Archbishop Flavio Calle Zapata, of Ibagué, Colombia, has instructed local parishes to offer an exorcism prayer because of the alarming increase in suicides in his archdiocese.

During the year 2014, seventy people have committed suicide in the region, and violence has also been on the rise.

Last Sunday, the archdiocese sponsored a “day of exorcism.” The Archbishop said that in today’s world “there is a culture of permissiveness” and what disturbs us “is that Satanism has also spread among our young people.” MORE

Reverend Franklin Graham, son of world renowned evangelist Billy Graham, said the Muslim prayer service on Friday at the Washington National Cathedral, an Episcopal church established under a charter granted by Congress more than 100 years ago, is “sad to see”  because the church should only open its door for worship of “the One True God of the Bible.”  MORE

“Taxifornia” author James Lacy discusses the massive sums of money California is spending to remove birds from blocking Bay Bridge with Stuart Varney on Fox Business. MORE

The New Jersey state Assembly on Thursday passed a measure that would allow doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients, modeled after the Oregon law that allowed a 29-year-old woman suffering from brain cancer to end her life. MORE

This list of 55 preparedness items (or categories) purposely avoids some of the preps that you might expect to see and is not intended to be a list of essentials or to be all-inclusive in any way. In fact, the list is intended to get you thinking ‘outside-the-box’ about your own needs for preps – to think of things beyond that of just rice-and-beans, bullets and band-aids. MORE

Next Monday, work will begin to renovate Vatican restrooms for pilgrims, but Pope Francis has also given instructions for showers to be installed where Rome’s homeless can wash.

Bishop Konrad Krajewski, or “Don Conrado” as he is familiarly known, is the Pope’s “almoner,” the person in charge of distributing alms on the Pope’s behalf. He recounts that it was a Sardinian homeless man named Franco who brought home the need for washing facilities. MORE

The tires weren’t cheap. The Michelin Primacy MXM4 all-season grand-touring tires set me back $250 apiece, plus mounting and balancing, for a total of  $1,131.

Over 26,277 miles, that works out to  4.3 cents per mile. Pretty typical for a high-performance luxury sedan. MORE

Latin Americans born into Roman Catholic families have increasingly left the faith for Protestant churches, while many others have dropped organized religion altogether in a major shift in the region’s religious identity, according to a survey released Thursday. MORE

According to a survey by tech giant Cisco Systems, about a fourth of professionals ages 18 to 50 would leap at the chance to get a surgical brain implant that allowed them to instantly link their thoughts to the Internet. The study was conducted on 3,700 adults working in white-collar jobs in 15 countries. MORE

“This fire is quite mysterious because it is not caused as a result of an electrical fault or bush burning. One just notices that fire from nowhere will start burning and before you know it, it has started destroying houses.
“This incident started mysteriously about a month ago, but no life has been lost since the outbreak. I don’t know the meaning of this strange fire which cannot be traced to a cause,” the acting district head said. He, however, insinuated that the fire outbreak, which, he said, was abnormal, could be a spiritual attack on the town, calling on residents to continue to offer prayers to God to put an end to the incident. MORE

Armenia threatened ‘grave consequences’ after Azerbaijani forces shot down a military helicopter, sparking fears of a major escalation in the conflict over the disputed region of Nagorny Karabakh.

The downing of the helicopter belonging to the army of the breakaway ethnic Armenian region is the most serious incident on the Karabakh border since a 1994 ceasefire ended a bloody war that cost 30,000 lives. MORE

Washington National Cathedral, known for presidential funerals and other major spiritual services, will host a Muslim prayer service for the first time Friday. MORE

US President Barack Obama came in second.

Russian President Vladimir Putin came in first.

For one, he has a remarkable grip on power. He became prime minister in 1999. That gig lasted until 2000, when he switched to president, which lasted until 2008. Then he became prime minister again — until 2012. He then went back to being the president of Russia, an office he’s held since May 2012. MORE