For the Record

‘The last word is clear.’

Pope Francis, reiterating on Nov. 1 that women will never become priests (the Pontiff has held this position for years but created a commission in August to discuss whether women would serve as deacons, leading to speculation); “Women can do many other things better than men,” Francis added, citing the Virgin Mary

10

Number of months the common swift, a bird, can stay in the air without landing, according to findings reported in Current Biology

‘I’m just a headline: the bad President, the bad guy who is killing the good guys.’

Bashar Assad, President of Syria, referring to the nearly half a million citizens killed during his nation’s five-and-a-half-year civil war, including those who died from alleged war crimes perpetrated by his administration; Assad called the characterization a “narrative” propagated by the U.S. government

‘There are no towns left. Everything came down.’

Aleandro Petrucci, mayor of Arquata del Tronto, one of the towns in central Italy hit by a 6.6-magnitude earthquake on Oct. 30; it destroyed architecture and art dating back to the 14th century and left an estimated 15,000 homeless in an area still reeling from an August quake that killed nearly 300

Pirates

Iceland’s antiestablishment Pirate Party made big gains in its election

GOOD WEEK

BAD WEEK

Buccaneers

The NFL team lost its Oct. 30 game despite record penalization of its opponent

‘Who is the thief here?’

Phyllis Young, member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, denouncing police removal of Native American protesters from the property surrounding an oil pipeline in North Dakota, which the tribe fears could damage its ancestral lands

‘That’s one thing y’all can take to the bank.’

Barack Obama, U.S. President, insisting in an Oct. 28 radio interview that his wife Michelle Obama “will never run for office”

30%

Percentage of additional time that African-American passengers wait for an Uber or Lyft car than their white counterparts, per an experiment conducted in Boston and Seattle by researchers from MIT, Stanford and the University of Washington

$620,000

Price paid for a Hong Kong parking space, making it one of the world’s most expensive

SOURCES: ASSOCIATED PRESS; FINANCIAL TIMES; GUARDIAN; NEW YORK TIMES; SWAY IN THE MORNING