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Young banker's suicide becomes twelfth in financial world this year


RT
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:38 UTC
Kenneth Bellando ()
© image from Facebook
A New York City investment banker is dead after allegedly jumping from his apartment building, continuing an alarming streak of suicides that has descended upon the financial world.

The latest death occurred on March 12, when 28-year-old Kenneth Bellando was found on the sidewalk outside his six-story Manhattan apartment building.

According to the Daily Mail, police investigators said the case was still under investigation, but that they do not suspect a third party to be involved and that Bellando - who had been working for Levy Capital since January - likely took his own life.

Before moving into his last position, the New York Post reported Bellando worked as an investment banker at JP Morgan Chase. His brother, John Bellando, also works at JP Morgan as an investment officer; the Post stated that multiple emails by John Bellando were presented as evidence during Senate hearings regarding the "London Whale" trading scandal.

Kenneth Bellando's death now marks the 12th time this year that an employee in the financial world has taken his or her own life around the globe. Bellando graduated from Georgetown University in 2007, and is the youngest banking professional to commit suicide this year.
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Cut

After the Crimea referendum Catalonia is getting ready to divorce Spain

Artyom Kobzev
Voice of Russia
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 14:45 UTC
Catalonian independence
© EPA
The referendum in Crimea is the first plebiscite in Europe dedicated to the issue of independence scheduled to take place this year. After Crimea, Scotland and Catalonia are planning to declare their right to self-determination. Enrique Ravello, a member of the Spanish parliament, even took part in the Crimean referendum as an observer. Back in January 2013 the parliament of Catalonia adopted the Declaration of sovereignty of that autonomous region, which allowed its citizens to independently determine its political future.

When talking of the separatism in Spain, one thinks of the Basque people and their organization ETA, which has been responsible for a number of terrorist attacks. But they are not the only ones dreaming of getting from under Madrid's control. Over the past few years, Catalonians have started talking about their right to self-determination. However, unlike the Basque people, they are planning to use only peaceful methods to insist on that right. Catalonians refer to the cultural and linguistic differences between them and other citizens of the kingdom. Below is the commentary of Alexey Kuznetsov, head of the Center for European Studies at the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations.
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Saturn

Neil deGrasse Tyson is really starting to scare conservatives‏

Amanda Marcotte
Raw Story
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 10:10 UTC
Image
© Raw Story
The wingnut panic over the show Cosmos is incredibly amusing to me. It's understandable, because Neil deGrasse Tyson is really good at being clear and concise about science and he eviscerates right wing attempts to muddy the waters with precision. I particularly liked this quote from an interview on Inquiring Minds: "I claim that all those who think they can cherry-pick science simply don't understand how science works," because science, unlike theology or musical taste, isn't a matter of just taking what you like and leaving the rest behind. What is interesting - and threatening - about Cosmos is it asserts interconnectedness of science. Evolution and the "big bang" theory are inseparable, and knowing how old and vast the universe is makes it much, much easier to understand how evolution works.
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Megaphone

Whacko Fox News host Mike Huckabee: Abortion rights? Next will be Holocaust for old people‏

Eric W. Dolan
Raw Story
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 09:26 UTC
Image
© Raw Story
Fox News host Mike Huckabee warned last week that abortion rights could lead to a Nazi-style extermination of elderly people in the United States.

"The fact is we live in a country that has always valued the notion that every person has worth and value," the former Arkansas governor said at Susan B. Anthony List's 7th Annual Campaign for Life Gala. "And I want us to be reminded of what takes place when a country begins to devalue any group of its citizens for any cause whatsoever. Once the devaluation of a certain segment of the population occurs, whether it is because of gender, religion, race, creed, color - or the age of gestation - then anything is possible."

Huckabee said he visited the notorious Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz earlier this year.
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Cloud Lightning

Lunatic Christian radio host: God could smite Bill Maher, but He's Merciful‏

Travis Gettys
Raw Story
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 08:51 UTC
Image
God has every reason to smite comedian Bill Maher for his blasphemous criticism, said the religious-right broadcaster Bryan Fischer, but he's trying to give the outspoken atheist a chance to repent.

Maher declared God a "psychotic mass murderer" in an anti-religion rant Friday on his "Real Time" HBO program in a segment dedicated to the new, biblically inspired film, "Noah."

Fischer, who frequently rails against LGBT people and their supporters, if not demons, said Monday during his radio program that God had given Maher the freedom to say whatever he wanted, but He could - and possibly should - smite the comedian, reported Right Wing Watch.
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Arrow Down

Missouri cops force man to frame someone or face prison


Police State USA
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 12:07 UTC
Terry
© KMOV
Terry Robinson recorded police threatening to set him up.
St. Louis - A man has brought forth evidence that a team of police officers repeatedly intimidated him with prison time if he didn't find someone to frame up with a weapons charge.

Terry Robinson, 21, is currently on probation from a previous offense and working to stay out of trouble and finish school, according to KMOV. Should he get arrested again, he will face at least 9 years in prison. Police officers used his precarious position as a way to leverage him into being their pawn in setting up innocent people with undeserved charges.

It began when officers saw him in his neighborhood, cuffed him, and pretended to drive him to the police station. During the drive, they began to lay out their demands.

What they didn't know was that Robinson had access to his cell phone and initiated the recording feature.

Officers reportedly told Robinson that they intended to arrest someone on weapons charges and would plant a gun on someone if necessary. Robinson could either give up a name of someone who could be framed, or else the officers would plant a .38 caliber revolver on him and make sure he was sent to prison.
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Megaphone

Bulgarian man behind on his mortgage demolishes his house and dumps it at the bank


trueactivist.com
Thu, 27 Feb 2014 09:23 UTC
demolished home
© unknown
At the end of 2013, a man from Lovech-Bulgaria who could not afford to pay the mortgage for his house gave his last penny to demolish it right before the banksters took it away.

The land that the house was built on was not included in the mortgage so the family decided to destroy the house and give it to its new owner.

The remains of the building were loaded on a big truck and moved to the central district office of the bank in the city of Teteven, where the contract for the mortgage was signed.
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Question

Why were there no cellphone calls from Flight 370 passengers?

Keith Bradsher
The New York Times
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 08:08 UTC
flight 370 relatives
© Feng Li/Getty Images
Relatives of passengers who were traveling on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 watched a news conference at a hotel in Beijing on Monday
When hijackers took control of four airplanes on Sept. 11, 2001, and sent them hurtling low across the countryside toward New York and Washington, frantic passengers and flight attendants turned on cellphones and air phones and began making calls to loved ones, airline managers and the authorities.

But when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 did a wide U-turn in the middle of the night over the Gulf of Thailand and then spent nearly half an hour swooping over two large Malaysian cities and various towns and villages, there was apparently silence. As far as investigators have been able to determine, there have been no phone calls, Twitter or Weibo postings, Instagram photos or any other communication from anyone aboard the aircraft since it was diverted.

There has been no evidence "of any number they're trying to contact, but anyway they are still checking and there are millions of records for them to process," said Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, at a news conference on Monday.
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Arrow Down

UK living standards have fallen across the board since last election

Phillip Inman
The Guardian
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 08:00 UTC
George Osborne
© Dominic Lipinski/PA
Chancellor George Osborne will come under pressure before the Budget to make sure economic growth is translated into higher incomes

Households at every income level have seen their living standards fall since the last election, according to independent figures that put pressure on George Osborne to translate economic growth into higher incomes.

According to data from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, households at the top and bottom of the income scale are worst affected, but middle-income earners who pay the 40p tax rate suffer most when their wages increase.

As the chancellor puts the finishing touches to his Budget, the findings will add to the clamour from Tory backbenchers for a rise in the 40p threshold to exclude more middle-income families who are dragged into the higher rate tax band as their salaries rise.

New figures from the IFS's "green budget", a scene-setter for the chancellor's statement, reveal that stagnant wages, rising shop prices and austerity measures have hit the real incomes of all workers across the pay spectrum, supporting Labour's claims that all workers are worse off since 2010.

The detailed analysis contrasts with a study by Treasury officials, published on Tuesday, that found a majority of workers saw a boost to their real incomes in all but one of the last seven years.
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Bizarro Earth

If you didn't know it already: Industrial civilisation headed for irreversible collapse - NASA

Nafeez Ahmed
The Guardian
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 07:50 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

Comment: The only way this world can ever change is through knowledge of psychopathology, and a good understanding of how 'evil' operates. This knowledge has been severely lacking - by design, no doubt - throughout the previous few millenia, leading to the inevitable rise and fall of civilizations as a function of the concentration and power of the destructive parasites (referred to as "elites" in this study).

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