Location in news

Places that turned up in the news, with the geography and context that make them examinable. Prelims asks where somewhere is and why it matters; this pillar is built so one reading covers both.
Location questions are among the most answerable in the paper, because the set of places in the news each year is finite and knowable. What trips candidates up is learning a name without its setting — the river it sits on, the state or country, the border it touches, the resource or dispute that brought it into the news.
Each entry pairs the place with its coordinates in the syllabus: physical setting, strategic or economic significance, and the story that made it current.