An explosion that destroyed a New York City home and killed a firefighter has drawn attention to marijuana-making methods that are legal in many states — but can also be lethal.

A New York fire battalion chief died responding to the blast Tuesday in a Bronx home that authorities say had been converted into an indoor marijuana farm. They're investigating whether the alleged growers tampered with gas lines and mishandled other materials in ways that caused the explosion.

Indoor marijuana farmers can create potential fire hazards by using natural gas, propane or butane to power carbon dioxide generators that make the plants grow. In recent years across the country, similar methods used to produce more potent marijuana extracts have resulted in explosions and other catastrophes.

So far, Donald Trump's plan to build a wall along the Mexican border is all talk. Last week, France and Britain actually began building one along theirs.

Construction started here on a roughly mile-long concrete barrier intended to separate a sprawling migrant camp from the tunnels that offer passage to Britain, the latest attempt in what has become a global effort to throw physical barriers in the way of historic streams of human ­migration.


From a razor-wire-topped border fence in Hungary to the sealed border of Macedonia and Greece to Trump's proposed wall , polarized societies across the world are finding that they can unite around keeping others at bay.

The "Great Wall of Calais," as the project is informally known, is considerably shorter than Trump's proposed partition of the United States and Mexico, but its message is much the same: Keep out. The concrete wall, which will rise to 13 feet, extends a fence near the sprawling Calais migrant camp known as the "Jungle," where more than 7,000 migrants have been stranded as they seek to enter Britain by all means possible. The concrete will be specially formulated to make it difficult to scale.

Footage of the shooting of Alfred Olango by police in a suburb of San Diego has been released by the El Cajon Police Department. Prior to this, the only evidence released had been a still from the video .

One video is a surveillance tape from the drive-thru of the restaurant. It shows Olango walking in the parking lot, moving quickly and pacing back and forth while officer Gonsalves remains close and pursues him.

All women attempting to enter a university should be forced to undergo a virginity test, the results of which would be submitted to their parents, an Egyptian MP has urged.

The lawmaker, Elhamy Agina, addressed the Egyptian Minister of Higher Education on Friday to issue a mandate making virginity tests obligatory for future female students.

In a rare and refreshing instance of a police officer striving to do the right thing, Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson is standing up against "the culture of the code of silence" between brethren in blue.

Following the discovery that seven police officers filed false reports in the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, Johnson is recommending for the days of paid administrative leave to be over, and that corrupt officers be outright fired. While these measures may seem drastic to some- former Chicago Police investigator turned attorney- Lorenzo Davis seems to agree: "We're trying to change the police culture - that culture has existed since before I was born - that culture of the code of silence. "How else can you finally change that without taking serious drastic measures?"

Just yesterday we wrote about an FBI investigation into potential voter fraud in the critical swing state of Virginia after it was revealed that 19 dead people had recently been re-registered to vote (see "FBI Investigating More Dead People Voting In The Key Swing State Of Virginia"). While the Washington Post caught wind of the investigation, it was not known who was behind the operation...until now.

Meet, Andrew Spieles, a student at James Madison University, and apparently "Lead Organizer" for HarrisonburgVOTES. According to the Daily News-Record, Spieles confessed to re-registering 19 deceased Virginians to vote in the 2016 election cycle.

While this should come as a surprise to precisely 0 people, Spieles just happens to be Democrat who, accorded to a deleted FaceBook post, apparently recently ran for Caucus Chair of the Virginia Young Democrats.

It's too bad really, sounds like Spieles had all the right "special talents" required to be very successful politician...he just forgot the most important first rule: "Don't get caught."

Somestimes it's a good idea just to give somebody a refund.

On Thursday a French Apple store refused to give one of its customers his money back, and boy did he get his revenge.

He went into the store with a steel ball and calmly began destroying iPhones and a Macbook Air while onlookers froze with shock.

He placed the smartphones flat on the table and smashed them with the ball, one after another.

In a video posted to YouTube, he speaks in French about his rights as a customer and said he was unhappy with how Apple handled his case.

Last week, the California ACLU released an alarming report about California law enforcement agencies' covert use of social media surveillance software. The report compiles records requested of 63 police departments, sheriffs, and district attorneys across the state. The ACLU found over 40% are using the software without any transparency or public disclosure. They also reported law enforcement officers may be using the social media surveillance software in a way that specifically targets activists of color.

The three primary pieces of software cited in the ACLU report are MediaSonar, X1 Social Discovery, and Geofeedia. These tools are marketed to law enforcement agencies as ways to keep track of protesters, particularly protesters and activists of color.

In one email from a Geofeedia representative to the San Diego Sheriff, the software is praised for its ability to aggregate"social media posts from the scene of Ferguson, Missouri."

Whatever the result is of this year's presidential election, fundamental issues broiling behind the scenes will no doubt prove the virtual powerlessness of the POTUS to bring about positive developments for the people of this nation and of the world.

The deep state machinery that controls our national destiny is much more powerful than the titular figurehead of the republic, which is why electoral debates will not address the fundamental issues driving us deeper into chaos, for the candidates are just as trapped as we are.

The wheels are already in motion for major hits to national and global stability, and whomever you choose to vote for, if you care to vote at all, prudence and common sense should compel you to prepare for what is unfolding behind the scenes of the election distraction.

1.) More Civil Unrest

In the last couple of years America has seen a drastic increase in civil unrest, protests, rioting and lawlessness. At present most of this is centered around the crimes of an increasingly callous and dangerous form of policing; yet as each new protest devolves into a riot, the specter of broader ideological and racial divisions among the populace are stoked by controlling interests such as George Soros, which means that violence will become more commonplace.

Preparation for civil unrest begins with the recognition that anything can happen anywhere at anytime, and one must abandon the tendency to ignore their surroundings carrying on as if this were business as usual. Self defense is still a right in America, but it does no good unless you seek out basic skills, tools, and situational awareness to protect yourself from mob violence. For those who've already found themselves embroiled in recent riots, the need for having a plan for sheltering in place, bugging out, or defending life and property is already very real.

In July 2016 the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin signed a law to ban the cultivation and breeding of genetically modified plants and animals (GMO), except in cases where they will be used in testing and scientific research. In fact, this law makes Russia the world's largest GMO-free territory and offers a great platform for the development of organic agriculture.

This decision made by the Russian government was also influenced by environmental organizations, farmers and other representatives of Russian society, concerned by the absence of reliable scientific studies on the long-term ('long-term' comes here with an emphasis) risks of GMO food to human health and the environment. The Kremlin has also apparently taken into consideration the interests of national food security, as the world market of genetically modified (GM) seeds is monopolized by transnational, mostly American, German and Swiss based companies.

Many European Union countries, unlike the U.S., have already applied restrictions on GMOs, similar to the ones implemented now in the Russian Federation. Only five EU countries (Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania) have been cultivating GM crops, but even they have begun to decrease the area of GM crop cultivation gradually.