Blocked

Beginning in 2019, Starbucks will block pornography in all of its U.S. stores. The nonprofit group Enough Is Enough has accused Starbucks of breaking a 2016 promise to put a pornography filter in its Wi-Fi. The group posted a petition demanding Starbucks follow through on its promise, and nearly 27,000 people signed. The company issued a statement saying it has always banned customer access to explicit content. However, Starbucks officials admitted rare violations occur. They said they have “identified a solution” to pornography access in their stores but did not say what it was. Enough Is Enough has also forced McDonald’s to change its free Wi-Fi policies.

Treated

Joni Eareckson Tada is recovering from a successful surgery for the removal of a cancerous tumor. Tada has had cancer before, eight years ago. She was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy until what was apparently a complete recovery in 2015. Recently, however, a small nodule grew over the surgery area, and after several biopsies Tada’s doctors declared it was cancerous. “My sovereign God loves me dearly and holds me tightly in His hands,” Tada’s ministry, Joni and Friends, reported her as saying. The surgeons were able to remove the tumor. On her blog on Nov. 30, Tada said she expected to begin follow-up treatment in January that would likely involve radiation therapy.

Died

Baroness Trumpington, British politician and World War II code breaker, died Nov. 26 at age 96. She was one of the “Land Girls” during World War II, helping sustain food production in the U.K. She also worked at Bletchley Park, the famous naval code-breaking facility. The baroness spoke several languages fluently and helped interpret messages broadcast from Nazi submarines. After the war she served as a Conservative government minister before joining the House of Lords. She stayed in the Lords for 37 years, including time as the party whip, where she earned a reputation as a colorful character. After she died, former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron wrote in a tweet: “They simply don’t make politicians like that anymore. She will be sorely missed.”

Disappeared

Lu Guang, award-winning Chinese photojournalist, has disappeared, according to his wife. Xu Xiaoli posted on social media, saying she has not been able to contact him for nearly a month, and she believes authorities took Lu away. He was in Xinjiang, the region where the Chinese government has interned up to a million Muslim Uighurs, when he failed to show up to a scheduled meeting with a friend. Lu has won multiple international awards for his work among those in the fringes of Chinese society, including coal miners, drug addicts, and HIV patients.

Dropped

U.S. life expectancy declined in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, because of an increase in suicides and drug overdose deaths. The latest government reports said that a person born in the U.S. in 2017 could expect to live 78.6 years, a decline of 0.1 years from 2016. The 10 leading causes of death in the nation have stayed the same, but the number of drug overdose deaths went up, with nearly 6,600 more recorded in 2017. Suicide is still ranked as the 10th most common killer in the U.S., but the rate of suicides has increased over time from 10 per 100,000 in 1999 to 14 per 100,000 in 2017.