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Fri, 29 Oct 2021
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Trader kills self in finance world's latest suicide

Manhattan trader committed suicide
© Riyad Hasan
Modal Trigger A Long Island Rail Road train pulls into the Jamaica station. A Manhattan trader committed suicide by leaping in front of a different train near Syosset Tuesday.

A Manhattan trader was killed Tuesday morning by a speeding Long Island Rail Road commuter train, marking at least the seventh suicide of a financial professional this year.

Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown's Vertical Group, jumped in front of an LIRR train at 6 a.m. near the Syosset train station.

He was declared dead at the scene.

Reilly's identity was confirmed by Salvatore Arena, an LIRR spokesperson, who said an investigation into the incident was continuing.

Passengers on the west-bound express train told MTA investigators they saw a man standing by the tracks before he jumped in front of the train, Arena said.

"Eddie was a great guy," Rob Schaffer, a managing director at Vertical, told The Post in an email. "We are very upset and he will be deeply missed."

The divorced father of three had rented a house around the corner from his ex-wife, Michelle Reilly, in East Norwich, NY.

One family friend, who said he spoke to the trader on Sunday, told The Post that Reilly "didn't look good."

Arrow Down

Florida trooper arrested a cop, then was stalked & harassed by the Thin Blue Line

Miami Cop_1
© Florida Highway Patrol dashcam
A Miami cop is arrested by a FHP trooper for excessive speeding.
Miami - After a Florida trooper showed integrity and equally applied the law to one of her fellow officers, she experienced months of harassment, invasions of privacy, and situations that felt so "life threatening" to her that she moved to another county. She has filed a lawsuit against over 100 cops named individually and over 200 that remain anonymous for their violations of the law and retributive actions against the honest cop.

On October 11th, 2011, Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Donna "Jane" Watts was patrolling her section of highway when she was passed by a marked police cruiser identified as belonging to Miami PD. The cruiser was traveling at break-neck speeds and was not using its emergency lights or sirens. Not giving the speeder a break because of his profession, D.J. Watts set off to get to the bottom of the situation.

Ambulance

Venezuelan doctors and medical students stage protest over hospital conditions

doctors protest venezuela

Doctors stage protest in Venezuela
Several hundred doctors and medical students protested conditions in Venezuela's hospitals Monday, citing shortages of medicines and critical supplies in the troubled oil-rich country. Related Stories

As police held back the demonstrators in the city's Plaza Venezuela, other health workers marched without incident through the center to the presidential palace in a government-organized show of support for President Nicolas Maduro.

The rival protests were the latest in an unresolved, nearly five-week-old crisis that has claimed the lives of at least 20 people.

Dollar

Bank Of America wants to charge people $5 for a currently free service

Bank of America sign
© PBS
Bank of America is offering you the chance to pay a fee for a service you may not know you already have.

The bank on Thursday launched a new kind of account, known as the "SafeBalance" account, which costs $4.95 a month and comes with no paper checks. Its major selling point is that it won't let you overdraw your account.

That sounds great in theory, especially if you're broke and can't afford to pay a $35 fee every time you're overdrawn. But if this is a luxury, it's one that anybody can afford -- and you don't need to pay $4.95 a month for it.

As the Consumerist blog points out, no one has to pay overdraft fees if they don't want to.

In a blow to the financial industry, the Federal Reserve in 2010 said that banks could no longer automatically charge customers huge fees for overdrawing an account balance on everyday purchases. Under the new rule, customers must opt in for what is called "overdraft protection," the service that charges you $35 every time you try to pay for a $2 cup of coffee with an overdrawn account. If you don't opt in, your card will simply be declined if you don't have enough money in your account to make a purchase.

Alarm Clock

New York homeless shelters housing record-high 53,000 people per night

Annual report from Coalition for the Homeless paints bleak picture but expresses hope for new De Blasio administration
Image
© Spencer Platt/Getty
A sign of a man panhandling for money on the streets of Manhattan.
The number of homeless people staying overnight in New York City shelters has eclipsed the record-high population reported last year, reaching an average of more than 50,000 people per night, according to a new study.

The annual report released Wednesday by the Coalition for the Homeless paints a bleak picture of the current state of homeless in New York City and offers a series of specific policy recommendations for new mayor Bill de Blasio.

In the past year, more men, women and children than ever before sought shelter, up 7% from 50,135 people in January 2013 to 53,615 people in January 2014. Another staggering figure: the number of homeless children sleeping in shelters has climbed 8% in the past year, with 22,712 children sleeping in homeless shelters in January 2014. And the average stay for homeless families with children stretched by two months to 14.5 months, another record high.

Bizarro Earth

Rampaging Indian elephant smashes up house but then 'saves crying baby trapped under debris'

Indian Elephant
© The Independent, UK
Animal allegedly rescued the infant after hearing her cries from under the debris.
A rampaging elephant smashed a house to bits in an Indian village, but turned back and rescued a baby trapped in the rubble, a couple have claimed. Dipak Mahato and his wife Lalita say a male elephant attacked their house in a village in West Bengal's Purulia district, but saved their ten-month-old daughter from beneath the debris.

Mr Mahato told The Times of India (ToI) his family were eating at about 8pm when they suddenly heard a "cracking sound" and crashing noises coming from the bedroom.

"We ran over and were shocked to see the wall in pieces and a tusker standing over our baby," he said. "She was crying and there were huge chunks of the wall lying all around and on the cot.

"The tusker started moving away but when our child started crying again, it returned and used its trunk to remove the debris."

Ms Mahato said they watched in amazement as the animal gently removed pieces of brick and stone that had fallen on her daughter.

"I can't believe that the tusker saved my daughter after breaking down the door and smashing a wall."

The child was taken to Deben Mahato Sadar Hospital and treated for external injuries, according to the newspaper. She is expected to make a full recovery.

Jhalda ranger Samir Bose told ToI the animal has damaged at least 17 houses in Mathadi, Kasidih and Ghoshra village areas.

Che Guevara

Breaking through the propaganda front: CNN's Christiane Amanpour interviews Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

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"Our people have public health guaranteed free of charge. Did you have that in the US?"

USA

U.S. government is attempting to police the world when it should be policing its own law enforcement agencies

Image
"I thought I had freedom of speech here," the man said to the police officer.
"You don't. You just lost it," the officer replied.
Once again, the U.S. government is attempting to police the world when it should be policing its own law enforcement agencies. We've got a warship cruising the Black Sea, fighter jets patrolling the Baltic skies, and a guided-missile destroyer searching the South China Sea for the downed Malaysia Airlines flight. All the while, back home in the U.S., our constitutional rights are going to hell in a hand basket, with homeowners being threatened with eviction for attempting to live off the grid, old women jailed for feeding crows, and citizens armed with little more than a cell phone arrested for daring to record police activities.

Robin Speronis now finds herself threatened with eviction from her own Florida home for daring to live off the grid, independent of city utilities such as water and electricity. City officials insist the Cape Coral resident's chosen way of life violates international property maintenance code and city ordinances. Mary Musselman, also a Florida resident, is being held in jail without bond for "feeding wild animals." The 81-year-old Musselman, on probation after being charged with feeding bears near her home, was arrested after officers discovered her leaving bread out for crows. Meanwhile, Brandy Berning of Florida was forced to spend a night in jail after recording her conversation with an officer who pulled her over for a routine traffic stop.

Welcome to the farce that passes for law and order in America today, where, as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, crime is low, militarized police activity is on the rise, and Americans are being penalized for living off the grid, feeding wild animals, holding Bible studies in their back yard, growing vegetables in their front yard, collecting rainwater, and filming the police.

Phoenix

Death row inmate Glenn Ford released 30 years after wrongful conviction

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Man found guilty of murder by all-white jury in deeply flawed trial had one of America's longest-ever waits for exoneration

Glenn Ford has been freed from the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana having lived under the shadow of the death sentence for 30 years. He becomes one of the longest-serving death row inmates in US history to be exonerated.

Ford was released on the order of a judge in Shreveport after Louisiana state prosecutors indicated they could no longer stand by his conviction. In late 2013 the state notified Ford's lawyers that a confidential informant had come forward with new information implicating another man who had been among four co-defendants originally charged in the case.

He was sentenced to death in 1984 for the murder the previous November of Isadore Rozeman, an older white man who ran a Shreveport jewellery and watch repair shop. The defendant had worked as an odd jobs man for Rozeman. In interviews with police Ford said that he had been asked to pawn a .38 revolver and some jewellery similar to that taken from Rozeman's shop at the time of the murder by another man who was among the initial suspects.

Asked as he walked away from the prison gates about his release, Ford told WAFB-TV, "It feels good; my mind is going in all kind of directions. It feels good."

Airplane

Missing Malaysian airplane: Why are the passengers' phones still ringing? - And much more

Image
© AP
Authorities are investigating the possibility that the pilot of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 committed suicide, the director of the CIA has revealed.

John Brennan, head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said: 'I think you cannot discount any theory', when asked if it was possible the pilot deliberately crashed the Boeing 777.

His intervention came as Malaysian police say they are carrying out psychological profiles of everyone on board the plane, which vanished on Saturday carrying 239 people after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.

The theory could offer an explanation as to how the plane 'disappeared' from civilian radar tracking its movements, as the pilot could simply have switched off the transponder shortly before it vanished.