“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.

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.