"What in the World?" - Week of Oct 29-Nov 4, 2017

When residents of a camp for displaced persons in THIS country—the world’s newest—became upset because they were told she wouldn’t be able to meet with them, Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was evacuated from the camp.

Catalonian independence from Spain was announced this week, almost a month after the regional government held a referendum on the topic. Who declared Catalonia’s independence?

Citizens of THIS nation went to the polls again to cast their ballots for president, after the results of the August 8 presidential election were nullified due to reported voting irregularities.

The collapse due to scandal of a second coalition government in less than a year caused THIS nation to hold snap parliamentary elections this week. Last year, the Panama Papers revealed that the then-prime minister owned an offshore company that he had not declared; this year, the current prime minister’s father wrote a letter supporting a convicted pedophile’s request to have certain civil rights restored.

Tensions are high in northern Brazil after protestors set fire to the local offices of Ibama, the Brazilian environmental protection agency, and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conversation. The fires were allegedly set in retaliation because the government seized boats belonging to people engaged in THIS illegal activity:

Rome’s Lazio soccer club faced international denunciation because it used images of THIS person to launch insults at a rival team:

Australia’s High Court has ruled that the nation’s deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, is disqualified from holding office because of THIS:

The United Nations and international chemical weapons inspectors issued a joint report that determined WHO was responsible for the sarin gas attack that killed more than 80 people in the Syrian village of Khan Sheikhoun in April?

Teodorin Obiang, vice president of Equatorial Guinea, was convicted in absentia in France this week on charges of embezzlement of public money. What is Mr. Obiang’s relationship to the president of Equatorial Guinea?

Two notes, each containing an aphorism for happiness, were hand-written by THIS Nobel Prize winner and given to a courier years ago, in lieu of a tip. The notes sold at auction this week for a combined $1.8 million.