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France's health ministry confirmed on Saturday the full recovery of a nurse who was treated for Ebola in a military hospital outside Paris. The patient was a volunteer nurse who traveled to Liberia to work with the charitable organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

"She received several experimental treatments successfully," Health Minister Marisol Touraine said in an interview with France Info.

The news follows the confirmation of another successful Ebola recovery in Europe. A doctor working with the World Health Organization was released Friday from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany.

The patient, an epidemiologist from Senegal, contracted the disease in Sierra Leone and was flown to the hospital in Hamburg at the end of August for treatment.

The New York Times reported Friday the WHO is considering ways to involve survivors of Ebola — namely, their blood. Officials hope it will contain antibodies that could help new cases fight off the deadly virus.

"The concept that this treatment could be efficacious is biologically plausible, as convalescent plasma has been used successfully for the treatment of a variety of infectious agents," said the WHO in a guidance document that outlines the proper steps and procedures for collecting blood and plasma from recovered Ebola patients.

A WHO statement released last week, however, warns of the dangers of such treatments. In West Africa, where Ebola has killed thousands in mostly impoverished areas, blood banks are not considered stable establishments. Risk of contracting HIV or hepatitis from donated blood is a serious issue and there is a shortage of qualified medical personnel.

Still, the WHO offers reason to be optimistic: An American doctor in Liberia recently received a donation from a survivor and made a successful recovery.

The recovered doctor's plasma was then given to another infected American doctor, who also made a full recovery. There is no confirmation that the transfusions themselves cured the patients, but the WHO is moving forward to develop a plan.

The organization is currently in talks with health officials and professionals in both Sierra Leone and Liberia, as well as Nigeria, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo as to how to implement convalescent therapy. There is concern about a large-scale execution of such treatments, as well as any risks.

"Some partners and donors are asking for rough estimates of what needs to be in place to support rapid implementation on the largest possible scale," says the statement. "They have questions about the number of staff needed and their training requirements, safety risks and how to manage them, laboratory capacities and how to enhance them, specific needs for equipment and supplies, and what all of this might cost."

As of Friday, the WHO had updated its Ebola death toll to at least 3,439 out of 7,492 possible and confirmed cases.

ebola

World Health Organization

Pope Francis has summoned bishops from all over the world to Rome to discuss issues concerning families – including hot-button issues like artificial contraception and gay civil unions.

The meeting, called a synod, opened on Sunday and is seen as a test of Francis' vision of a more merciful Church.

Not since the landmark Second Vatican Council half a century ago has a church meeting raised so much hope among progressive Catholics — and so much apprehension among conservatives.

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One Year Later, 'A Pope For All' Keeps Catholics Guessing

As with every big Vatican meeting, Catholic groups from all over the world have descended on Rome in the hopes of contributing to the discussion.

Catholic Church Reform International, an umbrella organization of progressive groups from all over the world, met last week in one of Rome's baroque churches.

"Pope Francis has told bishops we want to hear from the people, we want dialogue, dialogue, dialogue," says Director Rene Reid from Reno, Nev. "But there is one thing he didn't do: He didn't set up a mechanism for this to happen. So the bishops are going their merry way."

Reid says her group has come to ask for some basic changes.

"We would like to see the birth control issue revisited," she says. "We'd like to see celibacy become an option. We'd like to see greater respect and equality given to women."

The Two-Way

Pope OKs Communion For The Divorced? Not So Fast, Vatican Says

But no topic has become more heated in the lead-up to the debate than suggestions made by Cardinal Walter Kasper, the pope's favorite theologian, on the possibility — on a case-by-case basis — of divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion.

The idea triggered a vehement response by five prominent cardinals who wrote a book upholding Church teaching on the permanence of marriage. One of the authors, American Raymond Burke, head of the Vatican's Supreme Court, accused the media of trying to hijack the synod by fueling expectations of changes in Catholic doctrine.

Disagreements Once Hushed

But Rev. Thomas Reese, senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, says bishops and priests deal with contemporary reality and the tragic causes behind many failed marriages every day, just as the pope, when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, went to comfort the faithful in the slums.

"He saw that lots of people were living together who weren't married, lots of families broke up because of poverty or other issues. He saw the real world out there and as a pastor, he wants to respond to that."

Reese is pleased that disagreement over this issue is finally being aired in public.

"In last two papacies, disagreements were hushed up," he says. "There was only one line that people could take. Bishops came to Rome and they looked to see what the Vatican wanted them to say, and they said that. It was embarrassing at the synods."

But a recently published book, Francis Among the Wolves, documents growing resistance to pope Francis' repeated urgings for open and frank debate. The title is a reference to the story of St. Francis taming a ravenous wolf.

"But the wolves around Pope Francis don't kiss his hands," says author Marco Politi, a veteran Vatican analyst. "Or officially they kiss his hands, but they are now very aggressive."

Politi says a cadre of hardliners has been campaigning for months behind the scenes against Francis.

"They say that he is a demagogue, that he speaks too much about poor, like a socialist, that he's diminishing the sacred aura of the papacy, that he's too democratic," he says.

This Synod Is Only Phase One

Ahead of the synod, the Vatican sent out a questionnaire seeking input from clergy and lay people on many hot-button issues. The results showed the vast majority of Catholics reject church teaching on sex and contraception as intrusive and irrelevant.

But at the synod, 191 cardinals, bishops and priests will be flanked by only 12 lay observers.

Vatican analyst Robert Mickens says the synod needs to listen to a wider array of Catholics.

"Married people need to be heard," he says. "Gay people and their struggles need to be heard. Single mothers need to be heard. It won't do for a bunch of celibate men, so-called, to be parsimonious with God's mercy."

The two-week-long synod is just phase one, a discussion of issues. It won't be until a second assembly, a year from now, that concrete decisions are taken.

The outcome will not only affect issues of sexual ethics, contraception and divorce. It will ultimately determine the Catholic Church's relationship with the modern world.

"This is worlds in collision," Smiley says. "These are things that were fascinating at the time: You thought you were in this one place and this was true, and then you got on the train and went a few hundred miles away and everything was different and other things were true. And yet, that's the thing that our parents — that's what they discovered because they went out into the world. That was part of the job that that generation did."

That change is accelerated by World War II. Frank's younger brother, Joe, gets a deferment to stay on the farm while Frank goes overseas to fight.

"And there are other wars, obviously, as we go through volume two and volume three," Smiley says. "There are other wars and other generations have to deal with them. So that was another interesting thing for me, was to send these boys off to various wars and see what happened to them."

As part one of the trilogy draws to a close, some members of the Langdon family are still on the farm while others are spread across the country. Toward the end of the book, they all come together on the farm to celebrate Thanksgiving:

As if on cue, Walter turned from Andrea and looked at Rosanna, and they agreed in that instant: something had created itself from nothing — a dumpy old house had been filled, if only for this moment, with twenty-three different worlds, each one of them rich and mysterious. Rosanna wrapped her arms around herself for a moment and sat down.

A 21st-Century Writer With 19th-Century Style

Smiley has been compared to some of the great writers of the 19th century, when the novel was a flourishing art form. She says those are the authors she grew up reading and their books remain among her favorites.

Book Reviews

Smiley's 'Life': The Demands Of A Loveless Marriage

"I love their sort of openness, their accessibility and their willingness to engage with the socioeconomic world around them," she says. "And, you know, [Charles] Dickens did it in his way and [Anthony] Trollope did it in his way and [Jane] Austen did it in her way. And so I think it's great to be that kind of a novelist."

In that tradition, Smiley gives her trilogy the sweep of history. But what interests Smiley most is the way those historic events play out in the lives of one family whose roots are deeply embedded in the middle of America.

Read an excerpt of Some Luck

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Claire Danes, front, with, from left, Mandy Patinkin, Nazanin Boniadi and Rupert Friend on Showtime's Homeland. Jim Fiscus/Showtime hide caption

itoggle caption Jim Fiscus/Showtime

Claire Danes, front, with, from left, Mandy Patinkin, Nazanin Boniadi and Rupert Friend on Showtime's Homeland.

Jim Fiscus/Showtime

(Be warned: There are spoilers ahead, particularly if you haven't watched all of Homeland's third season yet.)

Showtime's widely-lauded terrorism drama Homeland returns Sunday facing a curious question for a show starting its fourth season.

What, exactly, is this series about now?

That was the biggest issue left by the death last year of Damian Lewis' supremely dysfunctional soldier-turned-terrorist-turned-doomed hero Nicholas Brody. And it's not clear if producers have found an answer yet.

The show began as a taut drama about Claire Danes' bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison struggling to prove Brody was a Manchurian Candidate-style mole, upon his rescue from an al-Qaida compound. The second season found Brody caught between secretly working with the CIA to bring down his former master and making U.S. officials pay for killing civilians in the Middle East. Last year, we saw the conclusion of his star-crossed affair with Mathison at the end of a hangman's rope in Iran.

Despite all the jokes about Danes' crying face in her scenes as an unstable Mathison, it was Lewis' Brody who seemed the dramatic linchpin for the most interesting parts of Homeland's stories. So now that he's gone, what's left for Carrie to fight for?

After watching three episodes in the new season, I'm still waiting to see that question resolved. Mathison is a CIA station chief in Afghanistan's capital of Kabul now, unable to care for the child Brody fathered with her because she works in a hot zone. She makes a decision about taking out a terrorist that brings serious blowback, threatening her ability to be where she most feels at home – in the thick of the action in the Middle East.

Television

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Her mentor, Mandy Patinkin's cagey, principled Saul Berenson, is working for a private security firm after a brief tenure as CIA director. Her ally (and not-so-secret crush) Peter Quinn is working in Islamabad until something shocking happens there that shakes him to his core.

Those who complain that Homeland is unrealistic seem to be missing the point; like fanboys who grouse that scenes in a Superman movie don't make sense. Of course, Homeland is often ridiculous – the first few seasons featured a solider-turned-suicide bomber who didn't kill himself, got elected to the U.S. Congress and murdered the vice president by gimmicking his pacemaker.

Still, it's odd to see Mathison game her way into positions of authority within the CIA when she's melted down so many times and been at the center of too many debacles (the Secret Service chief had to resign after one guy burst into the White House; Mathison was at the CIA when its headquarters got blown up by a terrorist). And Quinn's personal crisis also seems odd for a guy who entered the show as a cold-blooded black ops specialist with a long list of kills to his name.

Television

Claire Danes, CIA Agent, Protects The 'Homeland'

Others have suggested the show's depiction of Muslims and Arabs is racist. I wouldn't go that far, but Suraj Sharma's role as a college student whose family is torn apart by a military strike goes a long way toward humanizing those in the Middle East caught between American forces and the terrorists they are hunting — a sometimes-missing piece of he story in this series.

I have other quibbles, but it's tough to describe them without giving away plotlines that fans will want to see without a preview. It's just worth noting that, after seasons centered on thwarting grand conspiracies reaching high as the vice presidency, Homeland is now seemingly focused on Mathison's much less spectacular hunt for the leak of state secrets outside the government.

As always, the hope is that Homeland will also embody ambitious discussions about the limits of U.S. power in the Middle East and our current crises in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and elsewhere. And when a military strike takes out a number of civilians in the effort to kill a terrorist leader, we see some CIA leaders predictably callous about the turn of events, hardened by the routine of kills that often produce so-called "collateral damage."

My hope is that we'll eventually get a more nuanced tale of what this unending war is doing to all of us in the homeland from Homeland, rather than a spy thriller garnished with predictable lessons about meddling in the Middle East.

In the early going of the new season, however, it seems there are few larger lessons here. Instead, we're focused on Carrie Mathison as flawed hero, struggling to hold up a weighty series once balanced by two awesomely dysfunctional characters.

Homeland returns for its fourth season at 9 p.m. Sunday on Showtime.