Upgrade Error from 2.5 to 2.7, echo $return

After upgrading (almost) successfully from 2.5 to 2.7, my page displays the following at the top of it.

echo $return; } ?> Unused function * * @deprecated 2.5 */ function gzip_compression() { return false; } ?> $this->register_globals(); } } ?>

Also, my RSS feed no longer updates and an attempt to subscribe to it gives me the following error:

XML Parsing Error: syntax error
Location: https://eyeforear.com/blog/?feed=rss2
Line Number 1, Column 1:echo $return;
^

Can someone at least point me in a direction to start troubleshooting? I have disabled all plug-ins and the issue did not resolve itself.

Thanks, Brian