As Pope Francis told bishops, "journeying together" (from the Greek root of the word Synod) is easier to say than to do. At times over the past three weeks the bishops and some members of the laity gathered in Rome have seemed to be travelling on rather different paths and the process - deemed "invigorating" and "a breath of fresh air" by some - has left others with real concerns about the unity of the Roman Catholic Church.

There is further uncertainty ahead, as the Pope must now work out what he wants as he draws together his own thoughts after hearing his bishops' advice. This has been a pivotal moment of his pontificate - yet few are sure where all of this leads. And Pope Francis will have to handle the fruits of this Synod with care if it is not to divide his flock.

While churches here may be largely empty and belief in God, according to opinion polls, in steady decline, belief in, or at least fascination with, ghosts and spirits is surging. Even Norway’s royal family, which is required by law to belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church, has flirted with ghosts, with a princess coaching people on how to reach out to spirits.

“God is out but spirits and ghosts are filling the vacuum,” said Roar Fotland, a Methodist preacher and assistant professor at the Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo. Instead of slowly eliminating religion, as Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and other theorists predicted, modernity has only channeled religious feelings in unexpected ways, Mr Fotland said. “Belief in God, or at least a Christian God, is decreasing but belief in spirits is increasing,” he added, describing this as part of a general resurgence of “premodern religion.”

Tom Hedalen, a road engineer and committed atheist who is chairman of Norway’s Humanist Association, insisted that religion is still on its last legs and that the grip of ghosts on rational, modern minds merely reflected the success of charlatans at playing on people’s fears.

The Humanist Association, which ran a national campaign under the slogan, “Don’t Let Yourself Be Cheated,” does “not believe in God, trolls or Santa Claus,” Mr Hedalen said. “In the end, all religion will die out,” he added.

The report by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said that there was enough medical evidence at this point to link over-consumption of cured products – mostly from pork, but some from beef as well – with high levels of colon cancer. With each 50 gram (1.8 ounce) portion of the stuff consumed daily, the chance of contracting colorectal cancer for the average person rose 18%.

According to the study, there was a clear correlation between consumption of processed meat and colorectal cancer. According to WHO statistics, the three top countries in the developed world for colorectal cancer per 100,000 inhabitants were South Korea, Slovakia, and Hungary – all significant consumers of pork, according to the IARC numbers.

Israel, as expected, has one of the world's lowest levels of pork consumption. For poultry, however - considered far healthier than red meat by most nutritionists - Israelis had the highest annual consumption in the developed world, eating over 60 kg per capita annually, significantly more than in the US, which came in second with about 47 kg per capita consumption annually.

It was the latest in a series of admonitions to bishops by the pontiff, who has stressed since his election in 2013 that the 1.2 billion-member Church should be open to change, side with the poor and rid itself of the pomp and stuffiness that has alienated so many Catholics. In his final address, the pope appeared to criticize ultra-conservatives, saying Church leaders should confront difficult issues "fearlessly, without burying our heads in the sand."

He said the synod had "laid bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church's teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families".

He also decried "conspiracy theories" and the "blinkered viewpoints" of some at the gathering, and said the Church could not transmit its message to new generations "at times encrusted in a language which is archaic or simply incomprehensible". The outcome of the gathering, over which the pope presided, marked a victory for conservatives on homosexual issues and for progressives on the thorny issue of remarriage.

The final synod document restated Church teachings that gays should not suffer discrimination in society, but also repeated the stand that there was "no foundation whatsoever" for same-sex marriage, which "could not even remotely" be compared to heterosexual unions.

So when they had their chance to speak to the 270 bishops who have gathered at the Vatican to discuss family issues, they did not fail to raise concern about what place these Catholics can hope for in the church today. When divorced people have worked hard to forgive their former spouses, “the impossibility to receive the forgiveness of the church is all the more painful and difficult to understand,” they told the meeting of bishops, or synod.

As it stands, divorced Catholics who remarry without receiving a church annulment are denied the sacrament of communion, cannot be catechists, cannot teach religion and cannot be godparents. Homosexuality is regarded by the church as “intrinsically disordered,” a view that has left gay Catholics often sidelined, and gay couples feeling unacknowledged.

The church’s message is “one man and one woman will want to be together forever, they say yes and they mean yes, and the church says be faithful to your dream, it’s possible,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising, said last week, noting that he told young people that they were right to pursue this dream of marital bliss. But the cardinal, who has voiced support for change, said that people also needed to know that when marriages fall apart, they won’t be abandoned.

The church has to let people know that the dream is right, “but when you fail,” he said, “we stay together, you belong to us.”

It's painful for me to admit, but we can no longer rest carefree in our evangelical identity — because it is changing. No doubt you have seen the headlines declaring that evangelicalism is doomed because evangelical kids are leaving the faith. It is no secret that there is an expanding gulf between traditional Christian teachings and contemporary moral values. But the sad truth is that the ideological gulf between America's evangelical grown-ups and their kids, aka the "millennials," seems to be widening too.

Somehow the blame for this chasm is being heaped on traditional churches. They are accused of having too many rules as well as being homophobic and bigoted. Yes, we've heard those false claims from popular culture in its desperate attempt to keep Christianity imprisoned within the sanctuary walls. But now popular culture is being aided by Christ-professing bedfellows whose message to "coexist," "tolerate" and "keep out of it" is more marketable to the rising generation of evangelicals.

The last several decades witnessed tremendous evangelical influence in the United States. Leaders such as Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Paige and Dorothy Patterson, James Dobson, and James and Betty Robison made a bold impact on America's families, churches and government. Now that those few leaders are aging or retiring, or have died, there are very few traditional evangelical leaders left holding the torch and even fewer candidates to whom they can pass it.

In an unusual condemnation, the diplomat denounced the leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn, accusing him of breaching respect by scuppering the trade deal with Riyadh. The furious prince also railed against an "alarming change in the way Saudi Arabia is discussed in Britain", warning that the wealthy kingdom would not be "lectured to" and urged respect for its strict system of Sharia law.

He said: "One recent example of this mutual respect being breached was when Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Opposition, claimed that he had convinced Prime Minister David Cameron to cancel a prison consultancy contract with Saudi Arabia worth £5.9 million. This coincided with speculation linking the contract's cancellation to a number of domestic events in the Kingdom."

He warned: "If the extensive trade links between the two countries are going to be subordinate to certain political ideologies, then this vital commercial exchange is going to be at risk. We want this relationship to continue but we will not be lectured to by anyone. Hasty decisions prompted by short-term gains often do more harm than good in the longer term."

At the center of this second, disturbing narrative is Patriots against the Islamization of the West, or Pegida, a xenophobic grassroots movement that has manifested itself with demonstrations each Monday mostly in Dresden in the east, but also in other parts of Germany. But Pegida is only one part of a much larger problem… Germany these days, it seems, is a place where people feel entirely uninhibited about expressing their hatred and xenophobia. Images from around the country show a level of brutalization that hasn't been witnessed for some time, and attest to primitive instincts long believed to have been relegated to the past in Germany.

The examples are as myriad as they are shocking, and include the bloody attack in Cologne as well as the mock gallows for Angela Merkel and her deputy Sigmar Gabriel carried by a demonstrator at a Pegida rally in Dresden on October 12. But they also include the abuse shouted at the German chancellor when she visited a refugee hostel in Heidenau near Dresden in August, where she was called a "slut" and other insults, or the placards held aloft by demonstrators on the first anniversary of the Pegida rallies listing the supposed "enemies of the German state" - Merkel, Gabriel and their "accomplices."

The lack of inhibition when it comes to vicious tirades took on a whole new scale on Monday, when Turkish-born German author and Pegida supporter Akif Pirincci, said there are other alternatives in the refugee crisis, but "the concentration camps are unfortunately out of action at the moment."

After lashing out at each other's ineffective handling of the migrant crisis, the 11 leaders pledged to open up more space in refugee reception centres to provide more shelter as the winter months draw in.

Mahmoud Awad, a UNHCR field protection officer, said about 1,000 people passed through the Serbian border town of Berkasovo and into Croatia overnight. Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said his small Alpine nation was being overwhelmed by the refugees - with 60,000 arriving in the last 10 days - and was not receiving enough help from its EU partners.

He called the latest migrant deal "a step in the right direction" as he warned "Europe will start falling apart" if the crisis is not dealt with. After agreeing on the deal today, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel called the migrant crisis "one of the greatest litmus tests that Europe has ever faced". While EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed: "Waving them through has to be stopped and that is what is going to happen. The only way to restore order to this situation is to slow down the uncontrolled flow of these people."

Despite the latest setback for the struggle for Jewish prayer rights on Judaism's holiest site, Glick sounded a defiant note, saying the fate of the Temple Mount would not be decided by diplomats.

"The reality on the Temple Mount will not be determined by speeches and not even by international pledges to cameras, but rather by facts on the ground," he said. "So I am calling on all who want this country to continue and remain Jewish, to be connected to the traditional of Israel going back to Biblical times: come and show it on the Temple Mount. We must condition the world to accept Jews as part of the natural landscape of the Mount."

Grub Kitchen, in Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales, will serve a range of insect-based meals, which the head chef hopes will “make people think about their food”. They range from an insect tasting board to cricket falafels, bug blinis and worm pad Thai curry. The signature burger is made with toasted crickets, mealworms, grasshoppers, spinach and sundried tomatoes. For dessert, diners can try worm fudge ice cream, caramelised crickets or treacle tart with bug brittle.

Around 1,900 different species of insect are commonly consumed worldwide, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation at the United Nations. While they might not be common on British dinner tables, for two billion people, creepy crawlies are seen as delicacies. Insects can be a good source of protein, with more protein content weight by weight in crickets than in beef.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of the samples tested positive for AMPA, glyphosate's metabolite, according to the study, which was conducted by researchers at the Socio-Environmental Interaction Space (EMISA) of the University of La Plata in Argentina. All of the raw and sterile cotton gauze analyzed in the study showed evidence of glyphosate, said Dr Damian Marino, the study's head researcher.

“The result of this research is very serious, when you use cotton or gauze to heal wounds or for personal hygiene uses, thinking they are sterilized products, and the results show that they are contaminated with a probably carcinogenic substance,” said Dr Medardo Avila Vazquez, president of the congress.

“Most of the cotton production in the country is GM [genetically modified] cotton that is resistant to glyphosate. It is sprayed when the bud is open and the glyphosate is condensed and goes straight into the product,” Avila continued.

In their study, published in Environmental Health on August 25, the scientists particularly focused on the influence of Monsanto’s Roundup on gene expression in the kidneys and liver. In the new two-year study, which extended the findings from one conducted in 2012, the team added tiny amounts of Roundup to water that was given to rats in doses much smaller than allowed in US drinking water. Scientists say that some of the rats experienced “25 percent body weight loss, presence of tumors over 25 percent bodyweight, hemorrhagic bleeding, or prostration.”

The study’s conclusions indicate that there is an association between wide-scale alterations in liver and kidney gene expression and the consumption of small quantities of Roundup, even at admissible glyphosate-equivalent concentrations. As the dose used is “environmentally relevant in terms of human, domesticated animals and wildlife levels of exposure,” the results potentially have significant health implications for animal and human populations, the study warned.

“There were more than 4,000 genes in the liver and kidneys [of the rats that were fed Roundup] whose levels of expression had changed,” the study’s leading scientist, Michael Antoniou, head of the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King’s College London, said, as quoted by the Environmental Health News.

A vital water source for numerous lakes and streams, the Amazonian drought has been revealed with photos showing miles of dry, cracked riverbeds from where the water used to flow. Boats have been left stranded in the Puaquequarauna lake, due the low levels of the Rio Negro, near the Amazonian city of Manaus. There, houses sit isolated in the middle of the large deserted landscape, with only small pools of water remaining for locals to live off.

The crisis has left the Rio Negro, a crucial tributary of the Amazon River, in ruin. Now, whole communities face a battle to rebuild their lives. The shocking drought comes just a few months after the same region suffered bad flooding after a deluge of rain left several cities in states of emergency.