Over the last five years, the sexually transmitted infection (STI) gonorrhea has increased by 63 percent among Australians living primarily in cities. Gonorrhea has no visible symptoms in 80 percent of cases and can lead to sterility. Australian researchers note that the majority (75 percent) of new cases erupt among heterosexual young people aged 20-29 (BBC, November 6, 2017).

Saudi Arabia closed its border with Yemen after Houthi rebel missiles fell near the international airport in Riyadh (Telegraph, November 6, 2017). The Yemeni proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is heating up and increasingly worrisome.

“Most U.S. adults now say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values (56%), up from about half (49%) who expressed this view in 2011.

So say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN (MSN, October 25, 2017). After ten years of study and the development of a research tool that is 350 times more precise than previous tools, a team of brilliant international scientists cannot identify an imbalance between particles and antiparticles that should theoretically exist if the Big Bang itself produced all the matter in the universe.

In a unique twist of irony, Pope Francis is loved by many outside of the Catholic church, yet some of his most vehement critics come from within his own group of leaders (The Guardian, October 27, 2017). One prominent priest recently stated in an interview, “We can’t wait for him to die. It’s unprintable what we say in private.