The rabbis at the time (who were even smarter than our present sages) wondered what would hold us together as a people in exile. At the time, there was no call center or help desk that could tell you how long this displacement would last. There was no way to anticipate the end of the exile and our sages had to equip our people with something to get us through these stormy times.

So our sages incorporated Jerusalem into many ceremonial occasions. It appears in the Jewish wedding ceremony in which the groom breaks a glass and promises, on the happiest day of his life, that he will never forget Jerusalem. Breaking the glass symbolizes the temporary destruction of the city. Jerusalem also appears in the grace prayer recited after meals: “Have mercy, Lord our God, upon Israel Your people, upon Jerusalem Your city, upon Zion the abode of Your glory, upon the kingship of the house of David, Your anointed, and upon the great and holy House over which Your Name was proclaimed.”

And then comes [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, and in the middle of a wave of terror in which his people are being murdered, he travels to Germany (Germany of all places! What a terrible choice to humiliate the Jewish people in the place where the plan to destroy it was conceived), and declares proudly, as if presenting an achievement: Jews will not pray on the Temple Mount.

What drove you, Mr Prime Minister, to promise something that conflicts with the faith of millions of Jews around the world? We actually promise just the opposite each and every day. You're lying, Mr Prime Minister, and the world should know this: Jews will pray on the Temple Mount, and will wish with all their hearts for the establishment of the Third Temple, even though it does not fit in with your holy status quo.

The Jews never believed in the status quo. God our Lord did not promise us a status quo, and it is not what gave us strength for 2,000 years in exile, just the opposite. The hope that the status quo that prevents Jews from praying on the Temple Mount will be disrupted is what kept us going.

“Return in mercy to Jerusalem Your city and dwell therein as You have promised; speedily establish therein the throne of David Your servant, and rebuild it, soon in our days, as an everlasting edifice. Blessed are You Lord, who rebuilds Jerusalem”.

Jordan Wooley, a seventh grade student at West Memorial Junior High School in the Katy Independent School District, testified at a school board meeting last night about an assignment in her reading class that caused a serious controversy, and expressed frustration about her teacher’s atheist indoctrination.

“Today I was given an assignment in school that questioned my faith and told me that God was not real. Our teacher had started off saying that the assignment had been giving problems all day. We were asked to take a poll to say whether God is fact, opinion or a myth and she told anyone who said fact or opinion was wrong and God was only a myth,” Wooley told board members. Students immediately objected, Wooley said, but the teacher refused to consider their position.

Simon McKeown, a Reader in Animation and Post Production at Teesside University, claims that within 50 years computers will be advanced enough that they can create ‘synthetic digital life’ based upon people’s past movements, preferences and history on social media.

The avatars would be created using a process called ‘photogrammetry’ which can accurately reconstruct a virtual 3D shape of a human being from existing photographs and video. Computer voice synthesis, will take account of local and regional accents to deliver a more accurate representation of what they sounded like.

The digital lifeform would also be linked up to social networks and large databases so they would be kept ‘up to date’ with their relative’s activities and could communicate with them about their day. Mr McKeown has dubbed the idea ‘Preserved Memories’ and claims that people would be able to construct a reality to avoid ever having to say goodbye to loved ones.

Root vegetables may be a touch harder to feel for than chickens or fish. But watching 20 tonnes of freshly dug parsnips consigned to the rubbish heap in a Norfolk farmyard - purely because they didn't look pretty enough - is still one of the most shocking things I've ever seen. That's not just a few sackfuls of parsnips, it's not a skip-load. It's a colossal mountain of them - enough to fill nearly 300 shopping trolleys. And, more importantly perhaps, to feed 100,000 people with a generous portion of roast parsnips.

As a chef, I can tell you there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. In fact, they were beautiful. I would have been delighted to cook with them. Yet the supermarket client found them wanting. They "failed" the "cosmetic standards". They just departed, sometimes by a matter of millimetres, from some bizarre set of specifications that defines, with apparent omniscience, what it is that we, the customers, demand our parsnips to be. Not that anyone's asked us.

But this is not exceptional. This kind of near-criminal waste of good fresh produce is, unfortunately, very much the norm. Approximately one-third of the food we produce in the UK is never eaten. Take a minute to think about that - millions of tonnes of good food, and all the resources that go into producing it, squandered.

With the country in line to receive more than a million asylum-seekers this year alone, public anxiety is mounting — and so is criticism of Ms Merkel, from within her own party. Some of her close political allies acknowledge that it is now distinctly possible that the chancellor will have to leave office, before the next general election in 2017. Even if she sees out a full term, the notion of a fourth Merkel administration, widely discussed a few months ago, now seems improbable.

The trouble is that Ms Merkel’s government has clearly lost control of the situation. German officials publicly endorse the chancellor’s declaration that “We can do this”. But there is panic just beneath the surface: costs are mounting, social services are creaking, Ms Merkel’s poll ratings are falling and far-right violence is on the rise. Der Spiegel, a news magazine, wrote this week that: “Germany these days is a place where people feel entirely uninhibited about expressing their hatred and xenophobia.”

It is all such a contrast with the calm and control that Ms Merkel used to radiate, captured by her nickname Mutti (or “mum”). Throughout 2014, as Ms Merkel led Europe’s response to the eurozone crisis and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, German voters seemed more inclined than ever to place their faith in the judgment of the chancellor. The refugee crisis, however, revealed another side to Ms Merkel. Some voters seem to have concluded that Mutti has gone mad — flinging open Germany’s borders to the wretched of the earth.

If the number of refugees heading into Germany continues at its present level for some time, and Ms Merkel remains committed to open borders, the pressure for her to step down will grow. There are, at present, no obvious rivals. But a continuing crisis will doubtless throw some up.

Regardless of the chancellor’s personal fate and reputation, the refugee crisis marks a turning point. The decade after Ms Merkel first came to power in 2005 now looks like a blessed period for Germany, in which the country was able to enjoy peace, prosperity and international respect, while keeping the troubles of the world at a safe distance. That golden era is now over.

"In this regard, the Chinese side expresses extreme dissatisfaction and strongly protests," the statement posted on China's Foreign Ministry website says, according to Interfax. A US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AP on Monday that a US Navy ship had sailed near the artificial islands. The Navy was planning to send one of its destroyers on a patrol route that goes within 12 sea miles of the islands, previous reports stated.

The US vessel could have been accompanied by one or two US Navy surveillance planes, which have repeatedly conducted reconnaissance flights in the area, an unnamed US official told Reuters. According to the US Navy, additional patrols could follow in the coming weeks. The USS Lassen destroyer was scheduled to pass by the Subi and Mischief reefs, which belong to the Spratly archipelago, over which China claims sovereignty. Both reefs were initially submerged before China took up an ambitious dredging project aimed at turning them into islands.

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are a “potential terrorist” according to official US government documents. At one time, the term “terrorist” was used very narrowly. The government applied that label to people like Osama bin Laden and other Islamic jihadists. But now the Obama administration is removing all references to Islam from terror training materials, and instead the term “terrorist” is being applied to large groups of American citizens.

And if you are a “terrorist”, that means that you have no rights and the government can treat you just like it treats the terrorists that are being held at Guantanamo Bay. So if you belong to a group of people that is now being referred to as “potential terrorists”, please don’t take it as a joke. The first step to persecuting any group of people is to demonize them. And right now large groups of peaceful, law-abiding citizens are being ruthlessly demonized.

Many have wondered why the DOJ has not previously made the prosecution of these individuals a priority while the Department has entered into multi-billion dollar settlements with the nation's largest banks in the last two years. The DOJ has settled with JPMorgan Chase (a then-record $13 billion in November 2013), Citi ($7 billion in July 2014), and Bank of America (a record $16.65 billion in August 2014) for selling toxic-mortgage backed securities to investors in the run-up to the crisis.

The memo was sent to all US attorneys general and the rules outlined are effective immediately.

"One of the most effective ways to combat corporate misconduct is by seeking accountability from the individuals who perpetuated the wrongdoing," deputy attorney general Sally Q Yates wrote in the memo. "Such accountability is important for several reasons: it deters future illegal activity, it incentivizes changes in corporate behavior, it ensures that the proper parties are held responsible for their actions, and it promotes the public's confidence in our justice system."

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.