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EU Targets VPNs as Age Checks Expand

Australia’s under-16 social media restrictions have become a practical reference point for regulators who are moving beyond theory and into enforcement.

As the system settles into routine use, its side effects are becoming clearer. One of the most visible has been the renewed political interest in curbing tools that enable private communication, particularly Virtual Private Networks. That interest carries consequences well beyond “age assurance.”

A January 2026 briefing we obtained from the European Parliamentary Research Service traces a sharp rise in VPN use following the introduction of mandatory age checks.

The report notes “a significant surge in the number of virtual private networks (VPNs) used to bypass online age verification methods in countries where these have been put in place by law,” placing that trend within a broader policy environment where “protection of children online is high on the political agenda.”

Australia’s experience fits this trajectory. As age gates tighten, individuals reach for tools that reduce exposure to monitoring and profiling. VPNs are the first port of call in that response because they are widely available, easy to use, and designed to limit third-party visibility into online activity.

The EPRS briefing offers a clear description of what these tools do. “A virtual private network (VPN) is a digital technology designed to establish a secure and encrypted connection between a user’s device and the internet.”

It explains that VPNs hide IP addresses and route traffic through remote servers in order to “protect online communications from interception and surveillance.” These are civil liberties functions, not fringe behaviors, and they have long been treated as legitimate safeguards in democratic societies.

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Masked stalker fearing ‘fascist takeover’ arrested for murder plot of Trump aide

Donald Trump‘s budget director is the latest in a string of Trump administration officials to face a death threat.

Colin Demarco, 26, of Maryland was arrested January 22 by Arlington County Police for attempted murder charges following a five-month investigation stemming from a suspicious incident this summer.

He showed up in August at the Northern Virginia home of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought wearing a surgical mask and gloves under the guise of job searching, according to court documents.

Demarco feared Trump’s reelection would lead to a ‘fascist takeover’ and wrote notes plotting to murder a victim with the initials ‘R.V.’ and who ‘has served as a presidential appointee,’ though Vought’s name did not explicitly appear in the complaint.

The alleged victim was, according to court documents, involved in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-funded conservative outline for the US during Trump’s second term proposing a reshaping of the federal government to consolidate power in the executive branch.

Vought, an architect of this plan, has generated controversy due to his role in leading mass layoffs of thousands across the federal government during Trump’s first year back in office.

‘We are grateful for the work of law enforcement in keeping Director Vought and his family safe,’ an OMB spokesperson said in a statement on the arrest and charges against Demarco.

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Dad claims 16-year-old daughter took her own life after meeting a predator on Roblox, slams game platform beloved by kids

Penelope Sokolowski was just 16 years old when she took her own life last February.

Her father, Jason, believes her suicide was the culmination of a grooming process that began on Roblox, the game platform beloved by kids — with some 170,000 users under the age of 13, according to company data from 2023.

“We kind of thought we were covering all the bases,” Jason told The Post, noting that his family had used a third-party app to monitor Penelope’s online activity.

Jason alleges that his only child was contacted by a predator on Roblox who coerced her into cutting his name into her chest and sending videos of herself bloodied from self-harm — and who, ultimately, sent Penelope down a spiral that culminated in her death.

The girl was 7 or 8 years old when she first signed up for Roblox, players rove around online worlds and can chat with other users.

“I’d come in and sit in the room with her and see what she was doing, ask who those people were,” Jason said, recalling Penelope drawing an anime-style sketch for a friend she’d made on Roblox.

“As a dad I thought, oh, this is nice, she’s artistic, and she’s made artistic friends,” he added. “But I didn’t understand what Roblox was and its effect on her.”

The dad, who works in the film industry in Vancouver, British Columbia, separated from Penelope’s mother and moved out of the family home when the girl was 13.

He recalls how Penelope’s grades began to tumble and, when she was 14, he noticed scars from self-inflicted cuts on her arms, which she had been covering with bracelets and his oversized hockey jerseys. 

Penelope confided that she had been recruited into a self-harm group via Roblox, but assured her father she had moved on.

But not long after her 16th birthday, she took her own life.

Later, when Jason opened up his daughter’s cell phone, he found what he describes as a “crime scene.”

According to the dad, there were messages spanning two years with a person who egged on her self-destruction. Jason believes Penelope met this person on Roblox and then began privately conversing with them over Discord — sometimes for hours.

In one exchange, Penelope sent a photo of her chest, offering to cut herself there but worrying she couldn’t go “too deep.” Minutes later, she followed up with an image of the predator’s Discord user name written across her chest in bloodied letters.

In other images, she had carved the numbers “764” into her body. Jason believes Penelope had been contacted by a member of 764, described by the FBI as a “violent online group” that targets minors and grooms them into committing egregious acts of self-harm and violence.

Members of 764 reportedly troll platforms like Roblox looking for victims they can persuade — via grooming or sextortion — into hurting themselves.

“They are grooming girls to do whatever it is they can get a girl to do, whether it’s nudes or cuts or gore or violence,” Jason said. “[Penelope] was brainwashed all the way through.”

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Did Scientists Just Achieve “Inception”? Experiments Show “Dream Engineering” May Be a Reality

Northwestern University scientists exploring the possibility of programming your brain to solve problems during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep have found compelling evidence that this type of “dream engineering” is not only possible, but potentially valuable as well.

The team behind the sci-fi-sounding research suggests that the ability to engineer dreams for problem-solving could motivate other researchers to “take dreams more seriously” as a tool for improved mental health and well-being.

They also suggest that their findings offer a crucial step toward proving the theory that REM sleep “may be especially conducive to helping individuals come up with creative solutions to a problem.”

Dream Engineering with Music During REM Sleep

Although there is anecdotal evidence that people may have greater success at solving a problem after they “sleep on it,” in the past, there has been little scientific support for the role of sleep in such Eureka moments. Studying the role our dreams might play in problem-solving has also proven elusive because it is difficult to systematically manipulate what a sleeper is dreaming about.

To investigate the possibility of a higher level of “dream engineering,” the researchers examined what is known as targeted memory reactivation (TMR), where subjects are presented with sounds during sleep that remind them of a prior experience of trying to solve a specific puzzle. The research team then recruited 20 individuals who reported previous experience with lucid dreaming, a state where the dreamer has some level of conscious awareness in their dream.

During the first phase of the experiments, the subjects were presented with complex brain-teaser puzzles and given a 3-minute time limit to solve them. Significantly, each puzzle was accompanied by its own musical soundtrack. The team notes that difficult puzzles, combined with the short test duration, left most volunteers unable to find the solution.

Next, the researchers set up polysomnographic recordings to measure and document the subjects’ physiology while they slept overnight in the lab. Notably, they used electrophysical verification to confirm each subject was asleep before progressing to the next phase.

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ELITIST HYPOCRISY: Ellen DeGeneres Comes Crawling Back to ‘Hellhole’ California With $27M Mansion After Trump Victory Freakout

Remember when Ellen DeGeneres made a big show of fleeing the United States because she just couldn’t handle President Trump’s massive victory?

Well, that didn’t last long.

The disgraced talk show host has reportedly come crawling back to the very country she claimed she couldn’t live in, dropping a cool $27 million on a massive mansion in Montecito, California, according to Fox News.

Apparently, the “unbearable” weight of a Trump presidency wasn’t enough to keep her away from the luxury of the Golden State, even as it crumbles under the failed policies of the radical left.

Just over a year ago, Ellen and her wife Portia de Rossi packed their bags and moved to the Cotswolds in England. They claimed they were “never coming back.”

She cited the “political climate” and Trump’s landslide win as the reason she had to escape America. She even whined about receiving “texts with crying emojis” from her liberal friends when the results came in.

She had nothing but compliments for the UK when she first went there.

“It’s absolutely beautiful,” she said. “We’re just not used to seeing this kind of beauty. The villages and the towns and the architecture — everything you see is charming, and it’s just a simpler way of life.”

“It’s clean. Everything here is just better — the way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here.”

However, just weeks after the former talk show host announced she left the United States following President Trump’s election victory, her mansion in the United Kingdom was flooded.

According to new reports, Ellen has just closed on a sprawling estate in Montecito, right back in the heart of the celebrity bubble.

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Russian General Shot Multiple Times In Moscow Assassination Attempt – Hospitalized

Russian Lt Gen Vladimir Alekseyev of the Russian Ministry of Defense was shot several times in the back in Moscow in an apparent assassination attempt. The Russian Investigative Committee said the attempt was ‘foiled’.

“The Russian Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case on the grounds of a crime under Articles 30 and 105 (“Attempted Murder”), as well as Article 222 (“Illegal Trafficking of Firearms”) over the attempted murder of Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev in northwestern Moscow,” reported Russian state media entity TASS.

According to the investigation, on February 6, 2026, an unidentified person fired several shots at a man in a residential building on Volokolamskoye Highway in Moscow and fled the scene. “The victim was taken to one of the city hospitals,” Petrenko said.

Investigators and forensic experts from the Moscow Investigative Committee are working at the scene, studying CCTV footage and interviewing witnesses. “Investigative and operational search measures are being carried out to identify those involved in the crime,” the spokeswoman added.

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Third U.S. State Introduces Legislation Designating mRNA Injections as Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction

Tennessee State Senator Janice Bowling has just filed Senate Bill 1949, the “mRNA Bioweapons Prohibition Act,” prohibiting the manufacture, acquisition, possession, or distribution of mRNA injections and products—punishable as a Class B felony under Tennessee’s weapons of mass destruction statute.

Just last week, Arizona Representative Rachel Jones Keshel introduced HB 2974, amending existing statutes to designate modified mRNA injections as biological agents and weapons of mass destruction, and that their manufacture, possession, or distribution may be prosecuted as terrorism, carrying penalties up to life imprisonment if a violation results in death.

Credit to Dr. Joseph Sansone for drafting the “mRNA Bioweapons Prohibition Act,” now filed in three states.

There are now multiple legislators, international bodies, and peer-reviewed scientific publications declaring that mRNA injections constitute biological or technological weapons of mass destruction:

It’s only a matter of time before these dangerous products are outlawed.

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Mayor Mamdani Blasted as Tens of Thousands of New Yorkers Still Have No Heat While Garbage Piles Up Around City

New Yorkers have been blasting Mayor Zohran Mamdani for days now as trash piles up and snow removal moves at a snail’s pace.

Even worse, there are still tens of thousands of people in the city with no heat as deadly cold temperatures continue this winter.

It turns out there is more to running a massive city than slogans about taxing the wealthy.

The New York Post reports:

Tens of thousands of New Yorkers left without heat as temperatures drop to 4° — and tenants blast Mamdani for failing to act

New Yorkers placed a staggering 80,000 calls to 311 reporting a lack of residential heat and hot water in January 2026 — the highest monthly total on record — as private and public housing tenants told The Post they were trapped in unlivable conditions and accused Mayor Zohran Mamdani of failing to act.

The complaints poured in amid a brutal deep freeze, with tenants across the city reporting days without heat, ice-cold showers and overnight shut-offs as temperatures plunged into the teens.

Alex Hughes, a Williamsburg tenant, said the situation in his building has deteriorated so much that he recently packed his bags and moved into a hotel.

“We’ve had over 40 days of no hot water over the last 11 months. And we’re now on day eight or nine straight of no hot water,” Hughes told The Post. “I had to walk 15 minutes in the snow and ice to a friend’s house so I could shower.”

In Astoria, Nicole Pavez, 31, a city planner for NYC, said the current cold snap has pushed her building’s already unreliable heating system into crisis mode, forcing her to bundle up indoors and dress her dog in sweaters to keep him warm.

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Illegal Biolabs In Vegas & California Linked To Chinese National With Alleged Military-Civil Fusion Ties

Federal and local authorities are investigating suspected illegal biological laboratories in Las Vegas and California’s Central Valley linked to a Chinese national accused by Congressional investigators of ties to a PRC military-civil fusion enterprise, who spent a decade operating what Canadian courts found was a systematic technology-theft operation from British Columbia before fleeing south with a $330 million fraud judgment against him.

The FBI and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department executed search warrants over the weekend at two residences connected to Jiabei “Jesse” Zhu, a 62-year-old Chinese citizen already under federal indictment for operating an illegal biolab in Reedley, California that contained labeled samples of at least 20 infectious agents including HIV, tuberculosis, and what the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party described as “the deadliest known form of malaria.”

Las Vegas Metro Sheriff Kevin McMahill confirmed Monday that investigators recovered over 1,000 samples of biological material “consistent in appearance” with items found in the California facility.

“This can’t keep happening,” Congressman Kevin Kiley said after the Las Vegas raid, calling for immediate hearings on bipartisan legislation he introduced with Representatives Costa and David Valadao. “The illegal bio lab just raided in Las Vegas was operated by the same LLC and Chinese nationals as the one discovered in Reedley.”

In the Reedley case, investigators discovered nearly 1,000 bioengineered laboratory mice, infectious agents including E. Coli, malaria, various chemicals, medical waste, blood, tissue, serum, body fluid samples, and illegal pregnancy tests, Congressman Jim Costa noted, citing the Select Committee’s review.

Property records show both the Reedley warehouse and the Las Vegas homes are owned by the same limited-liability company whose officers include Zhu and his business partner Zhaoyan Wang, both Chinese citizens facing federal trial in April 2026 on charges of distributing hundreds of thousands of misbranded COVID-19 and other testing kits.

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party’s investigation frames Zhu as a Chinese citizen from Canada “associated with PRC-government linked companies” and with direct ties to state enterprises and military-civil fusion networks.

Photos from their review show freezers packed with numerous small bottles and sample containers holding what the caption identifies as blood and other fluids, plus sealed bags labeled with apparent drug shorthand (for example “MDMA,” “Coca,” and “Met”), suggesting the freezers were being used to store both biological materials and suspected narcotics-related items.

The report states that in the early 2000s, Zhu served as vice chairman of Henan Pioneer Aide Biological Engineering Company Limited, a PRC state-controlled enterprise whose corporate ownership structure the Committee mapped to show interlacing with state-linked financing channels running through China Development Bank and its affiliated funds, the National Council for Social Security Fund, and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

The report explicitly flags Chinese military exposure, noting that beneficial owners operated through passthrough joint-venture companies including Henan Investment Group Company Limited, which the Committee describes as “involved in military-civil fusion.”

The Select Committee documented that Zhu’s work in cattle genetics connected to strategic PRC priorities.

As Zhu stated in documents obtained from the Reedley Biolab, “the Company is looking to seize the opportunity to develop the operational platform for the rapid growth in the Chinese dairy industry, fulfilling [PRC] Premier [and CCP Politburo Member] Wen Jiabao’s wish to ‘provide every Chinese, especially children, sufficient milk every day.’”

At that time, China faced a pressing milk crisis.

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Illegal Alien Released Into US by Biden Regime Kills Innocent 59-Year-Old Man During High-Speed Pursuit in SoCal

An illegal alien from Colombia released into the US by Biden Regime killed an innocent 59-year-old man during a high-speed pursuit in Orange County, California, last month.

21-year-old Darwin Felipe Bahamon Martinez illegally crossed the US border in August 2023 and was released under Biden’s deadly ‘catch and release’ policies.

Police pulled over Martinez in Anaheim for reckless driving. As officers approached his Jeep, he sped off and a high-speed pursuit ensued.

Martinez crashed into a Honda and killed the driver, an innocent 59-year-old man.

According to Fox News, Martinez is being held in the Orange County jail on a homicide charge.

Democrat Governor Newsom’s dangerous sanctuary policies also prevented ICE from detaining Martinez and now an innocent man is dead.

“He was released into the U.S. under the Biden administration’s so-called ‘catch-and-release’ policies, but if that hadn’t happened, the innocent 59-year-old driver he allegedly killed may still be alive today,” ICE said in a statement to Fox News.

“If local officials in Gavin Newsom’s sanctuary California choose to release Bahamon Martinez into the community, they will put ALL Californians at risk,” ICE said.

“California must honor our immigration detainer. Otherwise, ICE will be forced to re-arrest this criminal illegal alien at-large. At-large arrests are significantly more dangerous than custody transfers are because they require ICE officers to arrest unpredictable criminal illegal aliens in public settings,” they said.

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