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A sign? Banker suicides return: JPMorgan executive "blasts wife, kills self" with shotgun

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge.com
Thu, 10 Jul 2014 13:17 UTC
The end is near
With Russia and China having briefly taken over the hub of global executive suicides, the sad trend has returned back to America. In what appears to the 15th financial services executive suicide this year, yet another JPMorgan Director took his own life. As IBTimes reports, Jefferson Township (New Jersey) police report that the Global Network Operations Center Executive Director, "Julian Knott, age 45, shot his wife Alita Knott, age 47, multiple times and then took his own life with the same weapon." They are survived by 3 teenage children...

As IB Times reports,
JP Morgan executive director Julian Knott blasted his wife Alita to death with a shotgun before turning the gun on himself.

The 45-year-old, who worked for the investment bank in London until July 2010, shot his 47-year-old wife multiple times before committing suicide with the same weapon.
...
Julian moved to the United States from London in 2010 and was working at JP Morgan's Global Network Operations Center in Whippany, New Jersey, at the time of the tragedy.
...
Jefferson Township police, in New Jersey, confirmed on Sunday they had found two unconscious bodies at the Knotts' large suburban home at 1.12am.

A statement released on Tuesday added: "Through an extensive investigation conducted by the Jefferson Township Police Department, the Morris County Prosecutors Office and the Morris County Medical Examiner's Office the preliminary investigation has revealed that the two adults died as a result of gunshot wounds and the incident has been determined to be a murder/suicide.

"This preliminary investigation revealed that Julian Knott, age 45, shot his wife Alita Knott, age 47, multiple times and then took his own life with the same weapon."
...

Comment: Related? Protect your assets: Bank false flag event may be coming soon

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Stock Up

The Guardian's publishing of NSA spying revelations helps reduce overall losses in earnings

Katrina Bishop
CNBC
Tue, 08 Jul 2014 13:17 UTC
Edward Snowden
© Unknown
American "Whistleblower" Edward Snowden
The sensation sparked by the revelations of ex-NSA employee Edward Snowden on the level of covert online monitoring by the U.S. online helped narrow losses at the publisher of the U.K.'s Guardian and Observer newspapers.

Guardian News & Media, which publishes the two newspapers and theguardian.com, reported a £30.6 million ($52.3 million) loss in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization over the year to the end of March. This marked an uptick from the £33.8 million loss posted the previous year.

It's been quite a year for the media group, which won the highest accolade in U.S. journalism - the Pulitzer Prize - for its coverage of the NSA's surveillance activities, based on the leaks by Edward Snowden. After breaking the story, the Guardian worked together with The New York Times and ProPublica to report news from the leaked documents.
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Cow

Cow rampages through town, tosses cop aside and tramples over cop car


KOMO News
Tue, 08 Jul 2014 13:05 UTC
Image
Police in Mount Vernon, Wasington killed an agitated Angus cow that rampaged through town, tossing a police officer into the air and tap-dancing on a patrol car.

The Skagit Valley Herald reports that police spokeswoman Shannon Haigh says the cow apparently escaped from a farm outside the city limits. It was first reported in a Wal-Mart parking lot last Friday.

Haigh says the cow slipped past city police and Skagit County sheriff's deputies who tried to keep it out of the street and away from a nearby wedding.

When officers tried to catch it a few blocks away, Haigh says it charged an officer, tossing him into the air. He was sore, but not seriously hurt. The cow escaped again by jumping on the hood of a patrol car, trotting across it and running off.

Haigh says police and the cow's owner finally agreed it might need to be killed to prevent further injury or damage. An officer shot the animal.

Comment: Considering all the police brutality incidents in the news lately, one can hardly blame the cow for being a little suspicious about the cop's intentions and high-tailing it out of there.

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Gold Bar

Protect your assets: Bank false flag event may be coming soon


Survivalbackpack.us
Tue, 08 Jul 2014 00:00 UTC
crowd in front of bank
© fofoa.blogspot.com
The 21st Century Bank Run
Wall Street's biggest trade group has proposed a government-industry cyber war council to stave off terrorist attacks that could trigger financial panic by temporarily wiping out account balances, according to an internal document.

The proposal by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, known as Sifma, calls for a committee of executives and deputy-level representatives from at least eight U.S. agencies including the Treasury Department, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, all led by a senior White House official.

The trade association also reveals in the document that Sifma has retained former NSA director Keith Alexander to "facilitate" the joint effort with the government. Alexander, in turn, has brought in Michael Chertoff, the former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, and his firm, Chertoff Group.

The document sketches an unusually frank and pessimistic view by the industry of its readiness for attacks wielded by nation-states or terrorist groups that aim to "destroy data and machines." It says the concerns are "compounded by the dependence of financial institutions on the electric grid," which is also vulnerable to physical and cyber attack.

Comment: As the US economy continues its downfall, the pathocrats will be looking for creative ways to grab cash. As the 'terrorist' theme has been working well, it is likely that this Bill is a warning of what may come.

Banks have almost zero cash: Be prepared to lose your savings

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People

Myths of crowd wisdom: When crowd decision-making goes wrong


BBC
Tue, 08 Jul 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Thinkstock
Are the many wiser than the few? Phil Ball explores the latest evidence on what can make groups of people smarter - but can also make them wildly wrong.

Is The Lord of the Rings the greatest work of literature of the 20th Century? Is The Shawshank Redemption the best movie ever made? Both have been awarded these titles by public votes. You don't have to be a literary or film snob to wonder about the wisdom of so-called 'wisdom of the crowd'.

In an age routinely denounced as selfishly individualistic, it's curious that a great deal of faith still seems to lie with the judgement of the crowd, especially when it can apparently be far off the mark. Yet there is some truth underpinning the idea that the masses can make more accurate collective judgements than expert individuals. So why is a crowd sometimes right and sometimes disastrously wrong?

The notion that a group's judgement can be surprisingly good was most compellingly justified in James Surowiecki's 2005 book The Wisdom of Crowds, and is generally traced back to an observation by Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton in 1907. Galton pointed out that the average of all the entries in a 'guess the weight of the ox' competition at a country fair was amazingly accurate - beating not only most of the individual guesses but also those of alleged cattle experts. This is the essence of the wisdom of crowds: their average judgement converges on the right solution.

Comment: See also: Need an Expert? Try the Crowd

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2 + 2 = 4

US for-profit colleges engaging in predatory practices and misleading students finally called to task

Anya Kamenetz and John O'Connor
NPR
Tue, 08 Jul 2014 00:00 UTC
Everest College
© Jeramey Jannene/Flickr
Corinthian operates colleges and training programs under the names Everest College, Heald, WyoTech, and QuickStart Intelligence. This location is in Milwaukee.
Under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, Corinthian Colleges will put 85 of its U.S. campuses up for sale and close the remaining dozen. The for-profit college chain operates campuses under the names Heald, Everest and WyoTech. It has more than 70,000 students across North America. It's the largest-ever college, by enrollment, to be shut down in this way.

It all started in January when the U.S. Department of Education asked the company to provide detailed records, including Social Security numbers, job placement results, and attendance and grade changes, of students. This was part of compliance with federal regulations designed to make sure that colleges that don't offer a good value to students, don't get student aid money.

When Corinthian didn't fully respond, in June, the Department of Education placed a three-week hold on financial aid payments to Corinthian. The cash freeze was a big problem for the college, which had underlying financial difficulties. Inside Higher Ed reported in May that the college faced closing off or selling its business, with both enrollment and revenue slumping.

Comment: It's timely that these colleges are being scrutinized for practices that are clearly not in the best interests of the students. These for-profit colleges receive much of their revenues from federal financial aid: student loans, Pell grants and military educational benefits. Yet students often fare poorly, dropping out in large numbers and defaulting on federal loans at double the rate of their counterparts at public institutions. At the same time the executives of these companies are receiving huge salaries based only on profitability with no link to the success of the student body.

Predatory For-Profit Colleges Pay Executives Based On Corporate Profitability, Not Student Outcomes

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Quenelle

After 6 years! 38 journalist groups in US protest against suppression of media by White House


Voice of Russia
Thu, 10 Jul 2014 10:37 UTC
White House
© Flickr.com/Chris Oakley/cc-by
38 journalism groups in the US have sent a message addressed to President Barack Obama expressing protest against the "politically-driven suppression of news and information" about the activities of the American authorities. According to the capital's online newspaper The Washington Examiner, this is an unprecedented criticism of the White House.

It is particularly significant because immediately after coming to power, Obama promised to make his government the most transparent one in American history.

"You recently expressed concern that frustration in the country is breeding cynicism about democratic government," the authors of the letter to the owner of the White House write. "You need look no further than your own administration for a major source of that frustration - politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies. We call on you to take a stand to stop the spin and let the sunshine in."

The journalists specifically complain that in all branches of the US government officials were banned from communicating with them, especially "on the record," that their questions and requests for interviews regularly remain unanswered, and that judiciary journalists were even included in departmental black lists.

Comment: The journalists who are now writing this polite letter to the White House were silent for almost 6 years about the current administrations: drone wars, support to terrorists in Syria, war on Libya, propping up of the mafia banking sector, support for GMO, continued creation of the police state, support for extra-judicial assassinations, regime change in Ukraine, slaughtering of the middle class, support for torture, illegal detentions, massive surveillance on everybody, destruction of health care and education and the list goes on.

In fact these same journalists have for the most been active in selling the US foreign policy and the creation of the fascist police state that the US has morphed in to.

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Pistol

Yet again! Six people dead following mass shooting outside Houston


RT
Thu, 10 Jul 2014 02:33 UTC
Houston shooting
© Unknown
At least six people, including several children, were killed during a shooting near Houston, Texas on Wednesday. The suspect surrendered after a three-hour standoff with police.

According toABC News, the gunman shot seven people in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas. Six people were reportedly killed, including four children, though Harris County police originally reported that five children had died.

The incident began Wednesday afternoon, when an alleged domestic dispute escalated into a violent episode that left three children and two adults dead at the scene by the time police arrived. A child and mother both survived the initial attack and were airlifted to a local hospital. The child has since passed away, while the mother is still battling for her life.

Comment: What would the police have done in the past without these humvee military trucks? Obviously they are needed, don't you see?

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Heart - Black

Pastor, church members plead guilty to beating 13-year-old boy


Los Angeles Times
Wed, 09 Jul 2014 20:56 UTC
Lonny Lee Remmers, pastor
© CBS Los Angeles
Lonny Lee Remmers, pastor of Heart of Worship Community Church in Corona, is seen in court in 2012. He and two members of the church pleaded guilty Monday to state charges of beating and threatening the life of a 13-year-old boy.

Caitlin Owens Crime Pastor, two members of Corona church plead guilty to charges of beating a 13-year-old boyPastor,two church member drove 13-year-old boy to desert and forced him to dig his own grave

The pastor and two members of a Corona church pleaded guilty Monday to state charges of beating and threatening the life of a 13-year-old boy, who was forced to dig his own grave, authorities said.

Lonny Lee Remmers, 56, Nicholas James Craig, 24, and Darryll Duane Jeter Jr., 30, tortured the boy in the church-run group home where he lived, according to a witness report in affidavits for search warrants.
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Binoculars

UK moves to legalize mass surveillance

Nadia Prupis
Common Dreams
Wed, 09 Jul 2014 18:56 UTC
Mass Surveillance
© Daniela Hartmann/Flickr/Creative Commons
The UK government is pushing to pass an emergency law that would allow for storing and tracking the public's phone calls, text messages, and internet use.

The bill, which is set for inter-party reforms later this week and is expected to pass, was created as a response to alleged domestic terrorism threats - although the validity of these threats and the likeliness of an attack are uncertain.

Recruitment propaganda and videos of alleged war crimes by British citizens in Syria that surfaced on social media this year have helped fuel speculation and reports of radicalization on the home front. However, former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove said Tuesday that recent fears of extremism in the West have been overblown by governments and media, with most terrorist activity having been refocused into the Middle East.

The bill closely resembles a previous plan, proposed in 2012 by Home Secretary Theresa May, that would have required telecommunications companies to retain detailed information about their customers' phone calls and internet use for up to 12 months. The proposal, called the Communications Data Bill, was dropped in 2013 after its tactics were deemed invasive and disproportionate by opposing members, including Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

Before being vetoed, the plan became known as the "Snooper's Charter."

Ministers from the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats have promised not to let the new bill become an updated version of the old one. A Liberal source told the Guardian, "There is no question of a snooper's charter, watered down or otherwise, being introduced by this government."
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