fire to end fighting in Ukraine?
8. How much plastic is entering the world’s oceans every year, according to researchers in the U.S. and Australia?
a) 8 million metric tons, b) 12 million metric tons, c) 14 million metric tons
Answers:
1) The Magna Carta; 2) That the campaign against Boko Haram prevents the military from sparing enough soldiers to ensure a safe election; 3) Charlie Chaplin; 4) The alignment of molecules in the metal, with molecules of the innermost core aligned along an East-West axis, compared with molecules in the core a layer removed that line up along a North-South axis. According to researchers, the finding suggests that Earth’s magnetic field switched between polar and equatorial axes about 500 million years ago; 5) The Costa Concordia; 6) To demonstrate that the robot maintains its balance; 7) Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France; 8) a