The Supreme Court agreed last week to hear a landmark abortion case, giving longtime pro-lifers like Ann and Joseph Scheidler hope they might live to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

A week after 79-year-old former abortionist Ulrich “George” Klopfer died, his wife reported finding boxes in the garage of their Crete, Ill., home filled with the remains of more than 2,000 aborted babies. Klopfer had stored them in sealed plastic bags filled with formalin, a chemical used to preserve biological material. Each bag was carefully labeled and dated from 2000 to 2002. Authorities have not disclosed the gestational age at which the babies died.

Sophie and the Heidelberg Cat 

Andrew Wilson

A Middle Eastern studies program may lose its federal funding for emphasizing cultural content and Islam over language instruction.

The federal government gives $235,000 a year to the joint Middle Eastern studies program at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The money, appropriated under Title VI of the Education Act of 1965, is supposed to help colleges teach foreign languages to students in furtherance of U.S. security and economic interests.

The sugar skull, an emblem of Mexican folk holiday Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is this year’s must-have Halloween decor, plastered on succulent vases, wreaths, mugs, and pillowcases. Mattel recently announced its new Day of the Dead Barbie, adorned with a floral dress and a skull-painted face, and Nike released a tennis shoe in honor of the holiday, with colorful piping and ever-so-faint sugar skulls.

Despite comprising only 3 percent of the nation’s four-year colleges, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have produced 80 percent of the country’s African American judges, 50 percent of its African American doctors, and 27 percent of African Americans with STEM degrees, according to the Department of Education. Until last week, the federal government excluded more than 40 HBCUs that are faith-based from a program that loans out money for campus improvements.

Sixteen years had elapsed since Phil Vischer wrote a VeggieTales episode, and he didn’t know how easily he could bring the characters back to life. But Vischer decided to try after the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) approached him last year and asked him to present Bob the Tomato, Larry the Cucumber, and the rest of his botanic, Bible-teaching creations from the 1990s to a new generation.

“I started writing, and Larry walked through the door,” Vischer told me. “It was surprisingly easy for them to start talking to me again.”