Latest news with #seniorcitizen
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Woman claims fortuneteller who could ward off evil spirits made her $20,000 disappear
A Long Island man who claimed he could 'banish evil spirits' is now facing criminal charges after allegedly scamming a senior citizen out of tens of thousands of dollars, Nassau County police said. Hemanth Kumar Muneppa, 33, was arrested Thursday in the parking lot of a Hicksville bank, where authorities say he was attempting to get a 68-year-old woman to withdraw an additional $42,000 after previously convincing her to pay $20,000 for psychic services. According to investigators, Muneppa worked out of a psychic and astrology business called Anjana Ji on South Broadway, where he posed as a fortune teller and offered to 'purchase the power to fight evil spirits' on the victim's behalf. Police said the woman returned to the shop on Friday for further services, where Muneppa allegedly demanded another $42,000 and drove her to a nearby bank to retrieve the cash. Bank employees, concerned that the woman was being scammed, alerted police and officers arrested the so-called fortune teller at the scene. Muneppa, of South Richmond Hill, has since been charged with third-degree grand larceny, third-degree attempted grand larceny, and two misdemeanor counts of fortune telling - a rarely used statute in New York that criminalizes accepting money for spiritual services unless they are strictly for entertainment. Prosecutors said the victim believed she was being targeted by evil spirits and turned to Muneppa for help. In a written statement to prosecutors, Muneppa allegedly admitted, 'I did a few palm reading and astrology readings. She gave me a bunch of money… all $100 bills.' He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Friday and was released without bail. He has been ordered to wear an ankle monitor and stay away from the victim, NBC4 New York reported. No attorney information for Muneppa was immediately available. According to NBC4, Mueppa, a father-of-two, did not comment outside court on Friday. The case has raised concerns in the community. Mehwish Saeed, who owns a clothing store near the psychic shop, said her daughter also visited the business and was misled. NBC New York Privacy Policy 'Playing with somebody's feelings and giving them false hope - that's really bad,' Saeed said. 'They're just making people a fool, so they deserve to be punished.' While fortune telling charges are uncommon and often difficult to prosecute, authorities said the case met the criteria for criminal charges. According to the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review, such cases are frequently challenged on First Amendment grounds, making convictions rare. Anyone who believes they may have been a victim of Muneppa or the Anjana Ji shop is asked to contact the Nassau County Police Second Squad at 516-573-6200.
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Travel + Leisure
14-07-2025
- Travel + Leisure
These Are the Best Cities in the World to Retire for $1,500 or Less a Month
Getting to a comfortable place financially is certainly the common goal. However, saving up all those dollars and cents so you can enjoy those golden years seems to be getting harder and harder. There is, however, one easy solution: moving to a destination where your money stretches further. And, according to a new list by International Living, there are plenty of places you can live for just $1,500 a month as a senior citizen. "While the costs of everyday life may be rising back home, there are places overseas where $1,500 a month covers you for housing, healthcare, food, fun … the whole nine yards," the website dedicated to helping expats live their best lives, shared. "And that's for a couple. If you're flying solo, you can call these places home for even less." According to the site, the Iberian Peninsula reigns supreme when it comes to affordable retirement living. It named Bragança, a city in northern Portugal, as a top spot thanks to its furnished apartments, which can be rented for about $400 to $500 a month. It also noted that the cost of living here is also rather affordable, with electricity, water, and internet costing about $150 a month. Access to health care is also easy, thanks to private health insurance, which costs around $100 a month. Add in a $400 food budget and $30 for transportation, and you're squared away for a retirement under $1500 a month. Also joining Bragança is the city of Covilhã, located in central Portugal, where you can also find one-bedroom apartments for about $500 a month. Here, International Living shared, a meal out at an inexpensive restaurant can go for as little as $8.50 per person, while groceries remain affordable, too, with "a liter of milk, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, a pound of beef, a pound of cheese, and a bottle of wine" totaling around $15. International Living added, "With utilities (electricity, phone, Internet) averaging $175, a couple can live comfortably within a $1,500 budget while still having funds for travel and savings." Joining Portugal are three destinations in Spain, including Oviedo, close to the Bay of Biscay, where retirees can snag a furnished one-bedroom apartment for about $630 per month, while utilities average about $185, and a monthly public transportation pass costs $34. Alicante, Spain, also made the list, where you can get a city apartment or an ocean-view spot for less than $700 a month. Granada, Spain, rounded out the list; here you can get a city apartment for $600 a month and the overall cost of living for two people averages just $1,000 a month. Of course, there are other places outside the peninsula that made the list, including several spots in Mexico, Malaysia, and more spread across Asia. See all the places you can move for an affordable retirement at
Telegraph
11-06-2025
- Automotive
- Telegraph
I've been caught by Britain's most prolific speed camera – it makes the road no safer
When careful motorist Norman Tate received a letter of intended prosecution for speeding, he could hardly believe it. It told the grandfather, who had had a clean driving licence for more than a quarter of a century before the incident last year, that he'd been caught doing 45mph in a 30mph zone in his Ford Mondeo by a speed camera on a busy junction on the A38 in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. 'I'm a straight-up person. My immediate thought was, 'I'm a senior citizen and don't do 45mph in a 30mph area',' says Tate, now 80. 'I might creep over the limit by a few miles an hour, but not by that much. So I thought I'd investigate.' The chartered civil engineer, with experience of road and bridge design, analysed the signage along that stretch of road. He's concluded that it is 'not fit for purpose' – and argues that motorists should be given better warnings that they are about to enter a 30mph area. It is a view that others who have been caught by that speed camera share – and there are plenty of them. In fact, the little yellow box mounted on a pole is so prolific that it is said to be the 'most lucrative' speed camera in the country, according to a Channel 5 documentary due to be broadcast tonight at 8pm. Speed Cameras: Are They Out to Get You? says that one camera caught 17,498 speeding offences in nine months from when it was installed in August 2023 – at an average rate of 72 per day and potentially costing motorists more than £1.6 million. So, what, you might well ask, is going on with this camera in a Nottinghamshire market town to make it ranked the most prolific – and some claim the sneakiest – in the country? And what happens to all the money it generates? When we visit Sutton-in-Ashfield to meet Tate, from nearby Chesterfield, Derbyshire, he explains how, as you approach the camera from junction 28 of the M1, first there is a 70mph speed limit that suddenly turns to 50mph – with an average-speed camera overhead – then it goes to 30mph about 100 yards from the crossroads where the camera is. There is a 30mph sign as you approach on the dual carriageway and a smaller sign warning of the camera ahead and reminding you it's 30mph. But, Tate says: 'When I started looking into the signage, it became apparent that if there's a high-sided vehicle on the inside lane, there's no way you can see the 30mph sign. There is nothing on the road itself to say it's 30mph. I think there should be. It's too easy to think you're still in the 50mph zone.' (When we stopped by at a busy 4pm, motorists appeared to be driving carefully, but it was hard to tell whether it was carefully enough – the camera uses infra-red light technology, which means it doesn't flash.) The figures in the documentary come from a survey by Legal Expert, a personal injury, compensation and accident claim solicitor company. To obtain them, the firm made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to all 43 police forces in England and Wales asking for the number of speeding fines issued in the 12 months to April 5 2024, and the top 20 spots where drivers have been caught speeding. Only 23 replied. If the 17,498 figure for the camera on the A38 in Sutton-in-Ashfield is annualised, it would be 23,331, putting it ahead of the second-placed speed camera, which was on the M25 between junctions 7 and 16 in Surrey (21,989 offences, at a daily average of 60). With speeding offences resulting in a £100 fine and three points on your licence (if they result in a fixed penalty notice and are not contested), that would mean that £2,333,100 worth of fines would have been threatened in a year, using the annualised figure for the A38 camera. A separate FOI request, not mentioned in the documentary, about the A38 speed camera was later made to Nottinghamshire Police by Gary Eyre, a heating engineer from Huthwaite, near Sutton-in-Ashfield. He found the reply 'flabbergasting': it said 41,675 motorists were punished for travelling in excess of the 30mph limit in the camera's first 20 months. 'I go into about 10 houses every day and everybody knows someone who's been done,' he said, explaining what prompted him to make the FOI request. That means at least £4.1 million worth of fines will have been threatened during that period. Nottinghamshire Police has stressed to The Telegraph that 47 per cent of those offences were resolved with speed awareness courses as an alternative to prosecution, so no fines will have been paid for those. 'I don't disagree with having speed cameras,' Tate says, 'and this one is there doing the job it should be doing and is designed to do – if the signage was correct. This is a very dangerous junction and the camera is trying to save people's lives. But if there's 23,000 people a year going through there at the wrong speed, there's something wrong – and that's the signage.' His attempts to argue his case saw him locked in what he called a 'David and Goliath' battle with the authorities. In the end, after first electing to go to trial, he pleaded guilty to his speeding offence, committed at 11.09am on February 1 last year. He did not contest the 45mph recorded by the camera but argued that the advance warning signs from the 50mph to the 30mph zone are 'inadequate' and called for a review of those signs. Magistrates gave him four points, fined him £360, and ordered him to pay a surcharge to victim services of £144 and £150 costs to the Crown Prosecution Service. In the documentary, Tate is featured with his friend Brian Staples, 76, a retired auto electrician from Papplewick, Nottinghamshire, who runs a classic car club. Staples is more dubious of the camera's intent, telling the documentary: 'They're taking those motorists to court and making them look as if they're bad drivers, and they're not. Friends that I know have been caught there are in their 80s – they're not speeding, they've just been caught out.' Staples also claims that some speed cameras are there just to collect money rather than to slow people down. Patrica Harvey, 68, a retired office accounts manager from Pinxton, Derbyshire, told The Telegraph that she has been caught speeding by the Sutton-in-Ashfield camera twice in a year, the second time around a fortnight ago. Both times, she said her speed was in the mid-30s mph. 'I was specifically looking for the sign the second time but didn't see it,' she said. 'I'm really very cautious about my speed. But one minute you're in 50mph, then it's 30mph. There's not enough signs telling you what's happening.' Judy Gascoigne, 66, a PA from Matlock, Derbyshire, was warned by a passenger in her car of the camera ahead and was trying to slow down when she was caught doing 36mph. 'I didn't see the signage,' she said. 'I did a speed awareness course and there were four or five others on it caught at the same camera.' Another motorist said: 'I got caught twice in the same week. When there's tree branches in the way and large vehicles, the signs are difficult to see.' The documentary also raises the question of what happens to the money from speed camera fines, making the point that it is common misconception that it goes to the council. In fact, it goes directly to central government, to the Treasury, and is used towards general spending rather than ring-fenced for specific areas. Motoring journalist and transport campaigner Quentin Willson told the documentary: 'If the public saw that the revenue raised from speeding fines made a visible difference, then perhaps the public would be more behind them.' It is an issue that West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster is campaigning on. He wants the money raised from speeding fines in his region to be spent on road safety schemes there. During a consultation in 2023, 93 per cent of the public agreed that money raised from fixed penalty fines should stay in the region. So far, however, his calls – to both this and the previous government – have not resulted in a change of policy. One argument against allowing the income from speed cameras to be retained locally is that it might incentivise regions to install cameras to make money. Nottinghamshire Police said around 37,000 vehicles go through the junction where the Sutton-in-Ashfield camera is every day, so only a very small percentage are exceeding the speed limit. There had been at least one fatal collision and a number of serious injury collisions in the years before the camera was installed. But there have been no fatal or serious injury collisions since it was installed and the rate of offences have reduced to around 60 a day. The force also said work to cut back foliage to ensure all signage was visible was done before the camera went live, and the 'unusual step' was taken of putting out proactive communication to inform people of the new camera. Inspector Simon Allen, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: 'While the 30mph limit around this junction is not set by the police, it is in place for a very good reason – including the very large number of children who use the pedestrian crossings to get to and from school each day. 'Like all safety cameras in the UK, this unit is in place to reduce speed and prevent road traffic collisions – not to catch people speeding.' A Department for Transport spokesman said: 'Fines from speeding offences help fund essential public services including health care, transport and policing in the West Midlands and across the country. 'While we keep the motoring offences and their penalties under review, we don't currently have any plans to change this system.'
Independent Singapore
28-05-2025
- General
- Independent Singapore
Body of 65-year-old found floating in Singapore River, police do not suspect foul play
Photo: Google Maps SINGAPORE: A man's body was found floating in the Singapore River on Tuesday morning (27 May). The police have since confirmed the identity of the man and revealed that the deceased was a 65-year-old senior citizen. The police said that they received a call for assistance at around 11:20 in the morning. Emergency services personnel recovered the body from the river, and Singapore Civil Defence Force paramedics confirmed that the man was dead. Based on a preliminary investigation, the police have ruled out foul play. Investigations are ongoing. Incidentally, this is the third case of senior citizens passing away in unnatural circumstances in just a week. On May 20, a 63-year-old was found dead at the foot of Block 76 Telok Blangah Drive. The man was found lying motionless at the foot of the block around 10 p.m. and was pronounced dead at the scene. On May 25, a 63-year-old woman passed away after falling from a block at Yishun Ring Road. The incident took place in the morning, around 10:30 a.m. The police said that their preliminary investigations do not indicate foul play in both cases. If you or someone you know is struggling with emotional or mental health issues, help is available. Mental health helplines Institute of Mental Health's Mental Health Helpline: 6389-2222 (24 hours) Samaritans of Singapore: 1-767 (24 hours) / 9151-1767 (24-hour CareText via WhatsApp) Singapore Association for Mental Health: 1800-283-7019 Silver Ribbon Singapore: 6386-1928 Tinkle Friend (for children): 1800-274-4788 Chat, Centre of Excellence for Youth Mental Health: 6493-6500/1 Women's Helpline (Aware): 1800-777-5555 (weekdays, 10 a.m to 6 p.m.) Counselling helplines Touchline (Counselling): 1800-377-2252 Touch Care Line (for caregivers): 6804-6555 Care Corner Counselling Centre: 6353-1180 Counselling and Care Centre: 6536-6366 We Care Community Services: 3165-8017 Online resources If you are in distress or know someone who needs support, do not hesitate to reach out. You are not alone.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Yahoo
Caregiver convicted of forcing Pearl River man, 78, at knifepoint to sign checks
NEW CITY -- A Rockland County Court jury convicted a live-in home care worker of forcing a Pearl River senior citizen at knifepoint to sign five personal checks in her name, totaling $18,592. The jury, after a week-long trial, found Delores Anderson, 60, of the Bronx guilty on Thursday, May 8, of five felony counts of second-degree grand larceny, the Rockland District Attorney's Office said on Friday, May 9. Anderson is scheduled for sentencing by Judge Kevin Russo on Aug. 27. A single count of second-degree grand larceny carries a maximum prison term of 15 years. Sentencing is at the discretion of the judge. Anderson cared for a 78-year-old man living in a Pearl River senior assisted living complex from December 2022 through August 2023. She was a live-in home care worker. She forced the man to sign five checks by threatening him with a kitchen knife, "instilling fear in him, that if he did not comply and author these checks, she would cause him a physical injury," the District Attorney's Office said in a news release. On May 5, 2023, Anderson forced the man for the first time to sign two personal checks payable to her, the release states. The checks totaled $4,082 each. On July 25, 2023, Anderson held the same kitchen knife to the victim's stomach and demanded that he write three more checks. Two of the checks amounted to $3,603 each, and the third totaled $3,602. She later withdrew $18,972.00 from her account, the release said. Orangetown police investigated and arrested Anderson in March 2024. Senior assistant district attorneys Allyson White and Brittany Richardson prosecuted. District Attorney Thomas Walsh said Anderson preyed upon a vulnerable person. 'This defendant not only violated a position of trust in this theft but threatened this elderly victim with a knife in his own home," Walsh said. "Our senior citizens can be assured that the Rockland County District Attorney's Office is committed to protecting them from violence and abuse and will vigorously prosecute any offenders." Steve Lieberman covers government, breaking news, courts, police, and investigations. Reach him at slieberm@ Twitter: @lohudlegal Read more articles and bio. Our local coverage is only possible with support from our readers. This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Caregiver forced Pearl River NY man to sign checks at knifepoint
