Here are the answers for last week’s quiz questions that may have ruined your holiday peace of mind.

1 FALCON, SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG are all undersea fibre optic internet cables and their near simultaneous failure has never been properly explained.

2 Prince Harry was in Helmand, Afghanistan, calling in US air strikes against suspected Taliban targets (which all too often turned out to be something quite different).  The press had known all along, but in return for promises of royal glory pix after it was all over, had agreed to keep their readers in the dark.  The Drudge Report blew his cover and he went home.

3 Carla Bruni appeared in (rather dated) nude pictures in the London tabloids when she accompanied President Sarkozy on a state visit.  A blatant attempt to boost the circulation of both the newspapers and their male readers.

4 Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi made an election come-back.  Which is more than Thaksin has yet achieved.

5 Ceremonial troops of the Afghan army were marching without ammunition in Kabul when an assassination attempt was made on President Karzai.  The soldiers ran away.

6 Bhutan made a great leap of modernization in allowing private mobile phones.

7 France’s President Sarkozy came out against text-messaging.  The examples were A2M1 (à demain), JTM (je t’aime), JTM+(je ne t’aime plus).

8 Tiger Woods called in with a bad back.  It is not reported if he signed on for the dole.

9 The United States opened a new embassy in Berlin on the site of the one that was closed in 1939. 

10 In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, cars were banned from the streets depending on whether the registration ended in an odd or even number.  The 50% of people who could no longer drive took the underground and overwhelmed the system. 

11 Mark Chapman requested, and was refused, parole for the 1980 murder of John Lennon.

12 7-year-old Yang Peiyi won a competition to sing at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics, but a Politburo member reportedly didn’t like her smile.  Her voice was lip-synched by sweet-smiling 9-year-old Lin Miaoke.

13 Asif Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto, and with a history of shady dealings, was elected president of Pakistan.  (All of it, not just 10%.)

14 Georgia was promised one billion dollars from the US, half a billion euros from the EU, and a loan of 750 million dollars from the IMF as its reward for losing the war against Russia.  Good job they didn’t win.

15 Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso likes appearing on TV cooking programmes (but doesn’t demand payment).

16 President 10% Zardari said ‘You are gorgeous’ to Sarah Palin.  She was learning about foreign, er, affairs, while he was earning himself a fatwah.

17 Morgan Tsvangirai couldn’t leave Zimbabwe for a meeting in Botswana on the disaster that his country has become, because, according to President Robert Mugabe, there wasn’t enough paper to make him a passport.

18 Spain’s long-dead dictator, Francisco Franco, was charged with crimes against humanity for his activities during the Spanish Civil War.

19 A depressingly large number of Americans persisted in believing that Barack Obama was a Muslim, an Arab, and/or a socialist.

20 Najib Razak, son of Abdul Razak and nephew of Hussein Onn, both Prime Ministers of Malaysia, was tipped to become No 2 in the United Malays National Organization, and likely successor to PM Badawi, despite allegations of connections to a murder, corruption and the silencing of witnesses. 

21 Former alcoholic and cocaine addict Diego Maradona was appointed coach of the Argentinean football team.  He at least one his first match against Scotland.

22 In December, Switzerland joined the Schengen Agreement, which means that anyone with a visa for 24 other European countries can also visit Switzerland.

23 Muntadhar al Zaidi threw a pair of shoes at President Bush at a Baghdad press conference.  There were reports that $10 million had been offered for the shoes.