Over the past weekend, the notorious Boko Haram jihadist group made yet another attack, leaving 85 civilians and refugees dead amidst the ruins of a burning village. Nigeria’s military received yet another embarrassing black eye, as jihadists seemingly hit and run without retaliation. Why does this kind of madness continue?

“If almost every mother breastfed her children it could prevent more than 800,000 child deaths a year [according to a recent Lancet article], yet governments are failing to promote and support breastfeeding, with rates remaining far below international targets, new research has found… Children who are breastfed for longer have higher IQs, lower death rates and less risk of infection than those who are breastfed for shorter periods or not at all, the research found.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is becoming increasingly unpopular in Germany due to her handling of the migrant crisis. “A newly published survey found that almost 40 percent of Germans are so angry with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy that they want her to resign… At the same time, 45.4 percent of voters for the left-wing Die Linke party saw Merkel’s refugee stance as cause for her to resign” (The Local De, January 29, 2016).

“Pope Francis held talks with Iran’s president at the Vatican Tuesday [January 26], calling on Tehran to play a key role in stopping the spread of terrorism as Iran tries to improve its image in the global arena” (Associated Press, January 26, 2016).

A country song tells the story of a young man asking his grandfather about some old photographs. The grandfather explains to his grandson the stories of the photographs; surviving the Great Depression, going to war and finally marrying the woman he loved. A line from the song goes, “A picture’s worth a thousand words, but you can’t see what those shades of gray keep covered, you should have seen it in color.”