A survey from a Vatican-approved religious university in Rome found that Catholic exorcists feel overworked and undersupported by bishops, according to The Times of London. Italian exorcists spoke to researchers at Regina Apostolorum’s 16th annual exorcism course in Rome, attended by 120 participants, The Times reported. The course attracted a significant crowd thanks to Pope Francis’s support of exorcism, the paper said. He has previously spoken about helping those who are “possessed by evil,” per The Times, and made exorcism an official Catholic practice, according to the Independent. The conference’s exorcists said that they needed more support from psychologists to determine whether people are mentally unstable or demonically possessed, The Times reported…

Fears of a growing totalitarian tendency in the US have swelled during 2020–22. But how close are we really to a totalitarian state? How have such regimes come about historically and what are the warning signs? This article will answer these questions by examining totalitarian regimes in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries and the pattern by which they came to power. Stage 1: Discontent and Rumblings. Those who would establish a new regime must tap into or generate dissatisfaction with the status quo. However much those desiring a reset may despise the old order, they can’t accomplish much without harnessing or fabricating a similar attitude in the public. Then the revolutionary totalitarian appears as the solution to these problems. After identifying and appealing to the people’s discontent, the totalitarian presents himself as a savior…

A report in the Washington Free Beacon cited sources in the State Department confirming that the Biden administration will move forward with establishing a new Office of Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem that will act independently of the US ambassador to Israel’s office there. This move goes against the expressed wishes of the Israeli government. Still, the Biden State Department is going even further, opening an official Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem wholly independent of the US embassy in Israel. This consulate will act as a de facto embassy to the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem, a move that violates international law. The purpose behind this move “is to walk back the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, erode Israel’s sovereignty over its capital city, and signal support for dividing Jerusalem. It is outrageous and shameful,” Milstein said. “Members of Congress should use every tool at their disposal to block implementation of this decision.”

Amid privacy concerns, payments giant Mastercard is rolling out the controversial biometric payment systems, allowing users to pay with the wave of a hand or a smile at a camera. However, privacy advocates have raised concerns about biometric checkout systems. “Mastercard themselves have recognized the data and security concerns that come with the use of biometrics,” Suzie Miles, a lawyer, told The Guardian. “A password can be changed, your smile and wave can not. If biometric data is hacked then the risk of fraudulent activity could be considerably higher than current payment methods.” Others fear that the systems will collect and store data that can be used to monitor and track users. “While it seems Mastercard have taken steps to protect and encrypt this data, as biometric payments become more commonplace the use of such data is likely to evolve and it will inevitably become harder to protect individuals rights to privacy,” Miles added…

A senior software engineer at Google who signed up to test Google’s artificial intelligence tool called LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications), has claimed that the AI robot is in fact sentient and has thoughts and feelings. During a series of conversations with LaMDA, 41-year-old Blake Lemoine presented the computer with various of scenarios through which analyses could be made. They included religious themes and whether the artificial intelligence could be goaded into using discriminatory or hateful speech. Lemoine came away with the perception that LaMDA was indeed sentient and was endowed with sensations and thoughts all of its own. ‘If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was…