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An intruder allegedly forced his way into a Florida home over the weekend, threatened a mother and her children, and refused to leave — but the victim also had her gun at the ready.Investigators said Michael McDonald, 33, entered the Palm Coast home around 1:50 p.m. Sunday after opening the garage and banging on windows, WOFL-TV reported.'I wasn't trying to kill anyone. I was trying to get him out to where my kids and I were safe in my house.'Courtney Price told Flagler County Sheriff’s Office deputies that McDonald demanded money, threatened her family, and continued advancing after she warned him that she was armed, the station said.Authorities told WOFL that Price repeatedly ordered him to leave and warned she would shoot. When McDonald continued advancing toward her, Price fired one shot, striking him in the arm, authorities told the station."I did what I had to do to protect my children and myself," Price told WOFL, which added that she knew McDonald through his sister."I panicked and got my gun," Price added to the station, "and that was my first time using it."Price told WOFL she warned McDonald that she would shoot if he didn't leave — and she said he continued moving toward her."He said, 'I don't care ... shoot me,'" Price recalled to the station.With that, she fired a single shot, WOFL said.RELATED: Home invasion suspect comes face-to-face with gun-toting homeowner — who is more than ready for him "I wasn't trying to kill anyone," Price told the station. "I was trying to get him out to where my kids and I were safe in my house."McDonald fled the scene in a silver Kia SUV, and deputies later located the vehicle at AdventHealth Hospital, where they conducted a felony traffic stop and detained him, WOFL reported. McDonald was treated for non-life-threatening injuries, the station added.RELATED: Armed crooks allegedly enter home in middle of night, but homeowner is prepared — and opens fire Image source: Flagler County (Fla.) Sheriff's OfficePrice and her children were not injured, WOFL said.Flagler County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Joseph Barile told the station that this incident illustrates why Florida's self-defense laws exist."She's in her own home, and someone comes in uninvited, refuses to leave, advances toward her, is aggressive toward [her] and her kids," Barile noted to WOFL, adding that "she even goes a step further, saying she's going to shoot ... and he still doesn't leave — she had a right to defend herself, and she did."Authorities told the station that Price acted lawfully under Florida's Stand Your Ground law and was protecting herself and her two children.McDonald was charged with burglary with assault and was being held in custody, WOFL reported, adding that officials said the suspect has an extensive criminal history that includes grand theft and robbery offenses.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Messaging application company Signal is calling out the United Kingdom over its plans to implement age verification that the government says will "protect" children.As part of a new policy that would ban social media for those in the U.K. under 16 years old, the government has also announced plans to force companies to infiltrate the phone libraries of every youngster — and soon every person within its jurisdiction who fails to upload ID.'Children deserve to be safe, protected, and nurtured. They do not deserve surveillance.'Such is the shocking scope and speed of the latest amendment to the country's Online Safety Act. Just last week, embattled and unpopular Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced content detection and blocking would only be turned by age verification check, a process that in practice requires universal ID submission and/or face scanning in order to use your phone in an ordinary fashion.An official government website details that the sitting Labour Party plans to force "Big Tech companies like Apple and Google" to activate built-in features or implement technical solutions to "detect and block nude images for children."This must take effect within the next three months for smartphones and tablets, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. To implement these changes — which the government said would "prevent predators" from exploiting victims — anyone refusing to submit to the ID system would be unable to "take, share, or view nude content."Civil rights advocates and privacy-forward apps responded with outrage, warning that the measures would begin a rapid process of total national registry and surveillance. Representatives from the Signal app responded by threatening to withdraw entirely from the U.K. market unless major changes are made. "Children deserve to be safe, protected, and nurtured. They do not deserve surveillance," Signal said in a press release. "The U.K. government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the UK be scanned on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning, will not safeguard children. It endangers us all," they added. RELATED: Livid judge cancels trial and busts lawyers for faking briefs with AI — on both sides After describing the U.K. government's demand as a dystopian phone scanning operation, the company then warned such policies would lead to the government wielding its powers as a method of censorship and surveillance under the guise of what officials might consider to be "threats" or "harmful content.""Wherever it runs, including the 'camera' itself once it is in place on U.K. devices — its scope will be defined by the whims and proscriptions of the government to detect nudity today and political speech tomorrow," Signal warned. Of course, social media companies came at the policy change from a different angle, saying that pushing teens off their platforms would only lead to less safety.RELATED: The backlash against AI reveals it’s a terrible scapegoat Thomas Trutschel/Photothek/Getty Images "Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less safe services," a YouTube spokesperson told CNBC.A Meta spokesperson told the outlet that bans risk isolating teenagers from online communities and information, which would send them to unregulated alternatives.Other restrictions in the U.K. include blocking livestream and communication with strangers for those under 16 and a consideration for online curfews overnight. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Word is now out that many popular “smart” TV brands, including LG and Samsung, allow for third-party apps on their devices. These apps usually contain a Software Development Kit that runs constantly in the background once the app is downloaded. When your TV is plugged in, connected to WiFi, and idle, the SKU is made available to others. The setup allows — if you can believe it — for the selling of access into genuine home IPs, like yours. Simply stated: You pay for the television, the internet connection, and the house in which it is all arrayed and sustained; they use your possessions while you’re not looking and profit heavily. Look for terms: proxy, SKD, opt-out.Believe it or not, they would really prefer you not look more closely into this situation.When your TV becomes their computerPerhaps it’s merely the latest confirmation that mainstream digital American life operates on an ethos oscillating between the poles “use this to rot your brain” and “something-for-nothing favoring us.” But given that so few are aware that their very own idle internet-connected televisions are being scraped, proxied, and used as free equipment for others’ profit, this one really strikes close to home. And who’s buying? Customers for this secretive access include, you guessed it, data-harvesting operations for AI firms and other large businesses that presumably harvest and manage their own type of market data analysis. Israeli-owned company Bright Data (formerly Luminati) runs the scheme by paying makers of various free games, apps, and screensavers a monthly fee derived from the number of users who installed their apps. Bright Data boldly lists “API Scraper Pricing” in its drop-down menu. It's merely the latest step down in the hierarchy of mercantile ethics: A few years ago, court documents revealed that Meta used Bright Data despite decrying its practices and actually sued Bright Data despite using its services.But it's all perfectly legal insofar as you accept the terms and conditions. According to data security investigators at Includesecurity.com, buried in the near-universally ignored small print is a statement of consent to allow Bright Data to use your TV and IP address to download things from the internet in exchange for something like a free or ad-free app experience. Even X lost its own lawsuit against Bright Data on the face of the law.RELATED: Livid judge cancels trial and busts lawyers for faking briefs with AI — on both sides Melina Mara/Washington Post/Getty Images; Grok/xAI You’re wondering, but why? Why would anybody go to such lengths? Why is it not illegal to abscond with the paid-for resources of individuals and families, unbeknownst to them? The secret life of scrapersWell, much of the world’s data is accessible only through the massive server farms known as data centers. Huge operators such as Amazon AWS, Google, and so forth hang their reputations on the security and control they can exercise over their enormous data flows. They’re highly competent at turning away scrapers: legions of bots and digital creepy-crawlies programmed to act like parasites, inserting into data tranches and harvesting the morsels there that their designers seek out. Often their designers are commercial actors or governments acting by proxy. Sometimes it’s an AI firm bent on feeding its models ever more specific and “authentic” data. Authentic because it’s more useful in mimicking or simulating human beings. So from residential proxy IPs, AI harvesters can insert into positions to scrape the precise form of information they require to keep elaborating AIs in pre-training, agent grounding, and search capacity. AI firms need fresh content in a way rather analogous to the vampire’s need for warm blood. It’s not negotiable. That’s why it’s not discussed, and why Bright Data is rewarded in the market for its labyrinthine infiltration, cloaking, and re-marketing capacities. No one quite seems to be sure why one little-known firm gets the virtual monopoly on this scam-like meta-market. Would we be a little out of our lanes to notice that Israeli software organizations, with well-understood and documented ties to the CIA, NSA, and GCHQ, seem to play central parts in an inordinate number of such specifically located operations?Basic hygieneSo what can you do about Bright Data and similar outfits? It starts with the simple if annoying fact that, yes, you should actually read the fine print. Check the various apps you’ve installed on your devices. Look for terms: proxy, SKD, opt-out. And be ready for the next iteration of the scheme, which will certainly still require your authenticity and human input, but will likely be buried even deeper in the digital subterrain.

For years, discussion of the U.S.-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine was dismissed by critics as little more than a Russian talking point.Now, newly declassified documents released by Tulsi Gabbard confirm it's real — but that’s not stopping establishment voices from calling her a propagandist.“Tulsi comes out, what was it, Friday, and she releases, she declassifies slides of these documents about U.S.-funded bio labs in Ukraine and beyond. Over 40 labs, hundreds of millions, dangerous pathogens, anthrax, plague, ebola,” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck explains.“And now it’s a Russian conspiracy theory that those exist,” he says.“Does it make common sense to you if we have anthrax and ebola sitting in a laboratory in Ukraine that is currently at war with Russia? Do you think it’s a good idea or should we just go take a flamethrower and burn all of those dangerous pathogens out of those buildings?” he asks. “Why do we have them sitting there in these bio labs that are in a war zone? Now, look at the loudest people shouting about this. The ones who are saying, 'You know, she’s a conspiracy theorist,’” he continues, pointing out that these people include “embedded Ukraine correspondents, strong advocates to send more money to Ukraine in Congress, and defense analysts that are tied to the status quo.”These, Glenn says, are “the same people clutching their pearls over the new DNI chief. They don’t like what she did with Ukraine.”“They’re framing this whole thing as Kremlin propaganda,” he explains. “Like Tulsi Gabbard is now working for the Kremlin. Have you ever noticed when outsiders get close to auditing foreign entanglements, surveillance powers, risky overseas labs, the defenses go nuclear?”“All of a sudden, it’s got to be stopped. It’s the worst problem ever. They just go crazy. To me, it feels like fear of exposure,” he continues, adding, “And maybe not all of them, but somewhere, somebody in that web is applying enormous pressure.”Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.