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“Almost 1,400 years have passed since the first battles broke out within the Muslim world between the inheritors of the Prophet Muhammad, which led to the schism between Shiites and Sunnis, and it seems little has changed” between the two sects of Islam (The Times of Israel, January 4, 2016).

The declining global economy, an exploding immigration crisis and ongoing terrorism have put tremendous pressure on the EU.

Today we may take for granted the presence of women as world leaders. Such was not so common 50 years ago, this month when Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (no relation to nonviolence advocate Mohandas Gandhi) became India’s Prime Minister—13 years before Margaret Thatcher became the United Kingdom’s first female Prime Minister and 39 years before Angela Merkel earned that distinction in Germany.

New Irish DNA research shows that more than 4,000 years ago, ancestors of the Irish came from the Middle East by way of Spain. They also came from Russia and the Ukraine (BBC, December 28, 2015). “The ancestors of the Stone Age farmers began their journey in the Bible lands, where agriculture first began, and arrived in Ireland perhaps via the southern Mediterranean...

“Thousands of homes in the north of England have been affected by severe flooding, some for the second or even third time in the past few years. In South America, where El Niño flooding has been responsible for at least eight deaths, more than 144,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in Paraguay, at least 20,000 in Argentina and several thousand in Uruguay and southern Brazil” (The Guardian, December 28, 2015).