The president of American Express died on board a plane bound for New York City on Friday.

According to the company, Ed Gilligan became seriously ill on a flight home from Tokyo and passed away. No other details about the incident were immediately released.

The 55-year-old, life-long company employee was returning from a business trip on a corporate jet.

In a letter to employees Chief Executive Officer Ken Chenault stated: "This is deeply painful and frankly unimaginable for all of us who had the great fortune to work with Ed, and benefit from his insights, leadership and enthusiasm. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife, Lisa, and their four children - Katie, Meaghan, Kevin and Shane. He was a proud husband and father, and his love for his family was evident in all that he did."

Gilligan started as an intern at the company 35 years ago. He became Vice Chairman in 2007 and President in 2013.

The company plans a memorial service for employees to share their memories of Gilligan. Details were still being worked out.

After Judy Jean Caquias died in Rikers Island custody last year, her youngest sister received a box from her old apartment with all of her personal belongings. Her whole life distilled into a pile of odds and ends: pictures of family, old papers from school, an iron-on patch of a woman with a rainbow flag flying. Yankees memorabilia, an Obama sticker, a political flier: "Demand housing for the homeless." A program for a community play she'd been cast in, and on the cover, a picture of her as a sad clown holding an American flag. And photos of herself: a grainy selfie she took in her bedroom wearing a gray tank top and gold chain, with close cut gray hair and reading glasses. Another where she's a little thinner, in a white baseball cap and gray hoodie, eyebrows raised and mouth slightly open as if she's about to say something.

On May 6 of last year, Caquias — who everyone knew as Jackie — was incarcerated at Rikers on a years-old warrant for having missed drug court dates. She was a tough lady at 61, according to the defense lawyer in her criminal case. But she had a history of liver disease, including a bout of Hep C, and in her 20s and 30s she had been addicted to heroin, which can also cause liver damage. Jackie had done time before on drug-related charges — but that was long ago. "She was very frightened of spending time in jail after all that time out," her former lawyer Ilissa Brownstein says.

On Jackie's second day at the Rose M. Singer Center, the island's only women's facility, the medical clinic ran lab tests that showed Jackie's liver was severely stressed. Blood work two weeks later showed the same. Yet the doctors at Rikers didn't send Jackie to a gastroenterologist for a liver exam. Instead, they prescribed her Tylenol 3 and iron, both dangerous for people with liver problems. The Tylenol 3 was discontinued after a week, but even after medical staff ordered the iron be stopped, the pharmacy continued dispensing it. Less than a month after Jackie arrived at Rose M. Singer, her system began to fail. She grew disoriented and delusional, and began vomiting so severely that blood and bodily tissue came up — all signs of acute liver failure. On June 25, 2014, after spending weeks in Elmhurst Hospital comatose and hooked up to machines, Jackie died. This according to a proposed amended notice of claim for a lawsuit to be filed this summer by her sister Daria Widing, and an analysis of health records by the medical expert hired for the case. The lawsuit, which will seek $20 million in damages, will charge that negligence by the City of New York contributed to Jackie's death.

Disturbing window into the mentality of ex-NYPD officers

Three former NYPD police officers discussed the murder of a 14-year-old gang member on Facebook and the exchange was awful as one could expect, according to an exclusive report by Mic News.

When 14-year-old Christopher Duran left his home in the Bronx for school last Friday morning, a red bandana-wearing gunman shot him to death. Former police officer and current CNN contributor Thomas Verni posted a New York Post story of Doran's murder on his Facebook page, where the three former cops basically blamed the young boy for his own death.

Here is exchange, per a screenshot captured by Mic News:
Yep, these men once wore the uniform and had the authority to arrest (and shoot) New Yorkers.

Congolese expert Jean-Jacques Muyembe may be little known to the public, but he has been one of the world's top Ebola investigators since the first epidemic erupted in central Africa in 1976.

Now, amid a decline in a west African outbreak that has taken more than 11,000 lives, Muyembe warns that Ebola will strike again in the future and that the deadly virus poses "a threat to the whole world".

Muyembe studied medicine in Kinshasa and at the University of Leuven in Belgium. He returned home to the Democratic Republic of Congo -- then known as Zaire -- in 1976, when the northern village of Yambuku was struck by a mysterious disease.

"They said many people were dying, and the health ministry asked me to go investigate," Muyembe told AFP.

He initially thought it could be a case of typhoid fever but he decided to continue investigating until he got to the bottom of it.

"I drew blood, and had no protective gloves or clothing," Muyembe said.

Accompanied by a Belgian nun suffering from fever, he returned from Yambuku to Kinshasa.

It was her blood samples, shipped in a makeshift cooler to the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, that enabled scientist Peter Piot to identify the worm-looking virus for the first time.

In a few days, the chairman of the Palestinian Football association will head off to a regional meeting of Arab states to organize an effort to expel Israel from FIFA as well as the International Olympic Committee due to treatment of Palestinian footballers under occupation. Meantime, Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation, has followed up on his first damning expose with another riveting article on Israel's targeting of Palestinian soccer players.

"A Red Line for FIFA? Israel, Violence and What's Left of Palestinian Soccer" is a full throttle appeal for investigation. First advising US spokesperson Jen Psaki to follow up on the situation (as we noted here), Zirin then directs his focus on his own profession, sports journalists.

He reveals that the response to his last article was "overwhelmingly hostile". Some of Zirin's professional colleagues made accusations against him, doubting not only his reporting of the attacks, but the very concept that Palestinian athletes were ever targeted. And that doubt stemmed from the assumption his sources were (merely?) Palestinian. This is some radical racism:

Amid reports of US federal aircraft flying mysterious flight paths over American cities, new sightings of a strange, low-flying plane over Minneapolis has reinvigorated suspicions of government surveillance.

On Wednesday, an investigation conducted by civil liberties activists noticed a series of unexplained flight patterns in the skies above New York City, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, and Seattle. Using the publicly available website flightradar24.com, activists also noticed flights over Minneapolis.

On Thursday night, more unexplainable flights were observed over the Twin Cities.

"I thought, 'Holy crap'," John Zimmerman told the Star Tribune after he and his fellow aviation enthusiasts witnessed a small plane flying low over the city in incoherent patterns. It made repeated circles over downtown, the Mall of America, and Southdale Center for over four hours.

A 7-months pregnant singer and her 23-month-old were kicked off of their United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Vancouver because the toddler was crying.

Singer Sarah Blackwood is currently on tour and travelling with her young son who became restless after boarding. The flight crew reportedly told the young mother to "control your child" while waiting for takeoff on the runway Wednesday.

Up to 4,200 migrants sailing across the Mediterranean Sea were rescued by European ships on Friday, but 17 people died during the journey on unseaworthy boats. The number rescued in 24 hours appears to be one of the highest in recent years.

The 17 bodies were found on three inflatable dinghies, from which over 300 other migrants were rescued alive, the Italian Navy said on Twitter.

Friday's rescue operations were led by the Italian coastguard, and involved German and Irish naval ships working under the auspices of the EU's Frontex border agency.

A similar international maritime mission off the coast of Sicily on Thursday resulted in the rescue of over 700 migrants from Libya in six boats.

So far, the busiest days this year have been on April 12 when 3,791 migrants were rescued and the May 2 rescue of 3,690 people.

Over 40,400 boat migrants, many of them fleeing poverty and conflict-stricken countries such as Syria and Eritrea, have arrived in Italy since the start of the year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

New statistics gathered by IOM confirm 2015 appears to be "an even deadlier year than 2014," when nearly 3,300 migrants perished trying to enter Europe. While last year the number of migrants dying in all Mediterranean crossings from January to April was 96, this year's toll is an estimated 1,770 so far through to April 30, IOM said.

EU ministers have approved plans for a military operation to fight people smugglers in the Mediterranean. Proposals to destroy traffickers' boats in Libyan waters still need UN approval, however. The European Commission plans to make the rest of the 28-nation EU share the burden of frontline, brunt bearing states such as Italy, Greece and Malta, although some countries, the UK among them, are against the plan.

An Orange County school district is using new software to spy on their students social media accounts, to "help prevent crime". Students are calling the efforts an invasion of privacy.

The school district has obtained a new social media program called SnapTrends, which will allow them to monitor student's Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare, Vine, and Instagram accounts when used on campus.

The software works by looking for keywords being used within a predetermined area based on GPS locations. The social media conversations can be monitored in real-time as they stream in and a security team can zoom in on users it views as influential.

"This information builds a clear view of social conversations when and where they unfold, the influencers driving those conversation, and why; ultimately giving you the ability to make more informed decisions and take more effective actions." the SnapTrends website explains.

The district claims that they will be using the software to prevent and stop cyber bullying, keep an eye out for students who are a risk to themselves or others, as well as criminal activities. They will receive assistance from local law enforcement in monitoring their students.

When questioned about privacy concerns, Orange County Public Schools Senior Director of Safety and Security Doug Tripp ignores that issue and just reiterates that it is to "protect our children." These privacy issues come at a time when Southern California schools have also been under scrutiny for their militarized school police forces.

The nearby Los Angeles School Police Department had received an MRAP via the Department of Defense 1033 program and was pushed to return it after a wave of harsh criticism. They have also been in possession of three grenade launchers since 2001, and 61 M-16 assault rifles. San Diego School Police are also in possession of an MRAP.

Seattle city parks are closer to going tobacco free.

City parks department commission on Thursday approved a ban set to take effect July 1.

The ban would expand a current city ordinance which bans "smoking, chewing, or other tobacco use...within 25 feet of other park patrons and in play areas, beaches, or playgrounds."

Several major cities have already adopted a parks-wide smoking ban including Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.

"We think protecting people from secondhand smoke, which there is no safe level of secondhand smoke, makes sense," Parks and Recreation acting Superintendent Christopher Williams has said. "It makes sense for us to be doing this as a parks and recreation department."