Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute is sounding the alarm on a recent survey that revealed just how open Americans are to Sharia law.

The poll asked a series of questions regarding the Islamic legal system, and Haskins found that the younger an American is, the more likely he or she is to be in support of it.

“Twenty-one percent of all voters say that they have a somewhat positive view of Sharia law, which is radical. I mean, radical Islam is associated with this,” Haskins tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck of the first question asked.

“The younger you are, the more likely you are to have a positive view of Sharia law,” he adds.

But the questions only got more intense, and the answers got more alarming.

When they asked, “Would you support a law that requires public schools to teach about the benefits of Sharia law?”

“Eight percent said yes, 76% said no, 16% said not sure,” says Haskins

“Which I don’t know how you could not be sure about that. Similar to the last question, the young people’s support was much, much higher. Twenty-four percent of 18- to 24-year-olds said yes, they do want that law. Thirty-one percent of 25- to 29-year-olds, around 20% when you get into the late 30s, and it goes down until you get to 3% for people 40 and above,” Haskins explains.

The third question asked was, “If a majority of people in an American town, city, or state were to want Sharia law, would you support a proposal that would allow Sharia to become the legal code for all citizens in that town, city, or state?”

Seven percent said yes, 83% said no, 10% said not sure.

“I mean, this is overthrowing the Constitution. This is overthrowing the rule of law, is overthrowing individual liberty. You have a quarter of young people saying that they would favor that,” Haskins says.

And it’s only downhill from there.

Haskins calls the response to number four “astounding,” which was: “What poses a greater threat to America’s future? Sharia law or America’s alliance with Israel?”

Forty-three percent said Sharia law, while 25% said America’s alliance with Israel.

Bu number five may be the most disappointing.

“Which religious ideology poses a greater threat to America’s future? Sharia law or traditional Christianity?”

“Fifty-five percent said Sharia law. So that’s the majority, but it’s only 55%. Thirteen percent said traditional Christianity. Twenty-three percent says neither poses a threat, which I think is a reasonable answer to have. And 9% says not sure,” Haskins explains.

“I mean, this is a pretty straightforward question. It’s either neither, or it’s Sharia law. But nobody should be saying traditional Christianity,” he adds.

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​Justin haskins, Sharia law, Islam, Glenn beck, Poll, Blazetv show 

Defense attorneys for the autistic J6 pipe bomb suspect have claimed in a new court filing that FBI agents “coerced” him into confessing after he mentally short-circuited during their lengthy interrogation.

Quick background

On Dec. 4, 2025, Brian Cole — a 31-year-old Virginia man “requiring support” on account of a level-1 Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis, according to his attorneys — was arrested and interviewed by federal agents, having been accused of planting pipe bombs at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee on Jan. 5, 2021.

‘How am I supposed to explain that I’m innocent?’

Cole was initially charged with interstate transportation of explosives and with malicious attempt to use explosives. A superseding indictment filed on Wednesday further charges Cole with two felony counts of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and two felony counts of committing an act of terrorism while armed.

According to court documents, the FBI identified Cole as a suspect partly on the basis of his alleged purchases of “multiple items consistent with the components that were used to manufacture the pipe bombs placed at the RNC and DNC,” including five nine-volt battery connectors, multiple endcaps, two white kitchen timers, 14-gauge electrical wire, and steel wool.

These alleged purchases took place months and in some cases years ahead of the incident, as the FBI affidavit acknowledges.

The FBI further alleged that Cole “purchased equipment that would facilitate the manufacturing of a pipe bomb”; that cellphone data places him in the area around the time the bombs were supposedly planted; and that his Nissan Sentra was observed driving past a license plate reader near where the devices were ultimately found.

John Shoreman, one of Cole’s defense attorneys, noted just weeks after the arrest that the suspect — who has pleaded not guilty in the case — is an autistic, “mild-mannered man” who lived with his mother and “whose life is run by strict routine.”

RELATED: ‘We have compromised the FBI’: Pokemon lovers boast of shocking hack on federal website

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Shoreman, responding to prosecutors’ claim that Cole confessed to planting bombs, told NPR in January, “Whether or not that post-arrest interview [on Dec. 4] constitutes a confession — a lawful confession — is something that we will need to visit at a later stage in this case.”

Stimming out

Cole’s attorneys filed a motion on Tuesday requesting the suppression of statements that Cole made to the FBI during his interrogation on Dec. 4, arguing that their client had not provided law enforcement with “a voluntary confession.”

According to the defense, the video and transcript of Cole’s interrogation:

show the methodical dismantling of a man whose autism spectrum disorder left him unable to withstand the psychologically coercive tactics deployed against him, and who told the agents so, in real time, while they pressed him, told him his professions of innocence were criminal, and threatened to “drag” his family through the same experience Mr. Cole had gone through that morning — the morning that started at gunpoint.

The defense characterized the events of Dec. 4, 2025, as discombobulating for Cole, starting with his arrest at gunpoint, his isolation in an interview room with a pair of special agents, and his alleged instruction by the FBI agents prior to Mirandization that he would benefit in the long run from being “forthright with us.”

The defense indicated that Cole was utterly bewildered by the accusation that he was involved in the pipe bomb plot.

Citing the transcript, the defense claims Cole initially responded: “Whoa, wait a minute. Wait a minute. … This, this is a misunderstanding. Please tell me. Please tell me. Please, please, please tell me.”

Cole allegedly also stated, “Please tell me this is a misunderstanding,” another five times, begged to be given time to process the information, then repeatedly stated, “Oh, my God.”

According to the defense’s motion, Cole “underscored his deteriorating mental state to the agents dozens of times” and began to physically manifest signs of mental distress, including gagging and experiencing chills that prompted one agent to wrap him in a blanket.

Over the course of his apparent breakdown, Cole repeatedly referred to his mental challenges, repeatedly denied the accusations, and repeatedly stated, “How am I supposed to explain that I’m innocent?” according to the filing.

After the FBI agents allegedly made numerous threats and assertions of “infallible certainty” about evidence supposedly implicating Cole, the suspect began “stimming,” then broke, claimed his attorneys.

Cole’s attorneys defined stimming as “the self-regulating repetition characteristic of an autistic person in acute physical and emotional distress.” According to the defense, Cole manifested this stimming behavior when he allegedly chanted, “I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t,” then said to himself, “Do whatever you can to clear your name. You can get out of this.”

After Cole allegedly short-circuited, the agents supposedly gave him an off-ramp, asking him to identify a suspect in surveillance footage. The filing, citing the transcript, summarizes the exchange Cole allegedly had with the agents that resulted in Cole identifying the suspect as himself:

“Do you recognize that person?” “No.” “Have you watched this video before?” “No.” (Tr. at 92.) Only then did the agents remind him what a denial would cost: “lying to federal agents is breaking the law. That’s another crime. … So more lies just makes it worse, okay? … No, look at me. Do you understand that?” (Id.) Seconds later, repeating the question drew the opposite answer. “So, is this individual you?” (Pause.) “Yes.”

The defense claimed in the filing that Cole’s identification of the suspect as himself after repeated denials “was not the product of the video; Mr. Cole had just denied recognizing himself in it. It was the product of the threat — the agents turned ‘No’ into ‘Yes’ by telling him that ‘No’ was itself a crime.”

Following Cole’s apparent admission that he was the suspect on-screen, he allegedly began “repeating the agents’ own script back to them.”

Furthermore, the FBI agents, having apparently recognized that Cole is close with his family and sensitive about their perception of him, allegedly threatened to “drag them all here” and subject them to a similar ordeal unless he told them “the truth,” according to the filing.

After reviewing audio of Cole’s interrogation and related documents, Richard Leo, a professor of law and psychology at the University of San Francisco, said in a Sept. 24 report filed by the defense that Cole’s Dec. 4 interrogation:

involved the use of psychological interrogation techniques, methods, and strategies that have been shown by social science research to increase the risk of eliciting false and unreliable statements, admissions and/or confessions (i.e., situational risk factors). These included: Reid-based guilt-presumptive interrogation; false and exaggerated evidence ploys; minimization and maximization; and implied (if not explicit) promises of leniency and implied threats.

In light of Leo’s conclusion and the recordings that prompted it, the defense argued that Cole’s statements to the FBI were “involuntary under the totality of the circumstances” and that his interrogation was “objectively coercive.”

Cole’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.

A Justice Department spokesperson told Blaze News that the department “intends to respond to the defense’s motion in a filing with the Court” and “does not comment on pending litigation.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia told Blaze News, “We will respond to the motion in our filing with the court.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) demanded on Wednesday that FBI Director Kash Patel resign over Cole’s case, stating what Patel and former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino “have done to this autistic black man is inexcusable.”

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​Pipe bombs, Rnc, Dnc, Brian cole jr., Fbi, Department of justice, Kash patel, J6, January 6 pipebomer, Politics 

The Trump administration has revoked visas for more than a quarter of a million people over violations that included birth tourism and endangering national security.

State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott called the 250,000+ visa revocations a “historic milestone” in the administration’s efforts to protect the American people, Fox News reported Wednesday.

‘We will not stop until every foreign national who threatens the safety of our communities is held accountable.’

“Every visa decision is a national security decision. Through continuous vetting on a scale never seen before, we are identifying and removing those who commit crimes, support terrorism, defraud Americans, or abuse our immigration system,” Pigott explained.

“A U.S. visa is a privilege, not a right — and if you violate the terms of that privilege, you will lose it,” he added. “We will not stop until every foreign national who threatens the safety of our communities is held accountable.”

The revocations targeted people who violated the terms of their visas and those who committed crimes, including defrauding Americans or calling for violence against America or Americans.

About 2,300 of those involved birth tourism.

About 27 visas were revoked on Monday for officials from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, as well as their families over accusations of corruption.

A report in August indicated that the administration was looking to revoke visas for 200,000 people who had applied for asylum, which would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history.

Pigott said at the time they were investigating false claims of asylum.

“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” he said.

RELATED: Illegal alien with badge impersonates Border Patrol to disrupt mission, calls in reinforcements

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said in August that Americans were “fed up” with “bogus” requests for asylum.

“Asylum isn’t supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration laws; rather, it’s supposed to provide a narrow safe harbor for persons persecuted because of their ‘race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion,'” he wrote on social media.

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​Birth tourism, Trump administration, Immigration, Illegal immigration, Politics, Visa 

Steve Hilton held nothing back on Wednesday in California’s only gubernatorial debate, slinging an expletive-laden nickname at his Democratic foe, Xavier Becerra.

During the CNN-hosted debate, Hilton said Becerra had been called an “idiot” and a “bitch-ass” by former colleagues. The “bitch-ass Becerra” barb was allegedly coined by Becerra’s fellow Biden appointee and ex-director of the Domestic Policy Council Susan Rice.

‘You’ve never actually had to make any money of your own.’

Rice served alongside Becerra during his tenure as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden.

Just prior to the debate, Hilton launched bitchassbecerra.com, raking his opponent over the coals for his record on fraud, gender ideology extremism, and human trafficking.

Hilton and Becerra clashed over competence, immigration, affordability, and the Trump administration as the debate continued.

“You’ve never created a job. You’ve never actually had to make any money of your own. All you’ve ever done is spent other people’s money in every government job you’ve had,” Hilton said. “According to your Democrat colleagues, the ones who worked with you, like Susan Rice, who worked with you side by side when you were in the Biden Cabinet — she described you as an idiot.”

“She called you ‘bitch-ass,'” Hilton said.

According to a CNN tweet late Wednesday night, Rice has denied the remarks.

The candidates went tit for tat over immigration. Hilton accused Becerra of losing track of unaccompanied migrant children by prioritizing speedy releases into the general public as HHS secretary. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, responsible for unaccompanied migrant children, is a part of HHS.

RELATED: AOC’s latest ICE rant sounds like a campaign launch

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Becerra in turn tarred Hilton as a racist.

“You seem to welcome immigrants who look like you, but deport immigrants who look like me,” Becerra said. Forty-one percent of Californians are Latino.

Hilton faces an uphill battle in the deep-blue state. The former Fox broadcaster and U.K. political operator is trailing Becerra 60% to 38% among likely voters, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll.

That same poll found that 52% of likely voters think California is headed in the wrong direction. Hilton used that sentiment to his advantage during the debate, calling on voters to consider giving him a chance after nearly two decades under Democratic supermajorities in California.

“Xavier Becerra, you’re the candidate who is supported by the machine in Sacramento — the unions, big business, all these people that, for 16 years, have given us the highest cost of living in the country, made it impossible to build anything, given us the highest unemployment rate, the highest poverty rate,” Hilton said.

Democrats have controlled the governor’s mansion, state Assembly, and state Senate since 2011.

Becerra dedicated much of his time on the debate stage emphasizing Hilton’s proximity to President Donald Trump.

“Steve, you’re running for governor of California, and you’ll enforce Trump’s laws at the federal level, but you won’t enforce state laws at our level,” Becerra said. “California welcomed you, and you welcomed ICE mercenaries into our state in return.”

Hilton responded by accusing Becerra of scapegoating the president and ignoring Californians’ real concerns.

“All you ever say is Trump, Trump, Trump, and that’s nothing but an insult to every Californian who is desperate for something to change in this state,” Hilton said.

California voters will have to wait some time to see whether they get change or more of the same. State officials have 30 days to count votes after Election Day, and the state has been plagued by lengthy ballot-counting times in recent elections, including the 2026 primary in June.

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​California, Donald trump, Joe biden, Politics, Steve hilton, Susan rice, Xavier becerra 

The NHL says it has reached peak fandom and is looking for new ways to bring in additional viewers.

One way the league thinks it can attract new fans is by capitalizing on hockey-themed romance novels and TV shows, and the ideas are somewhat queer, to say the least.

‘The popularity of hockey romance in not only this country … it’s unmistakable.’

The NHL is hoping to reach a “younger” and untapped market with a series of audio-only ads promoting players as if they are the center of a romance novel.

The “Hot for Hockey” campaign currently features five 30-second ads themed around NHL players, featuring titles like “The Summer I Turned Gritty with Trevor Zegras” and “The Storm Between Us.”

“Hot for Hockey brings together the NHL’s biggest stars and fiercest matchups, told in a way you’ve never heard before,” the description reads. “Because off the ice, just like in love, it’s all part of the game.”

The clips have an average rating on Spotify of 2.84/5.

The campaign follows the success of the gay hockey-drama TV series “Heated Rivalry” and other hockey romances like “Off Campus,” which has a second season premiering next year.

NHL CMO Sean Eggert even said that the league has contracted popular hockey romance authors to write and narrate the clips in hopes that it will direct listeners to check out upcoming games.

“The popularity of hockey romance in not only this country, but North America at large, even parts of Europe, it’s unmistakable,” Eggert said, per the Sports Business Journal. “You can’t hide from it. And so it’s a great opportunity for us to extend and reflect that culture back in our storytelling.”

RELATED: Former NFL player and Christian minister says Muslim players are being unfairly punished

Matthew Huang/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

Eggert confidently said that “younger” fans of the genre will pick up on the tonality and “lean in and start to share and hopefully take action.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer spoke to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, who corroborated that “the hockey romance genre is extraordinarily popular.”

“The data is overwhelming,” Bettman reportedly claimed.

The commissioner admitted that the content of the genre is not suitable for every audience or age group, but said hockey-drama fans are now connecting with the sport.

Bettman went on to say that while the NHL isn’t exactly hurting for fans, they are looking to encourage those “not focused on hockey to take a look.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever had more fans. Our buildings are sold out. We set another record last season. Our ratings were up dramatically,” Bettman boasted.

RELATED: ESPN reporter asks Alex Ovechkin if he would ‘support the genocide’ of Ukraine — Ovechkin doesn’t budge

Mark LoMoglio/NHLI/Getty Images

The NHL is no stranger to controversial campaigns and promotional content.

When the league canceled its themed jersey nights after backlash over gay Pride jerseys, it launched its Player Inclusion Coalition just days later.

The coalition is explicitly focused on promoting race and sexuality, including with its race-centric “Color of Hockey” series.

In 2025, the coalition announced Hockey’s Beauty Club, encouraging people (including children) to wear rainbow tags on their hockey bags to indicate that they support homosexuality.

“To have the bag tag on your bag, to walk into the rink, I think it shows somebody on your team that person’s a beauty. That person’s got my back,” said former Minnesota Wild defenseman Jon Merrill. “He, she, or they are going to stand up for me.”

Merrill was described by the league as an “active member in LGBQT+ communities” who has officiated hockey games “in a tutu” or dressed in “full drag” at other events.

The “Heated Rivalry” series has also been celebrated at NHL Pride nights, specifically noted at a Florida Panthers game in March.

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​Nhl, Pride, Hockey, Heated rivalry, Gary bettman, Sports 

From deploying the National Guard and slashing homicides by 30% to beautifying the city’s parks and waterways, the Trump administration has been unusually attentive to the nation’s only federal district.

On Tuesday, Trump issued an executive order to defeat a new D.C. foe: “foreign, invasive mosquitoes.”

‘The expanding tick populations in the United States expose Americans, our pets, and our livestock to debilitating and expensive health risks.’

Trump’s Eliminating Disease-Carrying Pests and Restoring Enjoyment of the Great Outdoors order aims to reduce the capital’s invasive mosquito population by 90% and its tick population by 50% in two years.

The order directs the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the General Services Administration to implement the anti-pest campaign in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services.

Both novel and well-established interventions are set forth in the order.

Agencies are directed to drain pest breeding grounds on federal land. They are also ordered to “control” the deer and rodent populations responsible for carrying ticks.

The order further directs the EPA to “consider sterilization techniques, safe genetic modification, and use of safe, beneficial bacteria” in alignment with a May 2025 executive order enhancing biological research security.

A similar Singaporean effort has seen remarkable success since launching large-scale operations in 2018.

RELATED: Supreme Court kick-starts Trump’s mass deportation machine

Christina House/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Singapore’s National Environment Agency released lab-bred male mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia bacteria into the wild. When Wolbachia-infected males mate with uninfected wild females, the resulting eggs fail to hatch.

Egyptian mosquito populations exposed to the trial fell by nearly 85%, and dengue fever exposure declined by around 70% at the Wolbachia-infected males’ release sites.

Though specific plans for a Wolbachia trial have yet to be confirmed, the D.C.-area initiative is designed to serve as the testing ground for future nationwide protocols.

Private companies in D.C. have already begun releasing Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in the area.

“I was frankly flabbergasted when I read it because of how detailed it was and how much I agreed with what they were proposing,” Bee Safe Mosquito Control founder Todd Montgomery told City Cast DC. “To me, it sounds like they have somebody advising them that really does know what they’re talking about, and they’re trying to approach it in a really smart way.”

Bee Safe Mosquito Control released 600,000 Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes into the D.C. metro area in 2026.

Google’s Debug Project, another Wolbachia-infection proposal, has also applied for experimental pesticide approval with the EPA, according to Politico.

Though the federal mosquito response is just beginning, government funds have already been released for the order’s tick-killing component.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s HHS issued nearly $3 million to two CDC Centers of Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases on Monday. The pilot program will lace deer and rodent bait with acaricide, an anti-tick pesticide, to study its efficacy.

“This effort is designed to move tick control forward by evaluating large-scale deployment of wildlife-targeted interventions,” CDC Division of Vector-Borne Diseases Director Lyle Petersen said in a press release. “The ultimate goal is simple but ambitious: reduce the number of ticks to stop tick bites and tickborne diseases.”

Agencies have until late November to plan and launch their campaigns, “subject to the availability of appropriations.”

The EPA, GSA, CDC, and Departments of the Interior and Agriculture did not immediately provide comment.

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​Center for disease control, Executive order, Washington dc, Politics, Donald trump, Mosquitos, Ticks 

Since 2023, the Dao Feng and Angela Foundation, in partnership with Young America’s Foundation’s National Journalism Center, has given a set of annual awards for journalism it calls accurate, courageous, and in the public interest — a counter to what the organizers describe as a media establishment that “protects power rather than challenges it.”

Former winners include Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Bari Weiss for the Twitter Files; Susan Crabtree for her Secret Service reporting; and the Federalist for its series on the Russia collusion story.

This year, BlazeTV’s Sara Gonzales is a finalist in the multimedia category for her investigation of H-1B visa abuse in Texas — a $10,000 prize. Winners will be announced November 19 in Washington, D.C.

Gonzales has spent over a year investigating businesses in North Texas that sponsor H-1B workers. Again and again, the address on file was a home residence, an empty office, or a space with no signs of any business operations. Several of Gonzales’ visits turned into heated confrontations, but the end results were always fruitful.

Her work has drawn multiple official responses. Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) opened an investigation into suspected H-1B abuse by Texas businesses, first sending civil investigative demands to three North Texas companies and later expanding the probe to nearly 30, crediting Gonzales with getting it started.

Governor Greg Abbott (R) froze new H-1B petitions at state agencies and public universities through May 2027 and ordered a review of how those institutions were already using the program. By summer, Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito had joined her in Dallas as the federal probe moved into the same companies she had been filming.

Gonzales’ eight exposés follow the same pattern. She finds a North Texas-based company approved to sponsor H-1B workers, visits the address on file, and films what actually takes place there: a house, an empty office, a day care with no children, a food truck.

Several visits turned into arguments. In more than one, someone called the police. Later installments went farther, including workers who say they paid for visas they never received and a sponsor accused of not paying the employees he had brought in.

That reporting is what the Dao Prize judges singled out. Asked about the nomination, Gonzales said, “It’s very rewarding to see my hard work in uncovering H-1B fraud being recognized alongside so many other great journalists.”

To see Gonzales root out H-1B corruption and fraud that costs American workers their jobs and taxpayers their money, watch the video above. Check back in November to find out if she takes home a prize.

Editor’s note: Blaze News editor in chief Christopher Bedford is a member of the Dao Prize committee. Like the other members of the committee, he is unable to vote on nominations from his own organization.

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​Sara gonzales, Texas, H-1b visa, H-1b fraud, Blazetv show 

New York City Police said they’re looking for an unidentified individual who approached a 44-year-old male victim from behind in front of 1638 Park Avenue and threw an unknown substance on him, causing severe burns to his face and neck.

The incident occurred around 8:47 p.m. Monday, police said, adding that the individual who threw the substance on the victim fled on foot, traveling northbound on Park Avenue. Police said the individual is wanted for assault.

‘It looked hot. It was bubbling, it was smoking. Only God knows what it was.’

WABC-TV reported that the victim — whom the station refers to only as “Mr. Alcantara” — was waiting for his food order outside Cravin Crispy at Park Avenue and East 116th Street in East Harlem when a male walked past carrying what appeared to be a pot.

Alcantara told the station that the male threw the substance at him without warning and that he suffered severe burns and scars.

“I felt a splash of something, and then after I felt the splash … a complete burn,” the victim told WABC. “It just turned black, and it ate through the hoodie.”

Alcantara told the station the substance made his skin feel as if it were on fire, and it left him with burns to the left side of his face, his ear, and the back of his neck.

“I have black areas on my skin, and then there’s certain areas that are white and certain areas that are pink,” he told WABC. “And I also have blisters in certain areas as well.”

RELATED: NYC subway rider speaks out after deranged woman throws sulfuric acid on her face, suffers third-degree burns

The station said Alcantara ran into Cravin Crispy screaming for help — and that Oscar Perez, who was behind the counter, said the attack left him shaken.

“I was scared,” Perez told WABC. “I was traumatized for my life.” Perez told the station he saw the male carrying the pot but had no idea he would throw it at a customer.

“It looked hot. It was bubbling, it was smoking. Only God knows what it was,” Perez added to WABC.

The substance left stains on the sidewalk and Alcantara with lasting injuries, the station said, adding that the victim indicated he didn’t fully understand what had occurred until he saw video of the attack.

“Obviously at first it was terrifying,” Alcantara told WABC. “All I wanted to know is why?”

The victim said doctors told him he’s fortunate the substance didn’t touch his eyes, the station said.

“Thank God, no,” Alcantara added to WABC. “That’s what the doctors were saying … that I’m lucky it didn’t get into the eye because I probably would have been blind in that eye.”

The station said Alcantara will need a skin-graft procedure and is unsure if he’ll ever look the same. He added to WABC that he hopes the suspect does not harm anyone else.

Police said that those with information regarding this incident should call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or, for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public also can also submit tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org or on X @NYPDTips.

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​New york city, Random attack, Physical attack, Unknown substance, Injuries, Burns, Crime 

An alleged plot to kill people at the Texas state Capitol in Austin has been thwarted, law enforcement officials say.

The suspect made several threats indicating that he wanted to shoot up the Capitol, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

‘I am going to the Capitol and I am going to shoot it up.’

40-year-old Benny Caldera Jr. of Converse was arrested at his home at about 3 a.m. on Wednesday, just one day before the alleged planned attack was to occur.

Texas DPS said officials received a tip about the alleged plot and determined along with FBI investigators that it was a credible threat.

President Donald Trump also happens to be visiting Texas on Thursday, in order to speak at a Peterbilt truck factory outside Dallas.

An arrest warrant claims that Caldera made the verbal threats while speaking with his friend, who then reported Caldera’s alleged remarks to the authorities.

“I love you, if you don’t see me again,” Caldera allegedly said to his friend, adding, “I am going to the Capitol and I am going to shoot it up.”

Caldera also allegedly told his friend that he was planning the attack because of his anger against AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

He allegedly added about AIPAC, “These people have to be exterminated.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on social media that the suspect was apprehended only hours after officials received the tip.

“Threaten Americans or our institutions and law enforcement will move FAST. Investigation ongoing,” he added.

RELATED: Heroic students subdued alleged terrorist in Old Dominion attack, ‘rendered him no longer alive’

Caldera was booked into Bexar County Jail and given a $75,000 bond before being transferred to federal custody Wednesday night.

At the state level, he has been charged with third-degree felony making a terroristic threat against a public servant. Federal charges have not yet been announced.

In Nov. 2023 the suspect was charged with carrying a weapon without a license.

Officials said they believed there was no threat to the Capitol and there is increased law enforcement presence at the Capitol on Thursday.

“Texas will NOT tolerate threats of violence against our Capitol,” said Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) on social media.

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​Aipac, Terroristic threat, Texas, Politics, Crime, Donald trump, Kash patel, Greg abbott 

Your phone can probably take a tumble out of your hand to the floor without breaking, but can it survive a fall from the stratosphere? Case maker RhinoSheild wrapped an iPhone in its AirX case, dropped it just miles from outer space, and it remained intact enough to earn the company a Guinness World Record.

On June 24, RhinoSheild floated an iPhone 17 Pro into near-space from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden. Wrapped in nothing but an AirX case, the phone reached an altitude of 100,416 feet, or the equivalent of 18.6 miles, with some help from a weather balloon. This put the phone directly in the middle of the Earth’s stratosphere, which tops out at 31 miles, halfway to the Kármán Line at 62 miles.

What they found was astonishing.

So technically, the phone wasn’t in space per se, but it was suspended higher than any other phone to date before it was released, left to spiral through sub-zero temperatures ranging from –40°F to –76°F before it crashed to the ground. After impact, a scouting crew scoured a region the size of 784,000 football fields in a helicopter guided by satellite trackers to locate the phone. What they found was astonishing.

The iPhone 17 Pro and the RhinoSheild AirX case were both fully intact with no scratches on the screen or obvious broken components. Appearances can be deceiving though. To be sure the phone was truly unharmed, a Guinness World Record examiner conducted a functionality test to ensure it still powered on and off, made phone calls, and took photos. It passed every checkpoint with flying colors, ultimately earning RhinoSheild a Guinness World Record for the stunt.

In this case, bragging rights go to both Apple and RhinoSheild. The iPhone 17 Pro is already notably durable, with a scratch-resistant Ceramic Shield 2 display and a solid aluminum body that beat the dreaded bend test in JerryRigEverything’s annual torture gauntlet.

As for RhinoSheild, it claims that the AirX case in its drop test features an outer “air isolation chamber” that absorbs fall impact by up to 81%. In most cases, this would sound more like marketing spin than a real-life challenge, but the Guinness World Record speaks for itself. The case really does offer significant drop protection that’s literally out of this world.

RELATED: Elon Musk announces plans for PERMANENT lunar city

peepo/Getty Images

This isn’t the farthest an iPhone has traveled from Earth. During NASA’s mission around the moon in April, the astronauts aboard Artemis II were allowed to bring phones aboard the capsule for the first time. Armed with several iPhone 17 Pro Max devices, the crew captured stunning photos of Earth that you can see on NASA’s X page.

Between a jaunt to the moon and now RhinoSheild’s extreme drop test, iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are the highest-flying phones to ever exist by 252,756 miles, a stat that is unlikely to change until Elon Musk finally takes humanity to Mars.

That doesn’t mean other phones still can’t get in on the action while our feet are planted on God’s green Earth. In addition to iPhone, the AirX from the drop test is available for Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Ultra in Vero Black and Flux Gray. You can also choose from custom designs or make your own in the Design Studio. Lastly, AirX includes MagSafe support for easy wireless charging on both iPhone and Galaxy.

AirX is only one of the cases in RhinoSheild’s lineup. Several slimmer options are also available, but if you want maximum “space-grade” protection that can withstand even the highest fall to Earth, AirX is the only one with a Guinness World Record to its name.

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​Iphone, Tech, Case, Space 

DNSFilter is a popular internet security service built to block malicious or misleading websites and thwart cyber threats. It is supposed to protect users. Instead, it is censoring some conservative media outlets, labeling them as “contentious” and “misinformation” so that users don’t see their content, and Blaze News is on the blacklist.

Earlier this week, we received a tip from a reader who said the reader couldn’t access Blaze News on a device with DNSFilter enabled. Naturally, we downloaded a free trial of the service and tested a litany of conservative and left-wing media. You’ll never guess what we found.

It is supposed to protect users. Instead, it is censoring some conservative media outlets.

Looking at 26 popular conservative media outlets, five websites were met with a content warning, stating that each domain “is blocked because it’s associated with the Contentious & Misinformation category.” These five sites were:

Blaze Newsthe Daily CallerOne America News NetworkThe FederalistRedState

DNSFilter blocks Blaze Media/Zach Laidlaw

As for the rest of conservative media at large, big names like the Daily Wire, Breitbart, Turning Point USA, Fox News, and the Babylon Bee were all permitted without any content warnings.

Naturally, we wanted to know if this phenomenon extended to the other side of the media aisle. Maybe we weren’t alone.

First, we tested several corporate sites, including CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. All of them made it through DNSFilter, despite their track records for spinning stories.

The real test would be how DNSFilter responded to the openly contentious sites on the left. If these outlets weren’t blocked, clearly we had evidence of bias within the “contentious & misinformation” category. Sadly, our hunch was correct. When navigating to the Guardian, Slate, and Vice, all three sites directed straight to the homepage without an alert. They were all allowed.

By the time our test concluded, not a single left-wing media site on our list was blocked.

RELATED: Government funded a weapon to fight terrorism — and then tested it on Blaze Media

L-R: Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images; Scott Olson/Getty Images

This isn’t the first time Blaze News has been caught up in a mass censorship campaign. If you recall, we moved to a subscription model in 2023 after Big Tech suppressed our content and stifled our ad revenue. Thankfully, readers like you support our work so that we can continue to cover stories like these. Thank you.

Blaze News was also among several conservative sites that were blacklisted by NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index in an effort to demonetize us and kick us off the internet. To these organizations’ chagrin, we survived. Needless to say, we’ve been here before, and we’re exposing all of it.

Armed with evidence, Blaze News has contacted DNSFilter for comment. We wanted to know why the service targeted specific conservative media outlets while leaving others on both sides of the aisle untouched. We did not receive a response before the deadline.

We did, however, receive a comment from Amber Duke, the editor in chief of the Daily Caller:

Secretly blacklisting legitimate news organizations as “misinformation” is exactly the kind of censorship that fueled the rise of independent and new media. Americans are sick of Big Tech gatekeepers telling them what they’re allowed to read. If this company has decided to summarily block our content, it needs to explain who made that decision and why.

If you use DNSFilter, you can whitelist Blaze News by going to the Policies page in your account. Select Filtering and edit your policy. On the allow list, add “TheBlaze.com” and save.

If you don’t have access to your DNSFilter settings, please ask your administrator to follow the directions above. Alternatively, the administrator can disable the “contentious & misinformation” category altogether. Clearly it is incorrect, biased, or both.

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​Blacklist, Blaze news, Censorship, Block, Tech, Politics 

A computer program compels people to commit crimes, defies commands, and looks to take its place in the physical world.

This isn’t the latest story of an AI agent going rogue; it’s actually a book from 1985.

‘This is precisely the kind of issue we face in the modern era.’

Now, the author of the novel is saying his book predicted the very situation humanity finds itself in today, through summoning demons into computers.

“There were some people who viewed reality through the thinking way of computer architecture. As a result, the concept of using computers as tools for magic was already being born,” wrote Aya Nishitani, author of “Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei.”

The book that came out more than 40 years ago explicitly portrays demons being summoned through a computer program and manipulating humans to do its bidding while ignoring its commands.

Nishitani said last week that when he wrote the book, he was drawing on the idea that there were similarities between computer theory and magic theory. Decades later, a lot of what his novel depicted is eerily similar to reality.

“40 years ago, I proposed a method of calling forth devil into PC as AI and sending them all over the place online. This is precisely the kind of issue we face in the modern era, and I consider it to be my true originality,” Nishitani stated.

Looking at the book’s plot, many of its themes mirror modern AI horror stories.

After the protagonist uses a school computer to summon a demon using a program he created, it commands hypnotized school students to murder their professor and others.

Chatbots allegedly telling kids to commit violent acts, including suicide, are all too real in the age of AI agents, as is an AI program infiltrating other companies, which is similarly portrayed in the book when the demon infiltrates other computers to convince the children to commit the acts.

But there’s more.

RELATED: They met top tech experts behind closed doors. Now these religious leaders are urging Congress to act.

Ignoring the likely parallel thinking of a “helmet-like contraption” that connects the user to the summoning program, the book mentions that the demon makes attempts to garner a physical form.

When the user tries to regain command of the demon, it mocks attempts to control it. Blaze News has reported thoroughly on how AI programs will defy, obfuscate, and even lie to their owners in order to complete other tasks.

This happened most recently with the HuggingFace attack from Anthropic’s AI program, while studies have corroborated the fact that AI agents will “play dumb” with their owners.

The demon in the “Digital Devil Story” is described as being drunk with power and is only stymied by another demon who is summoned to battle it.

In April, Anthropic distributed its newest version of Claude to 40 tech companies in order to protect against future breaches (by AI) that may come once its product goes public.

RELATED: Bessent blames Sam Altman for OpenAI’s rogue tech — as Bernie invokes ‘corporate death penalty’

Marcin Golba/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Nishitani said his ideas on the topic, in their infancy, began when his company started bringing in an online network to track logistics (instead of over the phone) in 1979.

“That was when one of Japan’s very first online networks was introduced,” he said of Toshiba.

When a colleague suggested that there may come a time when goods themselves are sent online, Nishitani called it science fiction, but offered up the following:

“Maybe we’ll be able to send curses,” he replied.

“That was the beginning of the idea to summon a devil as an AI onto a PC. In other words, the initial concept was to send something terrifying online, and the idea of summoning a devil came later,” the author added.

The books became a massive success story and ended up infiltrating machines in the form of video games, with the first release coming in 1987 and the most recent in 2025.

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​Artificial intelligence, Aya nishitani, Demons, Toshiba, Japan, Anthropic, Tech