Due to “plummeting polls, an unpopular and ineffective coalition, dire performances in recent state elections and increasingly acrimonious in-fighting among her centre-right alliance,” Angela Merkel agreed to step down in 2021, at the end of her current term, after 13 years as Germany’s chancellor (The Guardian, November 3, 2018).

I suppose most people have entertained the fantasy of winning the lottery. How about you? What would you do with all of that sudden wealth?

Even children daydream about finding buried treasure, perhaps inspired by a book or a movie such as Treasure Island, or another of the many with that theme.

On Saturday, October 6, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. His confirmation has brought up a question that seemed totally out of the question just a few years ago: Could the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade?

Roe v. Wade, an infamous Supreme Court case from 1973, ruled that abortions were protected by the 14th Amendment’s focus on personal privacy. While some states had already legalized abortions, this ruling struck down many states’ anti-abortion laws; laws that had been on the books in most states since the 1800s.

Sociologists have known for years that the fewer number of sexual partners one has before marriage, the lower the odds of divorce after marriage. New research from the Institute for Family Studies now shows that the fewer number of sexual partners before marriage, the happier the marriage relationship (The Atlantic, October 22, 2018)!

Earlier this year, Japanese scientists from the Kobe Ocean Bottom Exploration Center discovered a massive lava dome 30 miles from the southern tip of Japan’s main southern island of Kyushu. The dome stands 2,000 feet high, has a diameter of six miles and currently sits just 100 feet below the ocean’s surface. The dome is immense and contains nearly eight cubic miles of magma.