There's been a lot of talk in the western media about Russia's unfair repression of homosexuals, especially around the Olympic games.

It turns out that, like a lot of what the western media writes about Russia, this isn't really true, but that is a subject for another article.

We thought it would be interesting to listen to the author of the legislation herself. Her name is Elena Mizulina.

She sounds very much like a conservative American republican, talking about Christianity and family values.

She's very active on battling child pornography, is anti-abortion, and was a big supporter of the law outlawing profanity in the media.

A Kentucky firefighter has died, weeks after participating in an ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that went horribly wrong.

Electricity from a power line shocked four firefighters on a ladder as they sprayed water on a group of college students below who were trying to pull off the charity stunt.

Crews from the Fire and Rescue Department in Campbellsville were helping the Campbellsville University band with their video "Challenge" August 21.

Capt. Tony Grider died Saturday from burn-related injuries, according to dispatcher Mark Coker with the Campbellsville-Tyler 911 Center. The 41-year-old's body was driven, accompanied by an official escort, to his hometown of Columbia, Kentucky, and transferred to Grissom-Martin Funeral Home. There are no details yet about his funeral, Coker said.

Anti-Russia hysteria has made it easy for Americans to think that Putin and Russia are the bad guys in Ukraine. But people in the US are getting played.

Imagine in one of London's central districts, a Muslim group representing a significant section of the local community puts up notices before a street event telling women to confine themselves to one side of the road only. The posters, in Arabic and English, state: "Women should please walk along this side of the road only."

How much coverage in the UK media do you think this would receive? Would we see articles about Muslims trying to bring sharia law to the streets of London? Would commentators fall over themselves to decry Islam as a religion of extremism and intolerance? Would our media and politicians call on Muslim leaders to denounce such primitive practices?

From long experience, we all know the answer.

So how to explain the near-silence about exactly this happening last week in the London district of Hackney, except that religious Jews rather than Muslims were the party responsible. The Shomrim organisation put up the signs in preparation for the Torah procession in Stamford Hill. The posters (above) were removed after local residents complained.

In a field office near Brunswick, Ga., a federal agent working as an undercover cybersleuth signed on to a large file-sharing network sometimes used by traders in child pornography.

Using a law-enforcement computer program called RoundUp, the agent, Stephen D. Logan, scanned computer activity by the network's members in the state of Washington. He located a computer offering illegal photos and videos, and downloaded three files as evidence.

"There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn't the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors." - Professor Robert Gellately

If you see something suspicious, says the Department of Homeland Security, say something about it to the police, call it in to a government hotline, or report it using a convenient app on your smart phone.

(If you're a whistleblower wanting to snitch on government wrongdoing, however, forget about it - the government doesn't take kindly to having its dirty deeds publicized and, God forbid, being made to account for them.)

For more than a decade now, the DHS has plastered its "See Something, Say Something" campaign on the walls of metro stations, on billboards, on coffee cup sleeves, at the Super Bowl, even on television monitors in the Statue of Liberty.

Now colleges, universities and even football teams and sporting arenas are lining up for grants to participate in the program.

This DHS slogan is nothing more than the government's way of indoctrinating "we the people" into the mindset that we're an extension of the government and, as such, have a patriotic duty to be suspicious of, spy on, and turn in our fellow citizens.

This is what is commonly referred to as community policing. Yet while community policing and federal programs such as "See Something, Say Something" are sold to the public as patriotic attempts to be on guard against those who would harm us, they are little more than totalitarian tactics dressed up and repackaged for a more modern audience as well-intentioned appeals to law and order and security.

The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own policing.

After all, the police can't be everywhere. So how do you police a nation when your population outnumbers your army of soldiers? How do you carry out surveillance on a nation when there aren't enough cameras, let alone viewers, to monitor every square inch of the country 24/7? How do you not only track but analyze the transactions, interactions and movements of every person within the United States?

A former television reporter for an Anchorage, Alaska CBS News affiliate is for once making headlines instead of reading them announcing her resignation Sunday evening by saying live on air: "Fuck it, I quit."

Charlo Greene's unexpected sign-off came seconds after she finished playing her audience a report concerning the Alaska Cannabis Club - an organization that aims to establish connections between medical marijuana cardholders and suppliers in the Last Frontier State, where patients have been able to legally possess, use and grow small amounts of weed with a valid doctor's prescription since the passing of a ballot measure in 1998.

Greene was beginning to debrief KTVA viewers about the report during Sunday's program when she changed course and instead announced a previously unreported affiliation she has with the Cannabis Club - and then just as quickly quit live in the midst of the broadcast.


"Now everything you've heard is why I, the actual owner of the Alaska Cannabis Club, will be dedicating all of my energy toward fighting for freedom and fairness, which begins with legalizing marijuana here in Alaska," she said. "And as for this job, well, not that I have a choice but, fuck it, I quit."

A Brooklyn man has been arrested and charged with reckless endangerment for flying his GoPro-equipped drone too close to a New York Police Department helicopter.

The police helicopter was flying over Brooklyn as officers searched for a missing teenager early Wednesday morning. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) came within 50 feet of the aircraft.

"That's when the helicopter had to suddenly change course," police told CBS.

Local resident Isaac Rosa was then arrested for illegally operating the drone, which was outfitted with a GoPro camera. He was charged with reckless endangerment and obstructing government administration on Wednesday, CBS reported.

The man was later arraigned and released on a bail of $1,500.

"I am very disappointed that they are trying to make an example out of me," Rosa told the New York Post. "At the end of the day, this is not an illegal activity."

New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said at a swearing-in ceremony in July that he was concerned about the "terrorism component" regarding drones, raising concern over the idea of "somebody out there effectively joyriding with the drone."

It took a Louisiana mother six months to learn that police had killed her son during a scuffle. She believed he had died due to brain damage from chronic cocaine use. Now the FBI is investigating his death.

Robert Minjarez Jr. died in March, but it wasn't until the 11-page state forensic pathologist's report was released in August that his mother, Catherine Cortez, learned the truth about his death - which was ruled a homicide by the Lafayette Parish Coroner.

The month of March began with the 30-year-old leaving an emergency room against medical advice after being treated for Rhabdomyolysis, or muscle breakdown. The next day, a clerk at a Lafayette, La., gas station called police to report that Minjarez was standing outside the door, hallucinating, KATC reported.

Officers with the Scott and Carencro Police Departments, as well as deputies with the Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Office, responded to the call. Minjarez was cuffed at his hands and feet, then pinned to the ground by at least three cops, surveillance video showed.

Minjarez could be heard saying, "I didn't do anything, I didn't do nothing," the Louisiana Forensic Center's pathologist report said. Later, he "can be heard screaming, 'help, help, help me get them off, you're going to kill me... what the [expletive] did I do', followed by 'you're going to suffocate...' and "I can't breathe' [three] times."

Hundreds of activists marched in London on Sunday to protest against British involvement in Syria and Iraq, with many accusing the government of funding terrorist groups.

The activists, many of whom are Iraqi Kurds, accused the British government of supporting the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) by providing training and arms to Syrian rebels, many of whom are affiliated with the terrorist group.

Marching on Trafalgar Square, the group chanted 'Down with ISIS!' and 'Wake up, UK!' They also criticized the British government's close ties with Saudi Arabia, who they say are the primary funders of the Islamic State.

"ISIS terrorism has so far claimed the lives of thousands and thousands of people in the most violent and barbaric conditions," Memed, a Kurdish activist told Ruptly.