A new course, devised by a group of bishops and theologians, is to be offered in parishes across England in an attempt to “re-teach” the nation the basic tenets of Christianity amid fears they are increasingly being forgotten.

They hope the “Pilgrim” course, which has the backing of the Archbishop of Canterbury the Most Rev Justin Welby, will be run in every parish in the country. It will be based specifically around a handful of classic Christian texts which large sections of the population would once have known well including the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, the Apostles' Creed and the 10 Commandments.

The Bishop of Stockport, the Rt Rev Robert Atwell, another of the authors, said that widespread ignorance of once familiar texts had deprived a generation of people of a source of strength to help them cope at times of trauma. “People are losing their memory of these things.” “We are losing our capacity to lament as a nation because we don't have the spiritual resources, we don't have the language, we are groping around because we have not got this fundamental insight,” he said.

Mr Abe’s goal is for Japan to be able to exercise the right to collective self-defense. This, however, is a dangerous move that could eventually lead to the involvement of the Self-Defense Forces in overseas conflicts. Even if the change of the interpretation of Article 9 does not immediately lead to such a situation, it will raise suspicions about Japan’s intentions in the international community, especially in Northeast Asia, and increase frictions with neighboring countries. In short, rather than enhance Japan’s security, exercising the right to collective self-defense would likely undermine it.

To pave the way for changing the traditional interpretation of Article 9, Mr Abe in August appointed Ambassador to France Ichiro Komatsu — who share’s Mr Abe’s outlook — as the new head of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. It is believed that after a private advisory body on the reconstruction of the legal basis of security issues a report in this fall, Mr Abe will adopt a constitutional interpretation that allows Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense and include the new interpretation in the defense program outline, a guideline for long-term defense capabilities improvement to be adopted by the end of this year.

Japan’s defense-only defense posture helped it regain the trust of the international community in the postwar period, which in turn set the stage for it to become a leading economic power. If that posture is abandoned, there is a strong possibility that Japan will be forced to engage in military operations that will erode rather than bolster its diplomatic and security assets.

Equally worrisome is the way in which Mr Abe is attempting to effectively revise the Constitution without following strict constitutional procedures that are designed to prevent imprudent revisions of the nation’s basic law.

Preliminary official results show Chancellor Werner Faymann's center-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) as the strongest in parliament, with 27.1 percent of votes. Its coalition partner, the center-right Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) scored 23.8 percent of the vote. The right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) has once again secured its slot as the third biggest party in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, with 21.4 percent of the vote.

By securing seats in parliament, the right-wing populists have emerged as the big winners in the Austrian vote, particularly the FPÖ under party leader Heinz-Christian Strache. The FPÖ set the tone for the right-wing camp with its anti-foreigner sentiment. The camp also includes the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) and to some extent Team Stronach. Altogether, these parties secured more than 30 percent of all votes.

Thanks to President Barack Obama's obduracy over his flagship healthcare policy, Democrats and Republicans have failed to reach agreement in Congress on the federal budget, forcing the US Government to close down for the first time in 17 years, with around 700,000 federal workers being placed on indefinite leave.

While the White House insists that essential areas of the government, such as the military, will continue to function, the shut down represents yet a further blow to the prestige of the Obama administration at a time when it is still reeling from its inept handling of the recent Syrian crisis. There was a time not so long ago when the world looked to America for both political and economic leadership. But now that can no longer be taken for granted thanks to Mr Obama's inability to provide decisive leadership on either front.

Republicans rightly argue that by pressing ahead with Obamacare before the implications of the programme have been properly assessed risks adding to America's debt mountain at a time when the American economy is still recovering from the biggest economic crisis in recent history. The emergence of Russia, meanwhile, as the main power broker in the Syria crisis has severely damaged America's standing as a major global player.

In short, the longer the Obama presidency continues, the more America's status as a superpower ebbs away.

The White House and Congressional Republicans spent Monday locked in a stand-off over stop-gap measures to keep the government running, after the Republicans said they would only agree a deal if President Barack Obama delays his flagship healthcare programme by a year.

It is the third time since Mr Obama took power that budget negotiations have gone to the wire in this way, and many investors - jaded by previous stand-offs - were feeling confident that the Congress would reach some sort of eleventh-hour agreement.

However, that confidence has started to wane over the past week. Wall Street has started to bet on a long-term stand-off. Meanwhile, treasury officials are pessimistic about the odds of a US government default, which, they fear, would knock America back into recession.

The shutdown began after the two houses of Congress failed to agree a budget. The dollar index, which tracks the US currency against a basket of six major currencies, fell to 79.864, its lowest level since February. Previously US government shutdowns have lasted anywhere between a day and a month.

The economic impact will depend on how long the deadlock lasts, but Goldman Sachs estimates a three-week shutdown could shave as much as 0.9% from US GDP this quarter. Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets, said the bigger worry was US politicians not being able to agree on lifting the so-called "debt ceiling", when the US government will reach the limit at which it can borrow money to pay its bills.

"The longer this goes unresolved, the closer it takes us to the 17 October debt ceiling, when there is no money to pay bills including sovereign debt - debt default is an altogether different issue," he said. There are also concerns that markets will be affected by a possible delay in the release of key US economic data.

The cardinals, who were appointed in April by Pope Francis and will confer with him for the first time at the Vatican on October 1-3, were briefed to revise the constitution, known as Pastor Bonus, drawn up in 1988 by Pope John Paul, in a bid to give a great voice to bishops around the world. But Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, the group’s leader, said as the meeting loomed they were planning to go much further than just changing “this and that.”

“No, that constitution is over,” he said in a TV interview. “Now it is something different. We need to write something different,” he added.

Cardinals gathering in Rome before Francis was elected in March complained Vatican officials had become a self serving elite indifferent to the needs of dioceses around the world. Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga said his group had received suggestions on Vatican reform from around the world, including 80 pages of suggestions from Latin America. The convergence on a few main themes suggested God’s will was at work, he said.

The report is the result of six years’ work by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it – on which governments including Britain’s base their green policies. But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years. Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’ and they should focus on decades or centuries. Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.

The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming using the ‘leading hypothesis’ among scientists that the lower warming is down to more heat being absorbed by the ocean – which has got hotter. The last IPCC ‘assessment report’ was published in 2007 and has been the subject of huge controversy after it had to correct the embarrassing claim that the Himalayas would melt by 2035.

The move comes as the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, examine Moscow's plan to place Syrian chemical weapons under international control. Both Russia and the US have been beefing up their naval presence in the Med over the past several weeks.

The destroyer Smetlivy left a naval base in Sevastopol, Ukraine, on Tuesday on a mission to the Syrian coast, a military source told the state news agency Interfax on Thursday. The source said the Smetlivy would travel to the Mediterranean with the amphibious assault ship Nikolai Filchenkov, which left Novorossiysk on Monday carrying unidentified supplies for the Damascus government.

The missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, is also on its way to the Syrian coast to lead the Russian force there. The ship is reportedly known as a "carrier-killer" because it is outfitted with Vulkan missiles, that are designed to destroy large ships.

The BBC's Paul Adams in Geneva says it appears large disagreements still exist between the two governments. Syria's president has agreed to give up his chemical arsenal, but the rebels say it will not stop the killing. Free Syrian Army spokesperson Louay Moqdad told the BBC that the government of President Bashar Assad still had plenty of conventional weapons at his disposal and said he was "just trying to buy time" with the help of the Russians.

Russia announced its proposal for dealing with the escalating chemical weapons crisis on Monday, as the US Congress was preparing to debate whether to back President Barack Obama's moves towards military strikes. The UN has confirmed it has received documents from Syria on joining the Chemical Weapons Convention, a key step in the Russian plan.

It's not that federal government tried to prosecute a bunch of them but lost the cases. There were no serious efforts at criminal prosecutions at all. Which isn't to say nobody is in jail. There have been prosecutions of various mortgage brokers and other small fish who lied or encouraged clients to lie on their applications for a home loan. The crisis exposed some outright fraudsters who are now in the slammer, such as Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford. And, yes, major banks have been working through billions of dollars in civil settlements for shady behavior in the runup to the crisis.

But it's shocking that for a crisis that drove the global economy off a cliff, caused millions of people to lose their homes and generally spread mass human misery to almost every corner of the earth there is no defining prosecution. No man or woman who led one of the firms directly culpable for the catastrophe has been put in a prison-orange jumpsuit. You might think that by now we could say that orange is the new charcoal pinstripes. But we can't.

No CEOs even came particularly close to facing criminal charges. The closest would probably be Angelo Mozilo, who was chief executive of Countrywide, one of the most aggressive mortgage lenders during the boom years. It was bought up by Bank of America in late 2007 and has caused the bank no end of trouble since.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Mozilo with insider trading and securities fraud in 2009 for selling shares of his company while publicly proclaiming it was in fine shape. But those were civil charges, which Mozilo settled with $67.5 million in fines and a lifetime ban from serving as an officer of a public company. A criminal investigation was dropped.

And that’s about it.

He said the Church must ‘reflect the democratic spirit of the times’ and take the opinions of its members into account. He said: 'Celibacy is not an institution but look, it is also true that you can discuss (it) because as you say this is not a dogma, a dogma of the church.'

Archbishop Parolin is considered to be the most powerful official in the Vatican and his comments carry considerable weight. Pope Francis has been making waves in the Church with his forward-thinking approach and has made a series of comments to suggest that he is in favour of shaking up some age-old traditions.

Soon after being becoming Pope he called for a ‘poor Church for the poor’. He also said he wanted to boost the role of women in the Church and proposed a more tolerant stance on homosexuality, stating: ‘Who am I to judge?’ And before he took office he gave an interview in which he said: ‘For the moment, I am in favour of maintaining celibacy; with all its pros and cons... It is a matter of discipline, not of faith. It can change.’

While Fatah head and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas negotiates with Israel for the creation of a PA state, the Al Aqsa Brigade has incited all Muslims to take part in the “Day of Rioting” in defending "Palestinian land.”

In response, the Jerusalem police announced on Thursday evening that, following a security assessment, they will be restricting the entry of Muslim worshipers to the Temple Mount for Friday prayers. Among men, only those aged 45 and over with blue ID cards will be allowed to enter the compound.

Thousands of Jewish worshipers are also expected to gather at the Kotel at the start of Yom Kippur, causing security measures to heighten in anticipation of harassment and violence at the hands of groups of Muslims, as was the case during Rosh Hashanah when 15 stone-throwing Islamist rioters were arrested at the Temple Mount. Jerusalem police in large forces will be stationed around the Old City and the Kotel starting on Friday morning to maintain order during Yom Kippur.

Responding to a list of questions published in the paper by Mr Scalfari, who is not a Roman Catholic, Francis wrote: “You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don’t believe and who don’t seek the faith. I start by saying – and this is the fundamental thing – that God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart.”

“The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience. Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.”

Robert Mickens, the Vatican correspondent for the Catholic journal The Tablet, said the pontiff’s comments were further evidence of his attempts to shake off the Catholic Church’s fusty image, reinforced by his extremely conservative predecessor Benedict XVI. “Francis is a still a conservative,” said Mr Mickens. “But what this is all about is him seeking to have a more meaningful dialogue with the world.”

Criticising David Cameron’s promise to claw back powers from Brussels, Jose Manuel Barroso suggested that his tough line on Europe was an insincere attempt to counter the rise of the UK Independence Party.

He said: ‘Let me say this to all those who rejoice in Europe’s difficulties and who want to roll back our integration and go back to isolation – the pre-integrated Europe of the divisions, the war, the trenches, is not what people desire and deserve. The European continent has never in its history known such a long period of peace as since the creation of the European Community. It is our duty to preserve it and deepen it.’