The liberal-dominated Australian parliament passed an amendment to its online safety legislation last year, imposing age restrictions for certain social media platforms.

As of Dec. 10, minors in the former penal colony are prohibited from using various platforms, including Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and YouTube — platforms that face potential fines exceeding $32 million should they fail to prevent kids from creating new accounts or from maintaining old accounts.

Australian kids were quick, however, to find a workaround: distorting their faces to appear older.

‘They know how important it is to give kids more time to just be kids.’

Numerous minors revealed to the Telegraph that within minutes of the ban going into effect, they were able to get past their country’s new age-verification technology by frowning at the camera.

Noah Jones, a 15-year-old boy from Sydney, indicated that he used his brother’s ID card to rejoin Instagram after the app flagged him as looking too young.

Jones, whose mother supported his rebellion and characterized the law as “poor legislation,” indicated that when Snapchat similarly prompted him to verify his age, “I just looked at [the camera], frowned a little bit, and it said I was over 16.”

RELATED: App allegedly endangers ICE agents — now its creator is suing the Trump administration

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP via Getty Images.

Jones suggested to the Telegraph that some teens may alternatively seek out social media platforms the Australian government can’t regulate or touch.

“Where do you think everyone’s going to?” said Jones. “Straight to worse social media platforms — they’re less regulated, and they’re more dangerous.”

Zarla Macdonald, a 14-year-old in Queensland, reportedly contemplated joining one such less-regulated app, Coverstar. However, she has so far managed to stay on TikTok and Snapchat because the age-verification software mistakenly concluded she was 20.

“You have to show your face, turn it to the side, open your mouth, like just show movement in your face,” said Macdonald. “But it doesn’t really work.”

Besides fake IDs and frowning, some teens are apparently using stock images, makeup, masks, and fake mustaches to fool the age-verification tech. Others are alternatively using VPNs and their parents’ accounts to get on social media.

The social media ban went into effect months after a government-commissioned study determined on the basis of a nationally representative survey of 2,629 kids ages 10 to 15 that:

71% had encountered content online associated with harm;52% had been cyberbullied;25% had experienced online “hate”;24% had experienced online sexual harassment;23% had experienced non-consensual tracking, monitoring, or harassment;14% had experienced online grooming-type behavior; and8% experienced image-based abuse.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement on Wednesday, “Parents, teachers, and students are backing in our social media ban for under-16s. Because they know how important it is to give kids more time to just be kids — without algorithms, endless feeds and online harm. This is about giving children a safer childhood and parents more peace of mind.”

The picture accompanying his statement featured a girl who in that moment expressed opposition to the ban.

The student in Albanese’s poorly chosen photo is hardly the only opponent to the law.

Reddit filed a lawsuit on Friday in Australia’s High Court seeking to overturn the ban. The U.S.-based company argued that the ban should be invalidated because it interfered with free political speech implied by Australia’s constitution, reported Reuters.

Australian Health Minister Mark Butler suggested Reddit was not suing to protect young Aussies’ right to political speech but rather to protect profits.

“It is action we saw time and time again by Big Tobacco against tobacco control, and we are seeing it now by some social media or Big Tech giant,” said Butler.

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​Australia, Censorship, Social media, Technology, Free speech, Subversion, Sydney, Reddit, Tiktok, Youtube, Facebook, Threads, Snapchat, Politics 

State lawmakers, desperate to address America’s sky-high drug prices, have turned their fire on pharmacy benefit managers. Their chosen tools — outright bans in Arkansas and suffocating regulations in Indiana — will not rein in drug costs. They will close pharmacies, however. And disabled Americans will feel the pain first and worst.

For millions of people living with disabilities or chronic illnesses, the neighborhood pharmacy isn’t just a place to pick up a prescription. It is a medical anchor — often the only dependable access point in a fragmented health care system.

Policy leaders must hold three truths at once: Drug prices are too high, access is too fragile, and for disabled Americans, both problems collide.

When states make it harder for pharmacies to operate, they aren’t tightening consumer protections. They are tightening a noose around the patients they claim to protect.

Proximity is key

Healthy, mobile adults can switch pharmacies with mild frustration. Disabled Americans can’t. They rely on stable, nearby pharmacy relationships to manage complex regimens, limited transportation, and conditions that make in-person care indispensable.

A person with epilepsy juggling multiple medications cannot suddenly travel to a pharmacy two towns over. A disabled veteran with hearing loss cannot sit on hold for an hour to fix a refill problem. A parent caring for a child with developmental disabilities needs a pharmacist who knows her family and can explain changes — especially potential interactions — face to face.

For disabled patients, proximity isn’t convenience. It is continuity, safety, and sometimes survival.

Long before I served as commissioner for the Administration on Disability at Health and Human Services, I was a teacher who learned that real service depends on presence. You must know the person in front of you. The same holds true in every field: the banker who helps you fix a missed payment, the pastor who walks beside his congregation. Their influence comes from relationship.

Pharmacists are no different. They cannot be replaced with apps, compliance checklists, or centralized call centers. Their work depends on knowing their patients — and being close enough to serve them.

What happens when pharmacies disappear?

Imagine telling a cancer patient he now needs to drive 20 miles for treatment because a state ban forced his local pharmacy to close.

Imagine telling a parent managing her child’s seizure medications that she must start over with a new pharmacy because the compliance burden became too much to stay open.

Imagine telling a stroke survivor who no longer drives that “it’s only a few minutes farther.” For many disabled Americans, a few minutes farther means losing independence — or tipping into crisis.

Pharmacies provide far more than prescriptions. They monitor complex drug regimens and catch dangerous interactions. They manage refills when cognitive disabilities make self-management difficult. They offer immediate, walk-in guidance when something feels wrong. They coordinate with doctors on sudden changes. And maybe most importantly, they provide calm, in-person clarity that no software platform can match.

Lawmakers say they want to help, but they are ignoring what disabled Americans need most: stable, nearby pharmacies that can remain open.

RELATED: The maligned and misunderstood player that Big Pharma wants gone

Oleg Elkov via iStock/Getty Images

Access is a crisis

Drug prices in America are too high. Disabled Americans feel that burden more than anyone because they use more medications, more often, and for longer durations. Many rely on mail-order programs and already face delays and shortages.

So yes, policymakers should push for lower prices. They should demand transparency from pharmacy benefit managers so patients know what they are paying. They should pressure pharmaceutical companies to create pricing structures that serve consumers instead of shareholders.

But none of that will matter if the pharmacies disabled Americans depend on are regulated out of business.

Policy leaders must hold three truths at once: Drug prices are too high, access is too fragile, and for disabled Americans, both problems collide.

You cannot help vulnerable people by making their closest health care providers harder to reach. If states want to protect patients, they should create a regulatory environment where pharmacies can survive — and where the communities that depend on them can too.

​Opinion & analysis, Pharmacy benefit managers, Pharmacies, Health care, Disabled, Regulation, Bans, Prescriptions, Costs, Prescription costs 

A 15-year-old girl told police that a man lured her from the Multnomah County Central Library in downtown Portland to a hotel, where he repeatedly raped her, according to court records.

On Saturday, a witness called police after seeing the girl appearing to be distraught in the downtown area, and when police questioned her, she said she had escaped her captor.

Court records state that she told him she was 15, and he replied, ‘No one has to know.’

She said the man had returned her to the library that day, and she was able to escape after saying she had to go to the bathroom.

Police went to the library and identified a suspect as 23-year-old Nicholas Matthew Tull.

The girl was a runaway and said she met Tull at the library three days earlier, where he offered to give her shelter in exchange for sex. When they went to a nearby hotel, he allegedly kept her against her will and sexually assaulted her for three days.

Tull was arrested, and the girl was treated at a medical center. She also underwent sexual-assault testing.

Court records state that she told him she was 15, and he replied, “No one has to know.”

Police said they were able to recover her purse from his property.

RELATED: Transient illegal alien equipped a ‘rape dungeon on wheels’ to attack women in mountains of California, police say

Court records show that Tull has been charged with three counts of first-degree rape, first-degree unlawful sexual penetration, three counts of first-degree sexual abuse, coercion, and luring a minor.

A local resident told KPTV-TV that there were a lot of problems at the library.

“I’ve noticed a lot of people on drugs, maybe houseless,” Lorenzo Stroud said. “I see a lot of problems, but I see the library people and the security doing a good job of de-escalating rather than being overly aggressive.”

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​Portland library rape, 15 year old raped, Runaway teen raped, Portland crime, Crime 

Jesus is the reason for the season, but more often than not, it’s Santa who takes front and center stage. A 2,000-year-old baby offering an intangible gift just can’t compete with the big, red-suited, jolly man and his sleigh full of toys in the mind of a child.

That’s one of several reasons Allie Beth Stuckey doesn’t do Santa with her three kids.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie presents a compelling case for ditching the man in the red hat and putting Jesus back on the throne of Christmas where He belongs.

Santa invites confusion

While Allie acknowledges that Santa is a “Christian liberty issue,” meaning “we have freedom as Christians to disagree,” she feels personally convicted to forgo the tradition to avoid confusing her children.

Santa “is a form of deceit,” she says.

“We want our kids to trust us … and it can cause this kind of dissonance or confusion in a child when we tell them that someone is real, is giving them gifts, is watching them … is taking a tally of the good deeds they do, the bad deeds they do … and then allocating gifts in accordance to their behavior — and then to tell them one day that that system of morality around Christmastime doesn’t exist,” she argues.

“I do believe that that causes, even if just for a moment, mistrust between the parent and child” and “confusion about what is actually true … about the mysterious and supernatural realm.”

But “causing mistrust through deceit” isn’t even the biggest issue, she says. Santa can also cause “theological confusion” in developing children.

Santa and God have a lot in common, Allie explains. Both see us when we’re sleeping, know when we’re awake, and know if we’ve been bad or good, but the key difference is Santa takes his gifts away when we fail to be good, whereas God, infinite in grace and mercy, does not dangle salvation as a carrot in front of us to keep us behaving.

Santa “is a legalistic form of Christ” and a “counterfeit form of God,” says Allie.

And then there’s the flip side of this pitfall. Children might view God as a kind of Santa Claus, who gives them material gifts in exchange for obedience or good deeds, turning Him from the perfect and holy king of kings and the savior of humanity into a “feel-good” bringer of happiness.

In either case, the similarities between the two figures can deeply confuse malleable children who are still learning to distinguish between fact and fiction, while simultaneously sowing distrust between them and their parents.

Santa distracts from Jesus

Allie’s second reason for ditching St. Nick is that he draws the focus away from Christ.

“Santa Claus is the one who will give you all of your immediate desires and will fulfill all of the temporary pleasure that you long for because he is giving you something in the form of a tangible gift. … It’s no wonder that we as people, but especially children, have such a hard time actually focusing on Christ — the real gift-giver,” she says.

To Santa sympathizers who argue that his mysterious nature “makes Christmas really magical” and stimulates children’s imaginations, Allie says that we can still foster imagination in our kids without lying to them.

And further, “The reality is that there is already a beautiful mystery of Christmas that no one truly understands,” she says. “We are natural people who were intersected by the supernatural when Jesus became Emmanuel, God with us, made flesh. That is the mystery of Christmas.”

“And so why would we create a counternarrative to that? A cheapened narrative, a legalistic narrative that gives all of the wrong lessons about morality and about what saves you and about what satisfies you and about what fulfills you?” she asks.

But Santa doesn’t just distract kids from the true Christmas story; he also distracts parents, who are stressed and spread thin trying to maintain the Santa narrative through elaborate gift displays, Elf on the Shelf, staging half-eaten cookies, and dodging pesky questions from their kids.

“It seems like when that starts to be the taker of our joy or the source of our stress and our energy and not discipling our kids and telling them what the advent, the coming of the Lord, actually means in their lives, well, then we have veered into idolatry,” Allie warns.

To hear the rest of her argument, as well as ways Christians can still incorporate Santa into their Christmas season without losing focus on what matters, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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Lee Strobel doesn’t mind those who question his midlife Christian conversion.

Strobel’s shift from an atheist to rock-ribbed Christian came to life in 2017’s “The Case for Christ.” The film, based on his life story, showed how Strobel’s efforts to debunk the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the legal editor of the Chicago Tribune had the opposite effect.

‘There is evidence that points — compelling [evidence] — to the truth of biblical miracles and contemporary supernatural encounters. I’m not afraid of that.’

He says his shoe-leather reporting confirmed the resurrection. Looking back, Strobel tells Align his change of heart ruffled some professional feathers.

“After I became a Christian at the Chicago Tribune, somebody told me later that they overheard somebody in the newsroom say, ‘What happened to Strobel? He became a Jesus freak, like, overnight,’” Strobel says, laughing.

Miracle miles

Now, Strobel is back on the big screen with “The Case for Miracles,” in select theaters Dec. 15-18 via Fathom Entertainment. The film finds Strobel and director Mani Sandoval hitting Route 66 in an old Ford Bronco to swap stories and reflect on modern-day miracles.

Among the most poignant? A young woman with severe multiple sclerosis who is able to leave her hospice bed following a crush of community prayers.

It’s part travelogue, part documentary, and Strobel only wishes he had time to share even more remarkable stories on-screen.

“We had to leave out so many good ones. … We had another case documented by medical researchers … a guy who was healed from a paralyzed stomach,” he says. “He was prayed for, felt an electric shock go through him, and for the first time was able to eat normally.”

“He’s fine to this day,” he adds. “It’s the only case in history of its kind of [someone] spontaneously healed from this stomach paralysis.”

Meeting in the middle

Strobel says the film offers two very different perspectives on modern-day miracles given the key players involved.

“Mani grew up in a Pentecostal home. There was an anticipation that the miraculous would take place,” he says. “I was an atheist [growing up].”

The film is based on Strobel’s 2018 book of the same name, but he hopes the Fathom Entertainment release reaches a broader audience beyond his loyal readers.

“I think that cinema is the language of young people,” he says. “If we want to share this account, this evidence of the miraculous with a young generation, what better way than on the big screen? Among younger people, there’s something about a film that register deeply with them. … We should seize opportunities to communicate to those outside the faith.”

RELATED: Lee Strobel’s top supernatural stories to challenge your atheist friends

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Creative control

And the timing couldn’t be better. Faith-friendly films and TV shows are all the rage in today’s pop-culture landscape. Think the groundbreaking series “The Chosen,” along with the upcoming “Passion of the Christ” sequel from Mel Gibson.

Both Netflix and Prime Video are producing faith-friendly content, and recent hits like “Jesus Revolution” flexed the power of spiritual stories.

“It satisfies me on a creative level when I see films that deal with very important topics, like the existence in God, in a way that’s creative and that aren’t going to make people cringe but sit forward in their seat and anticipate what’s coming next,” he says.

And that creative explosion has only begun, Strobel predicts.

“In three, four, or maybe five years, we’re gonna see stuff where we say, ‘Oh, I never thought of doing that,’” he says of the genre.

The incredible made credible

Strobel isn’t a filmmaker by trade. He’s a busy writer, having penned more than 40 books that have been translated into 40 languages.

Strobel, like the late Charlie Kirk, doesn’t mind interacting with skeptics on- or off-screen. He welcomes it. The book on which “The Case for Miracles” is based starts with an extended dialogue with noted atheist Michael Shermer.

Strobel eventually befriended Shermer, who has a cameo in the film version of “Miracles.”

“I let him have his say,” he says of their early exchanges. Strobel is confident in his faith and the miracles he sees flowing through it.

“There is evidence that points — compelling [evidence] — to the truth of biblical miracles and contemporary supernatural encounters,” he says. “I’m not afraid of that.”

For Strobel, a miracle requires four key elements:

Solid medical documentation;Multiple, credible eyewitnesses who have no motive to deceive;A lack of natural explanation; andAn association with prayer.

Meet all four requirements, he says, “and maybe something miraculous is going on.”

Strobel doesn’t mind that some of his former colleagues may question his religious conversion. He’s comforted by the fact that he has company in that regard.

“I’ve seen so many journalists coming to faith. … I think God is stirring something in the culture right now,” he says.

​Faith, Abide, Entertainment, Lee strobel, Movies, Faith-based, Apologetics, Christianity, The case for miracles, Culture, Miracles, Align interview