Eideard

A Canadian senator has said imprisoned murderers should have the “right to a rope in their cell”.

Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, a Conservative senator, later backtracked from the statement, which came a month after two Canadians charged but not convicted of murder were found dead in jail.

Canada abolished the use of capital punishment in 1976…

Mr Boisvenu made his comments to reporters ahead of a meeting of the Conservative caucus. “Each assassin should have the right to a rope in his cell to make a decision about his or her life,” he said. He serves on the committee currently reviewing Canada’s omnibus crime bill.

Mr Boisvenu said he does not expect Canada to reopen the debate on the death penalty, but said “in horrible cases such as [serial killer Clifford] Olson, can we have a reflection on that issue..?”

Mr Harper’s office confirmed that it will not reopen the death penalty debate, but made no other comment…

Mr Boisvenu’s statements were roundly criticised by fellow Canadian politicians.

Bob Rae, an MP for Toronto and interim Liberal Party leader, told CBC the comments “were obviously completely unacceptable”. “He’s also suggesting that the prison system break the Criminal Code, which is equally ludicrous,” Mr Rae said.

Frankly, I think the idea has merit. Understand, I oppose the death penalty [1] our criminal justice and prosecutorial system teeters perpetually on the edge of corruption and [2] life without parole is cheaper than the time and money consumed in endless appeals against execution.

But, just as I feel the individual has the right to order the end of their own lives – whether because of terminal illness or ennui – I see nothing wrong with someone sentenced to life without parole being able to choose a simple means of doing the state a favor and ending his imprisonment with suicide.

Logan, Ohio — A man repeatedly shot his adult son and two sisters-in-law in his living room, killing them in front of his terminally ill wife, then fatally shot himself on the front porch as family tension about the cancer-stricken woman’s care apparently boiled over…

An earlier dispute about whether the woman should have been fed tea and toast or the orange her husband had peeled for her apparently set off the shooter Monday, 63-year-old Paul Gilkey…

The sick woman, 59-year-old Darlene Gilkey, witnessed the shootings from a hospital bed in her living room but wasn’t injured, the sheriff said. The family friction escalated into violence in the evening when Paul Gilkey went to a bedroom, retrieved a semiautomatic handgun and began threatening relatives, North said…

Gilkey, known as David or Dave because he went by his middle name, served a decade in prison beginning in 1974 for killing a man in Athens County in May of that year, according to court records. He also had a 1986 arrest for felonious assault, according to the sheriff…

Which didn’t keep him from having a gun in the house.

Darlene Gilkey was receiving hospice care through a company in nearby Lancaster, whose chief executive declined to comment Tuesday because of privacy restrictions. Investigators said she was taken to a hospital after the shootings rattled the normally quiet area.

I’m never surprised when people do something crazy and criminal. I am perpetually astounded over the candyass and cowardly politicians who are so cowed by the NRA and nutballs whose guns are grafted replacements for their sexual organs.

RTFA for the details.

Facebook launched a new suicide prevention tool on Tuesday, giving users a direct link to an online chat with counselors who can help, the company said.

Friends are able to report suicidal behavior by clicking a report option next to any piece of content on the site and choosing suicidal content under the harmful behavior option, Facebook spokesman Frederic Wolens said. Facebook will then email the user in distress a direct link for a private online chat with a crisis representative from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline as well as the group’s phone number.

The new tool gives people who may not be comfortable picking up the phone a direct avenue to seek help…

Users also have the ability to report suicidal behavior by going to the site’s Help Center or search for suicide reporting forms. They can also use reporting links around the site.

Worried friends who reported the behavior will also receive a message to say it is being addressed, Wolens said…

The new suicide reporting tool will be made available to people who use Facebook in the United States and Canada…All reporting on the site is done anonymously and so a distressed user will not know who reported the suicidal content.

Right idea, good idea. Too late for a young guy I worked with.

He killed himself a week later – disconsolate over a failed relationship.

Chancellor Keesling coming home from Iraq

A bipartisan group of senators is asking President Barack Obama to change the current “insensitive” policy of not sending condolence letters to families of service members who commit suicide.

A letter signed by 11 senators — 10 Democrats and one Republican — urges the president to “take immediate steps to reverse the long-standing policy of withholding presidential letters of condolence” to families of troops who killed themselves.

The policy, which goes back several presidents, has been the subject of protest by military families. CNN first reported in 2009 about the family of Spc. Chancellor Keesling, who killed himself while serving in Iraq.

The family set up a wall to pay tribute to Keesling in their Indiana home. Along with his uniform and the flag from his burial service, a space was left for the expected condolence letter from the commander in chief. It never arrived.

Upset when they learned a suicide did not merit a letter from the president, Keesling’s father, Gregg, wrote to the president and the Army chief of staff requesting the policy be changed.

At the time, a White House spokesman said the administration was reviewing the “inherited” policy.

Keesling has argued that his son’s suicide was a result of what he was exposed to during war and deserves to be considered caused by battle. The letter never arrived.

The letter to the president this week seeks again to reverse the policy. The senators note that the Pentagon has worked hard to try to eliminate the stigma of mental health injuries and to lower the suicide rate…

“Unfortunately, perpetuating a policy that denies condolence letters to families of service members who die by suicide only serves to reinforce this stigma by overshadowing the contributions of an individual’s life with the unfortunate nature of his or her death,” the letter says. “It is simply unacceptable for the United States to be sending the message to these families that somehow their loved ones’ sacrifices are less important.”

It doesn’t seem to matter if our leader in the White House is a compassionate conservative or a compassionate liberal – there hasn’t been anyone in that office with common sense or compassion enough to care about the families of someone whose death took place while toiling for this nation as a member of the American military.

It takes some kind of barbaric reasoning to inflict further loss upon those who were close to someone who felt they needed to take their life.

UPDATE: We won that one. Obama changed administration policy, today – 6 July 2011.

A man has committed suicide by jumping from the world’s tallest skyscraper in Dubai, according to its owner.

The man, in his 20s, fell from the 147th floor of the 2,717ft Burj Khalifa, landing on a deck on the 108th floor, local media reported…

It would be the first known suicide from the 160-storey landmark, which opened in January 2010…

Reports on the websites of the Gulf News and 7 Days newspapers said the man had jumped after a dispute with his employer. Police statements showed that a holiday he had requested was turned down…

The Burj Khalifa was designed by Chicago-based architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

It is the tallest freestanding structure in the world.

I wonder if the record holds – since he didn’t make it all the way to ground level?

Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and on average nearly 100 people take their own lives every day. But where those deaths take place has a big impact on families left behind.

In a stuffy apartment in Sendai, the air blue with smoke from cigarettes, a father kneels in prayer…His daughter’s photograph is not inside alongside the other ancestors, it is still on the bookshelf.Putting it there would be a final acceptance that she has gone, that two years ago he found her body in her rented Tokyo flat…

“I could not take in what happened. I thought there is really no God in this world at all. That is what I remember from that day…”

It was not long after the death that he got another shock – this time a letter from his daughter’s landlord…”The bill for renovating the flat came in April, then a demand for compensation for lost rent in May. So it was one after another.

“The only thing I could think about was my lost daughter. So when I was getting those bills, I had no will or strength to negotiate or resist.” In all he paid more than $30,000…

Few would choose to rent an apartment where a previous occupant had taken their own life. So a death is frequently followed by a demand for money…”Mostly it’s compensation for loss of rent for flats…”

Many families are also required to pay for expensive purification rituals.

RTFA. Many details, twists and turns. I suppose much of this wouldn’t be surprising in many cultures.

The best rental deal I ever had was a lovely little house in the middle of acres of woods – that had been the site of a murder-suicide. Never bothered me in the least.

Kapatos’ landing zone

A man who jumped out of a ninth-floor window in New York was alive on Monday after he landed in a giant heap of trash uncollected since the city’s huge snowstorm a week ago.

Vangelis Kapatos, 26, was hospitalized in critical but stable condition after jumping from his apartment in midtown Manhattan on Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

Sanitation workers have not collected trash since the December 26 storm dumped more than a foot and a half of snow on the city. Mounds of garbage several feet high line many sidewalks.

“Everybody is complaining that the trash hasn’t been picked up,” Kapatos’ aunt said on Monday. “But me, I’m thankful that it was never picked up…”

Katharina Capatos, who spells her surname differently from her nephew, told Reuters he was severely depressed and had spent a month in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital before being released last week.

He also was worried about the possibility of being evicted from his $572-a-month rent-stabilized apartment, she said.

Kapatos’ eviction hearing was scheduled to proceed on Tuesday, according to the New York City Housing Court.

Of course.

You don’t think any modern city would handle this differently, do you? They’ll probably take a statement from his hospital bed.

So sue me!

CNN host Nancy Grace settled a wrongful-death suit over the suicide of a Virginia woman following a Grace interview about her missing daughter, officials said.

Melinda Duckett, 21, questioned by Grace after reporting her 2-year-old son, Trenton, missing from his bedroom Aug. 27, 2006, later killed herself with a shotgun at her grandparents’ home on Sept. 8, 2006, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported.

Duckett’s estate sued Grace, alleging she drove the young Leesburg, Va., mother to suicide.

In settling the suit, Grace and CNN agreed to establish a $200,000 trust fund dedicated to finding Duckett’s son, who is still missing.

Meanwhile, lawyers representing Duckett’s estate issued an apology to Grace for comments accusing her of “ambushing” Duckett in the interview.

She’s a great champion for crime victims everywhere. Just ask her.

Nancy Grace is a worthy symbol of what happened to CNN after Ted Turner. That’s not a compliment.

At first, the kids thought the body on the front porch of a trailer in a mobile home park in Newberry Township was a Halloween decoration. But upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a real-life horror show – a 68-year-old man who had ended his own life with a bullet from a handgun, police said.

Next door neighbor Donna Jones was helping her friend’s daughter and another child get ready for the township’s trick-or-treat night.

After they left and went next door, Jones said, her friend screamed for her to come outside and call for help.

Newberry Township Police Chief John Snyder said the children discovered the body of John Sucic shortly after 6 p.m. on the porch of his trailer in the Conewago Valley Mobile Home Park in the 800 block of York Road…

Police officers covered the body with a sheet and put up police tape to prevent other trick-or-treaters from seeing the scene.

Jones said the children who discovered the body are about 4 to 5 years old and were anxious to head over to Sucic’s home when they saw his outdoor light was on.

Other neighbors didn’t notice anything until the police arrived…

The investigation showed that Sucic had shot himself in the head. Snyder said the police had indications he had made arrangements prior to killing himself. It appeared, Snyder said, the man’s body was on the porch for about a day before the kids made the discovery.

Not even any nosy neighbors in the trailer park, eh?

Officials in Toyama, a city 186 miles northwest of Tokyo, have launched the nation’s first scheme in which hairdressers are used as mediators between suicidal customers and professional counsellors.

The move taps into the renowned universal skill of hairdressers to lend a sympathetic ear to customers who often feel comfortable confiding in them about their problems.

More than 650 hairdressers in the city are involved in the new project, which involves taking part in training lectures with clinical psychologists to help them identify those in need of specialist help.

The hairdressers are also being given guidebooks to hand out to customers who they believe may be suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts and are able to put them in touch with professional psychological counselors…

As part of the new scheme, hairdressers will be taking part in training sessions organised by city officials with professional psychologists focusing on problems relating to suicide.

Japan is home to one of the highest suicide rates among industrialised nations, with more than 30,000 people killing themselves every year.

Hairdressers across the city appeared to welcome the initiative, with a growing number of premises displaying government-provided stickers in their window to show they are taking part in the project.

Hey – marketing is marketing. Increased traffic into a retail business is always welcome.