Just a thought.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Insurance...*

When you take out a life insurance policy, you pay premiums in the expectation that when you die your spouse or your children will receive the benefit. But audits of the nation's leading insurance companies have uncovered a systematic, industry-wide practice of not paying significant numbers of beneficiaries.

The beneficiary never comes forward because he or she doesn't know the policy exists.

But the companies know, says Kevin McCarty, the insurance commissioner of Florida, who led the national task force investigating the industry.

The companies don't pay, unless a beneficiary makes a claim. Companies have actual knowledge in their files that people have died, yet they have neglected to initiate an investigation and pay the claim.

In a little-known series of settlements, 25 of the nation's biggest life insurance companies have agreed to pay more than $7.5 billion in back-death benefits. However, about 35 insurance companies have not settled and remain under investigation for not paying when the beneficiary is unaware there was a policy, something that is not at all uncommon.

You can't scam the Insurance companies, but the Insurance companies may be able to. Just a thought.

Mental...*

Mental illness cannot be blamed for terror attacks, experts say. The overwhelming majority of people with mental illness never turn violent. But mental health disorders may make some people more susceptible to extremist ideology, and in rare cases that ideology can lead to horrific acts.

"Terrorist acts are not caused by mental illness but mental illness can provide a background that's receptive to terrorist activity," said Dr. Raj Persaud, a psychiatrist and professor at London's Gresham College. ".

There's a higher rate of mental health issues among "lone wolf attackers" as opposed to people involved in a terrorist network.

"The driver in Nice is better thought of as a spree killer than a terrorist," French prosecutor said that searches of the computer showed he had a clear, recent interest in "radical jihadism" and that he had recently conducted internet searches for Islamic propaganda chants.

"No personality disorder will cause somebody to turn into a terrorist, But these extremist ideologies can suddenly begin to make sense to someone who is deeply disturbed and (may) rationalize all of their anger." Just a thought.

Loon Wolf...*

The relentless series of mass killings across the globe poses a challenge for experts. Terms like contagion and copycat killing apply in some cases, and in certain instances perpetrators' terrorist ideology intersects with psychological instability.

The coordinated assault on multiple targets in Paris, were elaborately planned operations. However, they may have contributed to some of the other attacks by troubled individuals with no established ties to the militant group.

J. Reid Meloy, a San Diego-based forensic psychologist, said some of the attackers appear to have identified with terror organization as an outlet for their own seething emotions.

"In virtually every one of these cases, there was a deeply held personal grievance - loss, anger, humiliation," Meloy said. "When they come across terror group material, they're stimulated by that. They can take their personal grievance worldwide."

Two different syndromes could be surfacing in the series of attacks - contagion, in which one attack rapidly inspires imitation attacks, and copycat incidents, in which an individual seeks to emulate a previous perpetrator.

In Germany the deadliest of four recent attacks was carried out by an 18-year-old German-Iranian who killed nine people in Munich. Police said the young man had researched previous mass attacks, including the rampage in Norway that killed 77 people exactly five years before the Munich attack.

The attacker who killed 84 people in Nice, France, by driving through a holiday crowd was described as a psychologically troubled and violent man, not linked directly to any terror group. But what had been a history of domestic violence and petty crime took on darker implications with his decision to use a truck as a killing machine.

Max Abrahms, a terrorism analyst who teaches political science at Northeastern University, has been using the term "loon wolf" to depict individuals whose attacks are as much the product of mental instability as of any form of radical ideology.

"Historically, governments were looking for people who seemed to be undergoing radicalization," he said. "Now, we're looking at people committing similar acts, but in some cases with no evidence they were being radicalized and maybe were being driven by mental instability." Just a thought.

Disgraced...

In 1996, he was diagnosed with a potentially fatal metastatic testicular cancer. After his recovery, he founded the Livestrong Foundation to assist other cancer survivors.

Returning to cycling in 1998, he was a member of the US Postal/Discovery team between 1998 and 2005, when he won his Tour de France titles, as well as a bronze medal in the 2000 Summer Olympics.

The disgraced former cyclist agreed to pay the US government $5m and $1.65m to Landis after being accused of “actively concealing the [US Postal Service] team’s violations of the agreements’ anti-doping provisions”

Cyclingnews have revealed that Armstrong will have any accreditation request rejected due to his lifetime ban from cycling for doping, which saw him stripped of all seven Tour de France titles in what remains the biggest scandal ever seen in cycling.