what's going on in Japan?Oct 29th, 2007 - 17:55:45
Four dead in suicide pact in Japan
Article from: Agence France-Presse
From correspondents in Tokyo
October 29, 2007 03:12pm
FOUR bodies were found in a car filled with carbon monoxide in what was suspected to be Japan's latest group suicide, police said today.
A group of woodcutters found the bodies inside the vehicle parked on a small path on a hillside deep in the forests of Tochigi prefecture northeast of Tokyo, a police spokesman said.
Police said the three men, aged 20, 22 and 38, and one woman, 30, were all from Tokyo and nearby areas.
'The families of all of them except the 22-year-old man had filed missing person reports with respective local police,' said the police officer.
'Police believe it was a group suicide.'
Investigators found three charcoal burners, all used fully, in the back of the car, he said.
Japan has one of the developed world's highest suicide rates.
It has witnessed a growing number of suicide pacts among strangers who meet on the Internet and then go to scenic areas where they kill themselves together through carbon monoxide poisoning.
The woman in the latest case had been seen checking suicide websites, domestic media reported.
TOKYO (AP) - A woman leaped from an 11-story Tokyo apartment Wednesday in an apparent suicide, striking and seriously injuring a passer-by, a news report said Wednesday.
The unidentified woman, who appeared to be in her 30s or 40s, appeared to have jumped from the building onto a busy Tokyo street and was declared dead at the scene, Kyodo News agency reported.
She hit a 47-year-old male pedestrian who suffered a brain injury, the report said.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police said they could not immediately confirm the report.
Japan has one of the industrial world's highest suicide rates, with more than 32,000 people taking their own lives in 2006.
what's going on in Japan?Nov 13th, 2007 - 20:06:22
Japan's Suicide Rate Remains High
By AP-CARL FREIRE
TOKYO (AP) — Japan's employers should provide mental health services to workers suffering from depression and other illnesses, the government said Friday after reporting that more than 30,000 people killed themselves last year.
In its first annual report on suicide and suicide prevention measures, the Cabinet Office said 32,155 people killed themselves in 2006, the 9th straight year the figure has exceeded 30,000.
The total number of suicides represents a drop of 397 from the previous year, the government said. Still, Japan's suicide rate ranks 9th highest in the world, the government added, citing World Health Organization data. Lithuania had the highest rate, followed by Belarus and Russia, while the U.S. ranked 43.
Health problems were believed to factor in almost 50 percent of the Japan's suicides in 2006, followed by money problems and household difficulties, the report said. Forty-eight percent of those who killed themselves were unemployed, it said.
Suicides first passed the 30,000 mark in 1998 during an economic slump that left many bankrupt, jobless and desperate.
'This is a problem that needs to be dealt with comprehensively by society,' government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said at a news conference.
The central government and local authorities should work together to implement a law approved in June that calls on employers to offer mental health services to employees, Machimura said.
Other measures implemented by the government in June aim to tackle unemployment and filter Web sites that promote suicide. The government's goal is to cut the suicide rate by 20 percent in 10 years.
what's going on in Japan?Oct 29th, 2007 - 17:55:45
Four dead in suicide pact in Japan
Article from: Agence France-Presse
From correspondents in Tokyo
October 29, 2007 03:12pm
FOUR bodies were found in a car filled with carbon monoxide in what was suspected to be Japan's latest group suicide, police said today.
A group of woodcutters found the bodies inside the vehicle parked on a small path on a hillside deep in the forests of Tochigi prefecture northeast of Tokyo, a police spokesman said.
Police said the three men, aged 20, 22 and 38, and one woman, 30, were all from Tokyo and nearby areas.
'The families of all of them except the 22-year-old man had filed missing person reports with respective local police,' said the police officer.
'Police believe it was a group suicide.'
Investigators found three charcoal burners, all used fully, in the back of the car, he said.
Japan has one of the developed world's highest suicide rates.
It has witnessed a growing number of suicide pacts among strangers who meet on the Internet and then go to scenic areas where they kill themselves together through carbon monoxide poisoning.
The woman in the latest case had been seen checking suicide websites, domestic media reported.
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