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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.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is being called the “most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong,” who was the first chairman of China’s Communist Party (BBC, October 24, 2017). China’s Communist Party just voted to enshrine “Xi Jinping Thought” into the national constitution. This includes many of the leader’s approaches to government and geopolitics. Now, many outsiders fear that any attacks against Xi Jinping’s decisions or approaches will be viewed as a direct assault on China’s government.

Today is Reformation Day, and a special one at that. 500 years ago, Martin Luther mailed a collection of 95 statements to Archbishop Albert of Mainz and, it is believed, nailed them to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Known as the famous Ninety-five Theses, they represented his disagreement with some of the practices and positions of the Roman Catholic Church in his day, and they have changed the world—though not in the way it needs to be changed.

Scientists have long known that pigments in tattoo ink make their way into lymph nodes, as the immune system works to remove foreign material (ink) from the underside of the skin.

The UK’s “spy chief” and head of MI5 recently observed that the threat for terrorism in Britain “is multi-dimensional, evolving rapidly and operating at a scale and pace we’ve not seen before… It’s at the highest tempo I have seen in my 34-year career. Today there is more terrorist activity, coming at us more quickly, and it can be harder to detect” (The Guardian, October 17, 2017).