It doesn't get any more Orwellian than this: Wall Street mega banks crash the U.S. financial system in 2008. Hundreds of thousands of financial industry workers lose their jobs. Then, beginning late last year, a rash of suspicious deaths start to occur among current and former bank employees. Next we learn that four of the Wall Street mega banks likely hold over $680 billion face amount of life insurance on their workers, payable to the banks, not the families. We ask their Federal regulator for the details of this life insurance under a Freedom of Information Act request and we're told the information constitutes "trade secrets."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the life expectancy of a 25 year old male with a Bachelor's degree or higher as of 2006 was 81 years of age. But in the past five months, five highly educated JPMorgan male employees in their 30s and one former employee aged 28, have died under suspicious circumstances, including three of whom allegedly leaped off buildings - a statistical rarity even during the height of the financial crisis in 2008.

There is one other major obstacle to brushing away these deaths as random occurrences - they are not happening at JPMorgan's closest peer bank - Citigroup. Both JPMorgan and Citigroup are global financial institutions with both commercial banking and investment banking operations. Their employee counts are similar - 260,000 employees for JPMorgan versus 251,000 for Citigroup.

Both JPMorgan and Citigroup also own massive amounts of bank-owned life insurance (BOLI), a controversial practice that pays the corporation when a current or former employee dies. (In the case of former employees, the banks conduct regular "death sweeps" of public records using former employees' Social Security numbers to learn if a former employee has died and then submits a request for payment of the death benefit to the insurance company.)

Wall Street On Parade carefully researched public death announcements over the past 12 months which named the decedent as a current or former employee of Citigroup or its commercial banking unit, Citibank. We found no data suggesting Citigroup was experiencing the same rash of deaths of young men in their 30s as JPMorgan Chase. Nor did we discover any press reports of leaps from buildings among Citigroup's workers.

Given the above set of facts, on March 21 of this year, we wrote to the regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), seeking the following information under the Freedom of Information Act (See OCC Response to Wall Street On Parade's Request for Banker Death Information):

The number of deaths from 2008 through March 21, 2014 on which JPMorgan Chase collected death benefits; the total face amount of BOLI life insurance in force at JPMorgan; the total number of former and current employees of JPMorgan Chase who are insured under these policies; any peer studies showing the same data comparing JPMorgan Chase with Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup.

The OCC responded politely by letter dated April 18, after first calling a few days earlier to inform us that we would be getting nothing under the sunshine law request. (On Wall Street, sunshine routinely means dark curtain.) The OCC letter advised that documents relevant to our request were being withheld on the basis that they are "privileged or contains trade secrets, or commercial or financial information, furnished in confidence, that relates to the business, personal, or financial affairs of any person," or relate to "a record contained in or related to an examination."

The ironic reality is that the documents do not pertain to the personal financial affairs of individuals who have a privacy right. Individuals are not going to receive the proceeds of this life insurance for the most part. In many cases, they do not even know that multi-million dollar policies that pay upon their death have been taken out by their employer or former employer. Equally important, JPMorgan is a publicly traded company whose shareholders have a right under securities laws to understand the quality of its earnings - are those earnings coming from traditional banking and investment banking operations or is this ghoulish practice of profiting from the death of workers now a major contributor to profits on Wall Street?

As it turns out, one aspect of the information cavalierly denied to us by the OCC is publicly available to those willing to hunt for it. On March 24 of this year, we reported that JPMorgan Chase held $10.4 billion in BOLI assets at its insured depository bank as of December 31, 2013.

A rabbi of the United Kingdom, who fled to Israel after being charged with child rape, will be deported, the Israel Supreme Court has ruled.

48-year-old Todros Grynhaus of Salford, is set to stand trial in Manchester after the Israeli court ruled that he can be deported instead of being extradited.

Grynhaus fled last year after he was charged with seven sexual assaults on children. He was arrested in Jerusalem, after an international manhunt when he jumped bail on a false passport.

The fugitive hired two teams of Israeli lawyers to use all means to fight deportation, including trying to obtain Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.

A county court in Pennsylvania ruled against a widow who lost her house over a $6.30 late fee. The property was sold for $116,000 to cover the debt, in what the woman argued was an improper move by the authorities.

The home of Eileen F. Battisti, 53, was sold at a September 2011 tax sale to cover the paltry debt, which arose from an interest rate charge on Battisti's 2009 tax bill. Beaver County auctioned off the house, with an estimated value of $280,000, selling it for $116,000 to SP Lewis.

"I paid everything, and didn't know about the $6.30," she told AP. "For the house to be sold just because of $6.30 is crazy."

Battisti appealed the move, saying she didn't know she owed the past due charge until she was notified that her home would be sold. Beaver Country court initially denied her evidentiary hearings on the case, but Battisti turned to the Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg, which in August 2013 ordered the county court to review the case.

Last week, County Judge C. Gus Kwidis ruled against Battisti, saying she had been properly notified of her debt and that the sale followed state law. In his six-page order, the judge said the former homeowner is entitled to $108,039 in proceeds from the sale after her tax obligations are met.

"She's going to get that money, but she's going to lose her house. All the notice requirements were met," Kwidis said on Friday as cited by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "In tax assessment laws, even if I feel sorry for her, I can't do anything to help her. ... Everyone felt bad about it."

Battisti plans to appeal the ruling before the Commonwealth Court, she said.

Joe Askar, Beaver County's chief solicitor, said the judge got the decision right.

"The county never wants to see anybody lose their home, but at the same time the tax sale law, the tax real estate law, doesn't give a whole lot of room for error either," Askar said.

Gordon Lafer, a political economist and University of Oregon professor who has advised Congress, state legislatures, and the New York City mayor's office, landed at the airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, late last night bringing with him a briefing paper on school privatization and how it hurts poor kids.

Lafer's report, "Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids? Evaluating School Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin," released today by the Economic Policy Institute, documents the effects of both for-profit and non-profit charter schools that are taking over struggling public schools in Milwaukee.

"I hope people connect the dots," Lafer said by phone from the Milwaukee airport.

Lafer's research, commissioned by the Economic Policy Institute to evaluate the school-privatization push in Milwaukee, is a sweeping indictment of the growing private charter school industry -- and other schemes backed by rightwing groups and big business -- that siphon public funds out of public schools and enrich corporate investors at the expense of quality education for poor children.

The number of people dying in Denmark without a doctor's explanation as to why is on the up, recent statistics have shown.

Of the 52,000 who died in 2012, the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) death registry received no death certificate from doctors for 2,500 of them. This figure is almost three times higher than it was in 2002 and eight times what it was when the registry was established in 1994.

Vendsyssel Hospital senior consultant and pathologist Ulrik Baandrup said that fewer deceased persons are autopsied than in the past, explaining that because of this many doctors have less autopsy experience and therefore can be left with less knowledge about the causes of death.

Baandrup said that even when someone dies of natural causes, the reason should be "pinpointed" so preventative measures can be developed.

If the economy really is "getting better", then why are nearly 50 million Americans dealing with food insecurity? In 1854, Henry David Thoreau observed that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation". The same could be said of our time. In America today, most people are quietly scratching and clawing their way from month to month. Nine of the top ten occupations in the U.S. pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year, but those that actually are working are better off than the millions upon millions of Americans that can't find jobs.

The level of employment in this nation has remained fairly level since the end of the last recession, and median household income has gone down for five years in a row. Meanwhile, our bills just keep going up and the cost of food is starting to rise at a very frightening pace. Family budgets are being squeezed tighter and tighter, and more families are falling out of the middle class every single day. In fact, a new report by Feeding America (which operates the largest network of food banks in the country) says that 49 million Americans are "food insecure" at this point. Approximately 16 million of them are children. It is a silent epidemic of hunger that those living in the wealthy areas of the country don't hear much about. But it is very real.

John Goihl, a hog nutritionist in Shakopee, Minnesota, knows a farmer in his state who lost 7,500 piglets just after they were born. In Sampson County, North Carolina, 12,000 of Henry Moore's piglets died in three weeks. Some 30,000 piglets perished at John Prestage's Oklahoma operation in the fall of 2013.

The killer stalking U.S. hog farms is known as PEDv, a malady that in less than a year has wiped out more than 10 percent of the nation's pig population and helped send retail pork prices to record highs. The highly contagious Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus is puzzling scientists searching for its origins and its cure and leaving farmers devastated in ways that go beyond financial losses.

"It's a real morale killer in a barn. People have to shovel pigs out instead of nursing them along," Goihl said.

In Russia, prices on food products grow 40 times faster than in Europe, experts said.

Russia's Federal Statistics Agency, Rosstat, announced price growth details in the first quarter of 2014. According to him, food products become more expensive in Russia 40 times faster than in Europe. Experts explain such a significant difference with the ruble devaluation, as it is mainly imported products that become more expensive.

Currently, imported foodstuffs make up a lion's share of the range of Russian food stores. The main "culprits" of this trend are fruit and vegetable crops that Russia imports during cold seasons. Food prices also grow because of imported coffee, tea, dairy products, meat and fish.

The agency that controls US intelligence satellites failed to inform law enforcement when some employees and contractors admitted during lie detector tests to child abuse crimes, according to the intelligence inspector general.

The US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates surveillance satellites for the US intelligence community, was also found in other cases to have delayed reporting to authorities admissions of criminal activity uncovered during security clearance polygraph tests. Two inspector general reports released Tuesday found these delays possibly imperiled evidence in investigations or even endangered children.

In one case, an NRO legal counsel advised employees against reporting admissions by a government contractor of child molestation, viewing child pornography, and sexting with a minor, according to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General.

"Doubt we have enough to interest the FBI," the NRO's then-assistant general counsel told another agency official in an email, adding, "the alleged victim is fourteen years old and fully capable of calling the police herself."

The NRO employee reported the confession anyway, revealing that the girl was still in contact with the contractor who had admitted to the crimes. The US Department of Justice was not informed of the confession for nearly five weeks, according to McClatchy news service.

Overall, 30 individuals of the 30,000 who took the NRO polygraph tests from 2009 to 2012 confessed to child abuse or possessing child pornography, the inspector general found. The inspector general's office referred for investigation seven confessions related to child pornography or child abuse that the NRO failed to report.

Meanwhile, in some reported cases, delays as long as several months meant "individuals could continue the criminal activity or tamper with or destroy evidence in the interim," said the inspector general's office.

It's not just our kids getting too much screen time these days. Parents are also guilty of spending too much time on their electronic devices.

Researchers at the Boston Medical Center observed 55 different groups of parents and young children eating at fast food restaurants. The study found the majority pulled out their mobile devices right away, and, in turn, their kids tended to act up more.

"It's just normal childhood behavior," said parenting coach Toni Schutta. "If I can't get your attention in a positive way, I'm going seek it in a negative way."

Suzanne Ferguson, of Minneapolis, said she and her husband used to be smartphone addicts, checking their emails around their kids.

"We were the couple that would go out to eat at dinner and both be on our own phones before we had kids," she said. "We're very much attached to our phones."

Schutta says parents spend, on average, 11 hours a day using electronic devices. All that time takes away from face to face communication, which helps kids learn behavior.