The News You May Have Missed: January-February 2026

Swimmers of the Tiber

Hundreds of Anglican vicars have converted to Catholicism since the early 1990s, a study found, and roughly a third of all Catholic priests ordained in the United Kingdom between 1992 and 2024 were former Anglican clergymen. During that period, some 700 former Anglican laymen were received into the Church (The Telegraph, Nov. 20). The study, carried out by St. Mary’s University in London, identified 16 Anglican bishops and two Continuing Anglican bishops who converted during that time span. There was “unequivocally a surge” in conversions to Catholicism following the General Synod’s 1992 approval of the ordination of women as Anglican vicars, said study co-author Stephen Bullivant. He also cited Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 visit to the U.K., during which the Pontiff beatified John Henry Newman, as another event that spurred Anglican conversions. “However, most of these people have a long and very personal journey,” he said. In another blow, this October the Church of England appointed its first female archbishop of Canterbury, the principal leader of the Anglican Communion.

Big Time in the Big Apple

A growing number of New Yorkers are converting to Catholicism, with some New York City parishes experiencing year-over-year double or even triple the number signing up for the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA). Interest tripled at St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village, with about 130 people signing up, while at the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral numbers doubled to about 100. Many converts cite the September assassination of Charlie Kirk as motivation. In addition to his political activism, Kirk, an evangelical Protestant, often spoke about the importance of faith in God. The news out of New York follows a nationwide trend. During their annual fall assembly, the U.S. bishops discussed the influx in the context of the National Eucharistic Revival. Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, who spearheaded the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress, called it “a time of great grace for the Church in the United States.” His diocese, he said, had its largest OCIA class in 20 years. “Praise God,” he said. “Let’s hope that this trend continues” (Catholic News Agency, Nov. 18).

Away from the Manger

The pre-Christmas theft of a baby Jesus figurine from a nativity scene mystified Belgian authorities. Snatched from the crib on the Grand Place in historic Old Brussels, the figurine is part of a controversial nativity scene in which the faces of the statues lack eyes, noses, and mouths. Artist Victoria-Maria Geyer, a self-professed devout Catholic, crafted the figures out of cloth so that “every Catholic, regardless of their background or origins can identify themselves” in the scene. But Georges-Louis Bouchez, head of the ruling center-right MR party, said Geyers’s cloth Christ “in no way represents the spirit of Christmas.” He compared the figures to “zombie-like” drug addicts found at train stations. Authorities quickly replaced the baby Jesus and promised to keep a closer eye on the manger, though they did not take additional security precautions. In 2024 more than four million people visited the Christmas market in the center of Brussels’s historic old city to sip mulled wine and hot chocolate and shop at 238 vendors of toys, clothes, and ornaments (Associated Press, Dec. 2).

Their Satanic Request — Denied!

A federal judge permanently ended the Satanic Temple’s challenge to Idaho’s abortion laws. Chief U.S. District Judge David Nye, agreeing with earlier rulings that the group’s arguments “lack merit,” dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought back or amended. The Idaho Legislature had approved a law that went into effect upon the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision, allowing civil lawsuits to be brought against abortion providers by family members of unborn children. The Satanic Temple claimed the law is an unconstitutional violation of property rights, the equal protection clause, and religious freedom, and it represents involuntary servitude. Idaho’s “pro-life laws protect both mothers and unborn children, and this decision confirms those protections are constitutionally sound,” said Attorney General Raúl Labrador. “The Satanic Temple’s attempt to manufacture constitutional violations out of disagreement with Idaho’s values has been rejected at every level. We’ve defended Idaho’s laws through every stage of this litigation, and we will continue protecting the right of Idaho’s elected representatives to defend life” (Idaho Capital Sun, Nov. 14).

Weighed in the Balance

President Trump doesn’t want your huddled fatties yearning to eat. His administration instructed visa officers to reject obese immigrants (The New Republic, Nov. 7). The State Department directive, sent to embassies and consulates around the world, states that visa applicants may be denied if they have certain medical conditions, “including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, cancers, diabetes, metabolic diseases, neurological diseases, and mental health conditions.” The directive goes on to mention obesity, stating it can be connected to asthma, sleep apnea, and high blood pressure. “All of these can require expensive, long-term care,” it says, and it directs officers to consider whether an applicant has “adequate financial resources to cover the costs of such care over his entire expected lifespan without seeking public cash assistance or long-term institutionalization at government expense.” The directive came just one day after Trump announced a “fat shot” deal with two pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Zepbound.

Blood Sport

Wealthy foreigners allegedly paid tens of thousands of dollars to become “weekend snipers” and shoot terrified Bosnian civilians “for fun” during the 1992-1996 siege of Sarajevo (The Telegraph, Nov. 13). The “war tourists,” from Italy, the United States, Russia, and elsewhere, are accused of paying Serbian forces under the command of warlord Radovan Karadzic to take part in shooting sprees. They were allegedly motivated by sympathy for the Serbian cause, sheer bloodthirstiness, or a combination of the two, investigators say. Witnesses claim there was even a price list for the targeted killings: foreigners would pay more to shoot children and armed men in uniform. Prosecutors in Milan, who could bring charges of “voluntary homicide aggravated by cruelty and abject motives” against those identified as having taken part in the scheme, are being assisted by officers from a special unit of the Carabinieri, known as the Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale, which fights terrorism and organized crime. Serbia has denied the claims.

Fallout for “Fake News” Editors

The British Broadcasting Company is reeling from the resignations of Director-General Tim Davie and News Chief Deborah Turness following accusations of bias in the editing of its documentary Trump: A Second Chance. The BBC admitted filmmakers spliced together quotes from different sections of Trump’s speech before the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol to make it seem as though he directly urged violence. Earlier, Trump sued the parent company of CBS over a 60 Minutes edit of a Kamala Harris interview, resulting in a $16 million settlement, and complaints by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about a Face the Nation interview this summer caused a policy change. In the BBC documentary, different parts of Trump’s speech are joined to appear as a single quote: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.” But he uttered the second two sentences of that quote nearly an hour later than the first, and the part of his speech where he called on supporters to demonstrate peacefully was omitted (Associated Press, Nov. 13).

Synthetic Streams

Country-music hit “Walk My Walk,” by an artist known as Breaking Rust, rose to No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, marking a first for the genre. That’s because the song’s brooding, gravel-voiced cowboy crooner doesn’t exist — at least, not in the traditional sense. He’s an AI creation with no verifiable human footprint. Though Breaking Rust’s music sounds indistinguishable from mainstream country music, its creation process is entirely synthetic. And yet, on the music-streaming service Spotify, he has more than two million monthly listeners, with multiple songs surpassing one million streams. His song “Livin’ on Borrowed Time” has been played more than four million times. The popularity of AI musicians is no longer an anomaly. In 2024 the rock band Velvet Sundown reached 550,000 Spotify listeners in a month, despite evidence that its members are AI-generated. Spotify says it will begin identifying when AI tools are used in vocals, instrumentation, or production (San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 10).

Beef Everlasting

Back in 1995, Eduards Nits bought a Quarter Pounder from a McDonald’s restaurant in Australia, and this fall the burger turned 30 years old (New York Post, Nov. 4). Nits has kept it carefully wrapped in its original, McD’s-stamped, beige paper packaging. Despite having never been refrigerated, and spending the past three decades stored in cupboards and sheds, the burger is still “eerily intact” and hasn’t developed mold or a bad odor. “The only thing that’s happened is it’s shrunk in size,” says Nits, who would like the frozen-in-time Quarter Pounder to be shown in a gallery or museum. It’s unclear why the burger hasn’t seemed to age. Mike Haracz, a former manager of culinary innovation for McDonald’s, said it’s “false” that such burgers never go bad and break down. McDonald’s, for its part, stated that the burger’s longevity is likely due to a dry environment that inhibits the growth of mold and bacteria. “Food prepared at home that is left to dehydrate could see similar results,” the corporation said.

Make or Break Day

College entry exam day for South Korean students affects the whole nation: flights are temporarily halted, the stock market opens an hour later, and parents pack shrines for prayers (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 12). The exam, known as the Suneung, is essential for admission to top universities and is widely regarded as a gateway to social mobility, economic security, and even a good marriage. The government dictates a 35-minute nationwide ban on flights during the English-listening test (this November, 140 flights, including 75 international services, were rescheduled), while banks and public offices tell workers to start an hour later to avoid traffic on the roads. Police rushing late students to exam halls has become an annual occurrence. A number of superstitions are associated with the test, including avoiding seaweed soup for lunch, as its slippery strands are believed to make students “slip.” More than 550,000 students registered for the exam in the most recent admission cycle.

One for All

Many animals conceal illness from their packs or herds solely out of self-interest. Ant colonies, however, act as one “super-organism” that works to ensure the survival of all, says an international team of scientists. Ant nests are a “perfect place for a disease outbreak to occur because there are thousands of ants crawling over each other,” Erika Dawson, behavioral ecologist at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, told Agence France-Presse (Dec. 2). When adult worker ants get an illness that could spread through the colony, they leave the nest to die alone. In contrast, young ants, or pupae, are inside a cocoon, making escape impossible. When these pupae are terminally ill, they emit a distinct smell. Dawson’s team aimed to figure out whether the pupae “were actively saying: ‘hey, come and kill me.’” The answer is yes. The sick pupae only produce the smell when worker ants are nearby, proving it is a deliberate signal for destruction. The worker ants then gather around, remove the cocoon, “bite holes in the pupae and insert poison.” The poison acts as a disinfectant that kills both the colony-threatening pathogen and the pupae.

Adding Insult to Injury

Two Belgian pranksters snuck a fake painting into the Louvre just weeks after a $102 million heist at the famed Paris museum shocked the world (New York Post, Nov. 18). Neal Remmerie and Senne Haverbeke got the fake painting through security — and then put it in the same room as Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. The duo built the picture frame out of Lego bricks, which did not set off the museum’s metal detectors. Once inside, they put the oil-painted portrait of themselves, which they’d smuggled in rolled up, inside the frame and hung it on the wall. According to a museum representative, the painting was displayed for less than three minutes before it was removed. Museum lawyers are considering legal action. In the wake of the robbery, and following a series of allegations about the museum’s crumbling infrastructure, the Louvre announced a $92 million master security plan. Its Campana Gallery, which houses nine rooms of ancient Greek ceramics, remains closed as investigators examine the soundness of its ceiling beams.

Loot Dispute

An 18th-century Spanish galleon, dubbed the “holy grail of shipwrecks” for its storied cache of 11 million gold and silver coins worth an estimated $20 billion, has yielded its first treasures (Sky News, Nov. 24). The San José, a 64-gun galleon of the Spanish Navy, was sunk by the British in 1708 near Cartagena, Colombia. A Colombian mission to salvage the wreck has retrieved its first artifacts: a cannon, three coins, and some porcelain. The San José, rediscovered in 2015, lies almost 2,000 feet beneath the surface of the Caribbean Sea. Its exact location is a state secret, and ownership of the treasure is hotly contested. The United States, Colombia, and Spain are locked in a legal battle over who owns the rights to the sunken treasure. Sea Search Armada, a group of American investors, claims to have discovered the ship in 1982 and demands $10 billion, estimated to be about 50 percent of the treasure’s worth. The Colombian government, meanwhile, says the purpose of its deep-sea mission is research, not treasure, and claimed the artifacts will be preserved and studied.

The Most Mispronounced Words of 2025

From the election of Zohran Mamdani to the jewel heist at the Louvre, keeping up with the news left many Americans struggling with pronunciations. Language-learning company Babbel and closed-captioning company The Captioning Group compiled a list of the year’s most mispronounced words by news anchors, politicians, and other public figures (Associated Press, Dec. 4). The name of New York City’s new democratic-socialist Muslim mayor is pronounced zoh-RAHN mam-DAH-nee. During a debate, he chided former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mispronunciation, saying, “The name is Mamdani. M-A-M-D-A-N-I.” The theft of France’s crown jewels had many mangling the name of the world’s most-visited museum, which is LOOV-ruh, with a very soft pronunciation on the “ruh.” Other words and names on the list include acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, pronounced uh-SEE-tuh-MIH-nuh-fen; Alex Murdaugh, the prominent South Carolina attorney who was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his wife and son, pronounced AL-ick MUR-dock; and Mounjaro, an obesity medication that soared in popularity, pronounced mown-JAHR-OH. Also, actor Denzel Washington told late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel that his first name is actually pronounced DEN-zul, not Den-ZELLE.

Your 2025 Word of the Year

Even if you don’t know its meaning, you’ve probably been a victim of it on social media. Oxford University Press named rage bait as its word of the year (CBS News, Dec. 1). It refers to online content that is “deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive,” to drive traffic to a particular social-media account. “The fact that the word ‘rage bait’ exists and has seen such a dramatic surge in usage means we’re increasingly aware of the manipulation tactics we can be drawn into online,” said Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages. “Before, the internet was focused on grabbing our attention by sparking curiosity in exchange for clicks, but now we’ve seen a dramatic shift to it hijacking and influencing our emotions, and how we respond.” Rage bait topped two other contenders: aura farming (cultivating a public image by presenting oneself in “a way intended subtly to convey an air of confidence, coolness or mystique”) and biohack (“an attempt to improve or optimize one’s physical or mental performance, health or longevity”).

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