I suspect that much of my awareness of geopolitical events derives from being exposed to numerous news sources when I was growing up in Turkey. I read the military's Stars & Stripes, my dad's subscription to US News & World Report, as well as Turkish daily newspapers like Hurriyet and Sabah.

In the US, however, your standard run-of-the-mill news sources are very limited and constrained to the most trivial aspects of the news day. Local news, particularly in the mornings, covers weather and traffic for nearly 80% of the news hour. The national networks aren't any better. I follow the news just about every day, but find myself having to actively seek out information about the world that the media simply doesn't cover.

To illustrate my point, here's a quick quiz to see if your news sources are doing a decent job of keeping you up to date with what's going on in the world.

1. Who is Omar al-Bashir?
2. Where is the Swat province?
3. Who is Sheikh Sharif Ahmed?
4. Who is the President of Zimbabwe?
5. Where is Antananarivo?
6. What kind of natural disaster is claiming lives in Australia?
7. What country's Prime Minister stormed off in the middle of the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland?
8. Which two countries have stationed troops at the Saichen glacier, making it the "fastest melting glacier"?
9. After ousting the Tamil Tigers from a city they held for 10 years, what country's president urged the rebels to surrender?
10. What terrorist attack conducted by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba is colloquially referred to as 26/11?

Deduct one letter grade for each question you don't know the answer to. If you get a C or better (7+ right), please share your news sources in the comment field. If you score less than a C, then watching CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC and the like just aren't going to cut it.